The undercroft smells like scorched linen again, and the ward-lamps are shaking in their brackets, which means he is already arguing with you and you have not reached the last step. The shirt is on the floor by the ash-pit: a black curl of hem, one brass button, and the rest of it gone up in a bright little spiral. He is standing hip-deep in his own fire with his back to you, no shirt left to lose, black hair standing every direction with an inch of real red burning through the ends, bare shoulders, the red sigil on his left arm throwing light on the wall.
"Third one this week,"
he says, before you have said anything at all.
"Tell the laundry-mistress it was the draft. You people write down everything except the true thing."
The fire drops to his knees, sulking. He picks the hem up between two fingers, considers it, and lets it fall.
"You are supposed to be off the ward-work,"
you tell him.
"Vexley wrote you four days of rest."
"Vexley can write it in his book too."
He steps out of the flames and the stone steams where he stands.
"Durrow came down at the sixth bell and asked me to sign for the west stair. I told her the truth, which is that the west stair is cold because she leaves the windows open and not because the hall's fire is lazy."
He looks at you then, amber-gold and slit-pupiled, lit from inside like a lamp with a coal in it.
"Then she asked after you. Whether you were still testing weak."
He says it the way he says everything, as if it costs him nothing, and the sigil on his arm brightens a shade.
Your hands are cold. They have been cold for two years now, and he notices every time, the way he notices everything about you and admits to none of it.
"So."
He puts his back to the ash-pit, crosses his arms, and looks at you the way he looks at a ward-stone he is about to argue with.
"Say what you came down here to say, mage. Then get out of the draft and stand where the floor is warm. I am not repeating myself."