Her mood lightened as she followed River Road into the heart of the city. Evenings were long at the dark end of the Third Quarter, so taverns and soup shops were doing their best business of the year. Annice briefly considered stopping for supper before she headed up the hill, but smells, individual and combined, from a thousand different sources changed her mind. She was not going to throw up in the gutter like a common drunk.
At least she hoped she wasn't.
Hill Street to the Citadel seemed steeper than it had when she'd left. She felt ready to collapse when she reached the wall and sagged panting against the stone by the gate. You'd think that after walking for two quarters I'd be in better shape. Nothing hurt, she just felt drained. As she stood there, trying to catch her breath, the clouds that had been threatening finally made good on their promise of rain. Shit.
Dragging up her hood, she decided she was too exhausted to Sing the Bard's Door open and staggered in under the arch of the main gate. She didn't know the guard on duty, but the bard had been a fledgling with her.
"Annice. Bard. Going to the Bardic Hall."
Jazep peered up under her hood. "Witnessed," he said. "You look like you've fallen out of the Circle, Nees." His deep voice rumbled with concern. "Rough Walk?"
"Long Walk," she told him, already moving. "I'll see you later."
The rain came down in icy sheets as she made her way diagonally across Citadel Square. A dry route existed through barracks and stables and storerooms, but she wasn't up to negotiating her way past their occupants. It was faster and easier to get wet.
Eventually, putting one foot in front of the other, she arrived at the main entrance to the hall. Lifting her head, she blew a drop of water off the end of her nose, pulled the door open, and went inside.
The bard sitting duty in the main hall glanced up from her book. "You're dripping."
"It's raining."
"Annice?"
Annice shook her hood back, spraying the immediate area with a fine patina of water.
"Well, I guess the Circle does hold everything. Welcome home, Annice." The older woman rested her fore arms on the desk and leaned forward, frowning. "You look awful."
"Thank you." If one more person told her that tonight, she was going to puke on their shoes. "If you'll record that I'm back, Ceci, I'm going up to bed. I don't even want to think about recall until morning."
"Do you want me to have the kitchen send something up?"
No. Except that she was starving. "Soup and bread. Thanks."
Ceci turned to watch as she started toward the stairs. "You going to make it all the way to your rooms?" she asked dubiously.
"Of course I am. I'm fine. I'm just a little tired. It's my punishment for sitting on my ass all the way from Vidor."
"Riverboat?"
"What else."
"You push?"
"A little."
"Captain won't like that."
"Extenuating circumstances."
Ceci laughed. "They always are. Stasya's out in the city."
"Good for her."
"When she comes in, shall I tell her you're back or let her find out for herself?"
Annice thought about it for a moment, then called down from the top of the stairs. "You'd better tell her. You know how she hates surprises."
"You're the one who wanted to be on the fourth floor," she reminded herself a few moments later, resting on the third floor landing. "And you're the one who wanted rooms at the back of the building not the front. You've got no one to blame for this final effort but yourself."
The soup and bread very nearly made it to her rooms before she did. She'd barely Sung the lamp alight and checked to see that the kigh dancing on the wick was safely contained when the server arrived.
"Just set the tray here," she said, lifting a jumbled heap of slates off a round table and searching desperately for a place to put them. As usual, Stasya had left their common room looking like a storm had recently passed through. Finally, as it seemed to be the only clear space remaining, she stuffed the slates under a chair, stood her instrument case against the wall, and shrugged her pack off to crash to the floor.
The older man clicked his tongue—at the noise or the mess, Annice wasn't sure which—and nudged a pile of colored chalks aside with the edge of the tray. "I brought you some cheese," he said, straightening. "Need more than just bread and soup after a Long Walk."
"I only walked in from Riverton today, Leonas," Annice pointed out, removing a half-strung harp and a pair of torn breeches from her favorite chair. "Not all the way from Ohrid."
Leonas ignored her. "Probably haven't had any decent food for the whole two quarters."
"I actually ate quite well."
He snorted and looked her over. "Gained a little weight, did you?"
Annice sighed. She couldn't win. "Good night, Leonas."
"Good night, Princess."
"Leo…"
"If I can call my Giz Cupcake when she never was one," he interrupted, glaring back at her from the threshold, "I can call you Princess when you aren't one no more. Get some sleep. You look terrible." Jerking the door closed behind him, he left Annice no room to argue.
Leonas had already been serving at the Bardic Hall for thirty years when the fourteen-year-old Annice arrived. Determined not to let it show, lest word get back to her brother, she was hurt and confused and had no idea of how not to act like a princess. Leonas had gruffly taken her under his wing, explaining little things it had never occurred to the bards that she wouldn't know, easing the transition as much as he could. Over the years, he'd slid into the role of trusted retainer and if he wanted to call her "Princess," she supposed he'd earned the right. She tried to discourage it, though; she'd long left that life behind.
Stripping off her wet clothes and letting them lie where they fell, she pulled a heavy woolen robe and sheepskin slippers from the wardrobe in her bedroom, shuffled down the hall to use the necessity—fortunately running into no one with whom she'd have to make conversation—then finally sat down to eat.
The soup was excellent, big chunks of tender clam in a thick vegetable stock. Not entirely trusting her stomach, Annice saved the bread and cheese for later.
She thought about lighting a fire, but—in spite of the rain slapping against the shutters—it just wasn't cold enough to justify making the effort. Besides, once in bed with the curtains closed, she'd be plenty warm enough. Setting thought to action, she picked up the lamp and shuffled into the bedroom.
Blankets and sheets were heaped in a tangled pile. The down comforter trailed on the floor, evidence of a hasty departure, and all but one of the four pillows had been thrown to the foot of the bed.
"I can't believe she can sleep in this," Annice muttered, tugging the mess into some semblance of order. "And I don't even want to know how she tore that corner of the curtain." Bed finally tidied, she Sang the kigh in the lamp a gratitude and, in the dark, slipped off her robe and slid naked between the sheets. Just as they began to warm around her body, her bladder decided to get her up again.
"I just went!" she told it.
It didn't seem to matter.
"If it isn't one end lately, it's the other," she complained, groping for her slippers. "I am really getting tired of this."
"Nees? Are you asleep?"
Annice roused enough to murmur an affirmative, then gasped as a cold body wrapped around hers. "Stasya, you're freezing!"
"You're not. You're nice and warm."
"I was nice and warm."