He shrugged as if it didn’t matter. And then the food arrived, and Jess was pleasantly surprised to find his roast beef and mash were as good as a Sunday feast at home—one of the few consistently pleasant things he could recall about his childhood. They’d even mushed his peas. For a while, the five of them concentrated on their food. Someone had wisely allotted Thomas a double portion, and he ate it at an alarming speed that worried Jess for a moment; maybe the young German’s stomach couldn’t handle such a sudden rush of rich food. But Thomas seemed happy, and at the moment that was all that mattered.
“Glain!” Thomas suddenly put down his fork—he was more than halfway done with his second large schnitzel—and looked around at the rest of them. “What is Glain eating? Is she allowed visitors yet?”
“You’re free to ask,” Wolfe said. “The Medica floor is below this one.”
“Soup,” Thomas said. “I’ll take her soup.” Without waiting for anyone else, he stood up and stopped a server, ordered a bowl to go, and quickly left with it. Santi, done with his meal, leaned back to watch him go.
“He’s making a quick recovery,” he said.
“Yes,” Wolfe agreed. He didn’t look happy. “Seems so.”
They exchanged looks—significant ones, Jess thought. “He’s strong,” he said, out of some impulse to defend his friend. Santi sighed.
“He wouldn’t have survived without that,” he said. “But strength won’t keep the darkness away, and being on his own in a hostile place isn’t good for him. Go. Find him.”
Jess didn’t hesitate to take that suggestion. And it led him to the Medica floor.
The floor, instead of having individual chambers, had been built open, with only suspended curtains sectioning off one patient from another. Most of the curtains had been tidily drawn back and secured, the beds empty. The Medica attendant on duty rose from her station to study him as he entered, then nodded toward one of the curtained areas. “Your companions are there,” she said. “You can stay a few minutes. No longer. The patient needs rest.”
Jess nodded and continued on, and found Thomas sitting at Glain’s bedside. He seemed fine, and so did Glain; she’d been propped up with cushions, and was trying to spoon up soup, but without much appetite that Jess could see. He pulled a chair closer and straddled it. “I’ve been told that the Iron Tower gets the best of everything,” he said.
Glain swallowed her mouthful and reached for the water glass. “Soup is soup. But they’ve treated me well enough.” She shot Jess a guarded look. “How is everyone else?”
“All right so far,” he said. He knew she was asking mostly about Morgan, and he didn’t want to answer that question. “So, you’re not going to die on us, then.”
“Don’t you just wish? No. You’re not so lucky, Brightwell.”
“Good.” He extended a hand and she clasped it, but quickly, and then dug back into her soup. Personal emotion always made her uncomfortable. “Thomas thought of the food.”
“It was kind,” Glain said, and gave the German boy a brief, full smile. “Did you eat?”
“Schnitzel,” Thomas said. “But I almost regret it. I— My stomach can’t take so much rich food so quickly, I think.” He’d paled again and his fingers drummed in agitation. Trying, Jess figured, to distract himself from thoughts of what he’d eaten in the cells, or the times he’d had to endure hunger. Even the good things are tainted for him, Jess thought, and it enraged him all over again. But it would get better, wouldn’t it? Given time? It hasn’t for Wolfe. Against his will, he recalled Elsinore Quest’s advice: damage like this couldn’t be buried safely.
“We should leave you,” Jess said, “unless you need something?”
“I’ll harass the staff if I do. That’s what they’re here for,” Glain replied. “You concentrate on finding a way out of this. I’ll join you tomorrow.”
“If the physicians say you can.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, and ate another mouthful of soup with grim determination.
Thomas seemed reluctant to leave despite his restlessness, and Jess had to convince him that they weren’t abandoning Glain; he seemed eager for her not to feel alone, but to Jess it appeared to be more about Thomas’s experiences shadowing the situation. Eventually, Glain persuaded him by rolling her eyes and said, “Oh, for the sake of Heron, just leave me to get some rest, Thomas! I’m fine!” And as blunt as it was, it did the job of convincing him to follow Jess out.
As they left, though, Jess caught sight of a familiar figure slipping into another private curtained-off area across the way, and put his hand on Thomas’s arm to hold him back. “Wait here for me,” he said. “I’ll just be a moment.”
“Jess?”
“One moment.”
He didn’t go into the private space, but he pulled the curtain aside, just enough to see Morgan sitting down at the bedside of another young woman. It took him a moment to recall it, but hadn’t the snide girl Rosa mentioned something about Morgan’s friend? Sybil . . . No. Sybilla.
Sybilla couldn’t have been much older than Rosa—fifteen or sixteen, best guess. She was a slip of a thing, swallowed up by blankets and pillows, wan, pale, and unconscious.
As he watched, Morgan put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, bowed her head, and began to cry. Silent, wrenching tears.
“Sir,” the Medica attendant said sharply from behind him. “Come away. Now.”