The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher Page A

spectrum of every color and texture of cloth imaginable. One of the strips had little pink heart shapes alternating with bright yellow suns.
    Grimm sat up, wincing at the pain from his arm. He had a number of other cuts on his upper body, apparently, which were also covered in bandages and some kind of pungent sterilizing ointment. He didn’t remember receiving the minor wounds, but that was hardly unusual in combat. There was a foul taste in his mouth, and his throat burned with thirst. A pitcher and mug on a tray on the bed’s nightstand stood ready, and he poured the mug full of water and drank it down three times running before his body began to relent.
    Someone tapped on the door and then opened it. Grimm looked up to see a young woman enter the room. She was dressed . . . not so much untidily, he decided, as randomly . Her grey shirt was made of ethersilk, patched in several places, and looked as though it had been tailored for a man almost two hundred pounds heavier than she was. Though the shirt was long enough to serve as a gown itself, she wore a green undergown, with rustling skirts that fell to the floor. As she walked toward him, he saw that she wore stockings instead of shoes—green and white polka dots on one foot, and orange and purple stripes on the other. She wore an apron—but it looked to be made of leather, and was burned in several places, a smith’s garment rather than kitchen wear. Her hair had been dyed in crimson and white stripes, and then braided so that it resembled a peppermint candy. One lens of her spectacles was pink, the other green, and the band of her too-large top hat was fairly bursting with folded pieces of paper. She wore a necklace from which depended a glass vial of nearly spent illumination crystals, and she carried a covered tray in her arms.
    “Oh,” she said, pausing. “He’s awake. Goodness. That was unexpected.” She tilted her head, peering at him first through one lens of her spectacles and then through the other. “There, you see? He’s fine. He’s not mad. Except that he is. And I should know.” She carried the tray to a small table against one wall and whispered, “Should we tell him how improper it is for a gentleman not to wear a shirt when there is a young lady present? It isn’t that we don’t appreciate the view, because he’s quite masculine, but it does seem like something one should say.”
    Grimm blinked down at himself and fumbled for the bedcovers with one hand, pulling them up. “Ah, please excuse me, young lady. I seem to have lost my shirt.”
    “He thinks I’m a lady,” she said, and beamed at him. “That’s quite unusual, in my experience.”
    Grimm racked his mind for the proper thing to say in such a circumstance, and found little. “To be called a lady?”
    “Thinking,” the young woman said. “Now, here is some fresh soup, which doesn’t taste very good, but he should eat it all because the poison thinks it’s even worse.”
    Grimm blinked. “Poison?”
    The young woman turned toward him and came close enough to lay a hand on his forehead. “Oh, dear. Is he feverish again? No, no. Oh, good. Perhaps he’s just simple. Poor dear.”
    Before she could turn away, Grimm caught her wrist in his hand.
    The young woman . . . no, he decided, the girl’s breath seemed to catch in her throat. Her entire body went stiff and she breathed, “Oh, dear. I hope he doesn’t decide to harm me. He’s quite good at doing harm. It took forever to clean off all the blood.”
    “Child,” Grimm said in a low voice. “Look at me.”
    She froze abruptly. After a silent second, she said, “Oh, I mustn’t.”
    “Look at me, girl,” Grimm said, keeping his voice gentle and calm. “No one is going to hurt you.”
    The girl flicked a very quick look at him. He saw only a flash of her eyes over the spectacles when she did. One was an even, steady grey. The other was a shade of pale apple green. She shivered and seemed to sag, her wrist