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“Very,” she answered dryly. “Bed. Now.”
His smiled faded, and he shot Anrid a look of pleading. She shook her head with an apologetic smile and dipped her head toward the doorway. He moaned and fussed as if they’d asked him to climb a mountain but shuffled his reluctant feet across the room.
Trap’s attention shifted back to them. “You two, as well. To bed.” Her mouth pulled down a bit more severely. “To your own beds.”
Anrid burst into a violent fit of coughing and Jael staggered to his feet and bolted for the door as if someone had set the rear of his trousers on fire.
“Don’t eat your toe,” Anrid scolded Medda as she circled the kitchen table for the dozenth time, trying to keep everyone in their own seats and their hands in their own bowls.
Medda grinned a toothy smile and sucked more animatedly on her big toe. Anrid rolled her eyes and moved on.
Sometimes, you had to pick your battles, she told herself. But she was just too tired to fight this particular one. Asking Medda not to do something was the equivalent of an irresistible dare the child couldn’t refuse.
The little goblin girl sneezed and blew ickies across the table. Anrid sighed and grabbed a kerchief from her apron pocket to mop up the mess before anyone got into it and spread the icks around.
Jael stood on the opposite side of the table, trying to scrub gruel out of a goblin boy’s shoulder length hair. Anrid didn’t even want to know how that had happened. Excited chatter mingled with the occasional sneeze and cough. The children appeared to be coming down with something, half of them in mild states of nasal unpleasantry and the rest of them glassy-eyed and rosy-cheeked as if their body temperatures were elevated.
She avoided looking at Jael, but she almost sensed his cautious glances from time to time from the other side of the table. They’d barely said two words to one another all day, as if they had mutually decided not to discuss anything that had happened in the middle of the night. Logic dictated that getting the misunderstanding out in the open would be the prudent thing to do…but she didn’t have the nerve to admit out loud what had happened between them. She wiped Medda’s nose one last time, for good measure, before moving down the table.
“I’m still hungry,” one child complained as she walked past him.
“You’ve had two bowls, Blue.” She patted him on the shoulder. “We’ll ask Cook to make us a snack later, shall we?”
Blue’s hopeful eyes narrowed as his mouth screwed up in the preparations for a tantrum. “But I’m hungry now!” he placed his head right down on the table and cried.
“Now, none of that,” she scolded as she dug in her pocket for a clean kerchief—there wasn’t one—and handed him a mildly used one. She caught a horrified look from Jael and blushed.
But he schooled his expression. “I suppose I should add handkerchiefs to the ever-growing list of supplies we are running out of,” he said with a weary sigh.
Blue sneezed and blew into his kerchief.
“Make sure to get extra ones,” Anrid suggested and studied the rosy cheeks and runny noses surrounding the table. “I think we’re going to need them.”
“I’d like to know what they got into.” He all but growled the words as he yanked his tunic out of a pair of small hands searching for something to wipe off on. “They were fine yesterday, but now the whole pack of them seems to be sick.”
Anrid worried her lower lip and gathered up a couple of empty bowls. “Groups of children are always more susceptible to sharing sickness,” she said. “It only takes a single sick one to infect the lot.”
Her stomach plummeted. What if she had unknowingly brought a human disease into Imenborg? One the children weren’t accustomed to?
“I hope it isn’t me.”
Jael turned sharply toward her. “Why would it be you?”
“Human illnesses are different than goblin ones, I’m sure. And you’re probably more sheltered from disease down here. Yes?”
His mouth pulled down as he yanked his tunic out of Glade’s fumbling fingers for the third time. “I don’t know about all that: we have more than our fair share of coughs and fevers, I’m sure. But even if you did bring something with you, it’s not your fault. Sickness is just a part of life.”
A flurry of coughing went around the table. He was right, of course, but it didn’t make her feel any better. What if their little bodies couldn’t fight human sicknesses? What if they got really sick? Or, dare she even think the thought, what if they couldn’t survive it?
She’d never forgive herself.
Rapid footsteps echoed around the kitchen moments before Trap poked her head through the doorway, her mobcap so askew it looked about to bounce off her unruly curls. “I’ve got good news!” she announced as she entered with a large woven basket of laundry. “Math and Prince Kora have returned: they’re in the meeting hall.”
A burst of air exploded from Jael. “Thank the stones. They’re back sooner than I expected.”
Trap made a humming sound. “Yes, and they’re not alone.”
Something in her tone caused Anrid to freeze with the tall stack of bowls that had been licked clean by their owners.
