A few days later, with the dim dawn light creeping through the window, Maggie Barrow stood with scissors in hand and took a deep breath as she faced up to the girl in the mirror.

Maggie had never had a mirror before. They were far too much of a luxury at the orphanage, and she had had only a fleeting glimpse at the other place before her quick departure. With just the brief glimpses in window panes on dark nights or rippling water in the basin, she only had a vague idea of what she actually looked like. Hair, dark. Skin, light. On the scrawny side, others had remarked. That was all she knew.

Now, with the cracked mirror that hung on the wall of her room, she knew for the first time that her eyes were brown. Eyes. Eye. Well, that was the problem. She was supposed to be taking off the last of the bandages today. Her feet had been mostly healed after the first round of the blood treatment. After the second round, a day later, she was able to move her hand again, and could stand up without pain. On day three, Iosefka had taken off the bandages, and not re-bound her hand. There were scars running along her palm, and on the inside joins of three fingers, harsh dark lines that didn't hurt any more, but reminded her of a time when they had. But she had been unable to open her eye, and Iosefka had insisted on binding her face again, and giving it more time – and a third injection of a blood vial that looked quite different from the others. She had already explained about the scars; they might not have formed if she had had the treatment straight away, but it had been most of two days between the injury and the treatment, and the body could only heal so much, even with all the secrets of the Healing Church injected into its veins from neat little vials.

On that day, Maggie had been deemed well enough to leave the clinic, which had caused her more than a little worry until a lady – and she certainly deserved the title lady – had arrived with a basket full of things and a determinedly kind and helpful attitude. Viola, wife of Henryk's hulking partner, had helped her into a borrowed dress, combed and pinned her hair, and led her out into the world, arm in arm, to visit shops.

Shops had never featured in Maggie's life before, apart from faint memories of envious glances into confectioners' windows when she was very small. Viola took her to several, with cheerful assurances that bills would be settled later, and the basket that had been empty once Maggie was dressed soon began to fill again. She was quite uncomfortable with it, and felt that she ought to keep things as simple and plain as possible, but Viola seemed to seek out beauty wherever she went, and she tended to find it.

Eventually, they had left the wider, brighter streets and turned down a narrow passage, and then another – heading towards the river, Viola said. That was another thing. As far as she knew, Maggie had lived in Yharnam her whole life, but her world had been so absolutely tiny that she had no idea of the layout of the city. It didn't help that Yharnam was built like a maze, constantly twisting around and back on itself. But the riverside district was where the hunters tended to gather, Viola told her. They went to a tailor – not a dressmaker. There was not a scrap of lace or silk on display in his window, but Viola said that Merrigan would make her something "more practical".

She was wearing it now – long trousers and a shirt and waistcoat, the same style as a man's, but cut exactly for her. They were astonishingly comfortable after years of rough woollen dresses. So were the boots, which were low-heeled and made from sturdy leather. Astonishingly comfortable physically, but the first time she had left her room in them, she had struggled to push back the deep-rooted feeling that she was scandalously dressed and somebody was going to drag her back and force a skirt onto her.

Women hunters – and there were a few, she knew now – occupied an odd area of society. They weren't quite subject to the same rules and expectations as the other women of Yharnam, when it came to things like trousers and carrying weapons. They weren't expected to be ladylike. But, of course, it meant that others didn't quite understand where they fit into the world, and as with most things that weren't well understood, people could be quite uncomfortable around them. No one had bothered her as she set out to explore at least up to the ends of her new street, but people seemed to be avoiding her as well. Nobody really looked at her directly.

Perhaps the bandage wasn't helping. Maggie determinedly hooked a thumb under it and raised the scissors, then stopped again when she realised her hand was shaking. Blades, shaking hands and faces were probably not a wise combination. "What are you afraid of?" She demanded of her reflection, but she knew. She was afraid that she still wouldn't be able to open her eye, or that she would, but the sight would be gone. The pain was long gone, but the scars on her hands were proof that lasting damage was still possible, and her eye was where the wounds had been deepest.

Would the old hunter still be willing to train her if she was still half-blind after all this effort?

Would he let her keep what he had given her?

The floorboards outside her room creaked, and the door opened suddenly. Maggie had been staying here for most of a week, and the old landlady had never bothered to knock. She was the kind of old lady who was permanently on the verge of cackling. "He's waiting, girl," she said, jerking a thumb at the window. "And he's not a patient type." She stopped, and took in the sight of the scissors, and Maggie's thumb under the bandage. "What, you need Granny to help you take it off?"

Maggie growled in frustration. "I'm just trying to-"

"You think keeping it on'll make you less blind? Don't be so wet, girl, or I'll tell him you're not coming. What kind of a hunter is scared of her own face?"

Maggie's jaw clenched, and so did her hand, the scissors closing with a resolute snip so firm and decisive that a clump of her hair, caught by the blades, floated down to the floorboards along with part of the bandage. The rest fell loosely down around her neck. Turning away from the landlady, she whipped back around to the mirror as if she was ready to hit her own reflection.

She blinked. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and opened them again. She put the scissors down carefully and passed her empty hand in front of her face, covering one side and then the other. Then she leaned in.

Perhaps it was good that she had never seen her own face in detail before; it might have been more shocking if she had a clear memory to compare it to. Instead, she looked dispassionately at the dark red scars that criss-crossed from just above her eyebrow down to her jaw, one cutting across her lip, another reaching almost to the very edge of her eyelid. It was still swollen and shining, and even the patches between the scars seemed different, whiter and patchier than the other side of her face.

As for the eye itself, it was a lighter, more muted brown than the one on the other side. When she covered the healthy eye, the world she could see looked drained, almost greyish, as if the some of the colour and the light had been pulled out of it. The delay between injury and treatment had let some lasting damage take hold.

It didn't matter. She had two working eyes.

"What, girl? You want a pat on the head? He's waiting."

"Good morning."

Maggie pulled the cut bandage from around her neck and dropped it into the empty basin, then swept from the room, pulling her coat on as she went and pushing back the silly, girlish smile. The scars didn't matter; they wouldn't get in her way. She had two working hands and two working eyes. And grit, he had told her. Everything else she needed, she could learn along the way.

Henryk was leaning on the wall outside the front door, head down, looking half-asleep, but the moment she came out, he was off walking, not bothering to check she was following. "What took you so long?" He asked.

She didn't exactly need to run, but it was a near thing. She probably couldn't have managed it if she was dressed like a girl. She was determined to keep up. Henryk had a long stride; on that first night when he and his partner had walked her bleeding hide through Yharnam, he must have slowed down for her. He would never have to slow for her again.

"Bandages," she said shortly.

For a moment he did pause, just long enough to glance over and actually look at her. His eyes met hers, and then he turned back and carried on his march through the streets, saying nothing – but, she was almost certain, with the hint of a smile on his lips.

The sun was well up in the sky and a fine morning underway when they stopped abruptly in front of a large, dark building with murky glass windows all along the front either side of heavy wooden doors that stood ajar. "This is the Dream," Henryk told her, pushing the door open "It's where we work from." Maggie was distracted by the bricks either side of the door frame, which were covered in symbols, etched directly into the stone. Some of them gleamed as if they were wet, and some seemed etched so darkly they sucked in sunlight from the air around them. She recognised one or two from the doorpost of Iosefka's clinic, and thought she had seen some of the others around the district on her limited wanderings of the last few days.

He saw what she was looking at. "They're our runes," he told her. "Some of them have power. Some, we just use to keep track of things. You'll learn them all later. Today we're going to see if you can figure out which end of a rifle to hold." He jerked his head, motioning her to go in. Between the brightness outside and the dimness within, she couldn't see at all what she was stepping into, but she obeyed without question, and he followed her inside.

"Right," he said. "Let's make a start."