“Oh.” Maya looked down at herself, suddenly fully awake. Her skin was shriveled like dried fruit, and her hair hung in a limp rattail, but there was nothing to be done about either at a moment’s notice. She hurried back into the main room to unlock the door. “Come in. Sorry, I was in the bath.”

“Me too,” Beq said. She’d evidently had more time to clean up afterward, because her long green hair was neatly braided, and she wore her spare uniform, slightly rumpled from days at the bottom of a pack. “Chosen defend, I thought I’d never get that stuff off me.” She sniffed at her arm and shuddered. “I can still smell it.”

“All I can smell is floral … stuff,” Maya said. “So I think you’re all right.”

“Do you mind if I come in?” Beq fiddled awkwardly with the dial on her spectacles, one lens flipping back and forth. “I know it’s late. I just …”

“I think I’m still too keyed up to sleep,” Maya lied, stepping aside.

“Me too.” Beq closed the door behind her. “Nice décor. My room has a sort of nautical theme. Lots of mermaids.”

Maya hadn’t taken the time to look around much. Her room was large, but much of it was dominated by a wide, fluffy bed, with only a small table and a couple of chairs pressed into one corner. The motif seemed to be hunting, with paintings of people on horseback riding merrily across the countryside, presumably in pursuit of something inoffensive.

“I might prefer the mermaids,” Maya said. “Sit, if you like.”

Beq glanced at the bed, which made Maya’s heartbeat kick up a step, then went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs. Maya took the other and poured them water. For a moment they looked at each other, Beq’s eyes huge behind her lenses.

“You saved my life,” Beq said. “Again.”

“And you saved mine. Again.” Maya grinned. “I think we don’t need to keep score, do we?”

“Probably not. That … thing.” Beq shuddered. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

Maya shook her head. “Not even close. I thought plaguespawn were bad enough.”

“Still. You won.”

“We won. I couldn’t have done it without you. Both of you,” honesty made her add. “Tanax kept his head when I got distracted.”

“And now we go after Jaedia?”

Maya nodded. “She’s not too far ahead of us. And if she expected Cyrtak to catch up, she can’t be moving too quickly.”

“We still don’t know where she’s going.”

“There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” Maya said. “But we’ll find out. Whatever Cyrtak did to her …”

“You think it was him?” Beq said, finger tapping nervously against her mug. “That he was behind all of this?”