XI.

The old guard is standing over me. “About time,” he says, holding a filthy handkerchief to his mouth. 

I try to sit up but a lancinating pain prevents me from moving at all.

“You had a visitor,” he says as I settle back into paralysis.

“A visitor…” I repeat, squinting against the light outlining his ragged shape. “Nokweed…?”

“Nok—what? No, no. Said his name was—what was it now? I should really write these things down—Berman Ergot, I believe it was. Yes, Berman Ergot. There can be no doubt of that.”

“Erwan Bergot,” I say. “He is an Erwan, First Class.”

“That fellow? An Erwan? My, my—they really build ‘em soft these days. Never have I met such a fussy man of such high rank. Couldn’t even wait till you woke up to deliver the message himself—said the stench made his stomach turn. Well, he simply scurried out of here. But, of course, not before making me commit the whole damn thing to memory. Entitled scoundrel.”

“Message? What message?”

“Oh, who knows. Something about whether you’d be home for dinner tonight or some such thing. His family was wondering whether they should bother setting a place for you at Table.”

“My family,” I say. “Mine. Not his.”

He lets out a thunderous hacking, filling his mouth with bubbling phlegm, then turns his head and spits into the far corner of my cell.

“You know,” he says, dabbing globs of mucous from his beard with the handkerchief. “I’ve grown accustomed to plenty of foul smells. Plenty. But that Ergot priss was right—you really do stink. Wouldn’t surprise me none if they could smell you all the way up in North Chapel.”

He steps out of my field of vision; I hear the cell door screech and slam shut. “Left you some coffee over there, somewhere,” he shouts back. “Feel around for it. As for me, I can’t be standing around chatting with you all day—how would that look? Besides, I’m late for breakfast as it is.”

I listen to his limping gait vanish down the corridor to join his family at Table for breakfast.

Breakfast… so I have lost a full day.

With great effort, I manage to tilt my head just enough to glimpse my physical condition. I am charred black and flaking. There is no evidence of blood or flesh, only a fungal pattern of charcoal. I have never observed this before. Perhaps I am just tired.

It has been a long week.