Chapter 34
The land in the south of Crystallese was softer.
It was a strange realization. The kingdom I knew was hard and fierce. Survival was a war waged every day, and most days I was sure I’d lose.
But in the south… it was… soft.
It still snowed, and it was still cold, but the world looked decidedly fluffier. A word I never thought I’d have reason to use to describe terrain.
The snow fell silkier, and the wind blew quieter. The sky looked less imposing.
It was all very… soft. And fluffy. I hated it.
In the towns and villages I was used to, southerners were called soft. I never understood why. Now I knew. Now it made sense.
“You look as if you disapprove,” Baxley commented in a town one evening. I’d forgotten its name, and I don’t think my companions knew it.
“It’s just different,” I told him. The people here looked relaxed.
“Larana found warm baths,” Nicco said as he joined us. “She said something about thawing out and wants to know if you wanted to join her?” He looked my way and quickly looked away again.
“Join her?”
Baxley grinned. “They’re communal,” he explained. “Large pools, really, they heat them from below.”
I knew I was frowning. “And everyone can use them?”
“You pay a fee for the pleasure,” Baxley clarified.
“For the pleasure of being in a pool of water with others?” I asked dubiously.
“Women and men are separated,” Nicco told me gruffly. “Communal baths are cheaper than asking for a bath in your room in an inn.”
“Warmer too,” Baxley added.
I thought about it. “I haven’t had a bath since Vorn took me to—”
I stopped when I saw them both watching me intently at the mention of Vorn.
Shit.
“Anyway, I think I’ll go.” I went to stand, but his hand gripped my wrist and guided me back down to my seat.
“Since Vorn took you where?” Nicco asked softly.
“North.” I didn’t look at either of them. “There was a hot spring. I used it.”
“With him?”
What was that edge to his voice?
“No.” I glanced at Baxley, who seemed to be very interested in the fireplace at the other end of the common room. “I was alone.”
“So you were alone when you were with Vorn, and instead of running away to safety, you took a bath?”
I knew I was glaring at him. “Why are you saying it like that?” I demanded. “You’re making it sound…”
“Sound?” His voice was as cold as ice, and not the ice here, the ice back home, the hard, lethal kind.
“Sordid.”
He scoffed and shook his head as he looked away. Baxley glanced at me and subtly nodded toward the door, but Nicco saw him, and Baxley was on the receiving end of the glare for a change.
“I’m going to join Larana,” I announced as I stood. I walked away quickly before he could stop me.
In the streets where there were too many people for my liking, but I knew he was behind me.
“You’re following me?” I asked, not caring that more than one person looked at me in surprise at my tone and the fact that I was alone.
“Well, you don’t know where the baths are.”
I sniffed. I knew that. But that wasn’t the point. “So now you want to be nice?”
He chuckled. “No. I just don’t want Larana to bite my head off because she already paid for you, and you’re going the wrong way, so you’ll show up too late.”
I was? I stopped walking. I refused to look at him. “Which way?”
“I can take you.”
“I’d like to go myself. Which way?”
“It’d be easier if I took you.”
“For who?” This time, I did glare at him, and he looked far too amused for me to try to be civil to him.
“Come on.” He turned and walked back the way I’d just come, and I considered not following him at all. “You want her to like you?” he called over his shoulder.
Asshole.
I hurried to join him.
“Will you tell me where he took you?” Nicco asked as we walked.
“I don’t know where it was. I’d never been there.”
“You? The trailfinder, you didn’t know where it was?”
“I was tied and carried over someone’s shoulder. It’s disorientating.” Which wasn’t a lie.
He said nothing, but his jaw flexed.
“He didn’t—”
“He did not,” I confirmed quietly, my stare fixed on the snow on the path.
“You said he tried.”
“I said he tried.”
Nicco stopped walking, and I turned to face him. He pointed behind us. “The one with the red door.”
I looked back the way we had just walked and then back to him, knowing I wasn’t hiding my surprise. “You would have led me away from it just to have this conversation?”
He shrugged. “Enjoy your bath.” He walked away.
“You are a complete asshole!” I yelled after him. An older woman passing shushed me, and I glared at her so fiercely that she picked up her pace and almost ran away from me.
I pushed open the door, feeling even more annoyed when I saw the sign with the pool of water and steam rising from it. I’d walked right past it.
Twice.
Larana was waiting for me, and I almost turned around and walked back out when I met her fierce glare.
“What took you so long?”
“Nicco.”
She opened her mouth to say something, thought about it, and then shrugged. “My fault. I should have told Bax.”
“Have you been… in?”
Larana looked down at her traveling clothes and picked up her disheveled braid. “Do I look like I’ve been in?”
“No would have worked.”
She grinned. “Come on, let’s get the stench of road off us.”
She led me into a wide room that was lined with wooden benches, with towels placed along them at short intervals.
“We change in here,” Larana told me, pointing to the small shelf under the bench. “Fold your clothes there, then you take a towel.”
“Leave my clothes here?” I asked her in surprise.
She ran her eyes over me in confusion, and then I saw the look of understanding in her eyes.
“You can take your cloak in with you.”
I nodded once, grateful she understood that my money was in my cloak.
We undressed, both of us facing away from each other. I picked up a towel, surprised at how short it was, but it covered the important bits.
I folded my cloak as best I could and carried it through the purple curtain that hung between the changing area and the baths.
The baths were unlike anything I had seen. The wooden floor gave way to stone slabs. Steam rose in lazy circles above the water, and the bath itself was a single large pool, sunk into the floor so the water lapped gently over the stone.
Two other women were in the water, each at an opposite end, but they were more or less in the same position. They were resting with their shoulders against the bath wall, their arms spread out on the stone, and their heads tilted back as they enjoyed the warm water.
The air smelled of something exotic and warming.
“What is the smell?” I asked Larana as she dropped her towel and sank into the warm water.
She sniffed. “Honeyblossom?” She inhaled again. “Maybe some lilac.”
It was subtle but pleasant. Self-consciously, I put my towel over my cloak and quickly got into the water.
Heat instantly soaked into my skin, and I was quick to submerge myself fully. When I came up, Larana was unbraiding her hair. She pointed at the smaller pool to the side.
“You can wash your hair in there,” she told me. “See the stone shells?”
I looked and nodded when I saw the large shells that protruded from the wall.
“Soap for your body and your hair.” Her blonde hair fell in waves over her shoulders and floated in the water. “I can’t wait to wash my hair,” she said with a groan as she tipped her head back.
I leaned back and reveled in the warmth of the water. This was almost better than the hot spring in Thiece’s settlement.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, content to soak.
Larana also seemed to enjoy the silence, and we both just let the warm water soothe us.
I heard movement in the water and opened my eyes to slits. Larana was making her way over to the other end. She was swimming through the water, her strokes clean and strong. She was going to wash her hair.
I closed my eyes again. I was peaceful here, my mind did not wander to all the things it usually did, and I breathed in the moist, warm air of the baths.
“Hey.”
My body was shaking. I opened my eyes and looked up at Larana.
“You fell asleep,” she told me. “Go wash your hair, it’s almost time to leave.”
Shaking my head to wake up, I did as instructed. The liquid soap had a richer scent than the air, and it was so thick and creamy that I had to wash my hair twice.
When I was done, Larana was already wrapped in her towel and held out mine to me, along with my cloak. As I took it from her, I felt for the familiar weight, pleased that it was still there. I had fallen asleep and left my cloak unattended, which could have been a costly mistake.
Once we were dressed, our hair bound in a braid, we left the baths and hurried back to the inn before the cold made our wet hair even colder.
We were sharing a room tonight, the men in their own one. Larana went to theirs to tell them we were back, and by the time she came back, I was curled up on my bed.
“I’m so relaxed,” I told her sleepily.
She unbraided her hair and urged me to do the same. “It’s the scent of the bath and the shampoo. It’s meant to relax you.” I watched her brush her hair. “Brush your hair, Amarya. It’ll become all tangled like that.”
“It’s fine.” My eyes closed, and I slept straight through the night.
We left the inn the following morning. I was still so lethargic that I never even bothered to braid my hair, and I walked down to breakfast with it loose around my shoulders.
Baxley and Nicco paused their conversation for a moment, and then Baxley picked it up again.
Larana looked up as I approached and grinned. “You look as sleepy as a kitten,” she crowed gleefully.
I rubbed my eyes as I took a seat. “I’m so… what is in that water?”
Nicco took a drink of his coffee. “Lilacs and honey blossom from the smell of you.”
“I smell bad?”
Baxley grinned and ate his food. “You smell a lot better.” He looked at my hair. “You also look very young with your hair down. I thought you were older.”
I pushed my hair off my face. “I’m twenty-three summers,” I assured him. “An old maid. Well past marrying age.”