Asylum? Karigan’s heart thudded. She tried to sit up, but the pain took her breath away, and she fell back into her pillows.

“There, there, young lady,” the mender cooed. “We’ve reset your broken wrist, pulled shards of a mirror from your flesh, and tended the ghastly wounds on your leg. You have been through quite an ordeal, it seems, and now you can rest.” To someone else he said, “The syringe, please.”

An assistant in the shadows handed him a long, sharp needle, which protruded from a glass tube filled with fluid.

This could not be good. “What—what is that?” Karigan asked, feeling like a trapped animal. She glanced around the dim room—too many people hovering in the shadows and standing between her and the door.

“It is only morphia,” the mender said. “It shall ease your pain and help you rest.” He pressed a plunger on the end of the tube and a small amount of fluid squirted out of the tip of the needle.

Karigan had to get away. She threw her blankets aside and lunged forward to leap out of bed, but she was caught by strong hands that pressed her back into the pillows and did not let her go. The needle descended and stabbed into the meat of her upper arm. She yelped.

“Why?” she asked plaintively. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Do not worry, my dear,” the mender replied with a shadowed smile. “It is for your own good.”

BRANDY

The morphia had been, Karigan thought, really quite pleasant, vanquishing her pain for the first time in what felt like forever. One never really knew just how taxing pain was till one was free of it and could feel the difference. She’d given herself over to the lulling, floating quality of the morphia and slept, slept the sleep of tombs, vacant of dreams and visions.

But when the pain began to nag at her again, she found herself surfacing from the depths of slumber. Perhaps in the wakening world she’d find more morphia to once again release her from the pain that ached throughout her body with growing intensity.

Her eyes cracked open to an amber glow, like the dawning light that filtered through her window at Rider barracks and onto the wooden floor.

Rider barracks. Was she there? Was she home after some seriously awful adventures? The barracks burning down and everything that had followed, could they have been dreams?

A shifting inside her. A dislocation. Nothing had really changed, not the light, her pain, the bed. But a brief lightheadedness spun her round and when it settled, she knew she was not home, that this was not Rider barracks. Barracks was gone forever, had been gone for some time, just ashes and ruins. A tear formed in the corner of her eye, the grief fresh all over again.

I am not supposed to be here, she thought, though she still did not know where “here” was.

She heard soft footsteps on floorboards—someone was in the room with her. A young woman folding sheets, her back toward Karigan. Her long skirts rustled as she worked. She wore a scarf about her head, concealing her hair. One last sheet was folded, and the young woman, who must be a household maid, placed the sheets in a cabinet. She cast a quick glance at Karigan, who closed her eyes and pretended to still sleep. The maid then strode from the room, softly clicking the door shut behind her.

Karigan lay there, feeling the full brunt of returning pain. Her wrist especially, and when she lifted it, it felt much heavier than it should. She discovered it was immobilized in a hardened plaster. Much more clever, she thought, than the wood and linen affairs the menders at home used. Those tended to loosen and slip, and often bones did not knit back together properly. Wherever she was, the menders here were much more advanced.

Gazing beneath her blankets, she inspected herself further and found she’d been garbed in a very fine linen sleeping gown; so tightly and perfectly woven that she’d never seen anything of like quality, which was saying something for a textile merchant’s daughter. And the sheets, too. Her attention moved to her mauled leg and dozens of smaller wounds—from the shattered looking mask? All had been bandaged. However she had gotten here, by her own will or not, she’d been well tended.

Her room was large and airy with a high ceiling. The furnishings, though spare of ornamentation, appeared to her merchant’s eye to have been crafted by masters, and they gleamed with a high polish. On the walls, paintings of bowls of fruit broke up the busy, flowery pattern of wall coverings.

She found a hand bell on her bedside table. If she rang it, she supposed someone would attend her, perhaps bring food and drink, which was tempting because she was hungry and thirsty. She could also demand answers from whomever answered her summons. But first things first. She eased out of bed, her body trembling and weak, and pulled a chamber pot out from beneath the bed.

That necessity accomplished, she crossed the room to peer out the only window, espying dull sunlight and the brick wall of a neighboring building. She began to explore her room further and, to her dismay, found no sign of her uniform or the bonewood. She limped over to a wardrobe but found nothing inside except for a lonely shawl. Not only had she been disarmed, but they, whoever they were, possessed her brooch and moonstone. It did not matter her magic was not working here, those items were important to her and not intended for the idle hands of others.

She wanted her things back. She needed answers. She returned to the wardrobe and removed the shawl of soft lamb’s wool and placed it around her shoulders. Then she went to the door, cracked it open, and listened. The tones of male voices in heated discussion drifted to her from somewhere else in the house.