The bath was ready when the last customer left the bakery. Jack heard the front bolt drop below. One of the bakers called goodnight from the lane, another answered from farther off, and the kitchen settled into the smaller sounds of work done without an audience. Water ran through a pipe. A peel scraped clean. Someone stacked bowls inside bowls.
Mrs. Gowrie came upstairs carrying a folded towel and a pair of thin linen shorts. "These should stay up," she said.
Jack set his cup aside and accepted both. The shorts had been washed soft enough that the ties had curled. One knee bore a square patch sewn with small, severe stitches. "Thank you, Mrs. Gowrie. I can work for them. The cupboard wasn't difficult, and I saw two loose boards beside the ovens."
"You can see them again tomorrow if you're still here. Tonight you can stop looking for employment in my furniture." She turned to Caleo. "Don't let him fall asleep in the water."
Caleo leaned one shoulder against the bedpost. "I was going to let him drown and bring home someone else in the morning."
Mrs. Gowrie held him beneath a level stare until his smile failed. "I'll keep him awake," he amended.
She left them with the towel and shorts. Her tread descended the stairs, heavy on the third board and almost silent on the fourth.
Jack ran his thumb over the patch. He wanted to argue that the repair gave the garment more value, not less. He also wanted to be clean badly enough that he could smell the road on himself despite the bakery below.
Caleo took the lamp from beside the bed. "Come on."
The bathing room occupied a stone addition behind the kitchen. It had no window, only a square vent high in one wall and a clear glass globe set into the ceiling. The globe brightened when Caleo pressed two fingers to a mark beside the door. Warm white light spread across a broad copper tub, shelves of soap and folded cloths, and a floor sloped toward a grated drain. It had the soft fullness of sunlight passing through thin curtains.
The room had been made for work rather than luxury. Two pipes entered above the tub. One carried cold water from a roof cistern. The other passed through a clay housing built around a honey-colored stone like the ones beneath the ovens, though this one glowed more softly. Steam drifted from the surface.
Caleo set the lamp aside and tested the water with his hand. "Auntie thinks every bath should cook the person in it."
Jack touched it. The heat bit pleasantly into his fingers. "This is fine."
"You lived through a ditch. Your judgment is damaged."
Jack kept his hand in the water. "I can wash myself."
"I believe you. I'll be outside. If your head gets worse, call before you hit the floor."
Caleo showed him which jar held soap and which bottle was for hair. He placed a wooden brush within reach, moved the towel away from the splash line, and left without trying to watch Jack undo the cloak.
The closed door changed the room. Jack put one hand against the knot at his hip. He had worn the same piece of cloth since late morning, had climbed a wall in it, carried shutters and flour, sweated through the market, and repeatedly caught strangers noticing what little it concealed. Removing it in private should not have required courage. He loosened the knot, and Caleo's cloak fell around his feet.
The sunlike light showed everything the forest had hidden. Dirt filled the fine lines of his palms and darkened the calluses. Mud remained beneath two toenails. The cut on his cheek had closed into a raised red seam, while the wound at his hip had contracted to a narrow crust surrounded by new pink skin. Scratches crossed his shoulders and shins. Faded bruising spread behind one knee where a root had caught him.
At the base of his cock, the ring sat clean. Nothing else on him was. Sweat had darkened the sparse hair above it. Road grit and grime had collected in a dark ring where his foreskin was damp around the partially exposed head. His soft shaft hung low between his narrow thighs in the humid room, with his balls loose and heavy beneath it. The metal ring alone held no dirt in its markings. Its dark surface reflected the ceiling globe as if freshly polished.
Jack stepped into the bath. The water reached halfway up his calves before the heat made him stop. He gripped both sides, lowered himself another inch, stopped again, and finally sat with his back against the curved copper. Water rose to his chest and carried gray streams away from his skin.
"Oh," he said, the sound escaping before he could decide whether anyone outside should hear it. His shoulders loosened. His hip ceased pulling. Even the ache behind his eyes withdrew beneath the heat until it became something he could imagine forgetting.
Jack washed his face first. Dirt clouded the cloth. He rinsed it, washed his neck and chest, then scrubbed each arm until the skin beneath showed pale and unmarked except for the little injuries already closing. He could manage. He worked soap through the hair at his groin and cleaned carefully around the ring. It did not tighten or warm. When he drew back his foreskin, he found more dirt than he liked and washed until the skin moved cleanly beneath his fingers. The familiarity of the task helped. Different body or not, it had become his responsibility.
His back proved harder. Jack twisted with the cloth pulled between both hands. The motion tugged his hip. He changed direction and reached over one shoulder, but his long arm did not solve the angle. When he tried to wash his hair, both elbows raised above his head and the room shifted several inches to the left. He caught the rim as water struck copper behind him, and the door opened at once.
Caleo remained on the threshold. "Jack?"
Jack kept his grip on the rim. "Still conscious."
Caleo waited there until Jack's eyes focused on him. "A thrilling success."
Jack waited for the floor to settle beneath the tub. The position left him bent forward with one arm braced against the rim and wet hair hanging into his eyes. Asking for help should have been easier after everything else Caleo had done for him, but it was not. "I can't reach properly," he said.
Caleo entered without making him repeat it. He rolled a low stool beside the tub, dipped the brush, and rubbed soap into its bristles. "Turn around."
Jack shifted until his back faced Caleo. The tub narrowed toward that end. He drew one knee up to make room, leaving the other leg extended beneath the water.
The first pass of the brush traveled from Jack's shoulder to the middle of his back. Its bristles were firmer than the cloth but not painful. Caleo worked slowly across the places Jack had missed, using his other hand at Jack's shoulder when he needed him to lean. The contact was practical. Jack felt every finger anyway.
"You said the cut on your face happened yesterday." Caleo's next pass ended at Jack's waist. Two fingertips stopped beside the wound at his hip without touching the crust.
"I think they both did. This one was open when I woke up. Deep enough that I could see into it."
The brush stopped. "That should not look like this."
Caleo leaned nearer. Jack felt his breath disturb the damp hair at the back of his neck. The fingers beside the wound moved down, following nothing Jack could see, until they reached the water and withdrew.
"Some of the marks on the ring are body signs," Caleo said. "Flesh. Holding. Return, perhaps. The old book uses a different hand, and half the pictures are copies of copies."
When Jack asked whether Caleo could remove it, Caleo sat back enough to see Jack's face. "Not without knowing what the other half says."
It was not the answer Jack wanted. It was better than false confidence.
Caleo resumed brushing. "What do you remember?"
Jack watched the cloudy water move around his raised knee. Caleo had promised he could leave gaps. That made choosing one feel less like constructing a lie.
"I was going somewhere," he said. "I think I was expected past Briartown, at Thornfield Academy."
Caleo drew the brush along Jack's spine. "That's about forty minutes uphill on foot. You've been looking at it all day. The old fortress above the town is Thornfield."
Jack pictured the dark walls returning above every street, too large and too high to lose behind Briartown's roofs. He had taken them for the reason the city existed there, not a school.
"I knew the name, but not what it belonged to. I didn't know what Briartown looked like either. I knew it when you said it."
Caleo drew the brush over Jack's shoulder. "Like remembering a word you've forgotten?"
"More like finding someone else's note in my pocket." Jack pressed his thumb into his palm beneath the water. That came too close, but Caleo did not seize on it. When he asked whether anything else had returned, Jack gave him the name Eomer.
"I think he arranged the Academy. Or paid for it," Jack said. Caleo's next stroke slowed beneath the name. Jack pressed on. "And Drake. That's mine. Jack Drake."
The brush left Caleo's hand, struck the rim, and dropped into the water. It floated against the copper behind Jack.
Jack started to turn, but Caleo stopped him. "Stay there."
Caleo reached past him. His chest came briefly against Jack's wet shoulder, and his arm disappeared into the water beside Jack's ribs. He caught the brush before it drifted beneath the curve of the tub and sat back with water running from his elbow.
Caleo rubbed his thumb once across the bristles. Jack watched the unnecessary motion. "You know that name."
"Everyone in Briartown knows it." Caleo dipped the brush again, although it was already wet.
Jack asked why. "Because names like Drake are made difficult to avoid."
That was all he offered. The brush returned to Jack's back, careful and regular. Its rhythm was the same as before. Caleo was not.
Jack considered forcing the question. Caleo had earned more trust than anyone in this world. He had not earned every truth Jack possessed merely because there were so few. The distinction worked both ways, so Jack let the silence remain.
Caleo rinsed the soap from his back and poured water through his hair with a small copper jug. He worked in the sharp-smelling liquid from the bottle, fingers pressing carefully against Jack's scalp. Near the crown, one touch found the injury. Pain flashed white behind Jack's eyes, his hands locked around the rim, and a different road opened behind them.
Dark shop windows stood to his right, traffic to his left, and a green light shone on wet pavement. A silver hood slewed sideways beneath white headlamps. Someone across the street shouted, and the memory broke before the headlamps reached him.
"Jack." Caleo's hands had gone still in his hair.
Jack could tell him about the pavement, the lights, and a machine Caleo had no reason to believe could exist. He could tell him that the road belonged to another world and the body in the tub had belonged to someone else. The name Drake had already made Caleo drop the brush. The rest would give a boy Jack had known for one day every piece required to expose him, so Jack kept those pieces.
"A cart hit me," Jack said. "A big metal one. It left the road and came straight at me."
"And after that?" Caleo asked.
Jack shook his head beneath Caleo's hands. "Nothing until the ditch."
Caleo rested one hand at the base of Jack's neck until his grip loosened from the rim. Then he lifted the copper jug. "Close your eyes."
Jack obeyed. Warm water poured through his hair, carrying soap down his neck and shoulders. Caleo used his fingers until the last of it ran clear. He did not ask what kind of cart could be made entirely of metal or how it had left Jack naked. He finished the work Jack had asked him to do.
When Jack opened his eyes, the bathwater had gone gray. A darker residue circled the drain valve. The body beneath it looked less like something pulled from a ditch.
Caleo stood and took the towel from its hook. "Can you stand?"
"Yes." Jack put both hands on the rim and rose carefully. Water streamed from his chest and stomach.
Caleo did not turn away. "I've seen you naked already, Jack." Jack paused with one foot still in the tub.
That had been necessity. Standing clean in the globe's warm light and allowing himself to be looked at was different.
Jack stepped out. Caleo's attention passed over him, no longer clinical. It lingered at the lean planes of his stomach, moved lower, and returned to his face. The look was brief enough that Jack could have pretended not to notice, but he did not want to pretend.
Some quiet, vain part of him wanted Caleo to see what the water had uncovered. He wanted that quick stillness to belong to Jack rather than to the wounds, the ring, or the beautiful dead boy who had worn the body first. Caleo opened the towel and held it out.
Jack took it before wanting became an erection they would both have to address. He dried himself and pulled on the borrowed shorts. The linen contained him loosely. When he tied them, the waistband rested just above the ring.
They returned upstairs to find Percy on the bedpost with one foot drawn into his feathers, watching the room through black eyes. Someone had brought up a covered bowl while they were gone. Steam escaped when Caleo lifted the lid.
Potatoes, onions, and pieces of dark meat filled a thick broth. Two slices of bread lay across the top to keep them warm.
Caleo uncovered the bowl. "Auntie has decided you remain in danger of falling through the floor."
Jack sat on the bed and accepted the bowl. "She fed me enough for two people this morning."
Caleo settled near the foot of the bed. "She'll regard that as evidence she was right."
Caleo sat cross-legged while Jack ate. He did not ask questions between mouthfuls. The room had darkened around the gold-white street lamps outside, and moving light from the bakery garden trembled across the ceiling whenever leaves crossed them.
Jack finished half the bowl before giving Caleo the rest of what he was willing to share. He described waking wounded in the ditch, the ring guiding his survival, and names returning only when something pulled them loose. He left out what the ring had demanded and how completely he had obeyed. Caleo listened with both hands loose around one ankle.
Caleo let the silence following Jack's account settle. With his hands still loose around his ankle, he said, "A cart doesn't explain why you woke naked with that ring."
Jack touched the patch at his knee. "It doesn't explain it to me either."
Caleo regarded him for several breaths. Caution had returned to his mouth, the same reserve Jack had seen after the name Drake disturbed him. It did not erase the day behind them. "All right," he said.
Jack had expected another question. The absence of one made the next words come more quickly.
"What am I supposed to do?" Jack asked.
"Tonight? Sleep. Tomorrow is less simple."
Caleo leaned back against the footboard. "If someone named Drake was expected at Thornfield, the Academy will have its own record. They keep records for people who matter to them, and people who owe them money, and I suspect a Drake would manage to be both."
Jack asked what would happen if Thornfield's records rejected him.
Caleo rubbed his heel against the bedframe before answering. "Then you'll know more than you do now."
Jack's fingers tightened around the bowl. "What if they say I am?"
Caleo's gaze rested on the scar across Jack's cheek. "Then you'll know what they're expecting you to become."
Jack disliked that answer because it was honest enough to preserve the danger. He could remain in Briartown, find work with his hands, and avoid every person who might recognize the name he carried. The ring and borrowed memories would follow him. Hiding would make the questions quieter, not answer them.
When the alternatives had finished circling, Jack put the bowl aside. "I'll go to Thornfield."
Caleo nodded once. "I'll take you."
Jack kept one hand on the bowl. "You don't have to."
Caleo reached for the bowl and set it back in Jack's hands. "That's not why I'm going. Finish that."
The answer warmed Jack more than a promise made beautifully would have, and he finished eating while Caleo undressed for bed. Caleo pushed his frayed shorts down and left them beside the dresser without replacing them. Jack tried not to stare and failed selectively. Caleo's cock hung long and narrow beneath a small patch of golden hair. When he crossed naked to the bed, Jack's attention followed the lean curve of his ass before returning hurriedly to the bowl in his hands.
The bed was wide enough for two. That fact had seemed merely descriptive when Jack first entered the room. It became more important when Caleo turned down the blanket on both sides.
"Where are you sleeping?" Jack asked.
Caleo pointed at the bed. "You can have the wall if you think I'll steal the door."
Jack took the wall because it gave him something solid at his back. Caleo pressed the globe beside the bed, dimming it until the room held only a low twilight. Percy resettled on the post, spread one wing, and tucked it close again.
They lay on separate sides with the window open above the garden. Jack kept the borrowed shorts on. Caleo lay naked beneath the warm linen as though sharing his bed with a stranger required no alteration to the way he slept.
Jack listened to the building finish its day. A bar settled into place below. Water moved through the wall and ceased. Mrs. Gowrie spoke once, too softly for words, and someone answered from the kitchen. Then even those sounds ended.
Beside him, Caleo breathed without touching him and without leaving. For the first time since the white headlamps crossed the pavement, Jack allowed sleep to arrive without wondering whether he would survive it.