Chapter 24 Yue
What must I have done in a previous life to deserve this one?
I pause when we step into a room full of steam.
A bathhouse, built as an extension to the pavilion in its own standing structure.
Moisture drips from the ceiling, coats the walls, puddles on the floors so that they’re slick and treacherous.
A deep pool sits in the corner, dotted by a border of large, coarse rocks.
The water is shallow and clear, trickling over the edges from some unseen underground current.
I taste salt in the air, the warmth of the steam filling my lungs and revitalizing my airways.
How odd it is to find such a heavenly place in Hell.
“You… really only want us to bathe?” I mumble.
Kelai laughs, bright and bubbly. “Of course, my child. Set your clothes here, I’ll leave new robes for you. Let me know if you need anything.”
I furrow my brows. “What about the map—”
“Anything at all!” she interjects loudly, before skipping off the way she came.
Sooah and I glance at each other, unsure. Again, I smell no poison in the water or magic in the air. The star goddess doesn’t seem entirely sound of mind, but I’m finally starting to believe she means us no harm.
“I think the water’s fine,” I tell Sooah.
She gestures toward the pool, as if asking me if I’d like to bathe first.
I shake my head. “I can wait. To give you privacy.”
The guard regards me carefully before moving toward the water’s edge.
Sooah signs something, but her meaning is lost on me.
My sister, Nuying, was the linguist. I’m sure she’d have no trouble conversing with Sooah, were she here today.
She had a knack for picking up languages within mere weeks, if not days.
I keep my eyes lowered until the gentle sound of parting water reaches my ears. Even though she’s submerged to just below her shoulders, I can make out the frightening collection of scars upon her back from battles fought and won. Stab wounds, slices… burn marks. Just like mine.
Hers is not a classic beauty. Far from it, in fact, but I admire her all the same.
Her body is lean and muscular—with a frame almost as large as Sonam’s, even—no doubt the result of many years of arduous training.
Appearance wise, I initially thought Sooah gruff and intimidating.
The type who’s quick to anger. Now that we’ve traveled with one another a while, I see how wrong I was.
My more animal instincts can pick up on her calming presence—a soothing energy amidst all the chaos.
That is, of course, unless we’re in the heat of battle.
“I wish to ask you a question,” I say as she washes her hair with a provided bar of rice soap. “If you’ll permit it.”
She nods while patiently working up a lather.
“How did you come to be Sonam’s guard?”
Sooah treads through the water and reaches over the edge of the pool, dragging her finger over the steamy jade tiles to write out her answer. Her script is wonky because she’s writing upside down, but it’s nonetheless legible.
I used to work in the pleasure district.
I blink at her, amazed. “As a woman of the night?”
A servant girl, she clarifies hastily. When my father sold me, the madame said I was too ugly to train as a courtesan.
I snort. “A blessing, then.”
Sooah takes no offense, her grin growing wider. Exactly.
“How long were you there?”
Until I was seven and ten.
I lean back on the wooden bench, ignoring the heavy drops of sweat streaking down my forehead and cheeks. “Let me guess. You met the captain when he came for a night of pleasure? How scandalous.”
Sooah shakes her head. No. He came to investigate a murder.
“Oh?” I sit a little straighter, intrigued. Of all the things she could have said, that wasn’t what I was expecting.
She’s run out of room to write, so I unfortunately have to wait for the tiles to fog up again. If Kelai hadn’t hurried us away, we might have thought to bring something to write on. Perhaps we could have borrowed a few pages out of Sonam’s hunting log.
The morning it happened, I mouthed off, Sooah explains. So the madame cut off my tongue as an example.
I bristle. “Were they the ones I saw in the Court of Temptation?”
She nods. Surprised you never asked.
I shrug my shoulders. “Your business is your own.”
Sooah smiles even wider. I rather like you, demon.
A cackle rises out of me. What a strange thing to hear. “What happened after she took your tongue? Were you the one who murdered her?”
No, though everyone thought so. I would have hung if Captain Sonam hadn’t shown up. Helped me prove I was elsewhere at the time of the madame’s disappearance. Bedridden in the hospital as a result of her maiming. It couldn’t have been me.
“Who killed her, then?”
Sooah shrugs. We never found out. She simply vanished into thin air.
“And afterward… was that when you asked to work for the captain?”
Didn’t ask. He offered. Sooah combs her fingers through her hair, washing away the suds. He knew I’d have a hard time finding a new job, so he gave me one. Served with him ever since.
I allow her words to sink in, trying to imagine a younger Captain Sonam swooping in to save a poor servant girl. It’s all rather fantastical, something out of an old, clichéd fairytale. The handsome and righteous Prince Sonam, slayer of demons and savior of damsels. The thought makes me laugh.
Sooah finishes with her bath and pulls herself out of the pool, wrapping herself up in a fluffy cotton towel Kelai left behind.
She motions to the water, inviting me for my turn.
I hesitate only a moment before shrugging off my dirty robes and quickly slipping beneath the surface.
The hot water soaks into my skin—so hot it nearly stings—but it’s a most welcome balm against the frigid weariness of my bones.
I startle when Sooah takes a seat behind me on the ledge of the pool and brings the rice soap to my hair.
I jerk away for a moment, staring up at her in disbelief.
She isn’t afraid of me, and I can’t decide whether she’s brave or foolhardy—perhaps both.
She holds my gaze, unflinching, before I finally understand.
She’s a gentle giant. Only looking to help.
Normally, such a notion would disgust me.
I am a strong, vicious, man-eating demon, for gods’ sake.
Has she forgotten this? I thought she had better sense.
But then her nails gently scrape my scalp, working up a lather.
The calming sizzle of popping bubbles fills my ears.
Something strange happens to me. My chest tightens and my throat burns.
When I close my eyes, I’m able to remember my sisters.
For a brief moment, I forget my clawing emptiness, reminiscing about the days when my family would fawn over me.
I miss them. More than anyone could ever know.
I take a deep breath and relent, letting Sooah wash my hair as a sister might. I allow myself this one rare indulgence and try not to fall asleep, lest the soapy water take me. I suppose this particular human isn’t so bad. If it comes down to food, I can eat her last.
“I have one more question for you,” I murmur. “Back in the Court of Temptation… if your father and the madame were so horrible to you, why didn’t you take your revenge?”
I hear the squeak of Sooah’s fingertip against the tile beside me. Turning my head to read, I fully expect some tired old idiom about how revenge is a two-headed snake, and how it will harm you as much as it will your victim. Instead, Sooah surprises me.
There is little time in the world, she says. Why choose to hate when you can choose kindness?
It occurs to me then, that out of all of us in Hell, Sooah might be the one person who doesn’t truly deserve to be here.
I, on the other hand, do. Because I would never choose kindness where the Maskmaker is concerned. There isn’t a mountain he can scale, nor the smallest crevice he can hide within—I will find him. Why choose hate over kindness?
Because it’s all I have. If I give up on my quest for vengeance now, I may as well have let him kill me along with my sisters.