“What I wouldn’t give for a bit of the softer service tonight,” said Tevix with a wink and a groan.
Corin knew they were talking about prostitutes, not that he had ever met one. He wasn’t sure how he felt about paying for a lover. Why pay for it, when you can get it for free? He had never had a shortage of women ready and willing to join him in the bedroom, though belatedly he thought being a prince might have had something to do with it. He had always been more concerned with not fathering any bastards. Thank the Goddess Markham had been there to explain things to him. As an afterthought, he remembered Delis. He had not thought of her since leaving her in his rooms on the night of his birthday. She is a suitable woman...and everyone expects us to get married when I’m crowned. He sighed. Well, he had to pick someone, didn’t he? He wished she were here, she was always so good in bed...Goddess, he could use the relief and the relaxation, to say nothing of the pleasure.
Clearing his throat he asked, “Is the companionship not available?” Most gave him dark looks, though he had the feeling their anger was not aimed at him. “What?”
“The first rule set down by that sprout, the Red Dragon, was no whores during missions,” Nekobashi said with a curled lip.
“But I would think soldiers like yourselves would...” He couldn’t think of a nice way to say it. They didn’t need him to.
“We think we would too,” Arjent grinned, indicating himself with a thumb.
Corin was not the only one to raise a disbelieving eyebrow at the boy’s facade of worldliness.
“Mizrahi has his reasons,” interjected Giovicci. “The last Emperor to be assassinated several generations back was killed because one of his Dragon’s favorite whores was in the pay of an enemy.”
“That, and if Mizrahi ever sees one of us—or you for that matter—mistreating a woman, he would...ah, did he ever tell you about the first man he killed?” Arjent shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Mizrahi takes chivalry very seriously,” Yupendra said with a sage nod.
“That doesn’t make me sleep any better at night,” Nekobashi said with a sigh.
“Hey! You stay on your bed and I’ll stay on mine!” retorted his roommate Arjent.
“To the springs tonight,” Yupendra stated finally.
“Then to bed,” Vansainté said.
Yupendra nodded. “I’ll pick up some herbs for sore muscles to put in the water. And I need to change your bandages, Vansainté.” He turned to Corin, “Join us in the communal pool?”
“Sure,” Corin said. It was nice to be included for no other reason than that they might like his company. Yupendra left for his bag of herbs. “What about Mizrahi? Wouldn't he like to come?”
“Nah,” Vansainté followed him out of the common room. “Mizrahi bathes alone.”
Wix winked at him. “We think he’s embarrassed about his size.” The men laughed.
Yupendra rejoined them outside, a small cloth bag in hand. Vansainté, barely keeping a straight face, added, “He has many gifts; his tool isn’t one of them.”
They made their way down the street to the hot springs. At Corin’s puzzled look, Giovicci burst into fresh laughter and said, “You know the only tool Mizrahi ever cared about is the sword.” They reached a wooden building smelling of sulfur that was set back a little from the road. It had torches lit at the front corners and wooden walkways going out behind it into the forest. The men filed into the building.
A drowsy brunette in a uniform with vaguely temple styled robes greeted them. “Will you be wanting the sacred pools, or the spring?”
“Communal spring, miss,” Wix said with a smooth grin. Vansainté elbowed him in the ribs.
The girl looked unimpressed. “That’s two wax for the spring, two wanes for towel and soap. Each.”
Arjent looked like he wanted to haggle, but Yupendra put a large golden-skinned hand over his mouth, shaking his head. They paid their fees and followed her out the back of the building to the left-most walkway into the forest. The various hot springs were separated by small hills, underbrush, and trees. Tall metal torches were set up around the group pool so they could see. They settled into the lower pool for a quick wash so they could go to the upper pool and soak their sore muscles.
***
Skevelia
Anoni
Quietly, Anoni entered the Moon Temple, passing collection baskets and the small silver knife on its shelf above the basket. She took up the knife and cut a small lock of hair from her head. An offering of the body to the Mother, the hair was an offering that would be blessed and taken into the forest for the birds to take for their nests. As she cut, the hair of her disguise dissolved to silvery dust. Anoni took a moment, rubbing it between her fingers. She let it fall before moving up an aisle toward the rows of pews set in circles around the central round white altar. Only dim moonlight lit the sky through the large skylight in the roof. There was spicy incense in the air, a dark semi-narcotic that stirred the memories of the moment between dream and waking. She was glad it was not a night of high ceremony. On full and new moons, and some other nights, there would be a full complement of parishioners. Now the place was empty except for the small golden lightfish globes along the outside wall. The temple’s four open doors stood at the compass points, admitting a warm breeze that added a gentle swing to the already moving lightfish globes. A young acolyte in leaf green robes was tending the braziers. The acolyte looked up as Anoni entered, nodded, and turned back to his duties. The Moon Goddess was a private deity.
Anoni moved up the aisle, taking a few deep breaths to get used to the incense’s sensual blur. She sat in a pew near the center of the temple and gazed up at the sky. She let her hands rest palm up on her knees in the traditional prayer stance. Anoni began her opening prayer. She had never been a big believer in the Goddess, even after receiving Alcyenne’s little tools. But the repetitive prayer of the Goddess had become a way to focus her mind and to ease her way into meditation.
Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of Mystery, Our Lady of Silence, Our Lady of Light, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of Mystery...she continued, concentrating on clearing her mind.
Stellys? she called, feeling out the net of consciousness that were her allies.
Scion, it is good to hear from you.
Anoni wondered how this woman could sound happy at any moment of the day.
It takes practice, came Stellys’s voice.
Startled, Anoni realized her wandering mind had come across to the priestess without her knowledge.
Er...sorry.
Stellys chuckled and replied, There is nothing to be sorry about. I am happy even when I cry.
The woman’s answer would give Anoni a headache if she tried to figure out what Stellys meant. Instead, she turned back to business. How goes the watch?
An acolyte and a priest were approached by Shaiso’s men. They asked questions. When my people wouldn’t accommodate them, they were killed and dumped in the street near the artisan’s quarter. Markham is torturing them.
The news almost broke Anoni’s concentration. Hatred for Markham came alight and her breath stuck in her throat. He will die for this, she thought as she ground her teeth.
Stellys sighed in resignation, adding, It isn’t needed. They are in the Goddess’s hands.
How can you...? They were clergy. No threat to anyone. How can you not want justice? Anoni demanded.
They are in her hands. They are in her peace and in her light. As clergy, I worry about them least of all in achieving the silver fields of the Lady.
Anoni caught the slight, even within Stellys’s even tone.
Yeah well, Anoni retorted, Your Lady has a dark side as well. Stay well-guarded. Assign the guards to keep an eye on the clergy.
Angrily, Anoni broke contact. She could never understand pacifists. Even with the other little tools that Stellys and the other higher-level priestesses employed, being unguarded left them vulnerable. So far, the Moon Temple had weathered the decline in religious fe
rvor and political storms in the capital by staying as invisible as possible in the palace. If Markham Shaiso was killing priests, then attention had finally fallen on the mysterious order of the moon.
The crescent moon had finally made an appearance through the skylight as Anoni stood from her pew. She moved to the aisle and forsaking the traditional bow altar-ward, she gave the glowing crescent a tight-lipped nod, turned on her heel, and stalked out of the temple.
***
Skevelia
Anoni
Rage was a tremor in her muscles as she handed over her money to the attendant at the hot springs house. Receiving her fluffy white towel and soap, she followed the attendant down a middle walkway into the trees. Her footsteps were harsh on the wooden slats and her walk stiff-jointed with anger. She imagined Shaiso’s golden-tanned handsome face was the walkway as she followed the attendant through the flickering torchlight. She had paid extra for a private pool, farther out from the others, and an extra armful of torches ready to be lit. She needed to throttle somebody, and failing that, she needed to relax in her own form.
The young attendant stepped aside, a hand out to show the last steps to the pool. He seemed to know that any provocation would set her off, and so watched his boot tips and stayed silent as a mouse under the wings of a hawk. Chagrined at her own boorishness, Anoni threw him a sizable tip.
“Please leave me. I don’t want to be disturbed under any circumstances. I’ll leave the towel and the soap at the back of the house when I’m done.”
As the young man turned meekly to go, she stopped him. “And, don’t check on the pool until after dawn. I take my healing water very seriously.” He left, footsteps fading into the forest night. She was glad she could hear anyone approaching a fair way off. Early warning was her best precaution. With a sigh she put her towel and soap within easy reach of the pool and shucked her outer clothes. She looked down and her stomach did an unpleasant roll. She had forgotten to change herself back to a woman. The faintly clinking garment of moonpearls shown in the small amount of moonlight, but it also laid flat against her chest.
The softly glowing shirt was her net of responsibility. It was her best advantage against Markham Shaiso and his almost endless resources as the first son of a Highlord. Each stone was a man or woman she had persuaded to her cause, many of them men who had been sent out against her. It was their loyalty that she wore against her skin, underneath even the stones that assured her disguise. With each ally, she had cracked the key moonpearl on the neck. The stone cracked, always in three, the silver liquid clinging to the stone shell. One piece remained in the shirt and would reform into the key stone flawlessly in minutes. One piece would form into its own stone, to be given to the ally, and the third piece would be added to the bottom hem. The fragment would adhere to the hem, reforming into a separate stone to add to the shirt. The new pair of stones now worked as a communion link when held against the skin—one for Anoni to keep and one to go out into the world.
The shirt responded to basic thought commands to open at a seam when needed. She parted the front and shrugged the fluid shirt off, putting it under the pile of her street clothes. She concentrated on one of the few moonpearls still on chains around her neck to trigger the release of her disguise spell. Her true anatomy returned to her. She shook the silver dust out of her hair and away, sighing with relief. Her sword went into the pile of clothes. But so many years in places like the Daro Wastes had taught her that one of her long daggers would be on the pool edge next to the soap.
The pool was in a little grotto formed by rocks on one side and the side of a little hill on the other. The forest’s smell of evergreen and turned earth permeated the air surrounding the spring. The grotto was only faintly lit by the two torches in their holders and a little ambient moonlight that filtered through a break in the canopy above. She lit a couple extra torches and stuck them in holders near the pool’s edge. She had enough nightmares about drowning in dark water, she didn’t need to have that fear in her mind tonight. Running her hands along her head, she stepped carefully into the steaming pool. Anoni waded through the water and sat down on a bench carved out of the smooth rock of the pool. She was relieved to find that the torches burned some sort of insect repellent. However, that didn’t stop the peeps and whistles of the forest’s birds from reaching her ears. It was a familiar and comforting sound, and for a few long moments she just breathed in the slightly sulfurous fumes of the water and let the heat seep into her tense muscles. She ducked under the water to wet her hair and went to work on washing the long curling strands. Her hair was a nondescript gray in the moonlight. Though her long hair took much care and had once been used to hold her under water for long minutes, Anoni stubbornly refused to cut it. Perhaps it was to spite Markham and the rest that she went through the trouble.
Most of the time her woman’s body, all curves over the muscles of training, didn’t even exist. Her breasts, grown over the years under her disguise, still surprised her. She scrubbed herself well to get the horse smell off. The Sea Road would not pass any other towns until they hit Lyceo three days from there. It would be a long hard ride before she would be clean again.
Because it was a private pool, it had no second place for soaking. Instead, Anoni laid back in the pool when she was finished with a small cloud of bubbles floating in the water. The soap would dissipate from the pool with a little time as the water from the spring flowed into it and the old water went over the edge into a stream out one side of the grotto. Its gentle trickle lulled her into a state near dreaming. One errant thought floated across her mind while she lazed weightless, her hair flowing around her. This was what being in the womb must be like.
They say it’s the same when you die. You come into Her silver fields through Her. A warm weightless peace. Then you see the silvery soft grasses waving in the wind, and you keep that peace. That silence...
The crack of a stick in the forest to her right brought her to attention. In a smooth stroke, she was at the side of the pool. She grabbed the dagger and unsheathed it silently, taking the blade back into the water with her. She hid the blade in her shadow in the water. She had no time to get back in disguise. The illusion didn’t work fully without clothes on. She grabbed the extra torches within reach and doused them.
“Who’s there?” Her voice was naturally higher in this form, though it was considered low for a woman. Injecting a tremble into her voice, she tried to use her upper range to make it even higher. “Is anybody out there?”
There was a crackle of underbrush and the shadowed form of Corin Deviida clambered out of the forest. His hair and clothes were still damp from his own dip and he held no light. She could barely make out his wide innocent face and wavy hair. About to relax, she stopped herself.
He looked up in surprise and stopped dead. “Is Ryelis Mizrahi about here somewhere?”
“Uhm, yes sir. He went to get some wine,” she lied. She tried to keep her eyes wide in what must look like fear to Corin, but also to keep the light of the torches behind her. Her amber eyes could be the only clue to her identity that would reveal herself. If he couldn’t tell the color in the dimness, she would be safe. “Who are you?”
Corin came out of the trees and straightened his clothes. He was giving her the once over, eyes wide as he took in what he could see of her in the semi-clear water. She wished the soap bubbles were still there and hunched lower in the water, making sure her hair covered most everything of interest. “Eh hem? Ryelis will be back any moment,” said Anoni.
“Oh, right. I’m Corin...” He seemed to be about to say something else, but swallowed it. “I wanted to talk to Ryelis about something. It is important. I’ll have to wait.”
“No!” she said a little too emphatically.
“Oh,” a grin came onto his face. “I thought Mizrahi had a policy against paid women.”
She gave him a disgusted look. “Do I look like a paid woman to you?” Standing a little, she used the dagger to indicate her woman�
��s body. Though her hair still covered her nipples, she made sure he could see enough. She watched as his eyes widened a little at the display, and he tracked the dagger with his eyes. It was so rarely that she got a chance to show off her body that she couldn’t in good conscious ignore the opportunity. Apparently her answer was not one he had expected.
“I don’t actually know what...Ah uh. I’m guessing no,” he babbled.
“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions about something like that. It could get you in trouble someday. Ryelis will be gone for a month or more and I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye properly in Aquillion,” she said by way of explanation. “Now, if you don’t mind...”
Corin was startled out of whatever he was thinking and said, “Oh, right,” but didn’t move.
“Would you mind leaving? I am, in case you hadn’t noticed, wearing nothing but hair. He’ll be mad if he finds that his secret was revealed. I won’t tell him if you keep quiet, and I’m sure you can talk to him tomorrow about whatever it is,” she said, trying to sound businesslike. The higher voice was making her throat hurt, not to mention her ears.
“All right. Good night.” He seemed dazed. He turned to go with his hands in his trouser pockets, and then turned back. “You know, someone’s poaching on your turf.”
“What, Copelia? That filly in a girl’s body’s got nothing on me.” She bit her lip to stop the spasm of a laugh in her throat and added for good measure, “I know my man’s heart is true.”
He shrugged and turned back.
“Corin?” called Anoni.
He paused.
“You can take the walkway. You’ll turn an ankle in the dark.”
He seemed to shake himself and walked out of the grotto. He turned enough to get onto the walkway and his boots made a reassuring tapping sound as he moved off. She thought she heard him mumble something like “Mizrahi having made good choices for his tools.” It was garbled and made no sense to her. Maybe he was addled.
A Glimmer on the Blade Page 11
