CHAPTER 73: 73: THE STRANGER RETURNS XV

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"Ask," John said.

"I need a bath," Sera said, with the fatal candor of a woman who had stopped pretending she was made of incense. "The temple washroom is full of eyes and careful rules. I have dust where dust does not belong. May I use your washroom."

John’s eyes widened a fraction. His mouth did what mouths do when their owner would rather not rehearse this conversation. "Here."

"Yes," Sera said. "If it is not a burden."

Fizz cut in like a hero saving a scene. "Yes. Absolutely. The tub is already here. I will make the water polite. It will bow to you. It will say thank you for stepping into it."

Sera touched her collarbone, the closest thing she had to a laugh oven. "Thank you, Fizz."

John turned his head toward Fizz, expression flat, voice very quiet. "Why did you say yes."

Fizz blinked. "Because she asked."

"She is a priestess," John said, equally quiet and equally doomed to sound like a man drowning in his own idea of decorum. "It is strange to bathe here. In a forge. With two men in the next room."

"I said yes because she is human and dusty," Fizz said. "And because I can make a curtain from a sheet and a pole from a broom and suddenly it will be a washroom with walls and rules and I will enforce them with my paws. Also because you were about to say no out of panic and I am allergic to unnecessary inconvenience."

"It is not panic," John said.

Fizz hovered closer and lowered his voice, conspirator and clown at once. "Do you want to peek? Let’s peek together..."

John tapped Fizz on the head with two fingers, more exasperation than strike. "Do not be nasty."

Fizz flailed his paws in melodramatic pain. "Why did you hit me. I was joking. My jokes are an endangered species and you have assaulted one in the wild. Do you know how rare that is."

"Behave," John said. "We will do this properly."

Fizz grumbled, then clapped his paws briskly into purpose. "Properly is my middle name. Also Explosions. Also Snacks. Hand me the broom. Gael where is your cleanest sheet. John, find a good towel. Not the towel you use on yourself. The other one that looks like it has never met regret."

Gael, long used to storms of words with small cores of good sense, fetched a sheet from the storage trunk and a pole from a rack of spare handles. "Lord Fizz," he said around a smile, "I have some food if you want to eat while the lady washes. It is safer to chew than talk when hot water is involved."

Fizz pivoted midair and forgot the argument in a heartbeat. "Food is a moral imperative. Also a technical requirement for my glow and cuteness. What is on the plate."

"Meat pie and pickles," Gael said. "And a wedge of cheese that thinks highly of itself. A fancy one."

Fizz gasped. "A noble cheese. I accept. John enjoy your life choices. I will be in the next room saving civilization with carbohydrates."

Sera’s eyebrows rose. "Saving civilization?"

"It is a long story with many calories," Fizz said, already drifting toward the back room. "We will keep watch while we eat. If the merchant sends a thief to reclaim his coin, I will catch him with my superior wit and medium speed."

Gael’s chuckle followed them. "We will look out the back. You watch the front."

The door to the side room eased shut. Their laughter and the clink of plates softened to a background hush.

John was left in the office with the tub that Fizz had restored to warmth, the sheet curtain hastily rigged into a private corner, and Sera, who stood with her hands folded around her forearms like a woman who knew exactly how many eyes were not in the room and was grateful.

"I will be quick," she said.

"Take your time," John answered, then immediately wished he had chosen a different arrangement of words that did not imply he would be standing outside counting.

Sera disappeared behind the curtain. There was a rustle of cloth, the hush of water meeting skin, the kind of silence a room makes when it chooses to ignore the sounds that belong to one person alone. John took his place on the bench by the window and faced the street with a vigilance he could have sold in bulk. He did not turn his head. He did not glance at the curtain. He watched the shutters and the latch and the silver line along the bottom of the door as if thieves could be made out of light.

He listened to the grasshopper instead of the water. He listened to his breath, which had learned new manners last night and was determined to keep them. He listened to his thoughts turn once around the idea of the midwife being gone and then return to the problem he could actually solve: the servant, the coin, the question that could be answered with a name.

"John," Sera called softly from behind the curtain, voice composed and practical. "Where do you keep the soap."

"On the shelf to your left," he said, and then realized she might mean her left or his left and clarified more like a man disarming a trap. "On your left as you face the tub. Wrapped in cloth."

"Found it," she said.

He nodded at the wall and pretended nodding helped anyone.

Thirty slow minutes later the water noises changed. The curtain’s shadow shifted. Sera emerged with her hair damp and combed back, a plain white robe tied at the waist, skin fresh from heat and steam. She carried herself like someone who had set down a weight and remembered she had shoulders.

For a heartbeat John forgot how to blink. The lamplight made a soft circle on her cheekbones. The droplets along her hairline shone like small vows.