The attendants caught the litter on the Academy's service door.
They backed up and tried again. I knew the scrape in the lower panel; I had put it there with a wheelbarrow. One of my guards held the door open while the other waved two kitchen servants back inside.
I looked at the ceiling until we were past them.
The healer directed the attendants down a tiled passage. They carried me into a room with a narrow bed, a washstand, and a shallow basin beside it. The window was high enough that I could see only sky.
"On the bed. Keep that arm supported."
They moved me on the count of three. My right hand shifted inside the wrapping, and pain went through my elbow so sharply that I forgot where I was.
When the room settled again, the litter was gone. Both guards stood outside the door.
The healer slid the basin beneath my arm and checked the copper cuff. Its line of light was still closed above my elbow.
"Leave it flat."
"I wasn't planning anything ambitious."
Scissors worked through the waxed linen. The outer wrapping lifted easily. Underneath, blood had stuck the old bandage to my skin.
The healer soaked it before peeling it back.
I watched the window.
"Was this dressed before you went through the gate?"
"Yes."
"How far did the damage extend?"
"Below the elbow."
The healer glanced at the cuff above my elbow.
"Today?"
"Yes."
Something cold touched my thumb. I flinched.
"Tell me when you feel this."
The healer worked across my fingers. I answered four times.
Then I waited.
"Are you touching it?"
"Yes."
I looked down.
My little finger lay crooked against the basin's edge. The split at its first joint had been cleaned. Without the blood covering it, I could see how deep it went.
"Can you fix that?"
"I can close the wound. I can't promise the feeling will return."
The healer placed a folded cloth beneath it, lifting the finger into line with the others.
"Don't try to bend it again."
I had been about to.
The healer needed both hands for the next part. I counted the tiles above the washstand. There were twenty-three whole ones and a narrow piece someone had fitted badly into the corner.
I counted them again.
By the time fresh linen covered my hand, I was shaking hard enough to disturb the basin. The healer packed rolled cloth along either side of my arm and set a cup on the bed beside my left hand.
"Small sips."
I lifted it. Water spilled onto the sheet before I reached my mouth.
The healer steadied the cup without saying anything.
I drank that way.
Boots stopped outside.
Roxxy stood in the doorway with Halden behind her. She had removed her gauntlets. A dark smear crossed the palm of one hand, and she rubbed at it with her thumb while the healer checked my new dressing.
"The bleeding is controlled," the healer said. "For now. Keep this short."
"Does he need anything else?"
"Rest. And to leave that arm alone."
Roxxy looked at me.
"I heard," I said.
The healer moved to the washstand but stayed in the room. Halden waited by the door.
"Tobin?" I asked.
"Awake when I left him," the captain said. "They've taken the ruined armor off."
"And his leg?"
"He's being treated."
That was all he offered. I couldn't tell whether he knew more or simply had nothing better to give me.
Roxxy pulled a stool beside the bed.
"Pell is with the palace mages. They're feeding power into the central array. The station is still holding."
"For how long?"
"He wouldn't promise."
I looked at the strip of sky above the window. From the bed, there was no way to see the crack.
"Captain, wait down the passage."
Halden glanced at my arm before leaving. Roxxy closed the door after him. The healer washed blood from a pair of scissors.
For a while, that was the only sound.
Roxxy took the stoppered vial from her belt and set it on the washstand, away from the basin. Grey powder slid against the glass.
"Did you do that deliberately?"
There was no point asking what she meant.
"Yes."
Her hand rested on the back of the stool.
"Both times? At the station and the return circle?"
I nodded.
She sat.
"What about Tobin?"
I could have let that one pass. Halden had pulled the rope. Pell's rods had gone into the stones. There had been enough hands at work to leave mine out of it.
But she would ask them too.
"There was a root underneath him."
"You touched it."
"Yes."
Her gaze dropped to the fresh dressing.
"Each time you did it, this got worse?"
I shifted against the pillows. The cloth supporting my wrist caught the movement and hurt.
"Yes."
"You knew it would?"
"I knew it could."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
I looked toward the door.
"You threatened to kill me for slowing you down."
The healer set the scissors on a cloth. Roxxy kept her eyes on me.
"I did."
I waited for her to explain it. The gate had been failing. Valerius had been watching. There had been nobody else for the bags.
She did not offer any of that.
"I shouldn't have."
The words were much quieter than the threat had been.
I pulled the cup closer with my left hand. This time I got it to my mouth without help, though I had to put it down before I wanted to.
"Does that change the guards?"
"No."
I left the cup where it was.
Roxxy leaned forward, forearms against her knees.
"You knew there was something wrong with the core before we opened the case. You knew where to break the floor. Then you destroyed something that broke Halden's sword."
"The mortar was black. You saw it."
"After you showed me."
"Yes."
"What did you see that I didn't?"
My left eye prickled. I resisted the urge to touch it.
"Enough to know where the power was going."
"How?"
"I can't explain that to you."
"Can't?"
I watched her thumb move over the stain on her palm again. The blood had dried into the creases.
"I'm not going to explain it."
Her hand went still.
Outside, something heavy rolled along the passage. The wheels rattled over a join in the tiles and continued past us.
"I have a sealed room in the palace," she said. "An injured knight. A breach we haven't closed. My father will want an account of all three."
"And me."
"And you."
"What are you going to tell him?"
"What happened. Including who got Tobin out."
I could not make that sound like a promise to keep me safe. She hadn't offered one.
Roxxy turned the stool slightly, bringing herself directly into my line of sight.
"Before I came here, I asked what Kael's men had learned from the plaza."
I tried to close my right hand. Pain caught beneath the linen, and I stopped.
"People saw a weapon crumble," she said. "Then Saint Dorothy."
I watched her face.
"The thing beyond the Barrier called out a name. You heard it."
"Yes."
"Gardener."
At the washstand, the healer folded the stained cloth over the scissors.
"Did you kill Saint Dorothy?"
I had expected the question since the station. I still looked toward the door.
There were two guards outside. Halden was down the passage. My coat and Luna's mask were in the tower, unless she had moved them. I didn't know whether she was still watching the street.
Roxxy waited.
I could tell her about the beggar. The years leaving his chest. Dorothy's hand resting on his head while he thanked her.
But I had no way to show her now. Just another account of a dead woman, given by the man with the ruined hand.
"I won't answer that."
She did not look surprised.
"That isn't a denial."
"I know."
"Do you expect me to forget what I saw?"
"No."
The healer came back to the bed and checked the cloth beneath my wrist. I stayed still while a corner was lifted, examined, and laid down again.
Roxxy moved the stool out of the healer's way.
"When Valerius chose you," she said, "why were you in the Gate Room?"
"The Academy steward sent a group of us to the palace. Stores and carrying. I thought I was going to a storeroom."
"Did you ask to go?"
"No."
"Did the duke know you?"
"He asked my name."
"That wasn't what I asked."
"I don't know what he knew."
She studied me, then opened the door.
"Captain."
Halden came back. He stopped just inside, leaving the guards in the passage.
"Find the steward who sent the staff to the palace," she said. "Get the names of the people who went with Ren. Then the clerk who received them."
Halden looked at me.
"His assignment?"
"From here to the Gate Room. Who sent him where, and when. I want their own accounts."
"And the duke?"
"Ask why he chose Ren."
The captain nodded once.
"He won't like that," I said.
Roxxy picked up the vial and returned it to her belt.
"You've given me very little else to check."
I tried to sit higher. My arm stayed behind in its cradle of rolled cloth, and I had to lower myself before the healer could tell me to.
"The kitchen staff didn't choose the expedition."
"Neither did you, according to what you've just told me."
"They'll think they've done something wrong if you start pulling them out."
Roxxy looked toward Halden.
"Speak to them where they work. Don't march them through the palace."
"Yes, Highness."
It was less than I wanted. It was also more than I had expected to get.
The healer took the cup from the bed and refilled it. I waited until it was set within reach before trying again.
Roxxy watched me drink.
"No one is asking you to use that hand again," she said. "If its condition changes, tell the healer. Don't cover it up because you don't want me to hear."
"And if I remember an important gardening detail?"
"Tell Halden."
She opened the door herself. One guard stepped aside for her; the other stayed where I could see him from the bed.
Halden was about to follow when she stopped him.
"One more thing. Find out when he was last seen working in the gardens. And when he turned up for the palace assignment."
I lowered the cup.
I had returned to the Academy so nobody would ask where I had been.
Captain Halden left to ask exactly that.