Jared smiled as he folded the bundle back together. “Makes for an easy patient. How do you feel?”

Anji sat straighter in her chair. The agony that had made her lose consciousness was now only an echo where her fingers had been. The white bandages were speckled with dots of red, but the pain was nearly gone.

“How did you,” she croaked. “How—”

“He used to be a surgeon,” said Berip. He draped his scrawny arms over the scuffed wood, tufts of black hair dangling over the ridge of his brow, then pushed a ceramic bowl across the table and let a spoon clatter next to it. “Eat up. It’s really good.”

Anji tugged the bowl close and stared down into it with muggy eyes. Bits of meat and potatoes swimming in a thick gravy. Her stomach lurched, a mix of nausea and aching hunger, and she set into the bowl like a wolf, ignoring the weight of the manacles. The stew singed her tongue, but she spooned every morsel while the boy looked on, his own bowl neglected at his side.

“He worked in a big castle and everything,” Berip said, leaning an elbow onto the table top.

“Berip.” Jared rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

Anji glanced at Jared. “Must have been a good job.”

“It really wasn’t—”

“He doesn’t like talking about it much,” said Berip. “Says he likes this better.” He gestured around the kitchen. “Says it’s quiet.” Then he made a stern face and lowered his voice. “‘Apart from tossing the drunks out every night.’”

Anji guffawed and swallowed the last bite of stew, letting the spoon clatter into the bowl.

“Hey, she has a gap tooth!” said Berip, baring his little teeth. “Just like me!”

“Berip, don’t point things like that out, it isn’t polite.”

“It’s alright,” Anji said, facing Berip. She stuck her tongue into the gap in her teeth. “My dad had one too. I used to stick Celdia between them.”

“Don’t give him any ideas,” said Jared.

Berip giggled. “I wouldn’t do that—that’s stupid.”

“Berip, please.” Jared ran a hand over his face.

Anji leaned over the table, every muscle in her body tense and sore. She felt like she’d been pushed down a rocky hill and fallen into a tub of thorns. She wondered how much time had passed, and whether the Hawk—Kit—had woken up yet. She glanced at Jared’s bundle of surgical tools and imagined herself spiriting away the scissors and trying them on the blue bag upstairs. If she could find something sharp enough, something like shears with some leverage, she just might be able to cut into the bag and get her things and be away before Kit had a chance to wake up and realize what had happened.