Ashaun’s words stopped the cold spiral of battlefield iron inside Pip’s head, but they did not make the ache in its side or its chest go away.
Knowing you have not become a tyrant is a useful fact; it still leaves you sitting on the porch after frightening an eight-year-old boy who used to warm his fingers in your coat.
After breakfast, Pip got up quietly from beside the woodpile and limped past the laundry tubs to a small, circular hot spring at the western edge of the camp, away from the harness sheds and the path where Senna worked. The pool was barely six feet across, ringed with flat slabs of gray tufa stone and filled with thick, olive-green mineral mud that stayed just warm enough to steam in the cool mountain air.
Pip lay down on a flat tufa slab at the rim, resting its heavy sideways jaw on its crossed front legs, and stared down into the mud.
Every ten or twelve seconds, a pocket of marsh gas rose from the deep vent below, pushing the green clay up into a smooth, shiny dome the size of a teacup before popping with a soft plop and settling back into widening rings.
