15. The Communal Baths
The Communal Baths
All I can think about is what I’m supposed to do about Cosmer.
He’s been going hungry so I could eat for three years.
How do I fix it?
How do I ever repay the debt I owe him?
As a sixteen-year-old, I’d thought I was starting to, well, like him.
Then, I’d hated him. He’d been alive this whole time. Not to mention the way he’d let his bruised ego put all of our lives in danger on the way up here. And the fact he seems to keep upsetting, or at least, frustrating me.
So, how am I supposed to feel about him now?
I can’t imagine even looking at him, knowing what I know now. Let alone speaking to him, or…
Sleeping beside him.
Before I can respond – even think about responding – Riss breaks into a grin.
“Morale boosters!”
On her feet, she runs back down the rickety stairs.
Baffled – and still processing the bomb she unknowingly dropped me with – I follow.
She’s by the glass, watching what looks like a brown, oversized balloon on its side in the sky.
It does a slow loop of our ship. Through the quirky ship’s enormous window, I can make out a large group of people wearing long red robes.
They’re holding instruments – horns, trumpets, accordions, drums – and many are waving at our ship.
More and more soldiers and pilots are coming up here to watch and wave back at them.
Eventually, the ship boards The Emperor via a docking pod, but I stay by the glass, mesmerised, because there are new ships arriving or departing every few minutes. At one point, the sky is filled with ships sailing in different directions.
I turn to look the other way – and see Cosmer from across the deck.
Why? Why right now?
He hasn’t seen me yet. At a distance, under the sun that beats down at us from above the dome, he looks just like the boy who was always kind to me. My friend.
Of its own accord, my hand lifts a fraction – then I force it down.
I scold myself. What was I about to do? Wave at him? Like an infant?
Cosmer has seen me. I can’t read his expression. He’s just still. Just watching me, watching him.
Are there even people around us anymore? It doesn’t feel like it. It’s like there’s only Cosmer, and the ships, and the glass, and the sky, and me.
And though we’re protected from the elements and there’s no breeze here, I feel an unnerving tingling, as if there is – a cold one – blowing over my body.
There’s a specific word for it in Rhavnan, elyan.
I remember Old Mother used to say the sensation meant there was a version of you in the future, thinking of the you in that exact moment.
Maybe that’s what will happen. I will look back on right now with fondness, or…
Something else.
It’s a stalemate.
And I have no idea what to do to break it.
I want to run to him. How could you give up your Sky Provision for me?
I want to turn my back on him.
You let me think you were dead.
And there are things that are different about you.
And there are things that are different about me.
I’m so close to making a decision.
But it turns out I don’t need to make one.
Because he does it for me.
He’s started walking purposefully towards me.
I start walking purposefully towards him. He’s all I can see.
We meet each other halfway, almost perfectly in the centre of the deck.
“Cosmer,” I say, up at him.
“Ara,” he says, down to me.
I glance around. “Where’s D—”
He talks over me. “At his first corrective instruction.”
Of course.
I try not to let those words bother me.
He tilts his chin at our surroundings. “What do you think of the Sky Deck? Pretty different up here when there’s not an execution going on.”
“It’s amazing. Eric would have loved it.”
A smile touches his lips. “I actually thought that too, when I first came up here.” His eyes flicker. He looks almost bashful. “I can tell you what all the ships are, if you want?”
That sounds perfect.
I nod, eagerly, and we walk side by side towards the glass and study the world out there.
“Supply ship,” Cosmer says, pointing to a rounded ship with a huge tank set in its underbelly. “They’re called beetles. They come up every day with food and water.”
“What’s that one?” I ask, looking at a slower, smaller ship with wider wings.
“Damselfly. For short flights or carrying soldiers or pilots between ships, mostly.” He adds, “Although we use them for missions sometimes – they draw a lot less attention than hawkers or termites, I’ll tell you that.”
“It’s so small.”
“We actually have ships that are even smaller than that. We call them larvae craft, or LCs. They’re like bicycles. The engineers use them if they need to work on the outside of the hive.”
I take it all in.
The wonder I’d felt is evaporating like any moisture here.
I’m scared of what I’m about to say. But I need to say it.
“I just don’t understand. If Lartos can create all of this,” I gesture to the ships, “And supply it to Hevalla so that it can finally have its war with Rhavna, why can’t it use the technology to build something we actually need? It could give us proper farms, hospitals, schools, factories…”
“You’re talking too loud,” he says, glancing around.
I turn to him. “It’s true. This is how Lartos chooses to spend its money? When it could be doing literally anything else. Like fixing the Provision system. That’s the real problem, isn’t it? So many of us, starving – people who have no choice. The sick and elderly. Mothers and children. Us.”
He shakes his head, which ruffles his hair slightly.
“We don’t ask questions like that up here, Ara. We’re just soldiers. We just get on with the job.”
I state, simply, “But it’s not right.”
“Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. It’s the way things are.”
“And yet, if everyone thought like that, nothing would ever change.”
His eyes linger on mine.
But then Riss’ voice sounds out from behind us, calling my name. We both turn – and there she is, approaching at speed and talking loudly.
“Everyone will be going down to the baths now, Ara.”
Disappointment crushes me. There was so much I still wanted to say to him, now that things are better between us.
“They’ll have opened them,” Riss continues, oblivious. Turning to Cosmer for the first time, she says, “Coming?”
“I’ll meet you down there.”
“’Kay,” she replies, taking my arm to lead me away.
But I take a last look at him. He has his back to me now. It arcs slightly as he leans backwards, as though he’s stretching out an ache, his eyes still on the sky.
“We all scrub up when the morale boosters are on board,” Riss explains over her shoulder, as we climb down the metal ladder connecting Deck 9 with the Sky Deck. “It’s like, the one good thing that happens here. Helps us forget why we’re here. For a few hours.”
She leads me all the way down to Deck 2 – where the staircase ends.
I double-take the brass plaque on the wall. Definitely says 2.
“Is there no Deck 1?”
“There is,” she says. “But it’s the Osimidite Chamber. It’s off limits.”
She swings open the door opposite, which lets out a hot wave of air and steam. We head inside, through it.
There’s no separation. Men and women are using any of the large, soapy copper tubs they want to.
Just as Cosmer had warned me, there doesn’t seem to be any shame here.
Some are soaking themselves, or standing waist-deep and talking, or even just walking around through the steam, their full bodies on display. It’s a lot of skin.
Riss stops by a smaller bath, occupied only by a young Rhavnan woman with long black hair.
She’s lying back against the copper rim, heavily lidded eyes half-closed.
I realise I recognise her. She was the woman sitting opposite me at dinner yesterday, who had seemed, if anything, humoured by what she was witnessing.
The memory instantly makes me wary of her.
“Okay if we join?” Riss asks her.
The woman shrugs.
“Thanks,” Riss says. “Ara, this is Meg. Maybe you met her yesterday.”
As Meg makes no attempt to speak to me, I just nod.
Riss strips off efficiently. No hesitancy at all. She climbs up and slips into the bath and even swims a short lap before turning back to me.
“What are you waiting for? They don’t keep these open long.”
The water does look inviting. Deep and frothy.
I pull off my clothes as quickly as I can and jump up the rungs to get into it.
I perch on a metal seat jutting from the tub, my legs stretching out. Warmth rapidly fills my bones, soothing my muscles, still sore from training.
“This is great,” I say.
“Right? The osimidite under us keeps them hot. And they have some kind of potion for the bubbles.”
I rest my arms over the edge of the tub.
Riss glances at them – and gapes.
“Hey,” she says, with delight. “We match.”
She holds out her forearms to me – which are covered in extremely familiar small, round red marks around her elbows.
The sight shocks me. Completely, utterly shocks me.
I can hardly breathe as I hold out my own forearms to her.
We place our scars side by side. They could be twins of each other.
What in the name of the Sisters does that mean?
“I always thought these were scars from pox.”
Riss laughs. “They’re scars, yes, but they’re not from pox. They’re old track marks, from needles.”
I don’t think I’ve heard this Hevallan word before.
“Track marks?”
“Were you sick, as a child? Like me? And you needed injections?”
I hear Drake’s voice. Be cautious. Of things you think you know.
“I don’t remember. It’s possible, I suppose.”
“I’ve never met anyone else with them.” She grins broadly. “I don’t feel like such a freak now.”
She pulls away. Goes back to how she was lying before.
And I can’t be near her right now.
If I was sick, and was receiving regular injections, why wouldn’t I remember it?
The Queen has a unique talent.
Leaving Riss behind, I swim a slow lap.
But as I come back around, I see Cosmer meandering between the baths, towards us.
I’m somehow aware of every step he takes. Their length. How long they take to clear.
It sounds crazy, and I know it.
I tear my gaze from him. Keep swimming.
He must have reached us. I hear Riss ask, “What did you need to do up there?”