“That, um, person you were with earlier, Yani. Who is he? A relative of yours?”

Jin shook his head emphatically. “He just came here one day, the way most folks do. He’s a revive.” Jin gave the word its meaningful pronunciation, re-vive.

“He was cryo-revived, you mean?”

“Yah. He doesn’t much like it, though. His contract with his corp was just for one hundred years—I guess he paid a lot for it, a long time ago. But he forgot to say he wasn’t to be thawed out till folks had found a cure for being old. Since that’s what his contract said, they brought him up, though I suppose his corp was sorry to lose his vote. This future wasn’t what he was expecting, I guess—but he’s too old and confused to work at anything and make enough money to get frozen again. He complains about it a lot.”

“I… see. I think.” The little man squeezed his eyes shut, and open again, and rubbed his brow, as if it ached. “God, I wish my head would clear.”

“You could lie down in my bedroll, if you wanted,” Jin suggested diffidently. “If you don’t feel so good.”

“Indeed, young Jin, I don’t feel so good. Well put.” Miles tilted up the water bottle and drained it. “The more I can drink the better—wash this damned poison out of my system. What do you do for a loo?” At Jin’s blank look he added, “Latrine, bathroom, lavatory, pissoir? Is there one inside the building?”

“Oh! Not close, sorry. Usually when I’m up here for very long I sneak over and use the gutter in the corner, and slosh it down the drainpipe with a bucket of water. I don’t tell the women, though. They’d complain, even though the chickens go all over the roof and nobody thinks anything of it. But it makes the grass down there really green.”

“Ah ha,” said Miles. “Congratulations—you have reinvented the garderobe, my lizard-squire. Appropriate, for a castle.”

Jin didn’t know what kind of clothes a guarding-robe might be, but half the things this druggie said made no sense anyway, so he decided not to worry about it.