“It isn’t real?” I poke at the gold floorboard with my foot.
“Wouldn’t matter if it were. Painting doorframes—it’s all myth that it keeps us out.” He kicks off one of his boots. “A sealed circle of pure Eleutheraen gold, which is rare, will do it. But not some random bit of gold across a floorboard. How do you think we crossed the Cut?” Discomfort pinches his expression when he leans on the other leg to kick off his second boot. “Damned nuisance to move the Playhouse through, but any Player could traverse that pitiful moat.”
“Players can cross the Cut?” Gods,of coursethey can. It was never sealed with pure Eleutheraen gold. “What about the treaty—”
“The treaty kept thePlayhouseout. Not named Players. How could it? None of the original Players are around anymore to be named in a treaty. Sil doesn’t let us leave the grounds anyway.”
I stare quietly at the paint.Thistoo? Question marks prod at my mind. The wall was never fully sealed. The Three Compliments Rule is complete fiction. Mimicry—fortunately—doesn’t involve skinning a victim to take their shape.
How many lies did we foolishly accept as truth? How many more are there?
Jude collapses onto the bed without bothering to remove his jewelry, making himself at home, long legs dangling off the mattress. But his breaths are uneven, ragged. Wincing, he lifts himself to shrug off his coat.
My eyes widen. His sleeve is soaked through.
Jude curses as he inspects the wound. “Don’t tell Cora, will you?” he says. “I made her restitch this shirt a week ago.”
“Don’t mess with it,” I say, retrieving the supplies I bought. “And take that off.”
“Such excuses.” Jude frowns at his ruined sleeve. “If you want me to undress, you can just ask nicely.”
I toss the healer’s kit at him. “Fine. Suffer.”
“All right. All right.” He laughs on a wheeze, putting his hands up and wincing again at the movement. “I’ll quit teasing.” He goes back to working the buttons on his shirt, muttering about how Cicero will probably punish him with hideous costumes as vengeance.
I ignore the butterflies in my stomach as he tosses his shirt aside and unpack the healer’s kit—making a stern point ofnotgiving him the attention he’s always after.
But by the heat that floods my cheeks when I glance up at the wide expanse of Jude’s shoulders, the contours of muscle laced with golden veins, I think I fail extravagantly. I clear my throat and avert my eyes to the gold coin that hangs from a thin chain at his neck—a beaming Comedy mask pressed into its face. But when Jude twists to get a better look at the cut on his arm, the coin turns, revealing Tragedy’s sullen mask on the other side.
Head down, I lay the gauze out on the mattress beside a long cloth bandage and a small linen pouch of coiled catgut. There’s an astringent made of what might be vinegar and honey, but one glimpse at the wound makes me pretty certain none of it will do much.
The mattress sits too low, so I angle my knees on the floor and soak the cloth in the mixture before setting to work on cleaning the cut, ignoring Jude’s accusations that I’m trying to torture him.
“Are you still not going to tell me what that is?” I ask of the gleaming gash I spotted on his opposite shoulder when we left the Playhouse. Since then, it’s created a mapwork of golden veins down his chest and back. Whatever they are, they clearly aren’t related to this cut on his arm.
And they’re spreading.
The disturbing image of Gene Hunt’s skin nudges at my mind.
He shakes his head once. “There’s no mending that kind. Don’t worry over it.”
The laceration Dorian gifted him cuts deep into the muscle, closer to bone than I think either of us wants to admit. And the blade clearly didn’t rake clean across his skin—in fact, it looks like it was hacked into it in a brazen attempt to relieve Jude of his arm.
“Eleutheraen gold?”
“Gilded with it, maybe,” he says, making a face at his arm. “If it were pure, I’d probably be practicing my penmanship with my other hand right about now.”
“How did—” I sit back, suspicious. “You didn’t have any weapons.” I’m not sure I mean that as a question, but he answers it like one.
“Rib cages tear open easily enough without weapons.”
I almost drop the bronzed, curved suture needle I’m threading as my stomach turns. Best not ask questions I don’t want answers to, I guess.
“And get that away from me,” he adds sourly.
I blink. “What, aneedle? You’re afraid of needles?”
Jude makes a show of looking deeply insulted as I break into laughter, until he grumbles at me to get the stitches over with.
