Page 139 of House of Ashes

She nodded, still keeping a gimlet eye on me. “We’ve got enough healers to manage that. What we need is clean linens, freshly-boiled water, supply runs. Where there’s blood, bile, pus…there’s contamination. If you can handle laundry and a mop and bucket, I’ve got work for you.”

I realized that she was looking at me like that because I was a draga, a princess…and the Elinors of the world would never stoop to the back-breaking task of laundry.

Maybe even I would have turned my nose up at the thought, four years ago, before I understood that titles and bloodlines didn’t matter—things could always get worse. And in a place like this, every little bit mattered, no matter who you were.

Or maybe coming within a scale’s breadth of Rhylan dying had broken something in me. I needed to do something, anything, and the thought that I had once been like Elinor…that shamed me.

“I’m on it. But if anyone is…too interested in Rhylan, for the love of the gods, let me know, please.”

Cryla nodded, but she looked too weary to say anything more.

I made my way to the kitchens, which were already packed elbow to elbow, hot and humid, and by the time they sent me to the laundresses, I’d already broken out in a fine sweat all over my body.

The laundresses’ room was much the same, and the florid Bloodless woman churning out heaps of freshly-cleaned linens and bandages directed me to the servants.

The Bloodless man in charge of cleaning shoved a scrub brush and bucket in my hands, and directed me to the lower floor, where several of the worst-injured had already died in the night.

Their bodies had been removed, and the pallets taken outside to be washed where possible. I found a cake of lye soap in the bucket and filled it at the well, then got to work on the empty patches of floor where patients had been until recently.

One was still sticky with blood. I scrubbed mindlessly, my knuckles burning from the lye, tuning out all thought as I worked.

When that spot was as sparkling clean as it would ever be again—the blood had soaked into the wood—I moved on to the next.

The morning passed in a haze of work, and when I’d run out of places to clean and new pallets had been laid down over my work, I was sent to the laundresses again.

I churned a boiling vat of lye and linens, the inside of my nose burning, sweat dripping down my face from the close heat of the room.

Churn, drag out dripping linens, run them to the women working the mangles. Run several trips to the well, boil the water, churning again…over and over. The inside of my mind was quiet, lost to the repetitive motions of labor. I became immune to the scents of acrid lye and coppery blood hanging in the air, made so much more intense by the steam.

I lost count of how many times I refilled the vat, dumped in another armload of stained linens, and ran to the mangles. The repetition was almost soothing. It required no thought, no worry.

When someone touched my arm, my concentration was shattered. I looked up and the exhaustion hit me all at once.

I felt every bead of sticky sweat inside my tattered leathers, the aches in my shoulders and sides—the scabs where the wyvern’s claws had pierced me had reopened—and the soreness in my shoulders from the constant churning. The headache had grown worse, but I could blame it on the stench of lye, and not…not the need running through my veins for another’s blood.

“For the love of the gods, girl, go eat. Put some of that cleansing salve on your wounds and find clean clothes.” Cryla held my elbow, drawing me away from the vat.

One of the Bloodless laundresses took my place, and I allowed Cryla to lead me back to the main floor.

“When’s the last time you slept or had a rest?” I asked accusingly, and Cryla gave me a crooked smile.

“At my age, cat naps suffice. I’ve gotten what sleep I need here and there.”

Rhylan was still asleep, his face pale and drawn. Someone—possibly Cryla—had left a simple dress on the stool next to his cot.

“Get changed, eat, drink water, and see if you can get some more broth into him,” she instructed me. “You won’t be much help to anyone if you collapse from exhaustion and dehydration.”

I nodded. I felt it now, the day’s long work, harder by far than riding a dragon.

The dress was easily tied at the waist, and I wiped the crusted punctures on my shoulders and side clean before applying the salve. The cooks gave me stew and bread, and another bowl of soup for Rhylan.

I sat on the stool and wolfed down my portion before I tried to wake him.

“Rhylan,” I whispered, leaning over him. “I need you to wake up and eat something.”

His lids flickered, and I cupped his face again, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips, careful of the slowly-healing split in his lip. “Come on now. How are you ever going to show off for me again if you’re lying in bed all day?”

This time his eyes opened, and he smiled without the wound reopening. “I’d find a way.”

---