Manipulation had never been one of Kiri’s skills. As she walked along with Colin following her like a faithful dog, Kiri’s mind often returned to Mala, and the ability she had long had of moving people to her will, especially males. For all Colin’s trailing her like a dog, Kiri knew he wouldn’t take commands like one. But she had to be rid of him before they returned to the city. They couldn’t be seen together, especially now that she worried she hadn’t seen the last of the Untouchable’s people. If she was recognized, anyone with her would be in danger. It would be Westfall and Gilliam all over again.
To her surprise, Colin didn’t need any kind of coaxing, nor orders either. As they drew near to the outer buildings he broke away from her.
“I’ll see you some night, Firebrand,” he called back to her over his shoulder.
There was no one near enough to hear; the nearest person on the road was a farmer driving a pair of oxen more than two dozen yards from them, but Kiri still flinched at the name being said so loudly in the broad light of day.
Kiri waved a little wave, and smiled tightly, making a mental note at the same time to give Colin another name to call her by. It might not be a good idea to give him her real name, and she probably shouldn’t give him the name Shaela. It would be better for him to have something to call her besides Firebrand, but this was getting complicated. She didn’t want to have so many names that she might lose track of them.
She was dirty enough now that she blended with the crowd in the back-alleys of the city. Blending, in this case, meant no one walked wide around her as they often did when she was dressed as a higher-born woman. Instead, she was jostled and had to nearly fight her way along. More than once the jostling was not-so-innocent, once it was a pinch on the bottom, and twice a tug on her hair accompanied by a wolf whistle and a predatory sneer.
There was no real danger in it. The men were on their way again as if the harassment was a passing greeting or a normal pleasantry, apparently, for them. But still her heart quickened and throat tightened with fear and anger. She had to concentrate to keep heat from gathering in her hand. She would have felt better if she could have been dressed as the Firebrand. But there was nothing, really, for the Firebrand to do here. This petty ugliness was not the sort of crime she could address with fire and lightning, much as she might want to. But the anger at the idea of the women that walked everyday with men like that clenched her jaw until her teeth ached. It was a relief to slip into the servants’ door and back into the comfortable environment she was used to. Kiri had thought herself toughened by her adventures as the Firebrand, but it takes a different kind of toughness to be a lower class woman on the streets of Laed.
Two conflicting needs were competing for Kiri’s time. First, she desperately needed to bathe and to have her clothing laundered. She simply couldn’t go walking about the school dressed so shabbily. She may be a country girl, but there were still expectations that others had of her, and quite honestly, that she had of herself. The other thing she needed was some real time as the Firebrand. And not just babysitting Colin, but something...heroic. She needed to go out and fight some simple good vs evil. Her hand itched to knock a deserving villain back on his heels.
The dress she’d used as a bed was so dirty that Kiri couldn’t even stand to wear it on her way to the baths. She went first to her room and stripped down and changed into a dress she hoped wouldn’t be made too dirty by her wearing it in her current state and draped her dirty clothes over her arm as she headed out the door. It didn’t take long to find a servant who relieved her of the laundry, including her Firebrand clothes which she hoped would be dismissed as strange undergarments for country ladies. After that she made her way down to the baths unencumbered.
The baths were a luxury of the capital unlike anything Kiri had known in Westfall Valley. Not even the lord’s manor had had anything like this place. There were two sections, one for men and one women; Kiri assumed the men’s was just like the women’s but had never seen it herself. The women’s bath began with a narrow entryway where a servant, an elderly lady with a brisk manner and tight bun, waited to help the bathers undress. She took Kiri’s clothes, even the gloves, which meant Kiri had to keep her right palm always pointed downward to keep its faint light from showing. The old lady carried the pile through a small door into some sort of storage closet to keep the clothes from being soaked by the steam that permeated the air. Kiri waited and the lady returned with a coin-sized circle of soap and the tiny cloth towel that was going to be Kiri’s only covering until she finished bathing and returned for her clothes. That had taken some getting used to. Kiri had bathed with her sisters and Mala before, but these baths felt much more public than anything she was accustomed to. There was a large rectangular bath and a smaller square, shallow pool off to the side for rinsing before you got into the bath. It had a spout on one end and a drain at the other; the water continuously flowed to wash away the soil. Kiri went there first and used her towel to soak up some water to lather her soap and wash first her hands and face while she stood in the water to rinse her feet. Normally she wouldn’t have worked as hard, but she was too dirty to go into the steamy soaking pool without spending quite a while getting cleaned up. Once her hands, face, and body were clean she stood on her feet one at a time as she scrubbed the other clean. Some women sat on the tile beside the pool to scrub their feet, but Kiri preferred to balance like a stork. Despite the warm, steamy air the tile was uncomfortably cold. Finally satisfied with her feet, Kiri stuck her head into the flow from the spout to rinse her hair clean then pushed the straggly bits away from her eyes.
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One end of the bath was shallow, sloping only slowly down to the full depth which was nearly over Kiri’s head. It reminded Kiri of walking into a lake. A very, very hot lake. The normal thing to do was to walk into the pool at the shallow end and let your body gradually get used to the water until you were ready to fully soak. Kiri preferred to plop down in the deep end. So, when she was ready, she sucked in her breath, bent to lay a hand on the tile at the edge, and dropped into the water. The heat hit so fast it made her shiver as though she were cold instead of hot. Kiri felt her cheeks flush as she sank down to her ears in the water. For some reason it wasn’t quite so hard to see through the steam with her eyes nearly in the water. The thickest steam seemed to hover a bit above the edge of the pool. Now, sunk low, Kiri could see a couple of other women soaking in the bath nearby. They were talking quietly, and when their voices carried across the steam to Kiri’s ears she lost her footing and slipped into the water completely for a moment. She pushed back out enough to breathe, but not enough so she would be seen. She didn’t want to be recognized. She knew the voice she had heard--that was Mala!
The immediate urge to run away swept through Kiri, and she even turned and grabbed the edge to haul herself out of the water. But her head cooled enough, fortunately, before she did so to realize that scrambling noisily out of the pool would be the quickest way to draw attention to herself. The fog was dense; if it hadn’t been for Mala’s voice Kiri would not have realized it was her. The other women appeared only as vague forms, and Kiri no doubt looked the same to them. As long as she kept her distance there was no reason to fear that Mala would notice her. And was there even any reason to fear that? What was the worst that could happen--an awkward conversation?
But what was Mala even doing here? Why had she not gone on to the desert? Useph didn’t live in the city. Was she just up for the holiday? Kiri admitted to herself that she had no idea if Useph’s home was near enough to Laed for that to be practical. She ought to spend more time on geography. And why was Mala here at the Academy? The Academy was a tier down from the usual haunts of the noble class. It was a place for their most trusted advisors and sometimes younger unlanded children to train, but not for the nobles themselves. Mala didn’t seem the type to seek out tutelage to busy herself while her husband was in the city. There were far more status-rich activities she could pursue.
There was an obvious way to find out more about what Mala was up to, both why she was in Laed and, more specifically, at the Academy. But Kiri was too nervous to do it. Not to ask Mala, that idea didn’t even enter her mind, but to sneak over and spy on the two ladies. What if she was seen? That would be worse than just going over and saying hi.
It took less than a minute for her curiosity to overcome her caution. Kiri stayed down in the water to nearly her nose and slunk nearer Mala and her friend until she could make out their words. She was a little behind them, and still well hidden in steam. It felt so safe she started to relax and enjoy eavesdropping.
“-more private here,” Mala was saying to her companion. “I’m glad you suggested it, Mina.”
“Does this mean you’re ready to tell me?” Mina asked. “About what the reason is you wanted such a private place to talk?”
“It wasn’t for the surroundings,” Mala said. “This seems so tiny after the palace baths!”
“Much bigger than your barge, though,” Mina said. “Bored of that, are you?”
“One can only throw so many parties,” Mala said. “And you guessed right, that is why I wanted to talk. I asked Useph if we could press on soon. I’m not bored of Laed, but I am bored of the barge, and I want to go on to my new life and my own palace!”
“Wouldn’t we all?” Mina said. “I don’t fancy I’ll have one of my own someday. I don’t have half your beauty.”
“You look well enough,” Mala said. “And you are well connected. You’ll have at least a manor.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mina said, with thick sarcasm that Mala ignored as she always did when Kiri tried to be sassy with Mala. Kiri had to bite her lip to keep from joining the conversation with a biting comment of her own. She missed Mala more than she’d realized.
“Useph refused me immediately!” Mala pressed on. “He said he had business to attend to, and that we would leave when it was completed and not on a womanly whim.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound unreasonable,” Mina said. “A lord has responsibilities.”
“But to his people,” Mala said. “They’re not here, they’re in the desert! And he won’t tell me anything about what he is up to. Sometimes he goes to the palace, but more often he doesn’t. And on the boat he meets with some unsavory folk. He tries to keep me from noticing, but I’m no idiot. I’m worried.”
“Mala,” Mina sighed heavily. “This is business. It is better not to know about it. Keep your eyes on your pretty clothes and ignore the unsavory folk. And don’t ever ask about it. That’s the worst thing to do.”
“But if he’s doing something illegal, isn’t it something I should worry about?” Mala sounded hesitant and not at all like herself. “Isn’t there a chance it will get us both into trouble?”
Mina laughed. “There’s the law and the rules, Mala,” she said. “The law is for the nobles to apply to the rest of the folk. The noblemen themselves never fall by it. If they break their own rules, however, that would be something for the assassins to put a stop to. I don’t think you need to worry. Useph is not breaking the rules, and well, the laws don’t apply.”
Mala blew out a long breath. “So just don’t ask?”
“Don’t ask,” Mina repeated. “You don’t want or need to know. Now what did you think of the party yesterday?”
Kiri exited the pool as quickly as caution allowed. She was somewhat relieved that Mala now had some inkling of what Useph really was. But she was sad to see her friend seemed to be talked into accepting it so easily. Sad but not surprised. Mala had herself to watch out for, and some abstract lawbreaking didn’t weigh heavily against her perfect life she had managed to find. Kiri went back upstairs with her hair still wet, and lay back on her pillow not caring how it soaked the bedding. She needed it now, she thought, more now even than she had before the bath, to be the Firebrand, and save someone the way she couldn’t save Mala.