There are more apprentices, too, a dozen besides Maddy and Corinne, who - because they work with Mistress Coyle - seem to be the top two apprentices out of the whole house, maybe even all of Haven. I rarely see the others except when they're trailing behind one of the healers, stethoscopes bouncing, white coats flapping behind them, off to find something to do.

Because the truth of it is, as the days go by and the town gets on with whatever it's doing beyond our doors, most of us patients are getting better and new ones aren't arriving. All the male patients were taken out of here the first night, Maddy told me, whether they could travel or not, and no new women have been brought here even though invasion and surrender aren't bars to getting sick.

Mistress Coyle worries about this.

"Well, if she can't heal, then who is she?" Corinne says, snapping the elastic band around my arm a little too tight. "She used to run all of the houses of healing, not just this one. Everyone knew her, everyone respected her. For a while, she was even Chair of the Town Council."

I blink. "She used to be in charge?"

"Years ago. Quit moving around." She jabs the needle into my arm harder than she needs to. "She's always saying that being a leader is making the people you love hate you a little more each day." She catches my eye. "Which is something I believe, too."

"So what happened?" I ask. "Why isn't she still in charge?"

"She made a mistake," Corinne says primly. "People who didn't like her took advantage of it."

"What kind of mistake?"

Her permanent frown gets bigger. "She saved a life," she says and snaps loose the elastic band so hard it leaves a mark.

Another day passes, and another, and nothing changes. We're still not allowed out, our food still comes, and the Mayor still hasn't asked for me. His men check on my condition but the promised talk never happens. He's just leaving me here, so far.

Who knows why? He's all anyone ever talks about, though.

"And do you know what he's done?" Mistress Coyle says over dinner, my first one where I'm allowed out of bed and in the canteen. "The cathedral isn't just his base of operations. He's made it into his home."

There's a general clucking of disgust from the women around her. Mistress Waggoner even pushes her plate away. "He fancies himself God now," she says.

"He hasn't burned the town down, though," I say, wondering aloud from the other end of the table. Maddy and Corinne both look up from their plates with wide eyes. I carry on anyway. "We all thought he would, but he hasn't."

Mistresses Waggoner and Lawson give Mistress Coyle a meaningful look.

"You show your youth, Viola," Mistress Coyle says. "And you shouldn't challenge your superiors."

I blink, surprised. "That's not what I meant," I say. "I'm only saying it's not what we expected."

Mistress Coyle takes another bite while eyeing me. "He killed every woman in his town because he couldn't hear them, because he couldn't know them in the way that men could be known before the cure."

The other mistresses nod. I open my mouth to speak but she overrides me.

"What's also true, my girl," she says, "is that everything we've been through since landing on this planet - the surprise of the Noise, the chaos that followed - all of that remains unknown to your friends up there." She's watching me closely now. "Everything that happened to us is waiting to happen to them." I don't reply, I just watch her.

"And who do you want in charge of that process?" she asks. "Him?"

She's done talking to me and returns to quieter conference with the mistresses. Corinne starts eating again, a smug grin on her face. Maddy's still staring at me wide - eyed, but all I can think of is the word left hanging in the air.

When she said Him?, did she also mean, Or her?

On our ninth day locked indoors, I'm no longer a patient. Mistress Coyle summons me to her office.

"Your clothes," she says, handing me a package over her desk. "You can put them on now, if you like. Make you feel like a real person again."

"Thank you," I say genuinely, heading behind the screen she's pointed out. I lift off the patient's robe and look for a second at my wound, almost healed both front and back.

"You really are the most amazing healer," I say.

"I do try," she says from her desk.

I unwrap the package and find all of my own clothes, freshly laundered, smelling so clean and crisp I feel a strange pull on my face and discover I'm smiling.

"You know, you're a brave girl, Viola," Mistress Coyle is saying, as I start to dress. "Despite not knowing when to keep quiet."

"Thank you," I say, a little annoyed.

"The crashing of your ship, the deaths of your parents, the amazing journey here. All faced with intelligence and resourcefulness."

"I had help," I say, sitting down to put on clean socks.

I notice Mistress Coyle's pad on a little side table, the one so full of notes from our little consultations. I look up but she's still on the other side of the screen. I reach over and flip open the cover.

"I sense big things in you, my girl," she says. "Leadership potential."

The notebook is upside down and I don't want to make a noise by moving it so I try to twist round to see what it says. "I see a lot of myself in you."

On the first page, before her notes start, there's only a single letter, written in blue. A.

Nothing else.

"We are the choices we make, Viola," Mistress Coyle is still talking. "And you can be so valuable to us. If you choose."

I lift up my head from the pad. "Us who?"

The door bursts open so loud and sudden I jump up and look around the screen. It's Maddy. "There was a messenger," she says, breathless. "Women can start leaving their houses."

"It's so loud out here," I say, wincing into the ROAR of all the New Prentisstown Noise twining together.

"You get used to it," Maddy says. We're sitting on a bench outside a store while Corinne and another apprentice named Thea buy supplies for the house of healing, stocking up for the expected flood of new patients. I look around the streets. Stores are open, people pass by, mostly on foot but on fissionbikes and horses, too. If you don't look too closely, you'd almost think nothing was even wrong.

But then you see that the men who move down the road never talk to each other. And women are allowed out only in groups of four and only in daylight and only for an hour at a time. And the groups of four never interact. Even the men of Haven don't approach us.

And there are soldiers on every corner, rifles in hand.

A bell chimes as the door of the store opens. Corinne storms out, arms full of bags, face full of thunder, Thea struggling behind her. "The storekeeper says no one's heard from the Spackle since they were taken," Corinne says, practically dropping a bag in my lap.

"Corinne and her spacks," Thea says, rolling her eyes and handing me another bag.

"Don't call them that," Corinne says. "If we could never treat them right, what do you think he's going to be doing to them?"

"I'm sorry, Corinne," Maddy says before I can ask what Corinne means, "but don't you think it makes more sense to worry about us right now?" Her eyes are watching some soldiers who've noticed Corinne's raised voice. They aren't moving, haven't even shifted from the veranda of a feed store.