Dominic was still there. The young man looked scared as a rabbit, but he stayed long enough to say, to Morgan, “I’m sorry,” before he went back to his own table.

Not everyone in the Iron Tower was as content and smug as Rosa.

“Morgan?” Khalila settled back down in her chair and reached for Morgan’s hand. “They haven’t forced you—”

“Not yet,” Morgan said. “Thank you, Scholar Wolfe.”

He shook his napkin out and dropped it in his lap. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I did it to annoy Gregory.”

“Watch him,” Morgan said. “He’s a snake.”

“I’m immune to his particular poison. We knew each other as children, and he was five years older. You can imagine how that appealed to his cruelty.”

She shuddered. “I’d rather not. And thank you, whatever you meant by it.”

He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And then the food arrived, and Jess was pleasantly surprised to find his roast beef and mash were as good as a Sunday feast at home—one of the few consistently pleasant things he could recall about his childhood. They’d even mushed his peas. For a while, the five of them concentrated on their food. Someone had wisely allotted Thomas a double portion, and he ate it at an alarming speed that worried Jess for a moment; maybe the young German’s stomach couldn’t handle such a sudden rush of rich food. But Thomas seemed happy, and at the moment that was all that mattered.

“Glain!” Thomas suddenly put down his fork—he was more than halfway done with his second large schnitzel—and looked around at the rest of them. “What is Glain eating? Is she allowed visitors yet?”

“You’re free to ask,” Wolfe said. “The Medica floor is below this one.”

“Soup,” Thomas said. “I’ll take her soup.” Without waiting for anyone else, he stood up and stopped a server, ordered a bowl to go, and quickly left with it. Santi, done with his meal, leaned back to watch him go.

“He’s making a quick recovery,” he said.

“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. He didn’t look happy. “Seems so.”

They exchanged looks—significant ones, Jess thought. “He’s strong,” he said, out of some impulse to defend his friend. Santi sighed.

“He wouldn’t have survived without that,” he said. “But strength won’t keep the darkness away, and being on his own in a hostile place isn’t good for him. Go. Find him.”

Jess didn’t hesitate to take that suggestion. And it led him to the Medica floor.

The floor, instead of having individual chambers, had been built open, with only suspended curtains sectioning off one patient from another. Most of the curtains had been tidily drawn back and secured, the beds empty. The Medica attendant on duty rose from her station to study him as he entered, then nodded toward one of the curtained areas. “Your companions are there,” she said. “You can stay a few minutes. No longer. The patient needs rest.”