Hissing, she whipped away from the window and pressed her back against a wall, fists clenched and ready. She scanned the room in short, jerky motions of her head, breathing deep and fast, her heart a war drum in her ears.

No one came. No one ran or crashed through the door. No one came out of the shadows with a weighted club or a knife. There was only, she finally convinced herself, Master—still asleep—and herself.

The flash of pain had given way to a throbbing. She didn’t feel any glass embedded, thankfully. She unclenched her hand and examined her palm. A shallow cut, bleeding but not gushing. Not too bad then.

She pressed her hand against her side to stem the bleeding, and picked her way around the bed. She was acutely aware that she was barefoot, and therefore she went carefully, one foot at a time. There didn’t seem to be glass on the floor, but the sunlight was casting the room in stark light and shadow and her eyes hadn’t adjusted. She knelt by the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. A few moment’s rummaging with one hand, so as not to soil any more sheets, produced one of Master’s silken kerchiefs. It made a decent bandage, tied on one-handed with a practiced motion.

She sat on the bed, hand held up, and stared at the window, thinking. The shutters were flung open, of course, there was no latch there. She could have kicked herself for missing that. The windows did have a latch, though, on the inside, which must have been why it was smashed.

“Merciful thief,” she muttered under her breath. Merciful or supremely confident, for a cautious thief would have slit their throats. To thieve by stealth was to forfeit one’s life, if caught. Safer not to leave witnesses.

And where was the glass? Thieves didn’t bother cleaning up after themselves—and Clara would like to think she’d remember if she’d been made to sweep up after. Or that she would have woke at once if the window was smashed. She couldn’t have missed that. Right?

Perhaps the window was broken outward? But then why not just unlatch it, if no one was in pursuit? She thought about walking around the building, to see if she could find the glass in the street, and then remembered she was naked. She entertained the idea of going anyway—just for the thrill—and then stood up, padded around the bed, and ducked through the door into the dressing room for something to wear.

She didn’t know this home as well as she thought. The next room over wasn’t a dressing room, but a workshop or study. Broad crown-glass windows sat atop low bookshelves along the far wall, admitting ample sunlight. Three workbenches, with tall cabinets in between, were spread across the wall to her right. To her left, bookshelves, and then railings and a set of stairs, going down. She wandered in, carefully stealing around the chair and the occasional stool, drinking in fine jeweler’s tools, the glint of half-cut gems, scattered notes in inscrutable shorthand. And then suddenly she froze.

A dirk had been left on the center workbench.

A threat, then. That made sense. Master must have shat in the Three Serpents’ breakfast one too many times, or one of the other harbour gangs. Maybe even competition. Officially, the Faceting Guild had ever too much work and not enough hands, but one journeyman’s contracts were not another’s.

Speculation without proof, she chastised herself, speculation without proof. And stranger still that nothing seemed stolen regardless. Even half-cut gems could sell for a pretty dollar on the street—and the notes would be beyond priceless. Irresistible.

She padded over to the workbench and picked up the dirk, half on a whim. To examine the device on the pommel, if any. Her fingers curled with a practiced ease around the hilt, settling into grooves worn by long, hard use. Her eyebrows furrowed. She ran her thumb over the guard, an achingly familiar nervous tic. She tested a slow cut in the air, a jab, then quicker. A defensive set. The movements were practiced, routine. She switched to a reverse grip, and that felt right too, though a little awkward.

“Where do I know you from?” And she did know this weapon. Everything about it was familiar. The weight was weirdly forward, but that just meant every other knife felt wrong.

How did she know that? What cause had she to handle a weapon so proficiently? She was a bedwarmer. She’d been one for years and years. She knew the animumators never trained their product in arms, not when rumor held that bedwarmers sometimes strangled their Masters in their beds. She shuddered. Perish the thought!

Sheets rustled through the door. Clara whipped around, almost stumbling over herself, shaking off her stupor. Master was awake. She needed to...what was she supposed to do, again? Was she supposed to do anything?

“Good morning, Master,” she greeted, for lack of a better idea.

“G’morn.” was the faint reply.

“The window’s broken.” She hadn’t seen any glass on the floor, and she was now fairly certain there wasn’t any, but he did need to know.

“Is it?” He shuffled about the bedchambers. “Oh! My goodness,” he exclaimed, with entirely too little surprise. Clara didn’t know what to make of that.

She felt for a cabinet drawer, slowly slide it open, and dropped the dirk into it. Then she brought her hands out from behind her back, surreptitiously bumping the drawer closed. Best this was kept hidden, for now. No need to upset Master unnecessarily.

“Well, nothing seems to be missing, anyway.” Master finally appeared at the bedroom door. “How are you, then?”

“I’m—” Unlike Clara, Master had worn clothes to sleep, a loose-fitting set of cotton braes and a doublet. She was suddenly, acutely aware of her nakedness, and oh, how it felt right. “I’m alive, thank you. Um, how are you? Master?”

He examined her, and she straightened her back and posed in a way she hoped was alluring. She felt good under his appraising gaze. Mostly, though, she felt awkward. There was an expectation hanging in the air, and she was not meeting it and she didn’t know what it was.

“I am,” he finally answered. “also alive, and otherwise quite well, my lady.”

“Merciful thief indeed,” she muttered, “he didn’t touch anything in here either. Ah,” she guess, “Shall I make breakfast? I was just going to do that, but—” she glanced around pointedly, “I’m actually not sure where the kitchen is. It’s downstairs, is it?”

“No, no, no, you’ve done nothing wrong, everything’s alright,” Master reassured. Who was he reassuring? His eyebrows were furrowing like particularly agitated millipedes. “Do you remember last night?”he inquired, too-casually.

“I...”

She couldn’t recall. Literally, could not. Something should have come to mind, and nothing did.

It must have shown on her face, for Master snorted and scratched the back of his head. “I was afraid of this. You were passing strange last night.” “You get a sort of fit, every, oh, six months or so. Some animumator patch hack, I think. A fit of madness, and then retrograde amnesia.”

Clara, blinking, considered. “Am-Ne-sha?” She carefully vocalized.

“Amnesia, yes,” he nodded. “it’s not just forgetting, memory deserts you and stays that way. No fault of your own. You’re sick, is all.”

“Sick?” Her memories, sickened? “Master, that’s—am I going mad?” An edge of worry had sharpened in her voice, and she hated that. “I’m not going to kill you, am I?”

“Heavens, no!” Master clutched her shoulders in what he must have thought as a grounding, comforting gesture. “You’ve been living with me for years, Tiger. You’re no murderer, whatever else you are. You have never once been a danger to me. Here, take a seat! I have just the thing.” He let her go and shuffled over to the cabinets, rummaging through the drawers with no clear methodology. If he saw the dirk, he did not comment on it.

Clara carefully sat herself on a stool. She breathed, slowly, through her nose, out her mouth, and set about quelling the boil of panic cutting at the edges of her mind. She wasn’t going to go mad. She wasn’t going to murder anyone. Master would fix her.

“Ah! Here we are.” From a top drawer Master retrieved a brilliant blue gem, huge beyond belief, holding it delicately with both hands. “Hundred-carat sapphire,” he explained, “my journeyman’s masterpiece. Banishes confusion, brings clarity to the mind.” He almost pressed it in Clara’s face, he was so eager. “Here. Look.

Clara tore her eyes from the sparkle of sunlight dancing strangely over ten thousand faces. It was strangely difficult. “It helps me remember?”

He nodded.“Just so. We’ve been using it for years, it’s never failed.”

Clara nodded, almost frantically. “Yes. I’d like to remember more of my duties, at least,” she jested. She did not dare laugh. There was a high edge of hysteria to that laugh and she couldn’t keep it out.

“Here, hold it.” She let him press the sapphire into her palms—and it was as big as her palms, and stunningly detailed. Somehow every little movement revealed another face, another layer of engravement.

“Um.” Her own voice was strangely distant in her ears. “Do I have to…”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Master assured. “just look.”

Clara’s gaze had not averted from the sapphire. She was not entirely sure she could, now, and was uninclined to test it. Careful study was revealing a labyrinth, a maze with one path, and she found herself following it, making sense of it. Calloused hands were gently rubbing her shoulders, bleeding the last of any tension out of her.

Oddly familiar. Had Master done work for the animumators? She could not recall her own training, but that was no surprise—they guarded their secrets religiously. It might have been a gem like this that Clara was made to look into, day after day, walking the labyrinth as it turned her lethargic and pliable and runny around the edges...

Runny like she was now. She imagined Master spoke again, but could not be unsure. She was deeper now, closer to the center, stretching along its walls, straining to see it all. Distantly, a thought fluttered with an odd, academic clarity. It was passing strange that Master would get her memories back with a gem that made them go away...

The thought petered out. Clara was the labyrinth, was Master’s soft, careful voice, was the labyrinth.

And. Yes. Yes, she did remember…