Working with a broom handle was not nearly as good as using a properly balanced practice sword, or a real blade for that matter. She of course had to use her left hand because of her broken wrist, but it was not as hard as it might have been since she was trained to use her non-dominant side after a previous elbow injury. Grateful as she was just to have the broom, she wished she at least had her bonewood, and planned to request it of the professor citing her bad leg, but she never saw him, which was hugely irritating. When she asked Mirriam where he was, the housekeeper informed her it was none of her concern, but let it slip later he was out at the “dig site” with his students.
The only people she continued to see were Lorine and Mirriam. If she had her way, that would soon change if only she could stay awake. There weren’t even any visitations from the ghost—none that she was aware of at any rate.
To make matters worse, beneath her cast the flesh itched so much it drove her wild. She had nothing to slide beneath the cast to probe the itches, and she was sorely tempted to go to the bathing room and soak it in water to dissolve it off. Instead, she furiously scratched at the cast itself as if she could somehow transcend the plaster and reach her skin to find release.
When next Mender Samuels appeared to check on her and remove the sutures from various wounds, she demanded, “When is this cast coming off?”
“Three or four more weeks, I should think.”
Karigan perceived the hint of a malignant smile as he said it, like he enjoyed telling her bad news. She wanted to scream her frustration but would not give him the satisfaction.
“You do want it to heal correctly, don’t you?” he asked, while tugging out another stitch.
Karigan grunted and said no more.
Finally a day came when she felt more herself. The combination of good food and sleep infused her with most of her old energy. Her wrist still ached and itched in its cast, and she still limped, but on the whole, she was ready to take on the world, or at least the part of it that contained the household of Professor Bryce Lowell Josston.
She’d made her plans, so now it was a matter of waiting for the night. She took her mind off the coming excursion by sneaking into the bathing room to attend to her own ablutions. She filled the tub with hot water, and just as she sank into it, settling her broken wrist safely on the rim, Mirriam barged right in.
“You get out this instant!” she ordered.
“I will not,” Karigan replied. “You will have to lift me if you want me out.”
Mirriam paced in agitation, perhaps considering her options. “I could ask the gardeners to help . . .”
Karigan did not reply, guessing she was bluffing.
After some moments, Mirriam jabbed her finger in Karigan’s direction. “You will not get your cast wet, and we shall speak when you are done.”
When the housekeeper left, the tension eased out of Karigan’s body, and she took a glorious, long hot soak and a thorough scrub, not getting her cast wet in the process, thank you very much. Afterward, while she dried off in her room, she endured Mirriam’s scolding with equanimity.
“As you can see,” Karigan said, brandishing her cast before Mirriam’s face, “no harm has been done. It’s obvious I’m capable of bathing myself, though Lorine will still need to help me with my hair.” Karigan thought she heard giggles from the hallway in response to Mirriam’s being bested. Arhys, perhaps?
Mirriam pursed her lips. A muscle twitched in her cheek, but she nodded curtly and left. When the door shut behind her, Karigan spun around in a little dance of victory.
And then she saw the cat watching her through the window, that same pair of golden eyes, the white and light gray fur. He appeared neither scrawny nor scruffy, so perhaps he was a well-fed neighborhood cat. Since she’d already defied Mirriam once today, it did not seem a great leap to do so again. She went to the window and started to lift the sash, but at the first hint of a squeal, the cat jumped. She looked down, but could not see where he went. She shrugged and decided she would have to find some grease with which to ease the window.
Karigan busied herself the rest of the day practicing sword forms and was pleased by the increasing strength and precision of her left arm. When she finished, she gazed out the window. The sky was heavy, deepening with rain clouds. By late afternoon showers fell, accompanied by rumbles of thunder, and kept falling as the household settled into night and eventually into sleep, until only one soul remained awake, or so Karigan hoped. The constant patter of rain on the roof would help cover up the sound of her movements.
Wrapping the shawl around her shoulders, her feet clad in slippers, she tiptoed to her door, opened it, and peered out into the hallway. At night time, she discovered, the hallways were kept dimly illumined by phosphorene lamps at low glow. Some were made to look like tapers in candle holders, the glass flame bright, but false in that it did not flicker like a real candle. These, unlike the larger lamps, could be carried with ease. She picked one up from its place on a small marble-top table and moved down the hall toward the stairs, followed by her own monstrous shadow.
She hadn’t the nerve to open the doors along the hallway, figuring they could very well be inhabited. She suspected Mirriam slept only a couple doors away from her. No, her goal was to look around on the lower level, where the professor’s business took place. If she were to find out anything of interest, it would be downstairs.
She carefully descended, her shadow exaggerating her steps. When she reached the bottom landing, she ignored the parlor—one glance the other day had shown her an impersonal room of overstuffed furniture and the requisite portraits of important ancestors. It was enough to tell her the room was rarely used and that she would find nothing of interest there. It seemed to her parlors had not changed much since her own time.