She finishes packing soil around the base of the plant before she sits back on her heels. Her hands are dirty to the wrist. She looks better in the morning light than she did when she first arrived at Ravenclaw with the first batch of rescued wolved. Better is not the same as well, but I’ll take it.
“I need to ask you something,” I say.
Her expression changes by almost nothing, but I sense the shift.
“About Bern?”
“About the Syndicate. Numbering systems.”
She wipes one hand on her trousers. Leaves dirt behind. “That’s a broad subject.”
“I know.”
“And an ugly one.”
“I know that too.”
She looks past me, toward the healers’ wing. The eastern windows catch the sun at this hour. From here, the building looks ordinary. Long roof. Whitewashed walls. Clean glass. Nothing about it says there is a nameless wolf sedated behind a reinforced door.
Arden’s eyes stay there. “The man in your locked room.”
Am I that easy to read?
“Yes.”
“The tattoo?”
“3-0-6-7-0.”
She closes her eyes.
I wait.
The wind moves through the herb beds, carrying the bitter green smell of crushed leaves. Somewhere by the kitchen, Greta is scolding someone for lifting a lid before she says it is ready. The compound sounds almost normal if you don’t listen too closely.
Arden opens her eyes.
“Five digits,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Permanent?”
“Tattooed. Forearm.”
“Not intake, then.”
My fingers curl around the strap of my bag. “What does that mean?”
“It means he wasn’t processed as general stock.”
Stock.
The word is ugly. She says it flatly because making it softer would be worse.
I let it stand.
Arden looks down at her hands. “Some facilities used temporary markers,” she says. “Wrist tags. Neck tags. Numbers in ledgers. Those were for captives they moved, traded, drained, bred, killed.”
