“Iambetter, I think,” she agreed quietly.
The room felt smaller than normal with Niel in it. And she felt nervous in an unfamiliar way, shy, like she was worried how she looked and what he thought of her not out of fear but out of desire for him to find her favorable. It was an odd, unfamiliar feeling, to be self-conscious without any fear of violence.
“Still. There’s no need to push yourself. Healing takes time.”
“Please don’t send me back to bed. I’m sick of it.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t dare. What do you want instead, then?”
“Nothing you can provide,” she said, with a heavy sigh, thinking of a hot bath more longingly than she had during the whole siege. She wanted to wash the illness from her skin. There was no satisfaction in crouching before the fire with a rag and a wash-bucket.
“What’s that?” He pushed his empty plate away from himself.
“A real bath.” She almost moaned the words. “To becleanand warm again, for once.”
Niel raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair, kicking one long leg out to the side of the table.
“You think quite lowly of me if you thinkthat’sout of my reach.” His eyes seemed to laugh at her.
“Oh, no. It’s far too much work.” She set her utensils tidily across her empty plate.
“You want it in there?” he asked, flicking his eyes to her bathing room as he stood and collected their plates.
“I’m not asking you to do it at all,” Ayla said, horrified he’d heard it as a request. “Really, you aren’t to bother your men with this.”
“I’m not,” Niel said. “I’ve been sitting still for days. I need the exercise.”
“Niel, please.”
“It’s in both our interests that I stay fighting fit. And it’s such an easy request.”
“Easy? Certainly not.”
She watched helplessly as he left the room. Then he was back, hefting the table in his big hands and carrying it out like it weighed no more than a bedsheet. She went to sit in the window. Pulling her cloak tight, Ayla pushed one of the shutters open and stared down at the snowy landscape. The sun had burned hard while she recovered, and the recent snowfalls, according to Niel, were somewhat diminished. From so high up, she couldn’t tell. Men moved along the castle walk. Far below her one of the soldiers exercised her own Gemshorn in a trampled circle in the courtyard. The gelding must have been going mad, with only the castle yard to stretch his legs in.
A siege couldn’t last forever. What would happen when it fell? No matter how fiercely he could fight, Niel couldn’t overcome an army of the size camped outside. She pulled her cloak tighter and tried to turn her mind to happier matters.
Niel came back again a number of minutes later, a bucket of water in one hand and a heavy iron cauldron in the other. He’d tied his hair back.
“Mercy,” Ayla said as he sidled through the door. She had expected him to give up. Had thought it was one of those generous offers once made but never fulfilled.
He barely spared a look at her as he hooked the cauldron onto the hearth crane and bent over to pour the bucket in.
“This will take a while,” he warned.
“Niel, please.” She couldn’t fathom how many trips up and down the stairs it would take for a single man to heat enough water to fill the tub.
“Do you not want it?” he asked, his eyes fixing on her.
She bit her lip, and considered lying, but decided against it.
“I do, but I never meant to ask it of you. You’ve wasted so much of your time on me already.”
He shook his head, and left without a word, taking the bucket with him.
It took a number of trips for him to fill the tub, heating the icy water until it boiled one bucket at a time, then dumping it in the tub, where it steamed and cooled. At some point he removed his cloak, proof the exercise was warming him. Sitting in the window she grew colder and colder, staring down at the small figures moving below. She could even see Niel emerging to fill the bucket from the well, so far below her she had missed him at first.
She leaned her head against the frigid stone wall of the window seat. It was dangerous, the way her heart fluttered in her chest.
