Hina staggered back from the blow, crashed into a cooling rack and fell against the counter. Her arms sent a mixing bowl and a rolling pin flying before she caught her balance.

A huge scowling figure loomed over her in the humming electric light. Lagi clenched his fists, eyes bright and glistening.

Pale light from Ofelia's crescent streamed through the high window behind Lagi's head—it was early morning. The bakery wouldn't open for hours yet.

No one was coming to help her.

She swept her hand back and forth along the bench beside her, looking for something, anything.

"How can you be so fucking selfish, Hina? Fuck!" Flecks of spittle landed on her face.

Her head was full of angry bees. She shook it. It didn't help.

"You can't do this to me." Lagi drew his enormous hand back. "You can't. I won't let you." His palm caught her across the face with a crack.

Hina's vision flashed with tiny points of light and a groan slipped out of her mouth.

"It's not right." Lagi shook his head, jowls swaying. "It isn't right."

The tips of her fingers brushed against something. She reached out.

"You can't—you can't leave me." Lagi looked down at her, lower lip trembling. "You made a promise, Hina." His hand stretched back, paused. "Tell me you won't leave me," he said, voice small and desperate. "Tell me you won't."

Hina shook her head. No. She was leaving. She had to.

Roaring with grief and rage, Lagi struck her. His fist caught her in the stomach.

Folded by the impact, Hina collapsed to the floor with the breath knocked out of her lungs. She curled herself up around the sick and hollow pain of it, one hand holding her stomach, the other gripped tight to what she'd found on the counter.

"No. No." Lagi muttered. "This isn't right. No."

Hina had to get up, the thought pierced through the buzzing thrum in her head. She had to get up or she'd die here. One way or another.

"You can't—" Lagi shuffled back and forth muttering to himself. "She can't—you can't—no."

Ignoring the ache, the wrongness in her guts, Hina rolled up into a crouch on the floor.

Lagi brought his leg back for a kick. "You can't do this to—"

Driving herself up with the full force of her legs, Hina's right hand pushed out and up with what she'd found on the counter, the only thing that could be of any help. She pushed up with the knife, the tip of it catching on white linen. Pushed hard at first, and then the resistance was gone.

The knife slid home with a deep wet shluk.

The bakery fell silent.

The rage drained off of Lagi's face. Watery eyes blinked at Hina, then looked down. His expression was hurt and confused.

Hina's mouth opened. She followed Lagi's gaze to the handle of the knife sticking out of his chest. The white knuckles of the fist that held it. Her knuckles. Her fist.

Her knife.

Hina wasn't quite sure how it had gotten there. It didn't seem real.

Lagi lurched back, pulling the knife free from his chest with a squelch. He slumped against the base of the new oven that he'd been so proud of, breathing hard.

The knife was in Hina's hand, bloody. She wiped both sides of it on her apron, watched with horror as red seeped in to beige linen. That was going to leave a stain.

A sick sucking sound came from Lagi's chest.

"Oh." Hina looked down at his pale face, his staring eyes. "Sorry," she said. "Sorry." She could taste bile. "Sorry."

"You—" he croaked. "Can't—"

Blood pooled on the clay tiles, spreading along the lines of grout, reaching towards Hina's feet.

Her stomach lurched, and she bent double, retching. Droplets of sick and blood splashed onto the doors of the glossy wooden cupboards. She'd only cleaned them yesterday.

Sliding down with her back against the wood, Hina hugged her knees. The room spun.

Lagi's gurgling breaths got louder. The reek of shit cut through the blood and the bile.

He was—

Something twisted in Hina's guts. She let out a low moan, head between her knees.

She couldn't stay here. She knew that. She couldn't stay here.

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A wet gasp repeated, slower now, as Lagi tried and tried to catch his breath.

It stopped.

The electric lights crackled and hummed into the quiet.

Hina's eyes opened. Blood and sick had soaked into the hem of her dress. She had a lot of laundry to do. She let out a hysterical giggle then pressed a hand over her mouth to keep the sound from getting out.

She saw her hand on the knife again, pushing up, pushing in. It had hardly taken any effort at all.

Hina had to go. She pulled herself up on shaky limbs, one hand on the counter for balance—fingers still clutching the knife, white knuckled.

Only a slight change of plans.

Lagi lay on his side awkwardly, white face in the muck. He wasn't moving anymore.

He was—

It was nothing to worry about.

Lagi was—

By her own hand.

Lagi was dead.

Hina had to leave, before someone came. Had to be gone before someone found him.

Had to get clean.

She couldn't go anywhere looking like this.

* * *

The first time Hina had come home from working in the bakery, clothes covered in flour, Suki had been furious. Furious that she'd been walking around town looking like a common labourer when she had a reputation to uphold.

Whether that was Hina's own reputation or her mother's, Hina wasn't sure.

Since then, Hina's mother had made her keep a change of clothes at the bakery. They were folded up in the washroom, on the shelf next to the shower.

She supposed she should be grateful for that now.

Hina rinsed the knife in the sink, and left it there to dry. The package from her dress went onto the edge of the sink where it wouldn't get wet.

She glanced at the mirror. There was blood on her cheek, the tiny spots bright against brown skin. She brushed at it with her fingertips. It smeared.

Standing in the shower, which filled half the space in the small tiled room, Hina turned the faucet. Cold water hissed out of the shower-head to fall like tiny knives, stabbing into the top of her head and her face.

The shock of it swept away some of the fog in her head.

Hina's clothes soaked through in moments, blood and muck running down, across the tiles and into the drain below, disappearing like magic.

When the worst of it was rinsed off, Hina struggled out of her wet clothes, peeling them off of her body.

She kicked off her sandals, rinsing them under the water. Hina didn't have a spare set, not here, not anywhere she would be able to get to. She'd have to make do with what she had.

Her filthy clothes she left bundled at the base of the shower to rinse while Hina washed herself properly, scrubbed at the blood on her legs with the little bar of white soap.

She closed the faucet and caught the last of the drips of water from the shower on her back, shivered with the cold of it.

It was okay. Hina took a deep breath. She filled her lungs and then slowly exhaled. She was okay. She had survived.

She had survived... and there was a body in the other room.

A flash of blood and a knife—Hina took another breath. Her mind tried to work on the problem, slipping over it like she was trying to peel vegetables with oily hands.

There's a body in the other room. And what next? Someone finds it.

She tried to work through the consequences, one step at a time. When someone found the body, the best case was that Hina wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.

And the worst case was not good. Hina swallowed hard. If they decided it was murder, a short trial and an execution was a real possibility, like what happened with that Henderson woman who killed her husband, only a few months ago.

Gallows in the town square.

Or if the court was merciful, prison and hard labour. For years.

Hina had only finished school a year ago.

Her father might be able to protect her. But even if he could, and Hina wasn't sure that he could, that would be it: she'd be stuck in Grambe for the rest of her life, stuck with whatever new deal her father decided to make.

No. She had to get away.

But there was a body in the kitchen.

It was early. The bakery wasn't due to open for three or four hours, and Lagi sometimes opened late. More often these days. She had a little time.

Hina imagined moving the body, hiding it. That would buy her more time. But Lagi was a big man, he towered over Hina and was much wider. Had been a big man. Hina couldn't lift him, but she might be able to drag the body a little way, if she had to.

She could do it if she asked Kai for help. And her little brother would help if she asked, Hina was sure of it. But no, Kai didn't need to see this. It would be better for Kai if he didn't have to see this.

It would be bad enough telling him about it. Kai wasn't going to like this at all. He'd never liked breaking the rules. Not that it had done him any good.

If she was working alone, it might take Hina an hour to drag Lagi out of the kitchen, into the store-room and down the hatch into the cellar. An hour, or more, of hard work. And then she'd have to clean the kitchen for it to mean anything, and that would take longer.

Hours at least. Too long. Someone might come looking before she was done.

And she was leaving, anyway. Better to be hours away than to spend hours making sure nobody found the body. She was prepared for leaving. Yes. She'd lock the doors and disappear. Get Kai and go, before this became a problem. Before it became a bigger problem.

Drying herself with the coarse linen towel on the hook behind the door, Hina put her clothes on, shift under green linen dress, belt around her waist. The parcel from the edge of the sink went into the pocket of her clean dress. She shoved her feet back into sticky sandals, which were not obviously bloody. Good enough.

The knife was clean, with a hint of discolouration in the wood of the handle, but it wasn't an obvious murder weapon. It was a medium-length cooks knife, for cutting vegetables. Hina had stolen it from her mother's kitchen, she'd been using it to cut dough.

She slid the knife through her belt.

The pile of wet clothes showed red marks and they were undeniably Hina's clothes: leaving them would announce her as the killer for sure.

Did that matter?

Back in the kitchen, Hina kept her eyes from the body while she walked over to the pile of empty flour sacks in the corner. She took two back to the washroom, wrung out the worst of the water over the drain, and put the wet clothes into one sack.

The bag dripped onto the tiles while she hesitated. She was prepared for the journey, but there were things here that might help.

In the front room, yesterday's loaves were still on display. Today's batch wouldn't be ready for the oven for hours yet. Two crusty loaves went into the empty flour sack.

The cash register beckoned. Taking money might make Hina look guilty. More guilty.

She pulled the lever, and the drawer opened with a ding. Coins glittered within the tray. Most of them were copper pennies the size of her fingertip, but there were also a few copper boots and five silver quarter-crowns.

It was a lot, more than Hina had in her purse. Lagi must have forgotten to clean out the register yesterday. It was enough that Hina could take most of it and nobody would guess that any was missing.

And Lagi wasn't going to need it anymore.

Four quarter-crowns, a handful of pennies and three boots went into Hina's purse. She closed the cash register with metallic rustle and a ding.

There would be more in the safe, but Hina didn't have the key, and she didn't want to search Lagi's pockets for it. What she had was enough.

Through the door to Lagi's apartment, there was more that she could take, more that could help her. But taking Lagi's personal possessions felt wrong in a way that taking money from the till didn't feel wrong, or didn't feel very wrong.

And Hina had to go now.

There was a knock at the door.