“And when you inquired at the Spectrum you were reported.”

“No doubt.”

“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through, Brio.”

“I’m fine,” he insists. “Now will you tell me how you came to be here?”

“Lexi,” Evie explains. “She came to me. I was working as a retainer for Gen Ultimo. The kith-kins wanted an unassuming woman to escort their children to and from lessons in the city rather than a pack of hulking armored guards. It’s very in fashion just now, apparently. Lexi told me what happened, or what she suspected had happened, and your theory about conscripted vagrants and this place. She had a plan. I became Evie. I changed my clothes, stopping bathing with any regularity, and started frequenting every tavern in the Bottoms, picking fights. It seemed like such a far-fetched scheme… but it worked. The Savage Legion is real, and we’re both here.”

“How did you convince Gen Ultimo you were unassuming?”

“I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“Oh no,” Brio assures her, sounding magnanimous and for the first time like the man she remembers. “I’ve lost my freedom, my wardrobe, a fair amount of blood, and all memory of personal hygiene… but never my sense of humor.”

Evie unsheathes the flared blade of a dagger from her belt and holds the tip to the fire she built.

“Well, hold on to it now,” she advises him. “Because this next part is going to hurt far worse than the last part did.”

Brio draws in a deep breath and exhales serenely. “All right, then.”

While the tip of her blade continues to heat up, Evie offers Brio one of the remaining strips of clean cloth.

“Ball that up and bite down on it,” she instructs him.

He nods, taking the rag and rolling it up like a handkerchief. Brio holds it up and clamps his jaw around the thickly scrolled fabric.

When the dark steel of the dagger has turned bright orange with a smoldering red heart, Evie removes it from the flames. She reaches down with her free hand and grips the ankle of Brio’s injured leg firmly, looking up at him with sympathetic yet resolved eyes.

“Ready?”

He leans back and grips the stone on which he sits as best he can, nodding.

Evie presses the red-hot tip of the blade into the bottom of the gash, scorching the lower half of the wound. His throat fills with a horrific gargling noise, but Brio manages to neither scream nor jerk beneath her.

“One more time,” she tells him gently.

Again, Brio nods. Sweat is beginning to drip from both of his temples.