Hi,
Little side note on Hubay's comments about wrong word choices : I often don't comment on those (or typos or small grammar errors) and leave them out of my critique. If you want me to include them, please say so, and I'll incorporate them in the following critiques.
To the chapter now : I begin to see the plot at least moving a little forward, so I'm a little relieved about my earlier concerns. I still enjoy your chapters very much and want to read on. No cliffhanger this time, so I can't complain :-)
As said Hubay, there are a lot of short sentences at the beginning of the chapter, and while they do convey a sense of disorientation that we can share with the character, I thought that the flow of the first two sentences didn't work for me : I think they would work better if they were only separated with a coma, or a 'and'.
On the part where Mathieu does bring his dagger out of his boot without using his hands, and not contorting himself, I'm not sure that's possible (at least, not without hurting yourself).
I liked the fact that Mathieu names his hosts after the masks they're wearing (smiley, schoolmistress, ...). It felt quite real for someone in his position to do just that.
I was a little disoriented by the exchange about his family : as we don't know much about Mathieu's past, I couldn't be sure who had the right of it, and even though Mathieu doesn't give credence to their story, I felt like there was perhaps something there. Maybe that was the effect you wanted to achieve, but the result was that I slowed down in my reading, trying to see if I could detect who was right.
"Who would suspect a simple soldier of being a Cold One" : I had thought that this was common knowledge. Certainly, his friends knew that, and I don't see humors as something you can easily hide (people seem to be able to detect humors on sight), so why use an obvious spy.
As you can see, nothing really troublesome this week. I'm anxious to see how all of that unfolds...