Arc 5: Chapter 19: Fear, and Hunger
After seeing to Emma and Hendry, I found another room in the same hall as theirs on the second floor. Fully furnished and clean, I noted a distinct lack of brass pipes. They seemed to be in some rooms, but not others.
Catrin had said very little, her normal gregariousness giving way to a pensive distance. I’d kept my silence about the encounter with Laertes when we’d checked on the younger members of our quartet. Hendry told me he’d keep guard over Emma, who seemed irritated by the whole thing but hadn’t had the energy to argue much.
Though I was loath to leave myself defenseless for even a moment, I decided to wash myself and clean my gear. Phantasmal muck still coated my axe, armor, and cloak, and I took an hour or so to scrub all of it off. Most of it faded into nonexistence as I did, but even still the sight of aura lingering in a physical state reminded me where I was. I used the washroom for my own body, tense and anxious of ambush the whole time.
The Count’s manse had running water, probably pumped up from the same source as the moat. I normally wouldn’t trust any water in the Wend, but it gave off no alarm bells to either my physical or spiritual senses.
I’d just finished folding my cloak and hauberk on the foot of the bed when that lonely quiet was finally disturbed. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and a subtle warning from my powers. I’d leaned my axe against the bedpost after shaving its handle down. Instinctively, I reached for it.
“It’s me,” a quiet voice said.
I’d lit some candles in the room, leaving deep shadows in several spots. Catrin stepped out of one of them, adjusting her hair before folding her arms. Her gestures didn’t have their usual energy. She seemed subdued and uncomfortable.
“I’d have just knocked,” she said with a half-hearted smile. “But I didn’t really want to be in the hallways alone. This place…”
She shook her head. “I don’t like it here. So we’re stuck until morning?”
I nodded, moving around to the foot of the bed to sit against the frame. “Yes.”
“And then?” She asked, still keeping a distance as though ready to leap back into the darkness she’d emerged from at any moment.