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nothing
like sunlight or even moonlight, mostly yellow, with a useful bit
of blue near the wick. It would suffice. By holding the candle out
to the side and staring straight ahead, I angled the light in
obliquely. After a few blinks and false starts, I was able to
create a mild jolt of electricity that killed every living thing in
the straw, and also anything that had remained on me and Val.
    “It’s all right now,” I said. “They’re all
dead.” I set the candle back in its niche, shook out my cloak and
spread it again on the straw, sat down with Val in my lap, and
watched Jana bending over something in the corner.
    Jana straightened up. “I have to go to the
bathroom,” she said, clutching herself in desperation. “But I don’t
want you watching me!” The thing in the corner was a chamber pot.
Jana had never been troubled by girlish modesty before, and I
figured the squalid surroundings and the fatigue had spooked her,
like me and Val.
    After my experience with the bedbugs I could
not trust anything here. “I won’t watch you,” I said. “But let me
see that pot.” Jana brought it over and I peered inside from the
relative safety of my arm’s length. Just as I suspected, a huge
spider was lurking inside the curve of the lip at the top.
    This time, as I reached for the candle again,
I hesitated, remembering Reynaldo’s threat. I had promised not to
use my gift against him or his men; surely my oath had not
encompassed arthropods. And so far, I had felt no sense in my mind
that my impromptu extermination had alerted Reynaldo to my
disobedience, if that’s what it was. From the shrieks of revelry in
the hall above us, it sounded as if the bandits and their camp
followers were more interested in celebrating the imminent upturn
in their fortunes than in monitoring their hostages. But there was
no need to risk everything for a spider, even a big one. I knocked
it out onto the ground and Jana stomped it.
    At Jana’s continued insistence, I turned my
back and made Val do the same. There was a great rustling of
skirts, and Jana seemed to take forever with the riding knickers,
but at last she was done. By then I, too, was clutching myself, and
only just made it to the pot in time.
    When I had finished Val sidled over with a
confession. “I went in my pants.” His lower lip trembled with
shame. “I couldn’t help it.” Poor lamb, he had worn his soiled
diaper all this time and not complained. Now he had wet himself
again while Jana and I used the pot.
    “Of course you couldn’t help it,” I said,
shaking with maternal rage as I recalled Reynaldo’s brutal
treatment. “I almost wet myself too. You’ve been a good, brave
boy.”
    Val had been making real progress recently,
learning to tell me or Isobel ahead of time, proud that he usually
stayed clean and dry all day like an adult. We had put a diaper on
him this morning—better to be safe on the journey home—but I had
not expected Val to need it. What had happened today was a sad
setback for him.
    I undressed him, removing his little breeches
and the soaked and soiled diaper. I wiped the worst of the dirt off
his backside and between his legs with the outside of the diaper
and laid it on the floor beside the chamber pot. I was at a loss
for what to do next. Val still wore a diaper at night. There had
been one clean diaper in the baggage pack, for our first night at
home. By now all our baggage was no doubt distributed amongst
various loyal supporters of Reynaldo’s. Val would have to sleep
naked, wetting into the straw if I couldn’t catch him in time for
the pot. By morning his breeches would be dry. “You’re such a big
boy now,” I said. “You can sleep without diapers tonight.”
    Jana had watched all my activity with a
cynical air. “Val’s a big baby,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “And
he stinks. He smells like a bandit.”
    Val lifted his weary head, always ready to do
battle with his bullying older sister. “I don’t stink,” he