(The mattress. Is there a rule about not breaking things?)
(In Duun’s game we never did.)
(His rules. He’d have taught me. He’d have done it right.)
He heaved himself up off the tiles, limped in to the warm sand in front of the fire and sank down there, gritty and sweaty and chilled. (Gods, at least I can use the razor and the lotion I brought. That smells good. Maybe it will cover some of my stink.)
(I daren’t sleep. They promised no one would bother me. I daren’t believe that either.)
He felt after the pebbles in his belt and took out his prizes, never touching them with his fingers. They lay in the tissue, each unique, one with a white vein, the other white with a black. (Would someone ever cheat?)
(Fool!)
He looked at the fire, the abundant embers in the grate.
He went to the table and got the pitcher and poured it out on the coals. A great hissing of steam rose up and there was still a vivid glow in the coals.
(Oh, damn, damn, damn! The bath I drained. The water that won’t run.)
He took the pitcher to the bath and tried the taps again, got down on his knees and dipped out all the water in the toilet with his hands: it filled the pitcher once.
The coals had livened again when he got back. He poured the water on and got the platter and poured sand on, waited a while and scooped some of it out with the platter. There was still heat. There had been a metal grate beneath the logs. The coals lay at a forearm’s depth in sand.
(How much time? O gods, I daren’t wait for this.)
He cast the top sand away. He got down to the coals and used his razor again to rake them onto the platter, to turn them and examine them. Bit by bit the collection in the bathroom grew; and he got down to the deeper coals and into the heat. There was a metal grate. He got that out using his flight helmet for a hook. He moved more coals, and heat cracked the plate in two. He used the larger piece and raked more gingerly. His hands blistered now. The pain was a new encounter every time he reached in; everything he held was hot. The shard broke again and one by one the pieces he used broke to smaller and smaller shards. He abandoned his taking the coals to the bath, he only slid them out onto the sand and examined them and reached back for more. He set his knee on a hot ember and tears blurred his eyes, ran on his face and dried.
From far down in the coals, he scooped out a small black ember which was too regular and too smooth. He rolled it in the sand to cool it and scratched it with his razor. It was a pebble.
He wrapped it with the rest and never flinched at the heat. (Should I stop hunting?)
He kept going, to the last. Off to the side of the hearth, beneath old ash, he found a metal trap, and pried that open with his razor. He burned himself again getting out the small stone at the bottom. But he rolled it into the tissue too, and gingerly searched what little ash was left until he was sure there were no more.
He sat down then, slumped with his arms on his knees until he had rested. And then he began to pick the grate and the dead coals up and restore them to the fireplace.
The door opened when he was in the middle of this task. The hatani who had put him into the room were back. They looked about the room.
One walked into the bath and came back again, and Thorn got to his feet.
“Come with us,” the first hatani said.
Thorn took his sooty kilt and wrapped it about himself, then started gathering up all the rest of his and Duun’s belongings, every one.
“Visitor,” the other said, “it’s clear you’re not leaving, from the condition of this room. There’s no need to pack.”