And now, without my Turn, how vulnerable.
A mouse poked its head out from a gap in the timbers, saw us, squeaked, and jerked back.
Armand swayed. I caught him by the shoulders once more; he leaned heavily against me. I spoke into his shirt.
“I bet the bedroom is up that stairway over there. Can you do it? Come on, lordling, one step at a time.”
I’d been correct. Upstairs was a series of bedrooms, and I led us to the biggest, because it was the only one with a vantage overlooking the hazy lakefront. Should anyone approach, hopefully we’d see them or hear them before they made it to the door.
If we didn’t … there was still the pistol.
The bed was enormous, easily large enough for four (which made me wonder about both the size and the inclinations of its owner). The mattress had been stripped bare, but all the clean linens and blankets were in a trunk at its foot, so it didn’t take long to make it up.
“You’re quite good at that,” Armand observed, seated in an ugly leather chair by the door. He’d wanted to help, but I’d made him sit. I was glad I had when I saw how he’d tried to hide his wince as he stretched out his leg. He reclined back and watched me work with those unnaturally bright eyes.
As soon as this was done, I was going find some water to scrub away all the dried blood on his face.
“Experience,” I said. “We suffered a scandalous lack of maidservants at the orphanage.”
“I’m beginning to suspect this orphanage of yours wasn’t nearly the utopia you’ve always boasted it was.”
“Oh, right. You know me, forever boasting about what a ripping good time it is to be an orphan.”
“It always is in fairy tales,” he said innocently.
I snorted. “Have you actually read any fairy tales? Orphans fare the worst of anyone. We were lucky they didn’t decide to roast us and eat us for dinner, come to think of it.”
“Ah, dinner,” Mandy said, closing his eyes.
Of course. One more task before I could rest. I hoped Mr. Hunter kept his larder well stocked. One couldn’t live off chopped-up woodlands creatures alone, surely.
“There’s something I forgot to tell you,” Mandy said, eyes still closed.
“What?”
“Well, I didn’t forget, precisely. But I … I wonder if it really happened.”
“What?” I said again, impatient, tucking in a corner of sheet.
“Back there this morning, back in the woods with the villagers, before everything went so wrong … there was this moment. This girl, I mean.”
I glanced up.
“And she … I could swear that as soon as I told everyone that we were dragons—hardly, I don’t know, an instant before it all blew to hell …”
“What?” I demanded, crossing to stand before him.
“I said that we were dragons, and she said, ‘Drákon.’”
I stared at him, speechless. His eyes opened. He looked up at me soberly.
“She was fourteen. Fifteen. Reddish hair. Different from the other villagers, you know? Different. Like us. And I … I couldn’t see all of her, but I don’t think she was wearing any clothing.”
“Are you saying—”
“Then she vanished. Right in front of my eyes, she vanished. Without smoke, without anyone else even noticing.”
I sank into a squat before him, my hands light atop his knees.
“Sounds like a hallucination,” I said carefully.
“I know.”
“But you don’t think it was?”
“I was struck on the head after that, Eleanore.”
“Then perhaps you heard her wrong.”
He eased back again, evading my gaze. “Perhaps.”
“And perhaps she seemed to vanish but was merely caught up in the crowd. They were rushing you then, weren’t they?”
“No.”
“Armand!” I dropped all the way down to the floor. “I’m sorry, but you’re asking me to believe that this girl, this villager in the middle of bloody Belgium nowhere, knew what you were, what we are, that she herself may have been one of us, and then, poof, she’s gone? No smoke or anything?”
“I told you I wasn’t certain that it really happened,” he grumbled.
I regarded him without speaking. It had to be close to dusk, because the room around us was dimming from greeny gray to greeny charcoal, and Armand was dimming with it, a wraith in the big dark chair.
Outside, a water bird began a low, piping warble that bounced off the lake before fading into nothing.
“Suppose it was real,” I said finally, quiet. “I don’t see what we’re supposed to do about it now.”
“No,” he agreed, and closed his eyes again.
I moved through the night shadows. I didn’t want to risk any sort of light, even though I’d found candles and matches stashed inside a cupboard. The lodge had plenty of windows, and the woods were plenty dark. A single flame would be all it’d take to reveal us to anyone, anything, out there.
I’d located the pump for the well and gotten us buckets of fresh water, which was handy, but I’d figured the lake would be a good enough source even if I hadn’t discovered the well.
The larder was the problem.
Most of its shelves were bare, but for four sealed canisters and a great many mouse droppings. The canisters contained four different things: sugar, noodles, something fetid that might once have been powdered eggs, and strips of dried meat.
That was it.
The meat was a welcome find (I thought maybe it was venison), but I couldn’t imagine what to do with the rest of it. I might soak the noodles in cold water and wait until they softened, then sprinkle them with sugar …
That sounded disgusting, even to me.
We still had some tins left in the knapsack, plus the apples, but we’d decided to save them if we could; neither of us knew what lay ahead.
I devoured a couple of pieces of venison as I rooted around to make certain there wasn’t anything else hidden anywhere else (there wasn’t, only more droppings), then carried the canister upstairs with me to check on Armand.
I walked slowly, my feet feeling the way step by step, the wooden banister smooth and warm beneath my hand. The bedroom was slightly less dark than downstairs had been, probably because of the series of windows meant to take advantage of the view. I was able to pick out the contours of the bed, the silhouette of Armand within it.
“Hullo,” he said, and even though he’d spoken softly, it rang abnormally loud in my ears.
“Hullo.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve brought back some strudel?”
“Even better.” I held up the canister. “Desiccated meat.”
His voice held a smile. “My favorite.”
“It will be.”
I sat upon the edge of the bed and opened the lid. I had to admit, the strips tasted better than they looked. I reached in, took a few, and passed them to him.
Our fingers touched. His felt like fire.
“Mandy!”
“Beloved.”
“Stop it.” I reached for him blindly. “Come here. I need to feel your forehead.”
Obediently he leaned forward. My hands found his neck, his jaw. The firm shape of his nose and then that welt on his forehead, which I’d cleaned and rebandaged, so what I really felt there was padding. I’d given him some aspirin then, too, but it didn’t seem to be working.
I brought my face to his and touched my lips to a bare spot above the bandage.
I felt him go very, very still.
“Eleanore,” he said, and if his voice had been soft before, now it was barely a sound at all.
I pulled back, unnerved.
“It’s how you check for a fever,” I explained, glad he couldn’t tell that I was blushing. “My mo—”