The leaf was gummy, blue, and it came away from the wax paper in a slow peel. A moment after her teeth had bitten it through a third of the way up from its stem, pain—intense and expected—flared through those same teeth. Radstac bore it. She could not imagine ever not being able to handle that special pain. But if ever that day came, if ever she was tempted, as longtime addicts oftentimes were, to have her teeth pulled from her skull in order to eliminate that initial discomfort, that was the same day mansid would have defeated her, the day she would have lost her will, her strength, her dignity. If it came, her life as a professional mansid addict was done. All that would remain ahead would be the squalid, pathetic, debased existence of any hopeless amateur leaf user.

But, coincidentally, on the arrival of that hypothetical day, Radstac would open the veins down both her arms and have done with it.

She wasn't careless. She wasn't stupid. She respected her particular addiction, and she had sufficient faith in herself to cope with the powerful needs roused by the stimulant. Mansid, after all, brought clarity. She was very clear about its purpose and capacity in her life.

She was even clear that she was now consuming two-thirds of a leaf, when a quarter-lune or two ago she'd only needed half. Bodies contrived to build up tolerances. She understood this. There was a mathematics about it, a physical equation. It was one she'd worked many times before.

The pain had left her teeth. The other initial disorienting effects had passed. The clarity was enveloping her. Mansid grew only on the Isthmus, and so Radstac came to this wretched land, to fight its wars... and to find her leaf.

She pressed the remaining third of the blue leaf back onto its paper and made to tuck it into the pouch under her armor.