“Comfortable?” said Frances from the door, and I jumped.

“I see you’re not resting.”

“No. I’ve reconsidered the wisdom of keeping from trouble. I want to know what happens when we try to walk out.”

“You should have just made a break for it back in the Night Fair.”

“Oh, I expect to be stopped. But I think it would be instructive to know where, and how. Care to join me? We could say we were looking for the bathroom.” She seemed relaxed and casual, leaning in the doorway; but I suspected she wasn’t.

“No.”

“Care to join me anyway?”

I looked sharply up at her.

“I find I’m reluctant to leave you behind,” she said. “I think you’d best come along.”

The bathroom was at the end of the hall, perfectly agreeable, with a tub big enough to drown in. We continued to retrace our route, left and another left. But we didn’t come out at the top of the stairs.

“Over there,” Frances said softly. She pointed down the corridor. I saw the turned walnut newel post and frowned.

At the landing, instead of turning left to the next flight, the stairs turned right. “The back stairs?” I muttered.

Now Frances was frowning.

We might eventually have reached the first floor, but we couldn’t tell. We might have passed through the basement on the way to it. The halls were graciously appointed, the stairs were ornate, the rooms we peered into and passed through sunny and innocuous and even a little bland. And at last, without ever going up a flight of stairs that I remembered, we turned a corner into a hallway with yellow walls and white woodwork and a window at the far end.

“Oh, Lord,” Frances sighed. She was pale and inclined to lean. “Shall we make book on the next scene? We open the doors to our rooms and find ourselves sleeping on the beds. We open the doors and find the pits of hell. Or someone with a sword, who kills us. Or a bag of gold.”

I stalked to the door of mine and wrenched it open. “Or the room, just as we left it.”

“Could we have been drugged, do you think?”

“I’m too tired to think. I’m going to take my damn boots off and lie down. If you want to explore, have fun. Don’t wake me ” I didn’t actually slam the door. It had a bolt, so I turned it.

The sheets, of course, smelled like lavender.

6.1: A shedding of skins

The curtains were blowing lazily at the window; the breeze was lukewarm and smelled of the garden. A shaft of light gently cooked the floorboards. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but it must have happened. There was a distinct feeling of afternoon in the air.

I sat up and swung my bare feet to the floor, and thought, There’s more changed than the hour. It might have been the light. It might have been that the filter of weariness and alarm was thinner. Or maybe Frances was right: Maybe somehow we’d been drugged, and it had worn off. But the room seemed different.