The washstand stood in the north alcove of the back parlor, its three legs wedged into the floor-seams to keep it steady during the river dampness.
Sir Cael Ardent stood before the earthenware basin, his bare forearms trembling violently as he gripped the rim of the pine stand with both hands. His knuckles were white, the gray, necrotic veins standing out like taut cords beneath his papery skin. When his fingers clamped down in another involuntary spasm, the seasoned heartwood gave a sharp, wet protest, two thin splinters of pine tearing free beneath his left thumb.
He did not look at the splinters. He stared into the water in the basin, watching his own reflection shimmer and break in the gray Flood Month light.
The face staring back at him was not the gilded countenance painted on the recruitment broadsheets in the capital. It was the face of a drowned man—his hollow cheeks sunken, his lips tinged with a faint, leaden blue, his bloodshot eyes sunken into bruised sockets that looked as though they had been struck with a copper mallet. Above his collarbone, the gold disc of the Returner Seal sat countersunk into the blackened crater over his collar wound, its rhythmic, greasy gold pulse casting a sickening amber sheen across the surface of the water.
