There were several tubs, two of which had girls in them, three of which had laundry. Before he could lose his head and bawl, a burly woman with work-reddened hands and a tight, angry mouth stripped him before he could open his mouth and shoved him into the last of the tubs. She didn’t give him a chance to wash himself either; she used the same brush and lye soap that she used on the linen on his hide, with the same lack of gentleness.

The bristles lacerated his skin, his scalp. He didn’t let out a single sound as she scrubbed as if she intended to take his skin off, then made him stand, rinsed him with a bucket of water cold enough to make him gasp, and bundled him in a sheet. His own clothing went into one of the tubs with laundry in it, and she handed him the plain trews, socks, and shirt he brought with him, leaving him to clothe himself as she turned back to her work. He noticed that the girls didn’t get the same ungentle treatment. They were allowed to bathe themselves and did so lazily, completely ignoring his presence.

Well, that was all right. He didn’t want any stupid whores fussing over him like he was some sort of animate doll. He didn’t want their sympathy. He didn’t want anyone’s pity.

Hard. I gotta be hard. That’s what I gotta do.

He dried himself off—the laundress snatched the sheet away from him before he could lay it down and popped it back into a tub—and got the clothing on. It was rather too big, but that hardly mattered. All he had left now were his own boots, which he pulled on, and left without a backward glance.

His head was clear enough now, and while the laundress had scrubbed him, his grief had somehow changed, shrunk, condensed down into a hard, cold little gem that formed the core of a terrible anger that seemed almost too large to contain in so small a compass as his heart.

Revenge. That was what he wanted, more than anything in the world. And he wasn’t going to rest until he got it.

He walked into Jarmin’s shop, and the old man gave him a sharp glance, then a nod of satisfaction. “You’ll do,” was all he said, and tossed him a pouch.

It clinked. Skif opened it and found a little money; mostly copper, a bit of silver. He tucked it inside his shirt. It was little enough. Jarmin was cheating him, of course. The room, the food, the clothing, the baths—none of that was worth a fraction of what he’d stolen. Jarmin wasn’t giving him anything.