He’d been killed, then burned up.
A door slammed, and after a sweep of the flashlight, Sam turned on the lights. Heavy curtains blocked the windows, keeping any passersby from noticing a glow.
“Shower?” Sam asked.
Sarit pointed across the main floor, toward a dark hall. Her voice was low, monotone. “Where they wash the wool. Just after—”
“I know where that is.” Sam led me around a maze of machines, down the lit hallway, and entered a room with giant tubs. “Come on,” he murmured, helping me remove my backpack, my flute case, and my coat.
I dropped onto the edge of a tub, vision blurring with tears. Sam tugged off my mud-caked boots and tossed them aside. They thumped loudly on the wooden floor. Then he pulled around a makeshift curtain and turned on the water. Hot and cold poured from holes in two different pipes above, pounding on the bottom of the tub.
“Time to get undressed.” Sam helped me peel away a few layers of clothes, until I wore only my sweaty, stiff camisole and leggings. “In you go.” He held my hand as I stepped, shaking, into the tub, and water thudded around me, hot and cold and hard from a pair of pipes in the ceiling.
I closed my eyes and let the water soak through me.
Whit was dead.
I’d seen him die.
We’d been laughing.
And then he was gone.
Deborl’s people had been waiting for us.
They knew we were back.
When I opened my eyes, water still poured over my skin. Steam filled the room, and I couldn’t tell how long I’d been standing under the broken pipes. A long time.
I found shampoo and soap on the edge of the tub, a washcloth. Other showerlike things. Sarit must have liked this place. It had water, and lots of soft things to nest in.
Still shaking, I peeled off my underclothes, clutching a pipe to keep from falling. Silk plopped at the bottom of the tub, where dirt and grime had turned to mud around the drain. I nudged the mud with my toes until it fell through.
I scrubbed as hard as I could, feeling like I’d never been so filthy in my life. My skin burned, raw and red by the time I stopped the water and stood dripping.
Sam had left the room a while ago, taking my backpack and flute with him, but a pile of fresh towels and clothes waited. I dried and dressed, fumbling to clean my mess so the next person to shower wouldn’t have to. Sam still needed one. And Stef. And Whit. . . .
Not Whit.
I choked back a sob as I hurled my filthy clothes into another tub where Sarit must have been doing laundry; a heap of clothes already waited there.
When my hair was combed and braided and I caught a glimpse of myself in a fogged mirror, I looked skinny and pale. My cheeks were hollow and my collarbone jutted sharply, knifelike. The way short strands of hair clung to my forehead didn’t help.
I chafed my towel over my skin one more time, then threw it in the laundry tub.
The hall was cool and dim. Low voices came from another room of the mill. I followed them past a storage room, another holding enormous machines with a wide conveyer and rollers at one end, with sharp pins sticking out of all the surfaces. Carders.
One room had machines with spindly arms and bobbins filled with spun yarn. Tufts of carded wool had long ago settled on the floor like snow. Synthetic silk glimmered in the lights coming from the hall.
I found Sam and Sarit sitting on a bench in the weaving room, the giant looms half-warped with thread. Crates of fabric were stacked along the walls, some cloths dyed in brilliant hues, others in more subtle colors. None of these things looked like the smaller textile manufacturing machines I’d seen before. These were far less friendly, meant for production, but the whole building bore age and abandonment like a shroud.
As I entered, Sam looked up, dark and weary. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Thirsty.” I walked around a loom and sat between him and Sarit. If Whit were here, he’d have teased me, asking how I could possibly be thirsty after all the water I’d just soaked up. But he wasn’t. Whit would never be here again.
Sam handed me a bottle of water. The outside door opened, and he nodded at Stef as she walked inside, shadows trickling after her. “Want to shower next?”
She dropped her backpack and sleeping bag, then headed to the washroom without comment.
I leaned over my knees and tried not to think. A slender arm wrapped around me, and Sarit rested her cheek on my shoulder. “I know,” she whispered. “I know it hurts.”
Did she remember about Janan? That no one was getting reincarnated? Or could a death still carve out a hole in your heart, even if you thought they were coming back?