Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars 7)

“What do they guard?” Alain asked.

“Grain. As precious as gold.”

A few folk tended garden spaces in empty lots. Autun had not quite filled out the space between the walls built in the days of Taillefer, or else old buildings had fallen down and not been reconstructed, with the dirt around the foundations left to go to seed. A woman and man straightened from poking at freshly dug troughs to watch the soldiers pass. Like the child at the storehouse door, they called out no greeting, nor did the captain nod at them to acknowledge their presence. Their silence troubled Alain, who had an idea that relations between townsfolk and soldiers had once been easier.

The baths lay at the base of the palatine hill. The original structure was built by the old Dariyans, but it had been refurbished a hundred years ago and had not deteriorated overly much since then. Sorrow and Rage sat under a portico with a pair of nervous minders to guard them. Within the stone halls a pair of old women held sway, although it was true they were assisted by a quintet of younger, fairer lasses, banished to the back chambers as soon as the soldiers came in.

“This one,” said Captain Lukas, pushing Alain forward. “I’ll be back to fetch him.”

They took him to a room where he stripped. The attendants examined him with the look of women who have seen every possible thing the world has to offer. They even pinched his buttocks and measured the span of his arms with cupped hands.

“Pleasing enough,” the taller commented to the shorter in a murmur he was not meant to hear. “Too thin.”

“Aren’t they all these days?”

His clothes were taken away and two buckets of water brought by a gangling youth, who retreated as soon as he set the buckets on the stone floor.

“Raise your arms!” said the old woman.

Obedient, he raised his arms.

“Shut your eyes!”

He shut his eyes.

The water hits so hard he thinks his heart will seize. The cold sluices down his face, his neck. He is wet through in an instant and so cold he goes stiff, lips locked in a grimace, limbs in a rictus.

How can anything be so cold?

Then he remembers that cold causes him no injury, not as it does humankind. He is drowning in his vision. He must open his eyes, and quickly. Why did the ship surge in the waves so suddenly?

He opens his eyes as the water streams past, as a weight nudges him, then pushes, hard, and he flails through the water trying to get his bearings so he can reach the surface.

He is surrounded by merfolk.

They are circling, as for a kill.

They mean to kill him.

“Why?” asked the taller crone sarcastically. “Why? You don’t think we’re letting you get in the baths as filthy as you are? You wash that dirt off first. Then you can soak.”

“So cold!” he said between gritted teeth. Goose bumps had erupted all over his skin, but he could not tell if it were the cold water or the upwelling of fear that made him shiver uncontrollably.

“We should heat it up for you? Well, if you’d split the wood and paid for it before-times, maybe we’d consider it!”

“Don’t curse your fortune, young man. You’re one of the lucky ones!”

They were both old and spry, well enough fed by the evidence of their plump cheeks and ample hips, cheerful enough to be amused by him but nevertheless watchful, glancing at frequent intervals toward the door as if expecting someone to come charging in. They went on chattering, and the flood of words calmed his trembling.

“Getting a bath at all! Used to be under the rule of Biscop Constance that the common folk in town might pay a sceatta for use of the baths on Hefensdays, Secundays, and Jeddays, but not now. Reserved for the lady’s noble entourage and her captains.”

“Will you stop it?” said the other one in that same undertone. “If they throw us out of town for speaking sedition against the lady, my family will starve! You might speak, and I keep silence, and I’ll be guilty same as you.” She handed Alain a greasy lump of scouring soap. “Begging your pardon, my lord. We mean no harm by our whispering.”

“I’m no lord,” he said, taking the soap gratefully, “and I thank you for your trouble.” He scrubbed. He was not as dirty as he might have been, not nearly as filthy as he had once been, but it felt good to feel the dirt loosen and come free.

They chortled, as if he had made a joke. The taller one left. The shorter swept water into the drain as he washed his hair.

“All done?”