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Swallowing the panic that threatened to build again at the thought of what she wasn’t living in, she forced herself to straighten, to find the small washroom that was partially separated from the rest of the room by a half-wall. An honest-to-Ferrian marble tub graced the center of the space, mercifully clean, the taps above it showing its connection to the aqueduct system.
She wouldn’t have cared if the water came out cold as Renault County’s winters, but heating spells kicked in when she turned the left tap. The need to have the crawling feeling off her body was strong enough she didn’t even take a moment to marvel that the lords could afford to keep heating spells in place for a room that presumably was not in frequent use.
She peeled the layers of her clothing off, fabric sliding roughly over the old scars on her back, her buttocks, her thighs. She shed the rest of her clothes and stepped into the water, closing her eyes as the bliss of its heat rolled over her ankles, up her calves. She sank into the tub, letting the hot water seep into her bones, until it turned her pleasantly numb.
She took the cloth and little cake of soap that rested on the marble ledge and scrubbed at herself, until she felt she had stripped every stray bit of old skin from her body. Then she scrubbed harder, fixating on some imagined speck of dirt on her leg, until the skin rubbed away entirely and the water turned pink with blood. Sometimes, she thought the only way she could ever truly be clean would be to strip all the flesh from her body and start anew. Sometimes, in the dreams she so often had of other lives, she thought something of the kind might have happened to her once.
Shaking, Clare put the cloth down, staring at her leg until it finally clotted and stopped bleeding. She didn’t get out until the water turned cold.
After too much internal debate, Clare put on one of the dresses she’d bartered for in the market. She’d gone for dresses because they were a safe choice for performing, but she didn’t like them. Unfortunately, her travel clothes were past their limit on dirt, and her only other pair of breeches had been patched so many times the original material likely only existed in someone’s memory.
She couldn’t go out in public wearing them. Not in Veralna.
She retraced her steps from last night until she found Verol and Marquin—and Fitz—in the home’s dining parlor. It was a large, airy room with arched windows lining the eastern wall, letting in the morning sun. Plants dangled from hanging baskets anchored into the exposed wooden beams overhead, making the space feel alive and inviting.
Not even the scowl Fitz gave her could break the charming, sunny atmosphere. Finally seeing him in the daylight, she determined he was somewhere in his early thirties. With a medium build, light skin and muddy brown hair, he was, in all physical ways, fairly unremarkable. But there was an intelligence lurking behind the washed-out blue eyes.
“Good morning.” Verol waved at her, calm and easy, as if her being here wasn’t strange for them. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was only strange for her. “Did you sleep well?”
What the hell kind of question was that? Certainly not one she’d ever been asked before, and she found herself looking to Marquin. Because she’d known, instinctively, that he would understand her confusion.
“Sleeping in a new place can be trying,” he said, offering her a response, the ability to piece together what Verol’s tone alone should have told her. The question wasn’t an interrogation—it was a meaningless pleasantry. “I hope the bed was comfortable.”
She decided telling them she’d fallen asleep in the chair and awakened thinking she was in a lightless, bug-infested cellar was not the sort of morning chatter they were aiming for.
She answered without answering. “Thank you for the room.”
Marquin nodded. “We weren’t sure if you would be awake for breakfast, but we made you a place, just to be safe.”
Marquin and Verol sat across from each other, neither one at the traditional head of the table. The seat Marquin pointed out for her was one down from Verol, and across from Fitz. As she approached it the latter rose, shoving his chair back, and left.
“You’ll have to forgive Fitz,” Verol said. “He’s dreadfully antisocial in the hours before noon.”
“He is also,” Marquin added, “dreadfully antisocial in the hours after noon. Try not to take it personally.”
“And…who is Fitz?” He certainly wasn’t simply their carriage driver if he was eating at their breakfast table.
“Whoever he needs to be. If he feels like telling you, he will.”
She doubted that would be likely any time soon, but she could find it out on her own.
The tantalizing aromas of the morning’s breakfast, laid out on platters in the center of the table, drew her to it. She hadn’t eaten since the food Taius had ordered at the cafe and left for her yesterday afternoon.
She wondered if he’d been at the theater last night. He’d said he wanted to watch the performance and yet she hadn’t seen him in the crowd, after. He could have been wearing a different face, but at this point she was pretty sure she would have recognized him anyway, had that been the case.
Midway to the table she halted, a tremor running through her body. She forced herself to take another step but then her mind slid sideways, trying to go somewhere else. Somewhere in the past.
“Clare?” Marquin’s voice snapped her partially back to the present and she resumed walking. But the closer she came to the table, the more wrong it seemed. Like it wasn’t real, like it was a dream.
A happy, bright room. A table laid with food she was allowed to eat. Two people she wasn’t afraid of sitting there, welcoming, like this was every other morning for them.
Her fingers brushed the chair back and her heart kicked up its beating. Her stomach wanted her to sit down and eat everything laid out before her. The rest of her wanted to turn and flee. Out of the room, out of the house, out of Veralna City. To run and keep running until civilization was gone again and so was she, her mind given back over to that blank haziness she’d drifted in while she wandered the swamp.
It was a heavy thing, this world. Its institutions, its violences. Her body like a prison chaining her in it, and this half-wild need for vengeance—for security, for triumph—the only thing that made her strong enough to keep going.
She pulled the chair out. The moment she sat she knew this wasn’t going to work. Her entire body trembled. Sitting at the cafe’s table hadn’t invoked this feeling in her because it had been small, and outdoors. But here, inside, at a formal table meant for far more people than the three of them—there was only one other place she’d ever sat at a table like this.
Her palms pressed against the layered wood grain, ready to push her away, when the Song shifted and a kind of happy warmth stole over her. She remembered sitting at a table, larger than this one, filled with people—her parents and aunts and uncles, young children darting around and underneath, giggling, everyone happy.
