Chapter 24 #2
Cupping my breasts, I descended into the main rectangular pool at the thermae’s centre, only releasing them once I was submerged, conscious even of Esioul’s disinterested eyes.
Gods, it was warm, deliciously so, and achingly familiar, so like the all-encompassing sensation that had washed through me on the dais, and the scaffold.
I exhaled as muscles I hadn’t even known were tensed slowly relaxed, coaxed by the heat.
Esioul claimed a smaller bath as her own, stretched out and starfished on her back, her bruised body looking so much like a corpse that I found myself checking the rise and fall of her torso, counting each inhale and breath.
Drifting round and round, she allowed the water to guide her where it wished, tendrils of grey invading its surface as the ash shed from her hair and skin.
The air hung with something rotten, akin to stale eggs, masked under the burning rosemary.
Falstaff had bathed here—they all had; every druid in the templum.
I shuddered, despite the heat. Perhaps their taint of whatever it was that led them to serve a god so cruel infused the water, just like our ash.
I lay on my back, eyes upturned to the tiled ceiling, trying to tame the one muscle that had not yet calmed: my heart. It thundered in my ears, competing with the slosh of water.
Demetri was alive.
The Blood Tree had burned to nothing.
My blood was to be tested.
The Butcher…he was not what he presented to be.
Demetri was alive.
It was a surprise I wasn’t at the bottom of the pool, pinned under the weight of these new truths, each of them boulders tied to my ankles, dragging me under.
I counted the boons, holding my injured hand over where the beating was strongest. The warm flower in my chest had well and truly wilted, and though a small, foolish morsel of hope at Demetri’s endurance eased my nauseous stomach, there was an almighty cavern within me, too.
Bandaging one arm round my waist, I kept it out of the water, as instructed, using it to cover my breasts, pressing down hard as if it might hold me together.
One arm fanning over the water, I rotated, swirling in a loose circle. Had the Butcher swum in this bath, just as I was doing now? Alone? Naked?
I huffed a breath, doing everything I could to avoid remembering the curious sensation of his wet tongue tracing my palm.
He was a druid; he was responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.
A cup of water, a healing hand, and a bath would not erase that ledger, and it would be wise not to forget it.
Lifting my hand, I examined the neat stitch.
The gash was no more than a faint pink line beneath the threading, the skin already fused and sealed, though it should be impossible.
Sweeping my legs beneath me, I found purchase on the tile and stood, knees bent so my shoulders remained submerged in the warmth.
Esioul had done the same. The dark mass of her hair floated behind her like an oil slick, staining the pale blue water of the circular pool she occupied.
She was still, eye honed on something behind me.
Her gaze was loaded, something purposeful in the way she stared.
Him.
She stared at Him, a marble statue etched in the likeness of the Blood God, carved into an alcove at the far end of the baths.
As ever, His eyes were veiled, but this one’s hood was tilted upward, the chiselled fabric outlining an upturned nose, as if He were trying to peer down into the baths, to pass silent judgement, or perhaps to indulge in the very sins He demanded we bleed for.
“Odi te. Skybalon ei. Velim se pathein apeira. Odi te.” The sound of Esioul’s voice mingled with the steam on the ceiling, a storm cloud gathering over us. Words hoarse, her throat likely parched, they were somehow steady and unwavering, flung at the statue that watched us both.
“Odi te. Odi te. Odi te!” Rising to stand to her full height, water sloshed off her body, hair clinging to her like a second skin and embalming her in shadow.
Grunting, she dragged a hand to her mouth, hooking the pad of her thumb behind her two front teeth and flicked it outward, again and again and again. She uttered the same words between each bite.
“Odi te!” she spat, the sound bouncing off the ceramic walls before her hand slunk back into the water, her other arm limp as she panted. She clutched her side, chewing down on her lip, her one visible eye straining shut.
I did not speak Esioul’s tongue, the words unfamiliar and strange, but I was surprised to find they ignited something within me all the same.
“Odi te,” I echoed, copying the syllables as best as I could.
Bringing my thumb to my mouth, I slotted it behind my teeth, pushing outward in a mimicry of her gesture to the Blood God, knowing whatever it meant, He deserved to hear it…
even if it would bring another tower down upon our heads.
It was another strangeness, to know somewhere, deep down, that it might not touch me, regardless.
“Odi te,” she repeated, slowly this time, sounding out the letters.
“Odi te.” The words sat more comfortably on my tongue now, the shape of them easier to taste.
Her dark eye opened, crinkled in a smile, and she nodded. My gaze dipped to her chest, masked by her hair, and the way it heaved, the shake of her lungs rattling her small frame with the effort it took her to breathe.
“Mean fuck you,” she revealed, lowering her head to catch my eyes. “And cess odia ocu means stop fucking me with eyes, Helikri.”
“I wasn’t—” I started, but she spun in the water, giving me her back.
Cheeks red, I reached for the bottle the Butcher had thrown at me, intent on using whatever remained of the half-a-turn to scrub myself raw of everything that had happened: the blood, the dust, the ash, his spit.
Lathering the soap in one hand, I worked it into the tangle of my roots, jasmine and myrrh drowning the spoil lacing the water.
I held my breath, wondering which was worse: to stink of death or a druid’s sheets.
Working it down my long strands, I used the excess to coat the rest of my body, cleaning myself as thoroughly as I could before dunking my head under, my hair turning from the powdery, soft grey of the ash to its familiar shade of wet slate.
A hiss had my back straightening, eyes trained on the smaller bath where Esioul wrestled with her selected glass bottle, muttering under her breath and shaking it like a babe’s rattle.
She winced, face scrunched as she reached for her hair, but her hand, slick with suds, would not rise above her shoulders.
My heart splintered a little more, if hearts could do such a thing, widening the cavern.
Her ribs were most likely to blame, probably fractured or broken.
I stared down at myself, nakedness hidden beneath the waterline.
To the pits with it.
Resisting the urge to cover myself, I left the large thermae, intent on Esioul’s smaller bath. Big enough for three, maybe four, I plopped into the water and reached for her soap, which she’d abandoned on the mosaiced ledge.
“Here, let me,” I offered, motioning to her hair.
A strangled sound escaped her throat, and she swiped at the bottle, trying to reclaim it.
“You’re hurt,” I said, pointing to her ribs. “I can help.”
Her single eye dragged over the length of me, and I almost sank beneath the water, the pull to cover myself as heavy as the new truths bouldering my limbs.
“Think I told you before,” she gritted, attempting to retrieve the bottle again, though her movements were slower, pained. “I do not need help.”
“And I told you, you have it, anyway.” I offered what I hoped was a small smile, extending my hand.
She eyed it like I’d presented her the Sanctifying Needle instead. “You see what help did to me last time?” Glancing down at herself, she parted her hair, dragging it away to reveal her broken, bruised body.
I hung my head, tracking her gaze, ready to crawl back to the main pool and turn away from it. From her. From everything that had happened in the last few turns. But somehow, I stayed, and I looked. I looked at it all.
“But,” she started, and my head lifted. “I hear what you said to druid of bones.” Her voice lost its edge, morphing to a whisper. “I saw when you make tree go poof.” Her fingers opened, wiggling like Demetri and I used to when we would pretend to cast spells over the stewing pot.
A laugh bubbled up from my depths, crisp as a breeze among the heaviness of the steam. “I do not know why the tree went poof,” I admitted, copying her wriggling with my fingers not smothered in soap. “But it certainly was not I.”
She hummed, eye locked on the stitch of my palm. “Gods are restless, and they are wanting.”
“Blood, I suppose.” I glanced at the statue, the mass of Him leering over us. “Always blood. It is what He demands.”
Her tongue clicked. “Not Him. The others.”
“Others? As in, the Other?” The voice, or voices, in my dream circled through my mind, crows and nightingales, squawking and cooing, “You must come, you must come.”
“Just others.” My eyes refocused, landing upon her pinched brow and her one good eye roaming me anew. This time it was less assessing, more curious, as if were an odd, small trinket and she the broker, unsure of its value.
With a final glance, aimed at the centre of my chest, she turned, wading through the water to press her hips to the pool’s ledge. I waited, unsure whether to leave and return to the other.
“Well,” she barked, “get on with it.”