By the next morning the room smelled like stale sweat trapped under old metal.

  The stew and potion had burned away the worst of the fog in my skull, but the rest of me felt like someone had played kick-the-can with my ribs all night. Every breath scraped. My own scent rose from my gambeson in a dense, sour wave.

  I stared at the ceiling for a while, then checked my HUD. The HP bar was 2/3 full, not bad. It was time to try taking off the rest of my armor.

  Rolling to my side set the fractures burning along my chest. I got my legs over the edge of the bed and paused there, hunched, waiting for the world to stop pulsing at the edges. My hands shook on the buckles, but the metal gave. Greaves, gauntlets, pauldron. Each piece clunked down in a little heap on the floorboards.

  Sweat ran down my spine in an icy trickle.

  By the time the last strap slid free, my shift stuck to me like a second skin. I peeled it up at the hem and got a whiff of under-armor locker room. Armor bonus or not, keeping this on was a biohazard.

  A knock landed on the door before I worked up the nerve to stand.

  “Elspeth?” My voice came out hoarse, like I’d swallowed sawdust.

  The door opened a crack. Elspeth’s face appeared in the gap, framed by steam drifting from somewhere behind her. She took one look at me perched on the bed in my undershift, surrounded by chunks of plate, and her brows went up.

  “Good. You’re awake.” The door pushed wider. “Mara said if your color looked less like old cheese, you could wash. You look…passable.”

  A sloshing noise followed her. Finn elbowed his way past with a wooden bucket brimming with water, his arms straining, his grin huge.

  “I told Mam you wouldn’t want to stay filthy,” he blurted. “You’re a proper knight. Knights shine.”

  “I’m more of a walking saucepan,” I answered. “But I will absolutely take the water.”

  Behind them, in the hall, someone wrestled a copper tub into view. The blacksmith—Kael, they'd called him—filled the doorway for a moment as he maneuvered it through, breath grunting with effort. He set it down near the hearth, metal ringing on the floorboards. Hot vapor rolled up from inside.

  He wiped his forearm across his brow and glanced at the heap of armor.

  “You and I will look at the straps later,” he rumbled. “That set’s seen better days. I can hammer out the dents and tighten the joints, if you’ll let me.”

  “You bringing me bathtubs, I’ll let you do whatever you want,” I told him.

  His mouth twitched, then he backed out, leaving Elspeth and Finn to fuss.

  Elspeth crossed to the shutter and tugged it half-closed, muttering about drafts. She straightened the screen around the tub, checked the water with a knuckle.

  “Not too hot,” she decided. “You’ll go light-headed if it’s like soup. Finn, one more bucket. From the kettle, not the pump.”

  Finn sprinted off before she finished the sentence. Bare feet slapped the stairs.

  “You don’t have to—” I started.

  “I do,” she cut in, tone brisk. “You held off five boars on an empty stomach with broken ribs. If I let you rot in your own stink after that, they’d throw me out of the guild of decent hosts.”

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  My laugh came out in a short cough.

  “Guild of…right. Fine. I surrender."

  Something like relief softened her shoulders.

  “Good. Shout if you swoon. Finn will be posted right outside like a watchdog whether I tell him to or not.”

  As if summoned by name, Finn reappeared with another bucket, hot mist streaming from it. He poured it into the tub and nearly scalded his toes.

  “Ow! It splashed.”

  “That’s what shoes are for,” Elspeth scolded.

  He hopped back and craned his neck toward the window.

  “Your bird’s gone hunting,” he announced. “D’you know he ate half the butcher’s scraps in one gulp? Master Orren says he’s a demon from the east hills.”

  “Beakly? He’s not a demon. He’s just…enthusiastic about breakfast.”

  Finn’s eyes went round.

  “You call him Beakly to his face?”

  “Among other things.” I said.

  Finn bounced on his heels, the questions piling up behind his teeth.

  “Can you stand on his back while he runs? Does he bite? If I brought him liver, would he let me touch his feathers? How high can he fly? Does he sleep like a chicken, all tucked up, or—”

  “Finn.” Elspeth clicked her tongue. “Let the woman breathe, love.”

  He flinched, then flushed scarlet.

  “Sorry. It’s just…he’s big. Bigger than any mare. And the way he tore into that boar—”

  Elspeth herded him toward the door with both hands on his shoulders.

  “We’ll leave you to it. Don’t stand more than you must,” she warned. “Sit on the stool and slide in. Ribs don’t knit faster because you glare at them.”

  “Noted, doctor.”

  She snorted.

  “Don’t promote me. I mend pots and children, not bone.”

  The door closed behind them. Their footsteps faded down the stairs, along with Finn’s excited stream of Beakly speculation.

  Silence settled in, thickened by the hiss of cooling water and the creak of the tub as the metal adjusted.

  I hauled myself upright and shuffled behind the screen. The shift stuck as I pulled it over my head, peeling off with an unpleasant wet sound. Air hit skin that hadn’t seen daylight—or water—since I woke on Beakly’s back. Bruises mapped themselves in violet and yellow along my ribs and hip. Mara’s bandage rode high under my chest, neat and firm.

  “This is fine,” I told my naked reflection in the water.

  That didn’t make the first step into the tub hurt less. Heat crawled up my ankles and over my knees, then lapped at the cracked muscles between each rib. For a second my vision whited out. I gripped the rim until the ache in my hands overpowered the spike in my chest, then eased down until the water hugged my collarbones.

  The heat bled into me. It loosened grime and grit out of the cuts on my arms, drew the chill from under my sternum. Sweat and old blood clouded the surface in faint, murky whorls.

  On a low stool beside the tub, someone had left a bar of soap. Grey. Cracked. It smelled faintly of rancid fat and ashes, with a sharp sting that spoke of rough lye.

  I picked it up. It left a chalky smear on my fingers.

  Mara’s voice echoed in my head: The soap’s poor. We can do better with the fat.

  “No kidding,” I muttered.

  I let my head rest on the rim and breathed through the ache.

  Steam fogged the air thick enough to taste. I watched a bead of water crawl down my wrist and vanish into the grey scum coating the water's surface.

  I flexed my fingers under the surface. Tendons pulled, bruises sang and my cracked rib flared when I breathed too deep. Pain mapped me. Every point of it matched the world around me. Wood grain under my palms, the sour edge of old soap in my nose, Beakly’s weight in the mud yesterday, Mara’s rough hands on my chest.

  If this was a psychotic break, my brain had committed to production value.

  Hallucinations didn’t keep you from lifting your own armor. Hallucinations didn’t make your lungs catch when you laughed. At least, none I’d met on the ward.

  “You’re here until you’re not,” I told my reflection, blurred in the water. “Treat it like real or die like it is.”

  That settled it enough to move.

  I washed fast, before the heat leached out. Each stroke across my skin lifted another layer of grit. The bar scraped my knuckles, left them raw but clean.

  When the water cooled to lukewarm, I hauled myself out, teeth clenched as the air hit my ribs. I dried off with the rough linen Elspeth had left and padded across the floor, leaving damp footprints in the gaps between boards.

  The bed waited. On the folded blanket, someone had laid out a neat stack of clothes.

  Plain linen shirt, soft from too many washings. Wool trousers, patched at one knee. A simple belt. Even a pair of thick socks, grey and mismatched in length.

  I brushed a finger along the shirt’s hem. The fabric gave under my touch, warm from the sun that had crept across the room while I soaked.

  Not system loot. Not a quest reward. Just a village woman going through her chest and picking what might fit a stranger.

  I pulled the shirt over my head. It tugged on the bandage but didn’t bite. The trousers hung a little loose at the hips. The socks hugged my toes.

  Armor could wait.

  For the first time since I woke on Beakly’s back, I felt like I wore something that belonged to this world instead of the last one.