Reynold Aleese woke to sunlight streaming through his window.
That was the first thing wrong with the morning. The light came through the heavy drapes at an angle that put the sun well above the manor wall, which meant it was late in the morning. Far later in the morning than he was used to, which meant nobody had come to get him.
The second wrong thing was that he had rolled over to work it out.
For a moment, he lay very still. Then he flexed his right hand, and made a fist, and opened it again. He rotated his wrist, and slowly drew his shoulder back, waiting for the hot, searing pain of a joint too badly abused to move as it should… but the pain never came.
He tried the other side, and then his neck, and then, carefully, he took a breath all the way to the bottom of his lungs.
The breath went in and came out, and nothing anywhere in him objected to it.
