She shrugs, laughing. “Either way, I’m just glad you wanted to discuss religion instead of …” She doesn’t say his name, but red stains her cheeks again.
“Well, if we’re talking about choices, Idothink you could make a worse one than him,” I start, prepared to fully lift my fellow guardsman up in the priestess’s esteem. “He jokes, but he has a good heart. And he’s always the first to fight—not because he’s vicious, but because he cares so much about protecting…” My voice trails off as Fritzi and Alois return from the nearby grove. “What on Earth happened to you two?”
They are both absolutelyfilthyin mud, head-to-toe.
Fritzi shoves Alois. “It washisfault.”
“Was not!” Alois says. “I wastryingto forage some mushrooms, and—”
“And they werepoisonous, and this idiot was about to just pop them in his mouth!” Fritzi interjects.
“Yeah, and instead oftellingme not to, you rammed me so hard—”
“Well, I didn’t expect you to just fall over like a startled goat!”
Cornelia, who’d been trying to suppress her laughter, snorts loudly.
Alois’s argument stutters and dies on his tongue, and he starts to wipe away some of the mud. Which only smears it more.
Standing, Cornelia offers her hand to him. “Come on,” she says, “I can help get you cleaned up.”
Alois seems both terrified and excited as he follows her.
I tell Fritzi to wait for me and grab my pack. “There has to be a stream somewhere nearby,” I say. No civilization would build an important citylike this plateau once was without a source of water. After telling Brigitta we won’t go far, I lead Fritzi back into the trees while Cornelia hands Alois a cloth to clean his face.
We wander but are careful to keep the camp in mind, and we don’t go too far when we reach a well, stones encircling a hole in the ground with a rotted wooden roof. Whatever bucket had been attached to the crossbeam is long gone, but I lower a wooden tankard from my pack into the abyss with my own rope, and the water we pull up is fresh and clear.
I’m not sure if it’s pure enough to drink, but we could at least wash—we both desperately need to clean up. Fritzi quickly takes out the braids that held back her hair, kicks off her boots, and starts to unlace her kirtle, loosening the ties without removing it. It’s too chilly for a full bath, but she intends to wash her hair and clean off the streaks of mud at least. The pendant Cornelia gave her swings out, dangling off the silver chain.
She catches me staring at it.
“Is it working?” I ask.
Fritzi shrugs. “I’ve not… I don’t think he’s been…” She taps her head. “But maybe he just learned to be quieter about it.”
The worry that lines her face fills me with rage. The fact that even when he’s notherehe can still torture her…
But I know she doesn’t want to dwell on that. Not now.
“This bath from a well is not exactly the same as baths intheWell,” I say, tugging the rope back up. I would give a lot for the warm spring water pools among the trees, scented oils and soaps foaming over her body…
“I don’t care,” Fritzi says. She grabs the tankard, flips her hair over, and dumps it down the back of her head, cold water streaming over her scalp.
“I wish we had soap,” she mutters, tossing the tankard back into thewell. The cold is already catching up with her, and she squeezes the water out of her hair.
I hand her the rope. Much as I would like to just bring up more water and aid her in an impromptu forest bath, I am feeling the ache and grime of the day as much as her, and soap would, actually, be nice.
I root around in my pack, pulling out a spare tunic for myself and another for Fritzi so she can wrap it around her hair as a makeshift towel.
Something hard pokes my finger. I grab the thing and pull it out.
“What’s that?” Fritzi calls as she pulls up more water from the well. “Soap?”
“No.” I hold the wooden carving in my hand. “This is…” My voice trails off in wonder.
This is the horse carving I made for Liesel when Fritzi and I first saved her from Dieter, escaping Trier and hiding in the woods. I’d carved the little toy to comfort her, to distract her from the torture she had endured.
It’s been worn away—the evergreen needles I’d used for a tail are long gone, and the wood is smoother now than my knife had made it. I hadn’t known Liesel kept the carving all this time, but from the looks of it, she not only kept it, she treasured it. It’s a little dirty, but that’s from her fingers rubbing the wood.
