Ruth went in search of breakfast and her daily task, feeling obscurely as though everyone at Morwood could be measured for their degrees of ruthlessness and found excessive. She herself was ruthless at need, professionally ruthless; it had been a school-years’ joke that carried through her training and into her years of practice. Now no one joked about it, some people valued it, she only took it for what it was, a useful attribute. Here, though: here she was almost an amateur. Between Colonel Treadgold and Matron, patching broken men; Major Black training them to kill again and Herr Braun teaching them to infiltrate; Aesculapius doing whatever it was that he did to keep them willing to kill and die . . . It was a conspiracy, and she was a part of it now. And, yes, ruthless. She would do what she did, and not protest. She could lose herself in it, create almost an absence of herself, be truly Ruthless. Yes. She could be lulled by work; she could be lulled by learning. Exercise for the body, exercise for the mind.
