Liam’s mind was trying to draw up anything relevant about the current situation, context, history, notes, scribbles. It was as if his brain had chosen that time to take a vacation, because the only thing he kept drawing up were blanks, his eyes gravitating back to Aisha’s white robe as he desperately tried to convince himself that his flushed face was only a cultural hangup.
The only sound was that of the fountain, with water placidly flowing and shimmering under the blue light.
For Aisha to be here now had to be some cultural mistranslation. The Caliphate, despite its roots being in his world’s Islamic religion, did not follow the same norms. Mixed baths weren’t an oddity, though they were still rare. So maybe that’s where Aisha had drawn things from. It couldn’t, it-
“I believe we’ve been here long enough,” Aisha said, standing up and smoothing her long robe as her gaze locked onto him again, her expression stern. “Let us enter the warm-room.” Only now did he notice the blue light from the rust-moss overhead slightly dimming as she opened the door. Was it running low on charge? How long had they been here?
Liam hesitated before following her, feeling as if he was pulled by invisible strings, his gaze lingering on her robe as it shifted with her every step. Fortunately, he caught himself in time to glance away before it became obvious he’d been staring.
The next room had a faint orange light, this one milder than in the cold room, enough so that it made it slightly harder to see in general. The air was humid and, well, warm. This place was hexagonal in shape, with a circular, waist-height cut-off column at the center, and a shoulder-height wooden wall splitting the bench and the room in two. On either side, there were two basins with running water, and what looked like some cleaning equipment.
Aisha took to the right side, and Liam hastily took to the left one, ignoring the feeling of her eyes boring into the back of his head. For a moment, he managed to convince himself that he was thankful the divider was there, if just barely. Liam had to repeatedly insist that there was no way in hell he could assume anything at all in this situation.
To do so would just screw everything up and potentially get him into a lot of trouble.
“The warm room is for the first stage of cleansing,” her voice was so low it was almost a whisper. Even then, it echoed across the stone walls and ceiling all around them. “And for our bodies to acclimatize to the temperature before we enter the hot-room.”
There was the sound of ruffling clothes, and Liam swallowed, keeping his eyes fixed on the basin opposite the divider. It took him a minute to convince himself to relax and remove his robes, even as his ears seemed sharply attuned to the sound of splashing water, his overactive imagination betraying his attempt to remain focused on his own cleaning. The water in the basin was only slightly hotter than the air, making him wish he could take a cold shower instead.
This was normal, this had to be normal, why else bother building a bath with a divider? This was perfectly normal.
“Liam,” she whispered his name as the splashing on her side came to a halt, the sounds coming from her side of the divider betraying that she’d sat down on her half of the column. “What do you think about fate?”
The question proved a sufficiently powerful cold-shower equivalent to sober him up. Not least of which because there’d been a strange hesitation in her voice when she’d asked, or maybe it’d been a product of the echo.
“Depends on what you mean,” he kept his own voice low, focused on taking in the water from the basin and the words he spoke, ignoring the splashing sound opposite him in the room. “When people speak of fate, it tends to be one of either three things, and though they might seem similar, they’re not.”
Aisha chuckled. “I was right to take you for the scholarly type,” her voice held amusement. “Enlighten me, then, on the three kinds of fate.”
“Well, I guess…” He glanced down at the water between his fingers as he slowly scrubbed his naked palms against his arms and generously splashed himself. “The first fate is like water. It’s a part of nature, it behaves and acts in specific ways, and with the right knowledge and tools, you can harness it. If I were to put it as an example, then this fate is a cheater; it’s what allows you to flip a coin a hundred times and have it land on the same side each time.” Splashing his face, he sat down on the column, pleasantly surprised to notice that the stone was warm. “The second kind of fate is vaguer, it’s a concept. If the first fate can force the coin to land on heads, then the second fate is the choice to flip the coin at all. The second kind of fate is the ability to decide, and in a sense, it’s also all the possible outcomes of that decision. It’s free will, even if we might not know the consequences.”
“Ah, but would the first kind not be usable to eradicate the second?” she mused, speaking in that almost conspiratorial whisper.
“Not really,” Liam closed his eyes. “You can argue that you can use the force of fate as a way to narrow down options, to force someone to take a specific action over another, and some people are... very talented at doing that,” he added with a tiny growl. “But free will remains, even when your perception is that there might be just one path ahead.”
Aisha remained quiet for a moment. “And the third?”
“The third fate is what I’d call destiny,” he cracked a grin. “If the choice to flip a coin and the outcome of flipping it are the first two fates, then destiny would be getting struck by lightning before you can see the result.”
She laughed, a soft chiming sound. “That seems hardly fair.”
“Destiny rarely plays fair,” he said with a cackle, brushing his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes, and breathing in. “Destiny is the things that we can neither control nor prevent, destiny is what comes at us from outside the scope of what we could have done. But it’s a tricky thing because some scopes are broader than others.”
“Ah… I think I understand what you mean,” Aisha muttered. “If a God throws a lightning bolt at a mortal, it is the fate of the God, but the destiny of the mortal.”
“What is order to the spider is chaos to the fly.”
“You are using the same tone my teachers used to quote scripture.”
“It is a quote, but not from anything so lofty,” he said. “The full quote is that normal is an illusion, what is normal to the spider is chaos to the fly.”
There was an amused snort from the other side of the divider. “Does that make you a spider?”
“Hm?”
“I have a question for you, Liam, with your little play on semantics, what would you call a fateful encounter?” The voice was closer to the divider. “What is it meant to be?”
“I’d say it’s not meant to be anything good or bad, just impactful. It’d be an event where a decision is presented,” he mused on the question, enjoying the back and forth, finding himself far calmer than he’d been a minute ago. “Where the choices taken lead to change in some manner.”
Aisha hummed. “I believe I agree with your assessment.” There was an amused lilt, slow splashing steps punctuating her words. “Yet I always did prefer practical application over the theoretical.” Her wet footsteps led towards the door, the slight creak of wood signaling its opening. “I think I will make this door your fateful encounter.”
“What do you mean?”
There was no answer, as he found the door had closed.
Hastily finishing the wash, he rinsed off one last time and wrapped the towel around his waist, approaching the door that led to the hot-room, and coming to a halt when his slippers encountered something on the floor.
Her robe.
A lump formed in his throat.
Any attempt to think of what to do next was reduced to the feel of the wooden handle of the door against his palm.
Liam’s mind ran wild with a thousand reasons why he should run around and leave. The panic coursing through his veins felt far more real and solid than when he’d been facing the monster in the jungle. “Why” was prime amongst them, and his brain happily supplied him with every failure he’d ever committed over the past three decades of his life.
This wasn’t meant for him, it was some sort of misunderstanding, he’d find a way to ruin it, just like…
Before his nerves could get the better of him, he stepped through.
The hot room was, as the name indicated, hot. The humidity was a physical force against Liam’s skin, and the heat left him feeling instantly flushed. Inhaling proved to be a mistake as his lungs filled with humidity and hotness, spreading the higher temperature through his whole body.
Despite himself, Liam squinted in the steam; there was barely enough light to vaguely distinguish his surroundings. It was a square room with a tall domed ceiling, featuring a square stone steaming pool to the right and a person-sized raised slab on the left. The sound of running water was almost loud enough to be heard over his own beating heart and short breath.
Two emerald eyes stared at him from just above the surface of the water.
"The hot room is not meant to be experienced alone," she spoke softly, teasing, the smile obvious in her voice even if her face was invisible in the dim light. "Had you not entered, I would have been forced to call for a servant." Her voice drifted through the steam like a hand, pulling him toward her. "How else could you make sure your back is cleaned?"
“I… oh.” He wasn't sure whether to feel relief or disappointment, and before he could make up his mind, Aisha laughed. Somehow, the chime-like sound made his face feel hotter than the steam did.
“Come, join me, and I will teach you how the hot room is used properly.”
Breath hitching, he moved closer.
“Ah, this seems hardly fair,” Aisha spoke, closing her eyes and looking away. “There. I do suggest you don’t bring your towel in.”
Even aware that she was teasing him, his face flushed, and he had very nearly entered the tub, except the water was scalding hot. “Oh crap.” He flinched.
“If it’s too hot, you can sit and soak in the steam,” she suggested, keeping her eyes shut, or at least he hoped that was the case. Or maybe he didn’t? “The point is to allow your skin to soften, and your muscles to relax before the cleansing.”
There was not a shred of condescension or pity in her tone, rather it was the opposite, an edge of understanding, and of mild empathy and concern. And it was for that exact reason that he steeled his resolve as he grit his teeth and entered the water.
Aisha opened one eye to glance at him. The square pool suddenly felt like a jacuzzi or a bathtub, as if it was just barely large enough that one wrong move might cause them to brush against each other. “Feeling flushed?”
“I can handle it,” he replied quickly. “Even if it does feel like I’m getting cooked.”
There was a slight chuckle as she leaned back, closing her eyes again. “I didn’t have siblings growing up, so the hammam was something I only ever did with my mother or one of the servants,” she inhaled and let it out slowly. “It is nice to have someone to talk to while relaxing.”
“You said you were a scribe once, didn’t you have friends to share it with back then?” he said, putting his foot in his mouth.
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“Ah, it seems this is a custom you are not aware of,” her green, piercing eyes focused on him. “It is considered rude to call someone’s little lie out when they’re trying to be flattering.”
Now he wasn’t sure whether his face was hotter than the water or not, but he was entirely thankful that he was so flushed from the heat his face was likely already beet red.
“Another custom of this land is to give a compliment in return,” Aisha added with a whisper.
Turning his gaze to the stone pedestal, he calmed his breathing. “Were my words of how beautifully you weave spellknots not enough?”
“I thought it was merely a fact that the way I cast is no different from a work of art?”
“Flattery and facts are not mutually exclusive.”
“But did you intend them as flattery?” she teased.
“Did you take them as flattery?” he countered.
A pause.
“Perhaps,” she said with a light sigh, her green eyes opening to stare at the ceiling. “Little girls never dream of spending every waking hour surrounded by musty parchment, nor of their fingers always being stained with ink.”
Before he could ask her to elaborate, she spared him a glance before rising from the water. Liam instantly turned his head away, his face flushing harder still when he heard her laugh in that enchanting tune once more. She sucked in air, and he could almost hear the teasing words that were to follow, yet they didn’t leave her lips.
A moment of quietness spread out instead, with only his breathing and the splashing of water as Liam remained sharply aware of Aisha’s retreating steps.
“You can look now,” she sang out, and he found her lying face down on the pedestal, her hips covered by a towel, head resting between her crossed arms. “Now that we’ve softened and cooked, we scrub. This is the most crucial part, as it is nigh impossible to properly scrub one’s back.” Green eyes twinkled as she looked his way again. “I will return the favor and close my eyes, so that you may lend me aid in this.”
Liam hastily stepped out of the cooking-pot and into the fire, hurrying to wrap the towel around his waist. His eyes trailed over the vague silhouette of her body as her wet skin reflected the light, and he felt his throat tighten.
“I will count that as flattery,” Aisha teasingly called out, jolting him out of it. “There’s a kese next to the faucet, dip it in water before you start.”
The “kese” was a glove-like rough sponge. Liam wasn’t even sure what it was made of; his mind kept reeling back to Aisha as she lay there, his ears sharply taking in the sound of her breathing and trying to drown out his own heartbeat. “I take it where you come from, baths are not shared?”
“There are some places, but…” He stepped closer, putting the gloved hand on her shoulder, feeling her twitch. “Did I-”
“Just a little surprised,” she hastily said. Aisha’s heartbeat thumped against his touch, faster than his own, her breathing restrained.
She was nervous, perhaps even more so than him. There was something amusing about that, yet somehow it didn’t help him calm down any. It was more like it made him more anxious out of sympathy, or some shared uncertainty.
“Just your back… right?”
“Right.” Her voice came out as a tiny squeak, and it clicked that she was nervous. “With a little soap.”
Despite how tense she had become as he began to scrub, her dark skin contrasting with the suds, Aisha loosened under the assault of the rough cleansing glove. Within just a minute she’d slumped into the stone, her head sinking between her folded arms. Liam’s hand glided up and down, back and forth, his mind locked onto a thousand little details, trying to think of anything that wasn’t the flimsy towel that blocked his way past her waist.
“Are you trying to polish me to a mirror finish?” Aisha cooed, causing him to flinch as his gaze had been once more caught upon the gentle curve of the towel. “I think I can handle it from here.”
“I’ll… um… turn around.” His head swam with whispers of words not spoken, on the possibility of what might have happened had Aisha chosen to ask him to… expand his work area.
“You should lie down now.”
He obliged, trying to keep his attention away from her, painfully aware that the only piece of modesty she had on her person was the towel. Liam closed his eyes and buried his face into his arms, face down against the stone slab. The rocky bed was warm, yet with spots of coolness that had a certain shape to them, a hint of the previous user.
Liam twitched as soft hands caressed his shoulders, slowly working their way down to his ribs, and then back up. “Your skin is beautiful.” There was a breathless laugh to her words, one that left tingles in his ear. “You’re so soft… almost like a freshly plucked pearl. I’ve known men and women who would kill for something this smooth. What’s your secret?”
“Living in a cave?” He asked half-jokingly, his face flushed as he turned his head away from Aisha. “I think I’m a bit too pale for my tastes.”
“It would be a loss,” she tutted, fingers sinking into his shoulders a little. For a brief moment, he could feel her racing pulse on her palms… or was it his own? “It is so fine I hesitate to use the kese; perhaps something softer would be better. A scrub made of the finest silk, perhaps?”
Caught between the warm, relaxing touch of her hands and her rhetorical teasing question, he just lay there with a face that was burning up. He wanted to react, and didn’t want to move, and the room was spinning a little too. But a sharp, stinging pain brought it all back into focus when a kese-armed Aisha squeezed the rough glove against his back. Liam held back from making a sound, even as his back muscles coiled with every movement.
It was over faster than it started, the experience more shocking than painful.
“There,” Aisha proclaimed, her work done, stepping away. “Unless you want me to continue?”
“I… can handle it from here, thanks.” Liam was a little woozy as he sat up. “Though… I don’t think I can stay here much longer, the heat’s getting to me.”
“Just the heat?” She asked. “Very well, let us be brief.” She proclaimed with a little giddiness laced into her authoritative tone. “Just scrub and rinse, and we will go to the cool room to recover.”
The seriousness in her voice caught him slightly off guard; it sobered him up a little and helped him focus on keeping himself focused on not looking at the source of the splashing sounds opposite the slab. It also left him mildly annoyed that the steam and heat had made his skin far more sensitive than he’d expected.
With a splash of water from the fountains on the walls, he’d very nearly managed to get his full attention back before he caught a glimpse of a bare-chested Aisha walking towards the door. “I’ll head to the cool room, do not dally.”
The light was dim, the steam was thick, and yet her wet skin reflected the red light just enough to leave an impression of curves and shifting lines that his imagination was all too happy to fill in.
Liam splashed his face some more before his mind could do anything it shouldn’t, and followed suit.
The warm room was empty, the two robes that had been left behind now down to one. There was a mix of relief and disappointment, but by now he was mostly thankful to be able to breathe cool air again, the freshness against his hot skin and inside his chest a wave of satisfaction in itself.
Robed and a little clear-headed, he returned to the dim bluish light of the cool room.
Aisha had already made herself comfortable on one of the benches, drinking from a cup, eyes lost in thought as they stared at an empty spot on the ceiling. Her breathing was deep, and each shift in her robe drew Liam’s eyes like a magnet, his mind filling in the blanks from the half-imagined memory from a mere minute prior.
“Something on your mind?” He asked, taking the metal teapot to serve himself some floral-smelling herbal tea.
“Yes,” she answered, drawing out the silence, nursing the glass cup as she took moderate sips from it. “This is…” She frowned. “I do not like leaps of faith; it is a bad habit in my line of work. People, gold, politics. Each of these things I had always approached carefully,” Aisha finally declared. “Yet I find myself poised to take a second one, even though there would be a way for me to make the jump less… risky, so to speak. To be a little surer of whether there are rocks waiting for me at the bottom.” Looking away, the scowl was evident in her words. “I do not enjoy this feeling of uncertainty, I will admit.”
“Not sure if I can help, but I could try. Could you elaborate?”
Her focus snapped to him like a hawk locking onto a mouse. “You can answer a question, even if…” Her green eyes softened. “Even if I find myself hesitating on whether or not to ask it.” Closing her eyes, she took a long gulp from her glass, emptying it. “Liam, is there anyone waiting for you back in… your home?”
There was a bit of surprise at the realization that the question stung, even if Aisha didn’t appear to have intended it that way. “Not in the true sense of the word.” He looked away, rubbing at his cheek. “I got some friends, parents, and so on. I don’t think they know I’m gone yet, I just often locked myself up in my work for months on end. I’m sure they’ll look for me once they find out, and to a point, I’m not exactly happy that I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, but…” He shook his head, combing his hair between his fingers and smiling slightly, thinking of everything he’d experienced thus far, and everything else that waited to be discovered. “But I like it here.”
Aisha studied his features. “I see.”
After a minute of observing him, she sucked in a sharp breath and carefully set aside her glass, standing up from the stone bench. Her emerald gaze did not leave his own as she circled around the fountain, approaching him with damp footsteps. Overhead, the light dimmed as Liam’s eyes widened when her fingers gracefully loosened the sash keeping her robe closed.
There was no time for surprise or questions, she leaned closer, close enough he could smell the soap off of her skin, feel the heat radiating from her body, and entirely unable to break eye contact under the intensity in her eyes.
“I like it with you here too,” she whispered.
Aisha gently cupped his cheek as she leaned in, eyes closing and freeing him of their transfixing beauty just as her lips locked with his own.
The kiss had a faint taste of chamomile. Soft, tender, wet. Her long dark hair tangled into his fingers and her hands gingerly held his chin.
It ended too soon, breaths mingled and hot, once more trapped in each other’s eyes.
“Rest well, Liam,” she betrayed the shared silence, thumb tracing his jawline before she pulled away.
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
----------------------------------------
The instant Aisha had closed the door, she covered her mouth to hide the sound of a very unbefitting squeal. Her face and lungs burned as she stomped her feet in a vain attempt to release the impossible bundle of energy that wanted to cry out and cheer. She held back the urge to rush back inside and kiss Liam again. The certainty of the embarrassment she’d face was what held her back long enough to pick up her clothes and rush out of the hammam.
Had she been too forward? Too daring? Or had it not been enough? The woman hugged the bundle of cloth tightly against her chest and fought against other very unbefitting urges. Her sandals slapped against her feet as she ran straight towards her room before she could convince herself to turn right around.
She locked the door to make doubly sure.
No, no, she was the Amil; there was a proper way to do things! Aisha threw herself at the pile of pillows, burying her face in them, and letting out a muffled shout at the top of her lungs. Her legs kicked wildly as she flailed in frustration and elation in equal measure.
“I am a grown woman, not some love-struck puppy. Show some self-control!” She swore at herself, her lips fixed into an upwards curve as her face burned at the indignity that a simple kiss had made her swoon. Had someone told her she would invite a man to share a bath, and that they would scrub each other’s backs, she would’ve found a way to have the fool executed.
There would be consequences, of course.
Sending her servants away so there wouldn’t be any direct witnesses while she shared her hammam with her exotic, handsome guest was definitely not proper. There would be rumors; she would become the main topic of gossip for months! Her carefully curated reputation, tempered over a decade of turning down marriage proposals and punishing whoever dared to so much as look at her the wrong way… all of it was now left up in the wind, waiting for the sharks to tear to shreds.
The realization hit her with a mix of anger and mortification.
“Stop smiling, damn you.”
Her cheeks ached, and her bout of kicking came to a stop as the memory of the kiss resurfaced with a heat to her face that threatened to make her head explode.
“Damn you, Liam.”
It was an infuriatingly maddening sweetness, the likes of which Aisha would’ve only ever attributed to people with more wind than brains inside their skulls.
“Why did you have to be so cute?”
Letting out a whimper that was very much unlike herself, she hugged the pillows tightly. No matter how hard she tried to stomp it out, her mind kept dancing with tall tales that were only befitting of the chittering of love-struck gossip amongst little girls who braided each other’s hair.
Exhausted physically from the bath, emotionally from her own traitorous heart, and mentally from having spent a whole day worrying over whether her guest was alive or not, she finally slumped down with a sigh of defeat. She was completely unable to keep the smile from leaving her face.
And as she tried to make herself comfortable to sleep, a glint in the relative darkness of her room caught her attention. Aisha tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t help but glance at the lone intricately decorated silver coin inlaid with gems. The “tool” the Weaver had given her.
At the sight of it, Aisha remembered this meeting had not just been of random chance but a product of fate. Yet as she wished to perhaps give some minor thanks to the Goddess for orchestrating this encounter, one concerning thought wormed its way to the front of her mind.
What if the reason Liam felt the way he did was because of the demons influencing him?
What if, when he was cleansed…
Aisha sat up in a jolt, eyes wide with horror.
When she’d spoken to the ruhaniyya, the elfin temple-woman from the capital had been too injured from overusing her blessing to do more than just confirm that the coin could have only been gifted by the Weaver herself (a fact Aisha had triple-checked with priests she was familiar with). It had been a meeting with too many questions left unanswered, and now Aisha found herself unable to ignore them.
“Bitajr.” She cursed under her breath, quickly giving the Merchant a quick prayer asking for forgiveness for calling his title in vain.
This situation was no longer one where she could stand back and watch. The plan she’d been instructed to follow would unfold the day after tomorrow, when the demon-in-disguise would emerge victorious from the climbing competition.
Just one day to find answers.
Aisha rushed to dress herself, leaving the room in a storm, preparing to call upon everyone under her authority.
Unseen and undetected, the pillow the Amil had been hugging a moment prior vanished in a swirl of darkness.