Page 44 of Adam, Mine

De Lacey looked surprised. “Oh, Munich is a half day’s ride to the south. If you came from Gerolfing, you have already traveled most of the way. Where are you going?”

Elias replied immediately. “Geneva. I . . . have family there. To visit.”

“A village boy with family in Switzerland! You are certainly something new, Elias of Gerolfing,” De Lacey said wryly.

Elias laughed, dry as leaves. His voice had not yet fully returned, but he had gotten this ability back at least.

De Lacey shuffled over to the pile of Elias’s things that lay crumpled and untouched for his nine days here.

“Safia can wash your clothes for the journey—” De Lacey started, but Elias sat up quickly.

“NO! No.” He thought frantically of the knives, money, and spell book. “I would not like her to touch my filth. I will find a washerwoman when I have left.”

De Lacey made an unconcerned noise and reached for his jacket. “Safia has cleaned blood and shit and all manner of things. Your sweat and pus are no matter to—”

Elias sprang from the bed, reaching out to tug his jacket back and offer his trousers instead.

Many things happened at once.

The noise of Elias’s movement startled De Lacey and he jerked in surprise. The envelope of money slid to the floor and opened, bills fanning out in an arc. Then the largest knife, butcher, unbalanced by its handle, fell from his coat and clattered to the floor.

De Lacey stood there with Elias’s jacket in his hand, white as a sheet. Elias threw himself to the ground, back to the door, and scooped all the money into the envelope besides a few bills.

“The payment for my stay was inside my jacket,” he tried. “I didn’t want her to wash—”

Faster than Elias could process, De Lacey sank to the floor and covered the knife with his hand. As soon as his fingertips made contact with the blade, he gave out a loud cry of terror and backed up into the brass tub with a clang.

“Felix!” he shouted.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Elias cried. He snatched his jacket, the knife, and the rest of his clothes. He could not leave here without paying; he was not raised in that way. But he couldn’t hand it to De Lacey, who was wild eyed and trembling. Elias turned to toss his payment on the bed.

Safia shrieked behind him as Felix came running. Elias turned around and she was pointing at him, her finger shaking.

“He has a knife!” De Lacey yelled. “Every word he says sounds like a lie to my ears.”

“The markings!” Safia screamed to Felix, who was sprinting across the house. “He has the markings of curse; the devils of word and deed follow him.” Then she descended into a language that Elias didn’t understand, doing gestures of clear protection.

Felix had never come into this room.

He did not care to visit patients. It was the first that he had seen Elias, the first Elias had seen of him. Felix was a strong man and tall. Not a man Elias could kill and not a man Elias could fight. And more: Elias did not want to. He knew Felix from the warmth in his voice, the rumbles that made Safia giggle. From the shouts of his playing with Agatha in the yard and the burr of his reading aloud to his father.

Felix’s face was kind, terrified, angry.

Elias chose to run. He ducked under Felix’s arm and pushed past Safia with a hissed apology. She shrank from him, terrified.

“He has a knife! Protect Agatha!” De Lacey shouted.

Elias could laugh now, but he could not yet shout that Agatha would never come to any harm from him. As he rushed into the living room, Felix hot on his heels, he saw her there.

Doll in hand, looking at him. Unafraid.

“I’m sorry!” Elias said.

“Don’t cry!” Agatha yelled. “Only babies cry.”

She threw her doll at him.

Elias caught it on reflex.