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“Go away.” Master Ostrum didn’t even look up at me as he pointed to the door.

“There’s still work to do,” I protested.

“Not today.”

I ignored him and tried to maneuver around the desk to the small door behind it. But Master Ostrum shifted his chair, blocking the entry to the laboratory.

“Nedra,” he said, his voice kinder this time. “You just did some excellent alchemical work. I’d debate on whether or not it was needed, given the girl’s condition, but nevertheless, you transferred her pain away. Not many fully trained alchemists could handle that.”

“Are you saying the amputations in the quarantine hospital are done without any kind of pain reduction for the patient?” I asked, horrified.

Master Ostrum shook his head. “I’m saying that most alchemists would have taken shifts on a procedure like that. You more than proved you’re ready for this work today.”

“Good. Let’s continue,” I said, trying to go into the lab again.

“Take a break. I don’t want you to push your body and your mind to the limits. I need you sharp. Tomorrow we go deeper.”

“Today,” I insisted, but the fight was leaving me.

The giant bell in the clock tower chimed.

“Don’t you have a study group now?” Master Ostrum said, deflecting me.

I hesitated. I’d attended a handful of Salis’s history study group meetings, and quite enjoyed the debates and new perspectives I’d learned. But as active as I’d been in the meetings for the first half of the month, in the last few weeks, I’d dropped them. There was too much work to do in the present to dwell on history. But Master Ostrum was right. I was bone-weary after the morning’s alchemical work.

“Go,” Master Ostrum said, sensing my doubt.

“Tomorrow,” I said, making the word a promise.

He bowed his head. “We resume tomorrow.”

Because the study group was in the same building as Master Ostrum’s office, I was only a few minutes late when I reached the meeting room.

“Oh,” Salis said, appraising me with her eyes. “We didn’t know you were attending today. Take a seat.”

I felt the admonishment in her voice, and my cheeks burned. I hadn’t meant to hurt the other girls’ feelings by ignoring the group; I’d just grown increasingly focused on my private labs with Master Ostrum.

“For those who’ve been absent,” Salis continued, shooting me a pointed look, “we’ve already discussed Wellebourne’s motivations and major battles leading up to the desecration.”

This was all subject matter I knew, although I did regret not getting the girls’ take on it. Wellebourne had started off as loyal to the Empire, striking out for an unknown and unpopulated island to lead a colony and expand the Emperor’s territories. After a rough winter with little aid, he decided he’d be better off leading his own independent nation and tried to rebel.

One of the other girls in the group plopped a book on the table and started rifling through the pages. Her name was Flora, and she was originally from the mainland. “One thing we have to consider is the abundance of dead people easily accessible to Wellebourne at the time.”

She slid the book around to show us an illustration with vivid details of a snowbound village in the early colony. Many of the houses weren’t fully constructed; the colony had arrived later than anticipated on the shores of Lunar Island and hadn’t been prepared. Forefront in the illustration was a row of dead bodies enshrouded with snow. The ground had been so hard that it had been impossible to bury those who starved and froze to death.

My fingers brushed one of the illustrated corpses. The hands and feet of the man were black—frostbite—but it reminded me of the girl in surgery today. A flare of pain washed over me, an echo of what I’d felt when I aided her, and I was left breathless.

Flora slid the book to the other side of the table so more could see. “We have to wonder, if the bodies were not present, would Wellebourne have...” She seemed reluctant to finish the statement.

Salis took the book from another girl’s hand, flipped past a few pages, then held it up for everyone to see. The illustration now showed a man, his head tilted at an abnormal angle, his eyes blackened, his shoulders slumped asymmetrically.

“I don’t think a man sees a dead body and thinks to raise it,” Salis said. “I think a man wants to raise the dead and acts on it when the opportunity arises. You’re trying to humanize him, Flora, and make excuses for what he did. But can you look at this and really think he was just responding to the environment?”

“I’m not trying to say it was okay!” Flora protested. She shook her head so violently that the little golden daffodils hanging from her ears smacked against her cheek. “But it’s worth considering. Would a man commit a crime if he never had access to a weapon? Would Wellebourne have raised the dead if there weren’t so many that winter?”

“I think,” I started, then paused as every girl turned to look at me. I began again. “I think that it depends on when Wellebourne started contemplating rebelling against the Empire. If he wanted to rebel before the winter wiped out so many colonists, then he was always a necromancer, just awaiting an opportunity, as Salis said. But if the death of so many colonists was the reason why he wanted to rebel, then he became a necromancer in response to the tragedy around him.”