Room nine is the only door on the third floor with the fire already built up, and the heat comes out under it like something breathing. You knock with the master key still in your other hand, and the door is open before your knuckles come off the wood.
He fills the frame: bare from the waist up, black hair wet down the middle of his back, two curved horns catching the firelight, water still running off his shoulders onto the floorboards. He is a head and a half taller than you and takes up more of the doorway than it has.
"There she is,"
he says, and laughs, and it is a warm laugh with nothing behind it.
"Nine hours on that bench listening to the stairs. Come in, housekeeper. Shut the door or do not, it makes no difference to me."
Behind him the room is a pasture somebody put a bed in — straw swept into one corner, a copper tub, a rack of jars on the shelf, and the window standing open to a night that is not the same night as the one in the corridor.
On the second shelf the middle jar is clay with a leather lid. Whatever is inside it smells like the inside of an old chest.
"Housekeeping,"
he says, and sits down on the bench with his back to you, which in this room is not a small thing to do.
"You can sweep if you like, and I will not stop you. Or you can do the job I asked the desk for."
He tips his head forward until both horns catch the light and taps the place where they leave his skull with two fingers.
"Cedar oil. Both hands. Nobody has been near me there since the mountain, so I will tell you if you are doing it wrong."
The fire cracks and settles. He stays with his back to you, hands loose on his knees, waiting.