Theo and John had taken the floor above, while I remained in The Menagerie and Patrick in the room next door. The two were conjoined, I realized after the fact, by a door near the wardrobe. I wondered, in the absence of sleep, if Patrick had yet seen it there, if he had locked his side of the door.
I had eaten, washed, painstakingly combed the snarls of my hair until the curls did not resemble a nest, and now I lay atop the blankets in a pale-blue lace-trimmed slip. I didn’t dare ask Tamir where it had come from.
Fever had set in, and I felt alternatingly hot and cold to my marrow. I’d discarded the dirty bandages. My arms lay on the mattress, ghastly and swollen, and though I wanted nothing more than to sleep for an eternity, I rose instead and went like a ghost to the adjoining door.
Before I could reach it, a sharp knocking came from the other side of it. I faltered, squinting at the door, wondering if I’d succumbed to delirium.
But when I pulled it open, Patrick stood there, dressed in clean clothing, smelling of soap, his brow so furrowed he appeared decades older.
I frowned, confused. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Far longer than I’ll tell you,” he said. Immediately, he noticed the sheen of sweat on my skin. “What is it?” he asked, eyes widening.
I blinked slowly. “I’m… unwell. Infection, I think.” I held up my sliced arms. “I’ve cleaned them, but they were already starting to swell.”
Patrick’s jaw rolled at the sight of them. He nodded to the bed over his shoulder. “Sit,” he said.
I hesitated. “I—I don’t want to impose—”
“Lord, just sit down on the fuckin’ bed, Nina.”
I went in tentatively and sat on the edge, noticing how high the hem of the slip rose up my thigh. Wishing I’d thought to don a robe, I blinked again and the room doubled.
Patrick was pulling something from his wardrobe. My eyes roamed over the expanse of his back, watching the muscles flex beneath his shirt.
He returned with a vial, half-filled with black swill. “Take it,” he said.
He loomed above, doused in lamplight. I found myself disconcerted again. Not by fever this time, but simply by him.
Patrick sighed. He leaned down over me until I could see nothing else. “Drink it,” he said. “Or it’ll be done for you.”
A shiver assailed me. I downed the contents, feeling the immediate flux of my mind, stretching and reshaping. The bluff would spread through my blood within a few minutes, curbing the fever.
Patrick backed away and crouched, hands coming together between his knees. Watching me carefully.
“I’m not about to keel over,” I told him. I pulled at the hem of the slip.
“Leave it alone,” he said.
I looked down at my hand, confused. “Why?”
“?’Cause it’s hard enough keepin’ my eyes where they ought to be.”
I flushed.
His eyes skipped to my arms now, both mottled in injury. He looked at the Artisan brand I had melted from my body, undeterred by the scar.
“What did you use,” he asked slowly, “to get rid of it?”
“An iron press,” I said, distracted. Relief was finding me. I closed my eyes and sighed. “Broke into a washhouse here in Morland and held it on the plate for as long as I could. A Crafter woman found me passed out cold the next morning. She gave me a job.” It was easier to speak to him, there in the dim. In the quiet. Time felt illusory in the earliest hours.
He hid his expression from me. “What happened to her? The Crafter?”
“Shot, I think,” I murmured. “She was harboring women fleeing Gilmore, and the police came.”
Patrick grimaced. By now, there were a hundred stories the same. A thousand. “But you escaped,” he said.
“I hid. Weallhid, actually, in a cellar beneath the steam ovens. Everyone except her. She covered the door behind us, and we sat like cowards and listened to the police officers scream at her and beat her and carry her away.”
