“Now I know,” said Camilla, wrapping herself in the bath garment, which was faded and wrinkled but smelled cleanly of soap, “why Kindra used to call this place the Nevarsin Guild-house.”
“It’s certainly more efficiently run than many in the Domains,” Magda agreed. One of the young women, beckoning to conduct them to the bath, halted a little and she addressed herself directly to Jaelle.
“You are the leader of this band, mestra?”
“I am.”
“The tall woman with white hair. She is—does she—is the skin disease from which she suffers contagious in any way? If so, mestra, your friend must bathe by herself and may not come into the common pool.” Her voice was a little embarrassed, but quite firm, and Jaelle answered in the same way.
“On my honor, she suffers from no contagious ailment. Her skin is that way from birth; she comes from a far country where all men and women have such coloring.”
“Well, I never! Who’d have believed it!” the girl blurted in wonder. Cholayna, who had stood behind Jaelle wondering what was going to happen, said, “It is true, my girl. But if your customers in the bathhouse will be bothered or afraid that they will catch something, I am willing to bathe alone, as long as I have a bath somehow.”
“Oh, no, mestra, that won’t be necessary, our mistress has known Jaelle a long time, her word’s good,” the little girl said, kindly if not tactfully. “It’s just that nobody here’s ever seen nobody like you, so we didn’t know, so we had to ask because of the other customers, you see? No offense meant, none at all.”
“None taken,” Cholayna said graciously (how she managed it, naked in a bath wrap. Magda never knew). As they went on into the bath cubicles assigned to them, Cholayna said to Magda in an undertone, “I had never thought how strange it would be, in a part of the world where everyone looks very much alike. But then, there are other planets like this, though not many. Skin as pale as Camilla’s would be almost as unusual on, say, Alpha, as I am here. What material is this?” she asked, fingering the bathwrap, “It can’t be cotton, not in this climate; or do they grow it in the south near Dalereuth?”
“It is the fiber of the featherpod tree; they grow everywhere in the hills. Woven podwool like this is costly; it is commoner to treat it like felting or papermaking, because the fibers are short. But when it is woven this way, it takes the dyes so beautifully that many people think it worth the trouble and cost. In the old days, pod weavers were a separate guild, who kept their craft secrets by living in their own villages and never marrying outsiders at all.”
Then the bath attendants came in; the child must have passed on the word about Cholayna, for there was not even any undue staring as they soaped and scrubbed all the women; even Camilla’s customary defensiveness relaxed when no one paid the faintest attention to the scars covering her body, and she laughed like a young girl as the attendants rinsed them under a hot spray before sending them out into the hot pool. Magda sank into it gratefully, though the water was too hot at first tor Vanessa, who yelped aloud as she stepped in.
“You sound like a pig ready for butchering, Vanessa! You’ll get used to it,” Jaelle advised, lowering herself into the steaming water. It smelled faintly sulfurous and seemed to soothe out all the sores and aches of riding. The women leaned back on the stone shelf in the water, sighing.
“It feels too good to be true,” Cholayna said. “The last time we were this comfortable, they had us drugged and poisoned!”
“After this, I feel as if I could handle my weight in bandits,” Magda laughed.
Jaelle said seriously, “We are as safe here as in our own Guild-house, and much safer than we should have been in any of the public bathhouses, some of which are run by pimps and such people.”
“In Nevarsin? Where the holy monks rule everywhere?” Camilla was frankly skeptical.
“The holy monks are much too holy to think of such things as laws to protect women traveling alone,” Jaelle said wryly. “In their opinion, virtuous women do not use such luxuries as public bathhouses where strangers might see their naked bodies, and if a woman frequented such a place she would deserve whatever came to her—disease, unwelcome attentions of whatever kind. There was a time, when the cristoforo rule of Nevarsin was absolute, that there were laws to close all the public bathhouses. A few stayed open outside the law and of course, being run by lawless men, they were lawless places; and the monks used the conduct at such places to justify their closing them… see, baths are wicked places, look at the kind of people who attend them! Fortunately the laws are more sensible now, but I understand the monks are still not allowed to attend public bathhouses, nor are pious cristoforo women.”
Camilla snorted. “If the monks’ bodies are as filthy as their thoughts, then they must be a dirty lot indeed.”
“Oh, no, Camilla, they have their own baths, I am told, within the monastery. And many homes also have baths on the premises. But of course those are only the richer folk, and the poorer sort of people, especially poor women, had no respectable place for a clean bath until some women opened them. And of course, the early ones were not overly respectable, as Arlinda told us; she has done the women of this city as much service as any Guild-house.”
“She should be made an honorary Renunciate,” Camilla said, sinking down to her chin in the hot water.
Jaelle lowered her voice so that the small group of pregnant matrons at the far end of the hot pool might not hear.
“I think she is more than that. Did you hear what she said about Rafaella? The woman sent from you-know-where… what, do you think, could that be, if not some envoy from the place we are looking for? One of the things mentioned in the old legend was this: if you came far enough, you would be guided. Rafaella and Lexie have come far enough, perhaps, to encounter that guidance. It may be that the message Rafi left me was about the guides sent from—that place.”
Camilla’s voice was openly scornful.
“And when we get there we will find ourselves among the spicebread-trees and the rainbirds who build nests of scented woods to roast themselves for the hungry traveler?”
But Jaelle was perfectly serious.
“I do not know at all what it is that we will find. The legend says that what each person finds is different, and suited to his needs. There was an old story my nurse used to tell me—oh, I was very little then, a tiny child in the Great House of Shainsa.” Magda could hardly keep from staring at her freemate. Only once before in all the years she had known her freemate had Jaelle referred, even fleetingly, to her childhood in the Dry-Towns, and never to anyone in her father’s house there. She could tell from Camilla’s eyes that this was equally astonishing to her.
“The story said that three men went out to seek good fortune,” Jaelle said, in a faraway voice, “and one married a beautiful wife with much gold and treasure, and thought he was fortunate. And the second found an abandoned homestead where he pruned the trees and they grew fruits and mushrooms for him, and he tamed wild cattle, and fowl, and as he labored night and day to build his farm by the hard work of his hands, felt himself the most fortunate of all men. But the third, they say, sat in the sun and watched the clouds, and heard the grass grow, and listened to the voice of God, and said, Never was any man so fortunate and favored as I.”
There was a long minute of silence. Then Cholayna said, determinedly practical, “As long as I find Alexis Anders alive and unharmed, I have already enough notes on this country and have seen enough strange things that I should be the most ungrateful of women to complain if I find nothing more.”
“I would hope for a mountain to equal Montenegro Summit,” said Vanessa, “but one can’t have everything.”
“Be careful what you pray for,” Jaelle laughed, “you might get it. There are mountains here, I tell you, much higher than Scaravel—though, after this, I could live richly content if I knew I would never again travel above the treeline. Margali, what do you want from that city of legends, should we be guided there?”
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“Like Cholayna, I’ll be content to find Lexie and Rafaella safe and well. Somehow I can’t imagine either of them being very interested in ancient wisdom—”
“And as for legends,” Vanessa said cheekily, “you yourself are the legend against which they are measuring themselves, you, Lorne—”
Magda flinched as if Vanessa had struck her. She needed no reminding of that—that in a sense she was to blame that these two women, who should have been her friends, had risked this desperate and dangerous journey.
For all that, would I have wished this road untraveled? I have tested my own strength and found myself stronger than I ever believed. Would I wish this undone?
Leaning back in the clouds of steam, her body at ease in the hot bath, she realized that it did not matter a particle whether she wished all this undone. It had happened; it was a part of her, whether for good or bad did not matter either. It was up to her to learn what she could from the experience, and pass on to the next thing in her life.
Just as she suddenly knew that she felt free of the “Lorne legend” which had pursued her for so long. No one, least of all Magda, had required of Alexis Anders that she try to equal or surpass Magda’s achievements. It had been Lexie’s own doing, not hers! Magda felt as if a burden heavier than the chervine packloads had fallen from her back and dissolved in the hot water. She would still help Lexie when she found her; the younger woman had gone into deeper waters than she was trained to handle. Magda was obligated to do anything she could to help her. But only, as her vow required her to be… in the words of the Renunciate Oath… mother and sister and daughter to all women. Not from guilt, not because it was her fault Lexie had done this rash and stupid thing. She sighed, a long sigh of pure relief.
“I am getting soggy,” Vanessa said. “I think I will get out, and try some of that hot wine they offered us.”
“Enjoy yourself,” Jaelle said, “but I must have Rafaella’s message as quickly as possible.”
Clean clothing was as great a luxury as the bath; Magda had saved one set when she let the laundry women take away hers for washing. Food had been brought and smelled most appetizing; but Jaelle hurried off to Arlinda for Rafaella’s message.
“Forgive me, breda. But Arlinda has known me since before I took Oath as a Renunciate, and she may talk more freely with me alone than with someone else to hear. Save me some of the roast rabbithorn I can smell on those platters.”
Magda conceded the good sense of this, but felt troubled as she watched Jaelle go off alone. Her Amazon trousers had gone for cleaning and she was wearing her old fur-lined bathrobe; she looked small and vulnerable, and Magda wished she could protect her. But Jaelle was not a child to be protected. She went back and watched the others taking covers off dishes with frank greed. Even Cholayna succumbed to a dish of boiled whiteroot seasoned with cheese and pungent spices, with a great dish of four kinds of mushrooms and a side platter of stuffed vegetables. Although she did not touch the roast rabbithorn, she did eat some of the stuffing of dried apples and bread soaked in red wine.
Magda set aside a haunch of the rabbithorn and plenty of the stuffing and vegetables for Jaelle. All through the meal she kept expecting the door to open and her freemate to return, but they had cut into the dessert by the time Jaelle came back.
“I thought I would never eat redberry sauce again, after that place,” Vanessa said, dribbling the sweet red stuff across the surface of a smooth custard. “But I find it tastes as good as it did then, and this time, at least, I am sure there is no noxious drug in it.”
They all turned to look as Jaelle came in.
“We saved you plenty of dinner,” Vanessa said, “but it’s probably cold as a banshee’s heart.”
“Banshee heart, boiled or roasted, is a dish I would never cook,” said Cholayna, “but if the rest is too cold, we can probably have it heated up in the kitchens.”
“No, that’s all right. Cold roast rabbithorn is served at all the best banquets,” Jaelle said, as she came and sat down and helped herself to rabbithorn and mushrooms. It seemed to Magda that she looked cold and constrained.
“What was Rafi’s message, love?”
“Only to come after her as fast as I could manage,” Jaelle said, “but there was another message which Arlinda gave me.” But after this she was silent so long that Vanessa finally asked belligerently, “Well? Is this some great secret?”
“Not at all,” Jaelle said at last. “Tonight, so Arlinda told me, one will come, supposedly, from that place, and she will speak with us. And I could tell, from the way Arlinda spoke, that she was afraid. I cannot imagine why, if the Sisterhood is as benevolent as I have always heard, a woman like Arlinda would have anything to fear from her. What Arlinda has managed to do, in a city like Nevarsin, is all but unbelievable. Why should the Sisterhood frighten her?” Jaelle poured herself some of the spiced wine, and sipped at it, then shoved it away.
“So, we are to be tried,” said Camilla. “That is a part of every search, Shaya, love. The Goddess knows you have nothing to fear. Do you truly think they will find us wanting?”
“Oh, how am I to know that, how do I know what they require?” Jaelle munched cold rabbithorn, as uninterested as if it were packaged field rations, her face stolid and closed-in, betraying nothing. “They will judge me in the name of the Goddess and I do not know what to say to them.”
Camilla said, and to Magda she sounded fiercely defensive, “You are what you are, chiya, like all of us, and none of us can be otherwise. As for me, I have no more reverence for these women of the Dark Sisterhood than for their Goddess, who thrust me unasked and uninvited into a world which has treated me as I, who am no more than human, would not have treated the meanest of creatures. If their Goddess wishes me evil, I will demand of her why, since when it befell me I was too young to have done anything to deserve it; if she wishes me well, I will ask why she calls herself a Goddess when she was powerless to prevent evil. And when I have heard her reply, then I will judge her as she or her representatives think to judge me!” She poured herself another glass of wine. “Nor should you fear anything from these women who presume to speak in Her name.”
“I don’t fear,” Jaelle said slowly. “I wonder why Arlinda fears, that is all.”
Cholayna had spread out her sleeping bag—the single one of Terran make—on the floor, and, using her saddlebag and her pack as a pillow, was leaning back, writing in a little book. She had, Magda thought, admirably recovered the habits of a field agent. Vanessa was meticulously combing and sectioning her hair for braiding.
Magda was debating following either example, and had started to get her sleeping bag out of its pack when one of the young apprentices came in, carrying an embroidered leather hassock, an elaborate guest-seat. Behind the girl came Arlinda herself. Although Magda expected that Arlinda would take that seat, she did not; she backed against the wall and sat down there, legs crossed beneath her heavy canvas apron, her brawny arms akimbo, bristling all over with expectation.
Then a woman came into the room, and they all looked up at her.
She was not exceptionally tall, but she seemed somehow to take up more space than she physically occupied in the room. It was a trick of presence; Magda had met a few people who knew how to use it, but they were seldom women. She had dark-auburn hair, twisted into a tight coil at the back of her head and fastened there with a copper pin or so. She was dressed in clothing of rather better quality than anyone Magda had seen at the baths or in the leather-worker’s shop so far, and it fitted her well, something unusual for women in this chilly city of cristoforos where women were expected to efface themselves. Her eyes were pale gray, looking out with an imperious commanding presence from under her piled hair.
She took the elaborate seat quite as if it was the expected thing. Magda glanced at Arlinda and noticed that the brawny woman’s arms showed signs of goose-flesh, as if she were cold.
What in the name of all the gods on all the planets in or out of the E
mpire has she got to be afraid of? Magda had not believed anything could make this old Amazon— better fitting the name than any Renunciate—afraid.
“I am the leronis Acquilara,” she announced. She looked them over, one by one. “Will you tell me your names?”
With one accord they waited for Jaelle to speak.
“I am Jaelle n’ha Melora,” Jaelle said slowly. “These are my companions.” One by one she repeated their names. “We are from Thendara Guild-house in that city.”
Acquilara heard them without motion, not a flicker of muscle moving in her face or a flicker of her eyes. An imposing trick, Magda knew. She wondered how old the woman was. She could not guess. Her face was less lined than Camilla’s; yet the boniness of her fingers, the texture of her skin, told Magda this was not a young woman. When she moved, it was with an air of complete deliberation, as if she moved only when she had decided to move and never for any other reason.
She swiveled her head to Cholayna and said, “I have known a woman with your skin color. She was poisoned in childhood with a metallic substance. It is so with you, is it not.” It was not a question but a statement. She sounded very self-satisfied, as if waiting for them to acknowledge her cleverness in solving such a riddle.