When Griffin woke up, Jackdaw was standing over him, wearing a frown and with a damp cloth in his hand. He instinctively twisted away, but as his senses cleared and he realised that it was just Jackdaw and not someone more worrying, he relaxed back into the pillow.

“Leave your skin on,” Jackdaw muttered sourly. “It’s only me.”

“What are you doing?” Griffin asked, trying to shake the sleep out of his brain and form thoughts that made sense. “You startled me.”

“I’m trying to get a good look at this cut on your face and whether there’s anything I can do to stop it from scarring,” he replied, with a little more annoyance than seemed fair. “Though I can’t achieve that if you’re going to keep wagging your jaw around.”

Griffin sat up, pushing the other man’s hands away, and drawing his own arm across his forehead. “Well, don’t bother, then,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. We both know I wasn’t brought here thanks to my looks.”

Jackdaw threw him an odd glance and began to busy himself with a bowl of water he had put down on a low table beside the bed. “I wouldn’t say that. You were only out there in the first place because some girl had gone silly over you.”

“Not some girl,” Griffin said hotly, throwing the bed covers to one side. “What’s got you all nasty today, anyway?”

Jackdaw muttered something under his breath, and turned his back on Griffin, plunging the cloth back into the water to dampen it again despite the fact that it had already been rejected.

“What was that?” Griffin demanded, bracing himself and gearing up to have what was probably going to be some sort of row.

“I was worried, alright?” Jackdaw half-shouted, whirling around to face him with a furious expression that twisted his features around. “Now sit still and let me do something about the absolute stupidity which is most likely going to scar you for the rest of your life, all because you couldn’t let a boy who had already lost his innocence anyway learn to live on his knees like the rest of us!”

He began to savagely dab at Griffin’s face with the cloth, but Griffin stifled a cry of pain and pushed him away again. He sat staring at him for a moment, breathing heavily, as Jackdaw fought to get himself under control. After a moment more, he understood.

“Look,” Griffin said, leaning forward a little and speaking more gently, “Just because you didn’t do the same for me doesn’t make you a coward. He’s only a boy. I can handle it, just for as long as I need to until we get away from here. There’s two of us now and it’s easier for us to look out for someone else. I know you would have saved me from it too if you could.”

Jackdaw sighed heavily, his shoulders moving up and down as he considered those words, rolling them over in his mind. He refused to look up at Griffin, and he still wore a grumpy expression when he at last conceded defeat.

“Let me clean you up, anyway,” he said. “It’s Winter Festival day. Can’t have you bleeding on the pillows.”

Griffin was surprised enough to sit as still as a carving while Jackdaw finished cleaning up the cut, thinking that he must have lost track of the days somewhere along the way. It almost seemed as though it should be far into the next month already, what with all that had happened in the last little while; at the same time, he could scarcely believe that it was the winter festival already, and that he had been here for so long.

“We don’t really celebrate much here,” Jackdaw said as he finished his work, rinsing the cloth off in the bowl of water one last time. “The Master doesn’t approve of us having any fun of course, and he’s got no one who wants to spend time with him out of choice. But normally there’s a little more food at dinner than usual, and sometimes Cook even manages to find something a little more special to serve us.”

“That sounds alright,” Griffin nodded, feeling a little lonely all of a sudden at the thought of the feast that the servants at Breckenridge would be enjoying.

“What would you normally do?” Jackdaw asked, offering him a dry towel so that he could wipe the water off.

“Feasting,” Griffin replied. “Or the kind of food that seemed like feasting to us. It wasn’t anything compared to what we have here, really. We would exchange gifts and have a little spare time to ourselves. Silliness, mostly.”

“Well, you are prone to silliness,” Jackdaw tutted, with only the barest hint that betrayed he was half-joking.

Griffin hit him on the arm, moving past him to climb out of the bed and stretch his sleepy limbs. He could feel from the battered bruises around his body that he had only been asleep for a few hours at most. “How is he now?” he asked, gingerly tapping his face to try and work out just how much he could move it around without hurting too much.

“Thomas, or Lord Carridon?” Jackdaw asked, lifting the bowl of water up to take it back and pour it away into the bathroom.

“He’s calling himself Fawn now,” Griffin replied. “We should make sure to stick to it. It’s what he wants. And I meant the Lord.”

“He’s tucked away in his study with the bottle of wine again,” Jackdaw told him, leading the way out into the corridor. “After the satisfaction he took with you I should think he’ll come out for dinner and nothing else. You’ve saved us all a good deal of rage, I think.”

“At least that’s something.”

Jackdaw looked back at him, with an expression in his eyes that almost had Griffin flinching back in case he flung the bowl of water at his head. “It wasn’t a good enough reason to do it.”

“Yes, it was. I can take it. I’m stronger than Fawn.”

“You’re not stronger than me! I could have dealt with it if you’d let me in on the plan.”

“I’m not sure you are,” Griffin said, smiling gently and taking the bowl of water easily while Jackdaw struggled with the door to the bathroom.

“Don’t get cocky,” Jackdaw grumbled, heading back out into the corridor and leaving him by himself again.

Later that evening, as predicted, Lord Carridon emerged stinking of wine again to eat in the dining room. He enjoyed a sumptuous feast, with birds slow cooked in rich liquors and stuffed with all manner of luxurious foods. Jackdaw served him, and Fawn even helped to clear the plates away, sure now as they all were that he would be safe for the moment. Griffin stayed out of sight, helping to carry things around in the kitchen and ensuring that everything was in its right place before it passed in front of Lord Carridon’s eyes.

When he was done and had returned to his own bedroom to sleep off the excesses of the last two days, Jackdaw and Fawn finally joined the rest of the servants in the kitchen to sit down and eat their own meal. All the offcuts of Lord Carridon’s meal were presented for them to enjoy, along with a few small pieces that Cook had managed to keep back for them. They even had small, sugary cakes to finish with, which Cook set on fire briefly with a huge amount of spectacle before presenting them hot and cooked all the way through.

The fun only lasted for a short time. It was already late at night, and the servants had not been permitted any small allowance to purchase gifts for one another, of course; and so, they simply sat around the table for a while longer, talking to one another, enjoying the fact that they had no work to rush to for the time being.

Eventually, Cook stood up and started to clean away their dishes; that was a signal for the rest of them, and they started to clear up as well until he shooed them away with a gruff admonishment that they should go and get some rest. The stable hands filed away back to their quarters in the stables, and Jackdaw, Griffin, and Fawn made their slow way back to their own.

Griffin hesitated as he was about to pass by Jackdaw’s room, the first one that he came to. He turned suddenly to face the others and looked at them both with some determination. “We can’t go to sleep yet,” he said. “Let’s sit together for a while. We can do anything, I don’t mind what. Let’s just not waste this night. It’s supposed to be a time to celebrate.”

Jackdaw sighed and pushed his hair back up off his forehead, blowing out air through pursed lips as if to indicate what a giant task he was being asked to complete. “I could teach you how to play cards, I suppose,” he offered, after a moment.

“I know how to play already,” Fawn cut in. “I learned when I was younger.”

“If you learned from your father then it should be easy enough to teach Griffin how to beat you,” Jackdaw replied wryly.

Griffin shoved one of his shoulders playfully, not wanting to be too mad with him; but he had caught the twinge of pain in Fawn’s eyes. “No more talk of fathers,” he said. “No Masters, no old lives, no work. Not tonight. Let’s play cards.”

Though they had only a couple of hours to spare before they were all yawning and rubbing their eyes, ready to head for bed, they passed them in laughter and casual conversation, all engrossed in the game that they stumbled through together. Fawn’s skills were truthfully more impressive than either of them had expected, and he even beat Jackdaw in a few hands, while Griffin only some of the time had any idea what was going on. The important thing was that they had fun; even Fawn managed to chuckle every now and then when Griffin made a particularly stupid mistake, while Jackdaw was on fine form, regaling them both as though they were in some fancy drinking house in the city rather than just sitting in the servants’ quarters.

At last, they gave up and went to sleep, and although they would wake up in the morning and still be servants, for the night they had almost begun to experience something that might approach the freedom of choice to live as they liked.