she didn’t want to be alone in a room with Arkady if she could help it. The sore place was on the side of her thigh, halfway to her knee, and edging toward spectacular, now that she got a look at it. The swollen, purple skin looked as if she were hatching an egg underneath it.
“You’ll need a poultice for that,” Arkady said.
“In the bedroom, please,” the Seneschal said. “The apprentice will ask questions.”
“No,” Judah said.
“If we have to chloroform her, you’ll lose the rest of the day, too, of course,” the Seneschal told Gavin. “And there’s the meeting with the generals in a few hours about the Nali campaign. Your father will be disappointed if you miss it.”
“Treat us in the same room,” Gavin said.
The Seneschal shook his head. “The apprentice will ask questions about that, too.”
Gavin pressed his fingers against the edges of his eye sockets. Then, with an apologetic grimace toward Judah: “The door stays open.”
Wordless, she dropped her skirt and stalked into the other room. Arkady followed her and closed the door halfway behind them.
Lying on her side on Elly’s bed, Judah arranged her skirt so only the hurt leg showed. A quickstove sat on the table—a small one, and new. It burned vials of Wilmerian gas and could heat a kettle to boiling in minutes. Arkady filled the kettle at the tap, placed it in the bracket, and used a match to light the flame. Then he took out his mortar and began rifling through his herb box, pulling out one tiny cloth sack after another.
“Where’d you find the toady?” Judah said. Not because the silence was awkward—she loathed Arkady and knew the feeling was mutual—but because she actually wanted to know.
“My apprentice, you mean.” Arkady began to grind herbs, gripping the pestle like it was a weapon and the herbs had offended him. An acrid smell filled the room. “You see, foundling, in the real world, people with no family or money must work to support themselves, or they starve.” The kettle was steaming now. He closed the gas valve, poured hot water into the mortar, ground away at it a few more times, and dumped the whole mess into a towel. When he came to stand over her, the smell was strong and almost culinary, like food gone off. Arkady’s fingers were bony and cold.
When she was younger, he’d occasionally taken liberties with those fingers. They’d put a stop to that, she and Gavin, and he had not taken liberties since. But she could not keep him from touching her, sometimes. He knew it, and let his fingers linger in a way she knew they would not have with Elly. Now he pushed aside her carefully-arranged skirt, prodding leisurely at the bruise and the flesh around it. “Lord Elban ought to make you hide that scab-colored hair, or shave it off,” he said. “It’s disturbing to look at.”
“So are you,” she said.
He slapped the poultice down on her leg hard. Aside from the bruise, the thing was hot and whatever herb he’d used was caustic. She couldn’t hear her leg sizzling but it felt like it ought to be. He pressed the poultice tight to her skin, staring right at her. She stared right back. She didn’t flinch.
“Inhuman thing,” he said, and then the door banged all the way open and Gavin limped in, his face dark with anger. Elly followed behind him.
“What are you doing to her?” Gavin said at his most imperious. His glare was fixed on Arkady but Elly’s eyes were on Judah.
“My apologies, Your Lordship,” Arkady said as he slid a bandage under Judah’s leg. Even through the pain she was disgusted by his touch on the inside of her thigh. “I’m afraid the water was a bit hot. It should be perfect for you if we hurry, Lord.”
Elly was already there, taking the bandage from the vulture’s thin hands, pushing him away from Judah. “Then hurry,” she said, nearly as imperious as Gavin. “I’ll do this.”
Gavin looked at Judah, who said, “Go ahead. I’m fine.”
When they were gone, Elly peeled back the poultice, sniffed at the soggy herbs and winced at the scalded skin beneath it. “I really hate that man. How are you not weeping right now?”
“Well-trained,” Judah said. In the other room, she felt Arkady put a matching poultice on Gavin’s leg. It was applied more gently, and not so hot, but the burn still flared anew. Since the door was closed now, and it was