Orfeus washed herself briefly, watching sourly as the water gurgled back into the system to be reused. This was why she preferred to stay in small working towns, not megacities. It wasn’t delightful to be reminded she was drinking other people’s sweat.

On the cheerier thought that they were drinking her sweat too, and because she had time, Orfeus finally saw to her hair. She wrapped the sad tatters of her old shirt around her shoulders as something approximate to a towel and rinsed it out, then washed it out again with the plain soap, though that wasn’t ideal.

She ran her fingers over the lengthening fuzz on the short-haired side and lifted her razor, then remembered, suddenly, morning in the wayhouse in Rountree: sunlight through the window. Rivasoa carefully shaving her face and head. The memory of the brightness of Rivasoa’s robes and the warm sunlight seemed to burn out at Orfeus in this dim room. She put the razor down. So she would curl, and tangle. There was nothing about her that was not crooked anyway.

She applied ointments to her welts and left the dressing on her side alone for now. She stretched, just basic ones and then the few others she vaguely remembered, as she’d need to rely on her body more. Clean shirt and clean loose pants she could move in, her same boots as they’d done perfectly well. Her thick brown cloak was getting a battered, war-torn look she rather liked. She pulled that on as well, even though she might get armour today and be made fully into a dark and gleaming soldier of justice.

Orfeus holstered one knife at her belt and took out the other, flipping it in her hand. The blade sprung out gleaming and blue. Just a tool, really. It had bit sharp enough, even if she hadn’t done as much damage as she received. So long as she survived it. “I’m going to call you Snakebite,” she told it as she tucked it into her belt.

There was no one waiting outside her door and Orfeus breathed out relief. She’d half expected the Wolf to loom out there already, shadowy and enigmatic.

She doubted Luga would be in his scrap-pile throne room this early in the morning, but wasn’t sure where else to find him. She put it off and just wandered for now, whistling a little, taking lefts and rights, prowling down corridors. This time she kept close track of what path led where. She was beginning to build up a schematic of the place in her head, but being able to see it from the outside would help.

At a window, she stared out and down, down, down. There were wisps of cloud below, and below that a dizzying gulp of nothing before the ground far, far down, green and brown like a blanket instead of living country.