The next two or three days passed for Elaine with a powerful sense of unreality. Not the kind that comes from waking up and finding you are still alive.
By the second day after she woke, her illness had already cleared.
Every morning she opened her eyes onto a life Raea had arranged for her in advance, which gave her the odd impression that House White was still flourishing.
Raea woke her punctually every day and made her breakfast or her lunch, and all Elaine had to do was wait at home for Raea to come back, like some pampered little wife.
Afraid Elaine would be bored, Raea had gone to the trouble of laying in a stack of novels popular around Castibury. As for what was in them, Elaine had no interest whatsoever.
Broadly speaking they were romance literature written for women. Elaine might be a petite loli now, but she genuinely could not summon any enthusiasm for that sort of book.
At the moment she was sitting by the window, listening to the carriages outside through the heavy curtain. It must have rained again; the wheels raised a wet sound as they rolled over the flagstones. Every so often someone passed along the street, voices carrying in through the glass, too blurred to make out.
Raea lived in what counted as the Greybridge District of the capital. Greybridge was the transport hub of the whole of Castibury and sat close to the Upper City, and most of its residents went out to work during the day, so there was hardly a soul about until evening, when it grew a little livelier.
Elaine stared at the curtain for a long while, then spoke.
"Raea, I want to go out and have a look around."
Raea was combing her hair at the time, the long silver of it spilling down to her waist. Over these few days Elaine had thoroughly accepted what had happened to her body.
At the request, the comb visibly paused.
"No."
"I won't go far, just once around the neighbourhood. You can come with me. Just a walk by the door. It's been too stifling in here."
Honestly, Elaine didn't understand why Raea wouldn't let her out.
"No."
"Then I'll wear a hat. Some sort of disguise. Didn't you say my face was too conspicuous? So we cover it."
Privately, Elaine thought that in her present shape nobody could possibly recognise her. Elaine White was a man, plainly, and if she went about telling people so they would almost certainly file her under mentally ill.
"No."
Elaine turned to look at her.
"Do you know how to say anything besides no?"
Raea kept her eyes down, working the tangles out of the ends of her hair a little at a time.
"Yes."
"Then say it."
"If the young master wants something, I can buy it and bring it back."
"I just want to go out and walk on my own."
Grateful as Elaine was to Raea for saving her, these past few days she had been shut inside Raea's home in a way that came very close to being held prisoner.
Raea didn't answer at once, and the room went quiet.
Elaine watched her and had the sudden feeling that what she'd said had struck something.
Raea's hand was still resting on the ends of her hair. Her head was lowered, fingertips holding one strand of the silver-white lightly, as though she wanted to let go and couldn't quite bring herself to.
After a while she said:
"The young master may be angry. It's all right to take it out on me, you know."
"I'm not angry. I just don't understand..."
And... was there something strange folded into that last part?
"Mm."
"That 'mm' sounded like you didn't believe a word. No, hold on. Raea, are you actually listening to me at all?"
Raea was exactly as Elaine remembered her. When they were children, any time Elaine tried to refuse her, Raea would fob her off with something vague.
Raea still didn't look up. She only wound that strand of hair around a fingertip, then let it go again, very slowly.
"I only want the young master to stay here. The world outside is too dangerous. I'm afraid the Judgment Tribunal, or some other organisation, will notice what has happened to your body and take you in as an anomaly."
While Elaine wasn't paying attention, Raea quietly breathed in the scent at the ends of her silver-white hair.
It was said so softly that Elaine didn't know how to answer it. No, wait, didn't Raea work for the Judgment Tribunal herself...
Never... never mind. If Raea had said it in the voice of an order, Elaine could have argued back. But she had said it like a request, and also like a thought that had been pressed down for a very long time and had finally leaked out a little.
Elaine was quiet for a moment.
"I can't stay in your room forever."
Raea's fingers stopped.
"Why can't you?"
Elaine opened her mouth and found she had nothing to say.
Over these two or three days Raea had looked after her with something close to total attention. Clothes, food, medicine, books, anything else that might relieve the boredom. Sometimes, worried Elaine would be bored, the perpetually straight-faced Raea would even tell her jokes.
The one thing that made Elaine uneasy was that in the middle of the night, sometimes, Raea would sneak in and watch her.
Thought about properly, Elaine appeared to be entirely kept by Raea.
Look on the bright side. At least House White's debts were not Elaine's problem for the moment.
After noon Raea went out for a while. Before leaving she set the seals in the house, as she always did. Elaine had tried to unpick the seals Raea left behind before; every attempt had ended in failure.
When Raea came back she carried the smell of rain on her, a little ash at her cuffs, and a worse look on her face than usual.
Elaine was leafing through the romance novel she could not get into at all. Seeing her come in, she laid the book face-down on her knees.
"Did something happen?"
Raea didn't answer straight away.
She came over first, felt Elaine's forehead, then glanced at her wrist. Being handled like that made Elaine uncomfortable.
"What are you doing? I got better ages ago."
"Mm."
"So you don't have to check every single time you come back."
Raea looked at her.
"I do have to check."
Elaine had meant to say something, and closed her mouth again.
Raea drew her hand back and hung up her coat.
"The Judgment Tribunal has assigned me a task. I expect to be away a few days."
Elaine looked up. She had no idea how the Judgment Tribunal's work actually ran, but hearing that Raea was leaving unsettled her more than a little.
"Ah... um... how long will you be gone?"
"Two or three days, roughly."
The room went quiet for a beat, and Elaine slowly sat up straight.
"Three days? You're leaving me here alone for three days?"
She didn't know what to do with that. She had, in fact, still been working out whether to raise the subject of her body with Raea over the next few days.
"I'll prepare food and household supplies... and, mm... whatever money you'll need."
Raea seemed to be thinking it through. Reluctant as she was, she had already made every possible preparation.
"That isn't the point."
"If anything goes wrong, there is an emergency safe room on the ground floor. I've put Sacred Objects in it that will shut out fire and..."
"Also not the point."
"Then what is?" Looking at the state of her, Raea seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Raea. Are you going to shut me up alone inside this house?"
Raea did not deny it. She started packing.
She moved quickly. The food she had bought at the market went one way, clean clothes were folded at the bedside. And, in case Elaine grew bored over the three days, an assortment of books bought or borrowed from the Judgment Tribunal and from the ordinary bookshops.
"No, Raea..."
The truth was that Elaine was frightened, because she kept feeling that her own body was a ticking bomb. Yesterday, in the bath, she had examined herself. Across her chest she could faintly make out white lines, thread by thread and strand by strand.
She simply hadn't asked Raea yet what those marks on her body actually were.