“I wonder if I ever would have left,” Scratch whispered, “if not for you.”

Brella didn’t respond. She didn’t need to. They both knew the answer.

“Do you think I’m . . . absurd?” Brella asked, her voice impossibly small.

Scratch spun around. “Why the hells would I think that?”

She shrugged. “I’m a revolutionary who can’t stand bloodshed. I have lofty moral principles, and they all melt away as soon as I meet a beautiful, clever—”

“Hush.” Scratch kissed her on the nose. The mouth. Her flickering eyelids, so delicate and so dear. “You care so much about life. Not just that your people live, but how they live. Of course you’re squeamish. Or, rather, maybe you’re not squeamish at all. Maybe the rest of us are callous.”

Brella waited for a long moment. “Perhaps.”

They stood that way for a while, Scratch supporting Brella’s weight. She thought about how desperately she had wanted that command, that knighting. She had made her life smaller to provide room for it, and she had been left with nothing but empty space. Tendrils of shame twined around her feet, and she felt like collapsing, but Brella’s arms were around her, keeping her upright. She wondered whether she deserved it.

“Oh.” Brella’s head popped up. “There’s something I want to show you.” She scampered across the room to a tub that sank into the floor. The tiles were a deeper color in the tub, more blue than white, framing a bronze drain at the base. Brella crouched by the tub, turning a few knobs this way and that. For a moment nothing happened. Then, water began to gush from a hidden spigot.

“It’s hot,” Brella breathed, entranced. “It’s steam and pipes, and they can get hot water for bathing whenever they want. It’s not even hot springs. It’s man-made.” She beamed, eyes flickering with joyous sparks. “And it’s not just the royals. Or the rich. Scratch, everyone has hot water. Either in their home or at a public bath maintained by the king.”

“Busy king.”

“Oh, hush.”

Mesmerized, Scratch watched steam curling from the rapidly filling tub. “Everyone?”

Brella nodded fervently. “Imagine, Scratch. Taxes used to make people’s lives better, and not just, y’know, for funding feasts.”

“Or paying my salary.”

Brella snorted. “Oh, please. You’d give up a year’s pay for an indoor bath.”

“Probably.” She hiked up her trousers and came to sit beside Brella, soaking her feet in the warm water. It was heavenly, and she couldn’t help but groan. “Oh gods, this feels amazing.”

“I told you.”