Marn had started coughing halfway through the trek, deep, wet-sounding retches that doubled him over. Faressa had agreed to take him under her care and to send him back to the Forge at the first opportunity. Marn had tried to argue that he should stay with Maya, but his protests were half-hearted, and he’d eventually agreed.

The scout arranged rooms at an upscale inn for the rest of them. Maya suspected it was at least partly a brothel, since the well-dressed woman in the front hall was unfazed at a party of guests staggering in in the small hours and there seemed to be a lot of good-looking servants hanging around without very much to do. Regardless, it was clean and well furnished and, most important, offered private baths. Burning her clothes had done nothing to get the stench of rot out of her hair and skin, and Maya wasn’t far from setting herself on fire.

Not long after they’d settled in, a handsome young man had knocked on her door with a tray of pleasant-smelling soaps and washes. She’d waved off his offer to apply them himself and retreated to the washroom once other servants had filled the iron tub with pails of steaming water. Fancy or not, the inn fell short of the accommodations at the Spike, but after two weeks on the road and the chaos of the night, it felt like unutterable decadence. Before climbing in the tub, Maya spent half an hour scrubbing at herself until her skin was red and sore, then rinsing and rerinsing her hair. Feeling tolerably clean at last, she slipped into the near-scalding water, gritting her teeth at the spike of pain as it lapped at the swollen skin around the Thing.

She prodded the little arcana idly as she soaked. It had gotten hot enough that it had left a blister on her finger when she’d touched it, but where it was actually embedded in her flesh it didn’t seem to have burned her at all. The flesh was puffy, as though swollen from bruising, but the skin was unbroken.

I need to talk to Basel about it. He would know something. After I find Jaedia. After all of … this. Her mind shied away, and she yawned, slipping farther into the tub and sending the water sloshing.

The next she knew, the water had gone tepid, and a knock at the door had her sitting bolt upright. A wave of bathwater went over the side of the tub and wet the washroom rug. Maya hurriedly hoisted herself out of the bath and shrugged into the fluffy bathrobe the inn’s servants had left hanging on the door.

“Who’s there?” she said. “I’ve got plenty of soap—”

“It’s Beq.”