“You did well,” Maya said, squeezing his shoulder. “But where’s Jaedia now?”
“Gone. Out of the city. I heard her talking with Cyrtak. She was going ahead with Nicomidi, now that he’d arrived, and Cyrtak was supposed to follow once he’d taken you.”
“Wait.” Tanax turned away from the tunnel and stalked over. “Jaedia left with Nicomidi?”
“I didn’t see him,” Marn said. “But that’s what she told Cyrtak. She gave him instructions on how to find them.”
“Do you remember the instructions?” Maya said.
“I memorized them,” Marn said. “I thought … maybe they’d help you. When you came.”
“You …” Maya grinned at him, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I’m sorry …”
“You saved me,” Marn said, smiling back. “I knew you would.”
*
Midnight had come and gone by the time Maya finally got the chance to sit down, every fiber of her being limp with fatigue.
Fortunately, Grace was the sort of city where there were rooms and services available at any hour. Faressa had been waiting at the tunnel exit, and she’d nearly fainted at the smell coming off them. At her insistence, they’d stripped to their underwear, and she’d hurried off and procured cheap, ill-fitting coveralls for them while Maya piled their soiled uniforms together and incinerated them with a touch of deiat.
Marn had started coughing halfway through the trek, deep, wet-sounding retches that doubled him over. Faressa had agreed to take him under her care and to send him back to the Forge at the first opportunity. Marn had tried to argue that he should stay with Maya, but his protests were half-hearted, and he’d eventually agreed.
The scout arranged rooms at an upscale inn for the rest of them. Maya suspected it was at least partly a brothel, since the well-dressed woman in the front hall was unfazed at a party of guests staggering in in the small hours and there seemed to be a lot of good-looking servants hanging around without very much to do. Regardless, it was clean and well furnished and, most important, offered private baths. Burning her clothes had done nothing to get the stench of rot out of her hair and skin, and Maya wasn’t far from setting herself on fire.
Not long after they’d settled in, a handsome young man had knocked on her door with a tray of pleasant-smelling soaps and washes. She’d waved off his offer to apply them himself and retreated to the washroom once other servants had filled the iron tub with pails of steaming water. Fancy or not, the inn fell short of the accommodations at the Spike, but after two weeks on the road and the chaos of the night, it felt like unutterable decadence. Before climbing in the tub, Maya spent half an hour scrubbing at herself until her skin was red and sore, then rinsing and rerinsing her hair. Feeling tolerably clean at last, she slipped into the near-scalding water, gritting her teeth at the spike of pain as it lapped at the swollen skin around the Thing.
She prodded the little arcana idly as she soaked. It had gotten hot enough that it had left a blister on her finger when she’d touched it, but where it was actually embedded in her flesh it didn’t seem to have burned her at all. The flesh was puffy, as though swollen from bruising, but the skin was unbroken.
I need to talk to Basel about it. He would know something. After I find Jaedia. After all of … this. Her mind shied away, and she yawned, slipping farther into the tub and sending the water sloshing.
The next she knew, the water had gone tepid, and a knock at the door had her sitting bolt upright. A wave of bathwater went over the side of the tub and wet the washroom rug. Maya hurriedly hoisted herself out of the bath and shrugged into the fluffy bathrobe the inn’s servants had left hanging on the door.
“Who’s there?” she said. “I’ve got plenty of soap—”
“It’s Beq.”
“Oh.” Maya looked down at herself, suddenly fully awake. Her skin was shriveled like dried fruit, and her hair hung in a limp rattail, but there was nothing to be done about either at a moment’s notice. She hurried back into the main room to unlock the door. “Come in. Sorry, I was in the bath.”
“Me too,” Beq said. She’d evidently had more time to clean up afterward, because her long green hair was neatly braided, and she wore her spare uniform, slightly rumpled from days at the bottom of a pack. “Chosen defend, I thought I’d never get that stuff off me.” She sniffed at her arm and shuddered. “I can still smell it.”
“All I can smell is floral … stuff,” Maya said. “So I think you’re all right.”
“Do you mind if I come in?” Beq fiddled awkwardly with the dial on her spectacles, one lens flipping back and forth. “I know it’s late. I just …”
“I think I’m still too keyed up to sleep,” Maya lied, stepping aside.
“Me too.” Beq closed the door behind her. “Nice décor. My room has a sort of nautical theme. Lots of mermaids.”
Maya hadn’t taken the time to look around much. Her room was large, but much of it was dominated by a wide, fluffy bed, with only a small table and a couple of chairs pressed into one corner. The motif seemed to be hunting, with paintings of people on horseback riding merrily across the countryside, presumably in pursuit of something inoffensive.
“I might prefer the mermaids,” Maya said. “Sit, if you like.”
Beq glanced at the bed, which made Maya’s heartbeat kick up a step, then went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs. Maya took the other and poured them water. For a moment they looked at each other, Beq’s eyes huge behind her lenses.
“You saved my life,” Beq said. “Again.”
“And you saved mine. Again.” Maya grinned. “I think we don’t need to keep score, do we?”
“Probably not. That … thing.” Beq shuddered. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Maya shook her head. “Not even close. I thought plaguespawn were bad enough.”
“Still. You won.”
“We won. I couldn’t have done it without you. Both of you,” honesty made her add. “Tanax kept his head when I got distracted.”
“And now we go after Jaedia?”
Maya nodded. “She’s not too far ahead of us. And if she expected Cyrtak to catch up, she can’t be moving too quickly.”
“We still don’t know where she’s going.”
“There’s a lot of things we don’t know,” Maya said. “But we’ll find out. Whatever Cyrtak did to her …”
“You think it was him?” Beq said, finger tapping nervously against her mug. “That he was behind all of this?”
“He was a dhakim. If not him, then who?” And now that he’s dead, will anyone be able to fix Jaedia? Maya took a long swallow of water and tried to banish the thought.
“And what about Nicomidi? Where does he fit in?”
“I don’t know,” Maya admitted. “Maybe we’ll get the chance to ask him.”
“It’s …” Beq sighed. “I wish I could be … more helpful. Understanding things is supposed to be my job.”
“Beq.” Maya put her hand across the table, fingertips on Beq’s knuckles. Even this faint contact sent shivers up her arm. “I wouldn’t be here without you. You talked Faressa into helping us, you shot that plaguespawn off my back—”