I allowed myself one nose-wrinkle and a shudder. “Those things?”

Amys, a stout red-cheeked woman in a plain gown and a cap of starched white, laughed. “I know. Yet the King requested, so eels it is.” Her voice belled merrily through the din of the kitchens, and she turned away to scold a hopping scullery boy as Jirisa ducked close to me, setting down her basketful of baguetton on the step.

I smiled a greeting, and Jirisa’s fair round face blushed scarlet. She wiped her hand on her rough woolen skirt and thrust it at me. A soiled bandage flapped against her palm, its ears coming loose.

“D-d-d’mselle—” She was all but speechless with fright. Poor Jirisa was painfully shy, and the distance between her station and mine simply made it worse. In the four years she had been at the Palais I had never heard a complete sentence from her.

“Tis no matter, Jirisa. Let me see.” I set the bread aside, the growling in my stomach protesting, and carefully unwrapped stained cloth from her moist, tender paw. “You should wash the bandages. It may take the rot if you do not.”

“Not with you charming it, d’mselle.” Amys had caught me out, and stood with her fists on her broad hips. Her sleeves, pushed up, showed forearms thick with muscle. “And she should not be disturbing a great lady so. The Duchesse has other things to do with her time, Jirisa.”

“It will make me no earlier nor later to bind this up, Amys.” The slash along Jirisa’s palm was healing nicely, the careful charm I had laid against her skin still pulsing and tingling reassuringly. Instead of a deep muscle-slicing cut, it was now a fragile pink scar.

Satisfied, I dug in my pocket for some antiseptic balm-lemon leaf and crushed it between my fingers, binding the resultant pungent mass against the slice and tying off the bandage. Jirisa snatched her hand back as soon as I finished and bobbed a courtesy, then scooped up her basket and was on her way, her blonde head down as if she were walking against a heavy wind.