If he waits for her to try a tent, he can lie flat on the ground and peek under the edge, safely unseen.

The edges are tacked down firmly in most places, but there’s a loose fastener in one spot he can lift to peek through.

She looks at the faces of the three people sleeping there, each very briefly, and then kneels down on the floor to look very carefully through a box of someone’s personal effects.

She’s clearly not looking for valuables — she sets aside a gold ring and a little pouch of coins without a second thought. Most things she touches are dropped again immediately. She only pauses once, briefly, on a crescent-shaped wooden comb, turning it over and over in her hands before shaking her head and putting it back with the others.

Once she’s sorted through it all, she puts it back just as she found it.

She looks through a second box (where she finds nothing of interest) and a third (where she handles a string of dark beads and a candle stub together for a while before putting everything back where it came from).

This is not a normal hobby!!

Okay. He feels like he has a good idea of how the rest of the night goes from here. Time to go climb into Z's bed and warm up his feet.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

(Hours later, Dorothy comes back to her own bed, and sits up touching the tines of her own silver comb until she falls into a fitful sleep.)

In the morning, Camillo hunts Anatole down to report his bizarre findings. Maybe they make some kind of sense with more context.

He’s already gotten someone to stitch the hole in his tent shut and patch it with hide.

“…she really is losing it.”

"'Losing it' isn't a real diagnosis," Camillo points out, primly. "It could be a compulsive thing but, like, maybe someone stole -- no, she wasn't looking for a specific thing -- maybe she's paranoid that someone is plotting to kill her and she's looking for poison?"

“That’s you being paranoid.”

"...fair."

“The other morning, she was looking the head in the eyes.”

"She's lost it."

“Quite.”

He leans back against the rock wall behind him.

“It does make starting with character assassination more tempting. For someone so popular she doesn’t have much of an inner circle to insulate her.”

"I don't see how that helps us. It's not as if we can take her in a fight even on her own, and stabbing her in her sleep doesn't get easier if no one likes her."

“It makes people so much more likely to look the other way when something seems off.”

He sighs.

“But she needs to think she can trust you for you to have any kind of chance, and this wouldn’t exactly help even if it all came from me.” 

"I told you, I have a plan to get away afterwards. I don't care if everyone knows it was me, as long as she dies."

“Do you know where you’re going, once you escape?”

"I -- can't say, I'm afraid."

He nods.

“…if it falls through, you can pass through Hall Sinclair. Go south and follow the river to the next town, ask them to point you the right way. They won’t be able to keep you long unless this whole place falls apart, but I’ll give you a token to show them and they’ll supply you and get you on a ship.”

"...thank you."

It is unexpectedly painful that he can't make any honest offer in return. Anatole isn't a real person and there is no way to rescue him from the dream. When Dorothy wakes up he will never even have existed.

“If someone does me a good turn, I try to reciprocate.”

“—oh. Here.”

He reaches into his pocket, and offers a little paper packet stained on a corner with reddish-brown powder.

“It could help your pain, too. Which is why you have it, if anyone asks.”

"How much for pain? In case someone's suspicious and I need to actually take some?"

Do these pants have pockets? These pants do not have pockets. He tucks the packet into a rolled-up cuff.

“About a pinky nail’s worth. It should dissolve well. I’d give her at least four times that.”