by J. S. Fields
Magda laughed, the sound colored with tightness. “You don’t like magic because you don’t understand it. It’s the intangible part that annoys you. It’s always annoyed you. That’s half the fun.”
I muttered and jutted my chin at the wound on her leg. “Royal Daughter—”
Magda nudged my knee with her foot. “No doctors. I’m fine. The week of tii is a week of observance. If you go out later, head to the square. Carpenters will be constructing a new house for the spirit, which resides in the center of town. Textile workers will add the cloth embellishments. All adults are expected to attend the building.”
Magda eyed the ceramic bath in the corner, which I hadn’t noticed until she turned to it. From this angle, I could better see around the partition. Steam rose from the tub. “The inns are the only things open as hospitality to strangers is important in the Puget religion. Would you help me to the tub?”
I frowned at her words, then grabbed Magda’s upper arms and helped her to stand. “The spirit house is constructed by free carpenters, no doubt. Wouldn’t want to provide jobs to guilders so they’d, maybe, stay in the three countries.”
Magda snorted as I helped her shuffle toward the tub. “Free laborers are a necessity, Sorin.”
“They are not.”
“You know we’ve no law against them. That’s guild snobbery you have. I’ve it, too, from the smiths. But rural towns can’t import every time they need services, and a town this size couldn’t support a guildhall, even before…this. With the residency ban lifted by my grandmother, most guild members are choosing to remain in their country of license. People still need smiths, and carpenters, and tanners. They may not hold the higher guild secrets, and the work will suffer because of that, but if you need a chair built, or a horse shod, it doesn’t pay to be picky. The guilds are still the only places for the finer work. It’s not like someone is going to invent a machine to cut veneer or spin cotton. I’ve heard those rumors. It’s ridiculous to think they’ll demolish centuries of guild tradition, unless we let them. Our masters are around. We need to find them. Besides, your mother wouldn’t just take off and leave you alone. You know that better than anyone.”
We reached the edge of the tub, and I eased Magda onto the lip. Relief crossed her face as the bath took weight from her leg. She’d managed a passable amount of pressure on it, which gave me hope that the cut hadn’t reached muscle. Or she still hid pain exceptionally well. She’d almost drowned once, when we were five, insisting she could tread water with a broken foot.
I placed the pair of boots in front of the tub and stood back up. There was a distinct scent in the air. Flowers? I followed it to the source and sighed. Peeking through the steam on the surface of the bathwater were rose petals of pink and red and yellow, spinning gently on the surface. A minor enchantment and an overpowering scent. Magda wasn’t passing as a commoner as well as she’d thought.
“Really?” I asked, abandoning our previous conversation. I scooped a handful of petals and let them fall through my fingers. “The innkeeper is a trade witch perhaps?”
Magda laughed and caught one of the flowers as it fell from my hand. She ran her fingers across the broad surface of the yellow petal before laying it on the rim of the tub. “Perhaps. Even without the toucan crest, an innkeeper can see wealth kilometers away. She knows where the money is coming from.”
I frowned, unsure whether Magda was laughing at me or simply being Magda. I argued anyway, because I could, and because the steam from the bath and the scent of the petals set me on edge. “Mother had money, and we did travel some. We even went to Puget once, and no one ever put rose petals in our bathwater.”
“If you had taken one of the invitations to travel with me, you could have had your fill.” Magda looked pointedly at me. “I would have loved you being with me during our vacations to Eastgate’s beaches, or even on some of the diplomatic trips. You’re the only friend I managed not to scare off. Well, until you stopped visiting.” She frowned. “Why did you stop talking to me, Sorin?”
The room was too hot now to think straight. This was not where I’d wanted the conversation to go at all.
“I—I didn’t. I mean, I did, but Mother said she would explain. I needed to focus on woodcutting, and my breasts got, well…” I tugged at my binder through my shirt, hoping she could put enough pieces together that I wouldn’t have to continue. “People started talking because I didn’t…finish. Because they thought I stayed in between.” I paused and considered my next words. “But I’m not, you know— Between. There’s no word for what I am. I’m just me.”
Magda’s next words were laced with hurt. “You think I would have cared about that? I tried to sneak out to see you, dozens of times. People always recognized me. Didn’t you ever try to see me? It would have been easier for you, I think. You could have just put on a cloak.”
I dropped my gaze to the petal water and rubbed at my cheek. “I needed to get…control of my body. Everything went so wrong.”
Magda made a funny little noise, and I looked up to see her staring at my chest. It should have made me feel uncomfortable, but for once, my hands were still, and my skin didn’t itch.
“That’s why you hide your breasts now?” she asked.
I nodded my head.
“But you don’t want to talk about it?”
I smiled sadly. “I don’t know how.” That wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t know how to talk about it with her.
Magda took my hand from the rim of the tub and held it her own, tracing her thumb over my knuckles. My breath caught; she was beautiful, and competent. And that damn strip of cotton didn’t seem to upset her at all.
“Your cut, Royal Daughter,” I whispered, although I did not take my hand from hers.
Magda’s gentle smile turned to a scowl. “After the bath. Let me clean it first.” With exaggerated irritation, she dropped my hand, lifted her tunic over her head, and let it slide to the floor.
I had to remind myself to breathe. She didn’t have anything on underneath her tunic. She looked…strikingly feminine. I had steadfastly tried not to imagine what she might look like without clothes during our trip here, and now I couldn’t take my eyes from her. In what started as clinical interest, I traced the scar tissue that ran across both her sides and, in one instance, over a breast. How soft would the skin be there, at the junction where her breast met her side? As soft as the petals still skating on the water?
That was inappropriate. I turned away as Magda stood and cursed at the ties to her pants and the knotted mess that lay there. I watched her only peripherally in case she needed assistance, my heart thudding in my chest. My mind filled with what-ifs, about what it would have been like to finish growing up together—the dances, the royal parties, the dresses neither of us wanted to wear but would have been forced into anyway. The idea of us together…
Magda finally managed to untangle the ties and pushed the material down. She sat again on the edge of the tub, her pants sagging at her knees, and looked up. “Sorin, can you…” She paused when I didn’t turn around. I was lucky I heard her over the rushing in my ears, with my mind wandering, as it was, to a past that had never been.
Magda’s tone softened. “I’m sorry, Sorin. I didn’t think. We just talked about this. Breasts make you uncomfortable, don’t they?”
I closed my eyes and tried to clear Magda’s chest and everything associated with it from my mind. “No. I don’t have an issue with breasts. You’re fine. We need to get your wound cleaned and bound.”
Magda finished removing her pants, but her movements were slower now, and hesitant. “I can manage on my own from here. You don’t have to stay.”
Her words brought a different kind of panic. I wanted to stay. My rational mind had steamed away with the bathwater. Gods, I’d have gotten in that bath with her if she’d asked in that moment. I was here to dress a wound, however, not contemplate how we might fit together in a porcelain tub. I had to remain professional. I was here as her
guide to all things Mother. I wasn’t here as her friend, and certainly not as her lover.
I turned back to Magda, carefully keeping my eyes to her leg and the wound there. I took the small cloth that lay over the side of the tub, wet it, and began to wash near the wound. It was red and puckered, but I saw no pus.
“I’ll need to stay for a bit. You won’t get the wound closed without me.” A basin filled with water sat on a short table near the tub. I brought it down to the floor and used it to wet the washcloth before beginning again. Her skin goosefleshed as I dabbed, and I forced myself to attribute that to her pain and not something else.
Magda snorted. “You’re not my servant. Besides, I doubt you’re any better with a needle and thread than I am.” She gasped on the last word as the cloth brushed the open wound.
“I wasn’t going to stitch.” I tapped the third satchel on my belt. I had most of the old blood off Magda’s leg now. The edges of the wound did look closed and had soft scabs. The center, only, still wept, although the blood beaded instead of ran.
“Would you look at me, Sorin?”
I did, but as my eyes moved upward, they caught again on her breasts. Everything seemed cloudy and felted, with the steam off the water and my heart metaphorically jumping into my throat. The heat came back to my face. Magda had a strange look on hers.
“You’re sure that stuff won’t kill me? From your demonstrations at the pub…”
Thank the gods we were still talking about the pigments. “I know what I’m doing, Magda.”
Magda seemed unconvinced, and my tone had come out harsher than I intended. I tried to mitigate my words.
“Bone oil is my own invention—a really neat new solvent. It’s not an alkahest, but it lets me extract things—things from fungi, that no one has ever seen before. This yellow extract, in very small amounts, will form a controllable film that binds to your skin. In a few weeks when that layer of skin sheds, so, too, will the film. In the meantime, it will close the wound. That’s what we need right now.”
She didn’t say anything further, but the quick nod to her head and the way she pressed her lips into a thin line told me volumes about the type of medicine she was used to.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” I said, and I did, selfishly, want to touch her skin. I took the yellow extract pouch from my belt and opened it, just enough for my smallest finger to move through. Then I dipped my entire hand in the bathwater, and dripped the excess into Magda’s wound.
“I’m forming a barrier,” I explained at Magda’s quick exhale. “A safety precaution. The extract can’t bind in water.” A larger towel lay on the floor next to the foot of the bath. I took it and patted the area around the cut dry. Then I again wetted my hand, cinched a small amount of the yellow granules to the top of the bag, and pinched them between my thumb and small finger.
I’d done this before, on viscacha and even an injured cougar once. It was important to work quickly before the water evaporated and the extract had a chance to move internally. Still, the tiny amount wasn’t enough to do Magda damage, even if it did get into her system. That I knew from personal experience, and the compound became inert once bound. It was only in loose form that it was dangerous.
I circled the wound in tandem, beginning at the top, then separating my thumb and little finger, running down both sides simultaneously. The extract slid together in my fingers’ wake, arching over the water bubble on the wound and closing it off from the air. When I reached the end of the gash, I brought my fingers together, snapped them against one another to dislodge the remaining extract, and immediately dunked my hand in the basin.
“By the gods,” Magda whispered as the film closed itself into an elongated, yellow oval. She flexed her thigh, and the film moved with her skin in a seamless layer. “That’s extraordinary.”
I shrugged and reaffixed the pouch to my belt. “It’s just a fungal pigment,” I said as I dried my hand. “Extracted from the golden mango fungus, which is a pretentious common name. I’ve been interested in alkahest work for the past few years. While the bone extract I distill isn’t quite there, it does do startling things to fungi that basic alcohols cannot.” I patted the pouches. “These three are the most interesting, at least in terms of functionality. I’ve observed others, however, that have potential. Now the bioluminescent fungi—”
“Sorin.”
Startled, I looked up. “Yes?”
“Thank you.”
I nodded. Magda was smiling again with that slightly bemused expression I remembered from our youth.
“You’re welcome. Ready for the bath?”
Magda stood, experimenting with the weight distribution on her leg. “Still hurts,” she said, “though I suppose that’s to be expected. It’s just a binder, after all. Help me out?” She paused. “If you’re all right with that?”
This time I snorted. “Of course I’m fine with it. I don’t need the Queensguard coming after me when they hear you’ve cracked your head open from getting out of a bathtub.” I pointed to the wool undergarment she still wore, stretched tight across her hips. Before I spoke again, I checked myself, making sure I could keep my voice even. “Do you need help with those?”
This time it was Magda who looked away. I wasn’t quite sure why, since she’d had no problem taking off her shirt in front of me. My heart was still pounding from that, and I couldn’t get much warmer. At least a blush wouldn’t show through her darker skin as it did mine. At this point, loss of an undergarment was unlikely to further my… Not “discomfort.” That wasn’t the right word. I didn’t like how attraction sounded either. It was too coarse.
“I’ve got it,” she said. I turned my head and heard the brushing of thighs as she stepped from the wool. “Ready.”
I kept my eyes on the tub as Magda gripped my arm and pushed into me. Once her right leg was in, we switched grips, and I eased her down into the water. I caught a glimpse of darkness, nothing more, before Magda submerged. She sighed into the petals, and my mind drifted to my own bath, hopefully just as warm, and if Magda had paid enough for each of us to get our own water.
“I’ll leave you for a bit,” I said. Magda’s eyes were closed, and the moment suddenly felt very private. “I’ll come back in half an hour to help you out.”
I turned to leave, and a splashing of water followed me. I looked back over my shoulder to see Magda sitting forward in the bath and eyeing me intently.
“Which of the rooms will you stay in?” she asked.
My mind blanked. Magda had been an excellent distraction, but now the squirming returned to my gut. I had to remind myself to breathe—that this was a simple thing, and I was a person who could make basic choices, surely.
“I don’t know. Anatomically, I match better with the women, but going in there just… I don’t know if I can. The men would ask fewer questions maybe. So whichever has the spare bed, I guess. If it comes to it, I can sleep in the stable. I’ve done it before.” It’d be cold, and prickly, but at least there wouldn’t be awkward questions.
Magda slapped the water’s surface, sending a small wave of petals over the side of the tub. “You’re not sleeping in the stable, Sorin. If you don’t want to sleep in the commons, then stay here. It’s a small room, but we’ve shared a bed plenty of times in the past.” She chuckled. “Most notably during the cold snap when we were eight and the wind was making that ghostly whistle through my fireplace. I don’t think I’ve ever run to another bed as quickly.”
“We were a lot smaller then, and you stole all the blankets,” I countered, shifting my weight on my feet and turning back to face the door. It wasn’t a bad suggestion, although the bed was big enough we would not need to huddle together as when we were children. That had been more from fear, and cold, than the size of the bed. Still, the image of Magda’s breasts, and the swell of her hips, would not leave my mind.
I heard her moving in the tub, heard the sound of soap hit the porcelain and Magda submerging herself. When I glanced back over m
y shoulder, she had moved to her knees, arms resting on the curved lip. Her face had turned from playful to serious, and the intensity of her gaze made me shiver.
“I would never push, Sorin, no matter how much I enjoy your company. You have my word.”
Now I was thoroughly confused. It must have crossed my face because Magda laughed and splashed more water at me. “Oh lords, Sorin. You’re as dense as when we were kids. I’m done in here. Come help me out and get in while the water is warm. If we share the bath, we can eat sooner. I’ll bring our dinners up—well, I’ll go down and ask someone to bring our dinners up, so you can bathe in peace. Then, we’re going to curl up on our respective sides of the bed and sleep like the dead.” She leaned over the ledge and grabbed the towel. “In the morning, maybe, we can have a different discussion if you’d like.” Her smile turned to a grin. “I’ll even use big words so you feel more at ease.”
The ribbing and playfulness slapped away the tension of moments before. I relaxed into the familiarity of our childhood roles and rolled my eyes as I helped her from the tub. Magda dressed and left, neither of us continuing the conversation. I had thought she might come back quickly, so I expedited my bath. But I was dry, dressed, and about to enter the bed when she returned with a woman carrying a tray of food. The serving woman was bustier even than our server at the Sorpsi pub, a fact Magda had not failed to notice.
“Chicken and potatoes tonight,” Magda said as the woman placed the tray and left the room. Magda’s eyes followed. “I already had mine. I’m going to sleep. Kick me if I move onto your side. It’s been over a decade since I had a bedmate. For just sleeping anyway.”
I felt silly for getting carried away with the steam of the bath and Magda’s direct attention. The joking was back in her voice, and she was Magda again. A friend. Nothing more. I ate my dinner as fast as I had taken my bath, then climbed into bed. Heartbeats after my head hit the pillow, I was out.
