The woman collapsed onto the steps, fell on her side, and rolled down to the street.
The night turned completely silent. Nothing moved.
I swallowed a mouthful of blood and ran down the stairs to her. She was on her back, her face to the sky. I dropped to my knees and checked the pulse in her neck. Alive. Oh good. Good, good, good.
“Grab her, and let’s get the fuck out of here,” Gort growled.
Will scooped her off the ground, slung her over his shoulder, and we ran for the carriage.
Washing an unconscious person was surprisingly difficult, especially since Shana and I were on our own. Clover was in the kitchen, watching the vat containing my dress and the dye boiling slowly on the stove. Her face looked haunted, and when I asked her if she was fine, she gave me a look that was pure zombie.
Will had brought the unconscious woman into the bathroom for us and departed. We heated up water, filled the tub, stripped her, and lowered her in. Shana shoved a rolled-up towel under her head to keep it above water and we started scrubbing. She wasn’t just dirty. The grime was layered and thick. Herdirthad dirt.
Normally I would’ve waited to bathe someone until they came to, but in her case, there was no telling when that would be. She could wake up in a minute, in a week, or not at all. She’d been on that street for months, without any awareness of her own hygiene or injuries. Her legs and arms had several cuts and scrapes, some of which were clearly infected, and her hair was full of lice. Getting her clean was a medical necessity and spot cleaning wouldn’t do it. We had to let her soak.
Shana had mixed some sort of botanical powder with oil and rubbed it into the woman’s scalp and mane of red hair, and now we waited for it to work. Shana said it would take about half an hour, and it would kill both lice and their eggs.
I heated more water and carefully added it to the tub. In winter, we’d build a fire directly under it, but considering her condition, gentle and lukewarm was best.
Shana checked the hair and got a fine-toothed wooden comb out. I picked up a small brush and started carefully washing her left hand, working the dirt from the cracked skin of her knuckles and from under her fingernails. Between the soaking and the scrubbing, the filth was coming off. Our soap kicked ass.
“Who is she?” Shana asked.
“The best mage of her generation,” I said. It was kind of hard to tell with all the dirt, but she was only twenty-eight, barely three years older than me.
“I thought Archmage Damaes was the best mage of the current generation.”
“So did he.”
Shana made a face.
I’d worked my way up to her elbow. The stink was epic.
“Does Damaes know her?”
“Yes. He’s the reason she’s like this.”
Shana dropped the soap. “Maggie!”
“Yes?”
“Tell me we didn’t just cross the Archmage? Tell me you didn’t drag my kids into it?”
“It will be fine,” I told her.
“Nothing about this is fine. That man is not in his right mind, and he can blast rocks from the sky with a flick of his fingers.”
That fire beam took way more than a flick but now seemed like the wrong time to quibble about the details.
“He cares about her,” I said. “Her mind is too fragmented for her to have realized she needed to panhandle. She is dirty, but she isn’t thin. He sends someone to feed her every day and she isn’t in bad health.”
“Does that mean he’s going to come looking for her? Did we just kidnap someone who belongs to him?”
“The word you’re looking for is rescued.”
“Aspects preserve us!”
“If he decides to get upset about it, I will take the blame and let him kill me.”
