With two beginners, Siobhan didn’t play as ruthlessly as she normally did, which proved to be a mistake. After three rounds, both Markl and Rune proved that they had the strategies of the game down and she lost magnificently, getting a circle painted around her eye for her troubles. Sticking her tongue out at a grinning Markl, she played much more seriously after that.
Time passed quickly, the rounds becoming quicker and more hilarious as people got interesting things painted onto their skin. With no mirror, they had to ask what was painted, and Siobhan was sure that no one had told her the truth about what Sylvie did on her skin.
Beirly came in as the dinner bell in the village rang, took in their faces, and burst out laughing. “Playing Thirteen Cards, I see!”
“Beirly, they’re ganging up on me,” Sylvie complained with a mock-pout. Considering that she had a mustache painted on her face, the pout didn’t have quite the effect she was aiming for. Beirly doubled over laughing, wheezing for breath.
Fei came in behind him, looking the situation over with a suspiciously straight face, as if he were laughing internally. “I see that Markl-xian is winning so far.”
Considering Markl only had a black spot on his nose, an eye on his forehead, and a heart on his cheek, that was a fair judgment to make.
“It’s a near thing,” Markl admitted without an ounce of modesty. “Rune’s wicked with cards. He’s almost gotten me these last three rounds.”
“And yet here I be with more scribbles on my face,” Rune drawled, which made Sylvie and Siobhan laugh. Truly, he looked like a demented clown. Rune had black circles painted under his eyes, high on his cheekbones, over the tip of his nose, and a fat lip around his mouth.
“I’d suggest stopping now,” Beirly managed in between guffaws. “If you start scrubbing, you might only have faint spots on your face tomorrow.”
Siobhan imagined going to a meeting with a karl with traces of ink still all over her face and grimaced. Perhaps the game hadn’t been the best of ideas. Although Sylvie and Markl, at least, were now much more comfortable with Rune, so it had paid off. “Right. And someone needs to start dinner. Who’s on duty tonight?”
“Fei and Denney,” Conli answered.
She blew out a secret breath of relief. That meant the food would be decent. Both of them were good cooks. “Where is Denney?”
“Coming,” Fei assured her. “She and I went fishing earlier.”
“We’re not that far from Drahn Lake,” he responded with a casual shrug. “An hour’s walk will get you there.”
“You went fishing in Drahn Lake?” Siobhan’s eyes crossed just trying to imagine that. “The lake that never completely thaws, that lake?”
He grimaced. “It was unpleasantly chilly. But the fish were biting well.”
In near-freezing temperatures? What kind of bait had they used?! Shaking her head, she dismissed it. She wouldn’t turn down fresh fish for dinner, for sure. “Alright. While you cook, I’m scrubbing.”
Fei snickered behind her as she marched resolutely for the inner bathing room. Rune, Sylvie and Markl had beaten her there and were already crowding around a pail of water, using the reflection to see enough to scrub with. The small towels and strong lye soap in their hands were doing a fair job of getting the worst of the ink off.
Resigned to the inevitable skin irritation this would likely cause, she grabbed a towel herself, soaped it up, and commenced scrubbing. As expected, the cloth felt rough as she tried to take off three layers of skin.
Since those three hogged the water-mirror, she was scrubbing blind. Her eyes roved over everyone as she had nothing to focus on. Rune had gotten off the black circles under his eyes, the one on his nose, and most of what was around his lips. The cheek facing her had a good swipe of black ink still left, though, as if he couldn’t properly see the sides of his face. Maybe he couldn’t.
“You missed a spot, Rune,” she told him. Without asking permission, she grasped his chin with one hand to hold him still and used her own towel to start scrubbing at it. “Ah, there, it’s coming off now.”
He looked at her from the corner of his eye, his whole body completely and carefully still. For a moment, something flashed across his face, an expression there and gone so fast she couldn’t begin to read it.