I don’t understand what exactly he’s trying to say, but I know a genuine warning when I hear it, she thought. She looked him over. He’s ragged and dirty, but his nails aren’t bitten down, and he’s only trembling a little. “They never did tell me your name,” she remarked.
“Zhegorz. I had a last name once but my family doesn’t like me to use it, because they say I don’t belong to it like they do so I never even remember it now it’s been so long—”
Daja cut him off by resting her hand on his arm. “When did you eat last?” she asked. Cupping his elbow in her free hand, she steered him down a narrow side street, away from the gawkers and any spies who might report his ravings to the crown. Her horse followed calmly when she tugged on his reins. “And where in Hakkoi’s name have you been sleeping?”
“Beach caves,” he replied, watching everything but the street in front of them. Daja braced him when he nearly tripped over a mound of horse droppings, and maneuvered him past hazards after that. “Sand’s good for scrubbing clothes, and there’s a stream, but I had to come because of the game pieces—”
“You can tell me about the pieces later, Zhegorz. When did you eat?”
He shrugged. Daja had the peculiar notion that if she looked into his eyes she would see comets and whirling stars where common sense ought to be. With a sigh, she pulled him around the corner onto Kylea Street, where she found a strawberry vendor’s cart. She grabbed a woven reed basket filled with strawberries and flipped a silver argib coin to the vendor who sold them, then thrust the basket at Zhegorz. “Eat those,” she ordered. She had to spend the next several minutes showing him how to remove the leafy crown after he ate one strawberry whole. He was silent as he worked his way through the basket, popping fruit after fruit into his mouth.
He’s starving, thought Daja as she continued to steer him along the back way to the town house. The Namornese gods are cruel, to make someone like him mad. For all his raving, he’s got a good heart. Most crazy people would have run off on their own in that fire, or never even offered to help. Not that he offered, but he did as I told him when I ordered him to. And he didn’t want me to walk back into the burning hospital. That was sweet.
The servants’ gate at Landreg House was open. Gently, Daja guided Zhegorz inside and turned her mount over to a hostler who came for it. Then she looked at her charge. “If I put you in a hot tub in the bathhouse, will you stay there?” she asked him.
Zhegorz ran a quivering hand over his chopped hair, his eyes scuttling back and forth. “Is the tub hot or the water hot?” he asked. “Specifics, what’s to be heated and what’s not—”
Daja interrupted him again. “I forbid you to talk crazy,” she told him sternly. “Not here. Here you will talk like a normal human being or say nothing, one or the other.”
“What’s normal?” the man asked. He rubbed his long, bumpy nose. His thin lips trembled.
Daja frowned at him. “I don’t know. You’re older than me—you think of something. But don’t frighten the servants, all right? I’m going to put you in the bathhouse to wash up, and I’m going to see about fresh clothes. You stay in the bathhouse until I come for you, understand?”
“Do I shave?” Zhegorz asked. He was hollow-cheeked and stubbly. Daja shuddered to think of him with a sharp blade. Someone had shaved him recently enough that his salt-and-pepper beard was only stubble now.
“Some other time,” she said, grateful not to deal with that on top of everything else. She led him into the bathhouse and waited as he undressed behind a screen, wrapped a towel around his waist, then climbed into a tub full of steaming water. The servants kept the baths ready at this time of day for anyone who might come in.
“Stay,” she ordered as he leaned back against the side of the tub. He nodded, thin lips tightly closed. It seemed he had chosen silence of the alternatives she had given him. Daja could accept that. Off she went in search of clothes and something more for him to eat.
Shan left Sandry and the rest of her party at the town house gate with a bow, a smile, and a cheerful good-bye. Briar and Tris nodded, but otherwise said nothing as they surrendered their mounts to the stable hands and followed Sandry into the house.
“I believe Daja will be bringing a, a guest of some sort,” Sandry told the head footman. “See that they have whatever they need, and please tell Daja she will find me in the book room.” I can’t wait to hear what that was about! she thought.
She then found the ground floor book room. She wanted nothing more than to sit and put her feet up on a hassock—attendance on an empress involved a great deal of standing, even when one was privileged enough to be allowed to sit in her presence now and then. She was just relaxing when she realized that Briar and Tris, instead of going to their rooms, had come in behind her and shut the door. They both stood there, Briar with his arms crossed over his chest, Tris with her fists propped on her hips.
“What?” demanded Sandry as they glared at her. “What did I do?”
“Did it occur to you that perhaps we might like to be consulted on yet another long ride?” demanded Tris.
Briar added, his voice mockingly proper, “Thanks ever so for asking, Clehame Sandry. Our lives are yours to arrange like you arrange embroidery silks. We have no minds—or rumps—of our own to help us decide if we want a day-long journey so soon.”
“I asked you, didn’t I?” demanded Sandry, startled. “I was sure I asked you. I told Cousin Ambros.”
“You did not,” snapped Tris. “You told us, like you’d tell ‘Cousin Ambros.’ In front of the empress and her court, so it’s not like we could discuss it with you.”
“Well, you could have said something before now,” replied Sandry with a shrug. “My lands are the main reason I came.”
“Tell you in front of the court, or the servants, or the empress?” Briar demanded. “Is all this royalness making you soft in the head?”
Sandry tightened her lips. “No one would have known if you’d spoken to me the way we used to talk to each other,” she said mulishly. “Silently. Remember? No one to eavesdrop, ever. Now stop complaining. If you want to stay here, I’ll go on to my estates with Ambros by myself.”
“And have the imperial friends who’re coming along report back that we gave them the cold shoulder?” asked Briar. “Maybe you don’t have to worry about them getting us in trouble, but we aren’t highborn. We’re vulnerable.”
“You’re just being disagreeable,” Sandry told them both. “I’ll say you both got sick, will that silence you?”
“You treating us like equals instead of servants—that will silence us,” Tris replied. “You didn’t act like this back at Winding Circle. Either we’re your household or your family. Make up your mind.”
Sandry’s mouth quivered. I’m homesick, she realized, distressed. I’m homesick, and I don’t want them to scold me anymore. “Oh, leave me alone!” she cried, wanting them out of the room before she actually began to cry. “I didn’t ask for you to come! It was Uncle’s idea—I just wanted to make him easy in his mind! How was I to know you two had gotten all, all prideful and arrogant?” She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief.
“We’re prideful and arrogant?” demanded Briar, shocked. “Who’s issuing orders around here, Clehame?”
“Oh, splendid. Tears. That solves ever so much,” snarled Tris. She flung the door open and stamped out of the room.
Briar followed her out after he allowed himself one killing shot, “See you at dawn, my fine lady.”