Elen crossed the south canal, the cross-Halt road, and the north canal by means of a long, low bridge that led into the merchant quarter. The official caravanserai was under the control of the intendant. Its enclosed courtyard was currently empty of wagons and visitors, but employees were bustling around because they’d gotten word a caravan was coming, the one the prince had overtaken and left behind.

A token awaited Elen in the chatelaine’s office. A private bathing room had been set aside for her use. It was one of the expensive ones, with a tiled washing floor, and was furnished with bamboo pipes connected to the cistern on the roof, brass rinse buckets, clean brushes, a grooming kit, and soap. The wooden soaking tub in the corner was already filled with hot water.

She stripped and set her grubby clothes onto a bench. Standing on the tile floor, she washed herself, top to toe. It was impossible not to remember the naked prince. Had he been preening? She thought not. He’d seemed oblivious to the other people in the room, only able to perceive himself.

Bathing was splendid, a luxury she would never take for granted. Clean, scented skin was splendid. Clean, trimmed fingernails were splendid. Clean, lice-free hair was splendid.

With a grateful sigh, she sank into the hot soaking tub. Head resting on the tub’s rim, she shut her eyes. The water’s heat permeated her flesh. She let go of the journey’s unexpected developments: the provocative and potentially perilous haunt, the maggot-pale bud of Spore hidden in the dirt, the haughty prince. Her viper, quiescent as it slumbered. Her eyelids fluttered. She slid into a hazy doze that dissolved into a misty recollection of one of her earliest memories, in a place whose name she does not recall and may never have known.