Book One – Chapter 18

To his dismay, the bathroom was exactly as he had left it, with his torn shirt and scattered feathers and discarded bandages all clung together in sodden clumps. The water he had splashed still pooled in shallow streaks across the floor, dull and streaked grey.

Yu paused in the doorway, beak ajar. For a second he thought about retreating anywhere else — about going to his room and locking the door and never coming out again. But just seeing the toilet made his business here a thousand times more urgent.

There was no way to step around it. The mess was everywhere. Yu shuffled in and pulled the door shut. It took him desperate seconds to work the key. At last, he threw himself onto the toilet.
As he sat there, voices rose through the stone.

“No resonance. No pull. Either inert or harmless. Really, don’t worry. If he made it through the seals, it’s generally random stuff that needs activation.”

There was the faint clinking of metal and the rustle of glass. They were stripping the selder of belts and tools, no doubt.

While they sorted him out below, Yu sorted himself back into order. His pants were rather loose, cinched with an elastic waistband and an additional suspenders, which saved him any belt trouble. Once he was done, his thirst and hunger crept back up.

He eyed the stone barrel in the corner. Not counting the toilet, it was the only source of water. There was a sink opposite the toilet, but it had no outlet. If you wanted water, you needed to retrieve it from that barrel in the corner. Yu had not forgotten how he had shoved his stump into it earlier, spilling water everywhere. The water that remained would be tainted, but he wanted to drink from it still.