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the last animal, I pause, replace my swords in their scabbards and pick up two steaks, holding them out to Ram for his inspection.
    What is it with this guy? He’s still grinning. Seriously, Ram never grins and Ozzie never growls, not until the last ten hours or so. At least Ram’s smile isn’t quite so big right now, but I still study his face to prove to myself he is not actually handsome, that it was just a trick of the light or my overwhelming shock at seeing him smile in the first place.
    Hairy and goggley, yes, but also sort of good looking.
    Weird.
    “Much better. I think you’ve got that down.” He hoists the heaping pans of steak from the floor cart and carries it to the table. I grab the nearest wheeled rack and help him load the pans.
    The cut meat goes to the next room, where Michal’s teenage daughters, Zusa and Tyna, wrap what needs to be wrapped, further process anything that needs further processing (like the ground beef and sausages) and arrange it attractively in the windows, all while smiling and giggling and flirting with the young men among the customers who come to the shop.
    In a logical sense, Zusa and Tyna are probably a lot like me. I mean, I’m eighteen and they’re both right around there, sixteen and nineteen, I think. But I feel like we have little in common, and I’m not just talking about the language barrier. I may not know much Czech, but they know a bit of English, and all three of us have conversational German, enough to chat together—which we’ve done for a few moments now and then, mostly when I first came here.
    Not that I can blame them for not befriending me. I’m probably a little freakish, with my swords and blood-stained coveralls. And I admit I don’t linger too long in the doorway when I shove the meat cart their way. “Děkuji, Tyna. Děkuji, Zusa.” I let go of the cart and wave.
    “Děkuji, Ilsa!” They wave back, friendly enough, but that’s the end of it. Tyna grabs the cart, turns her back to me and navigates the narrow walkway of the front room.
    The door closes.
    And that’s the end of my normal peer interaction. To be honest, I didn’t fare much better at Saint Evangeline’s, even without the swords and bloodstained coveralls. I went to school with real princesses, with girls whose families had so much money they could buy themselves a country, if they wanted (or so girls claimed whenever someone of noble birth tried to pull rank).
    Since I didn’t even know where I was from, I was at a disadvantage from the start. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to gain acceptance. The last time I can really recall having friends was in the village.
    Homesickness wells up inside me again, and I turn to face the carcass I still need to finish.
    My enemy.
    The ones who stole my childhood and killed my mother.
    My blades sing again as I pull them from their sheaths. This time, I get everything right—the angle, the force, the speed, the cut. Steaks fall in piles in the pans below. This time I finish everything, right up to the hind shank and hock.
    When I finish this time, I’m panting. I grab a spray bottle and clean the lenses of my goggles while they’re still on my face, mopping up sweat along with blood.
    I glance at Ram and he’s looking my way.
    Grinning, again.
    What’s up with that?
    *
    By noon I’m starving.
    Ram must have guessed I’d be hungry after all that work, because I see him carry five large porterhouse steaks through the back door as I’m finishing the hindquarters.
    This is the best part of my job, the best perk in the history of job perks. We get to eat all we can of whatever meat we want.
    My first day working here, I was a little weirded out by the hanging carcasses and the swords (I think swords are smashing, and all, it was just a big adjustment getting used to their sharpness and using them on flesh and all that). In fact, by lunchtime that first day, I was starting to think my father had brought me here to punish me, which