Book One – Chapter 18

It could not. Surely there were precautions to prevent tampering with the infrastructure, if anyone ever managed to get close enough to where the water came from in the first place.

Yu stared at his reflection, distorted in the water.

Even if you poisoned the water from within the guild, as soon as the first guard fell, the others would know. They could just melt snow and drink from that. Also, it needed to be poison that could not be smelt or tasted. Was there poison like that in the medical room, maybe some sort of potion that was lethal when taken in too great amounts? He remembered that story about the bloated guard. What if you put it into the food? Into one of the big pots of stew. That would surely hide any odd taste. And with Bubs’ rigorous meal schedule, almost everyone would eat at the same time.

Yu turned away from the Yu in the barrel and looked at himself in the mirror. And then he tried very hard to listen to something else.

From below, the sounds of the borman and the krynn tossing luggage around and rummaging for papers, while Bubs and the shaman worked on the human and selder in silence. There was only the occasional exchange of what stuff they were giving to whom in which order and amount.

Yu needed water. The problem was how to drink. How to hold the slider and drink at the same time. Clearly, this mechanism was not designed for drinking — more likely to refill the barrel so you could scoop water out with the ladle and then wash at the sink. The barrel itself may even be for bathing. Whatever. If you still wanted to drink from it, you needed to grip the slider, pull and hold, and then duck your head under the spout. Easy. If you had hands. If you had even one hand. Yu had none. He needed both stumps pressed hard against the stone to hold the thing up. That left him unable to lean in and drink.