by Sharon Green
Lorand was in the midst of doing just that, when a voice said, “Good day to you, friend.” He whirled around to see that someone was already in the bath, a man he hadn’t noticed when he’d first come in. The stranger continued, “I’m sure you’re in need of this bath water as badly as I was, so please don’t hesitate about coming right in.”
The man was obviously trying to be friendly, so Lorand ignored the faint tone of condescension in his voice and tried to be the same.
“I didn’t intend to hesitate,” he answered, going back to the undressing he’d started after finding the towel and soap. “You startled me because I thought the bath house was empty, but it isn’t as if I’ve never used a bath house before. Our town has a large one for the use of the public, and week’s end night usually had the place filled to capacity.”
Lorand wasn’t in the habit of boasting, and certainly not about something as foolish as having used a bath house, but something in the other’s manner had pushed him to it. The stranger’s expression seemed to demand that Lorand justify his being there, but his choice of justification turned out to be another backwoods mistake.
“You’ve used a public bath house?” the stranger immediately demanded, sounding as if Lorand had confessed to murdering helpless women and small children. “With crowds present? But surely your own home had a bath house?”
The stranger made the lack of a private bath house also sound like a crime against nature, and Lorand suddenly found himself very annoyed. He’d been struggling not to look like a backward hick, but this easily-shocked stranger turned his mood perverse.
“In summer we used the creek’s swimming hole, and in winter we used a tub in the kitchen,” he returned with the most outrageously bucolic picture he could think of. But his need for a bath hadn’t lessened, so he headed for the water as he added, “What’s the difference where you bathe, as long as you come out clean?”
The stranger didn’t seem to have an answer to that, so Lorand used the opportunity of his silence to duck completely underwater. It felt wonderful to be wet all over, but it felt even better to know that the stranger had believed him. Lorand’s family had a tub installed in one corner of the barn, and that cramped area was where they all bathed. There was a small hearth near it to heat the water, which they’d used in the winter to also warm the area. It was crude but usable, which had always been his father’s standard of good enough.
Pushing away thoughts of his father, Lorand headed for a corner of the bath where there was clearly a molded resting area. He’d never had the chance to try relaxing in one, not with all the older men in the bath house claiming the comfort first, but now he could. He had just gotten himself settled into it when the stranger decided to try starting a conversation again.
“I assume you’re weary because of what was necessary to pass your test,” he said, this time managing to make it sound as if Lorand had probably jumped up and down a little before being given the passing of the test, rather than having earned it like this very self-important stranger. “What did they do to force you to participate? I’m Lord Clarion Mardimil, by the way. Air Magic.”
It had been obvious that this Mardimil was also an applicant, but the title he’d added suggested it, and the name, would be familiar to anyone with the least pretensions of being civilized. The title meant little to Lorand, and he’d never heard of the man happily!—but he had heard the rest of what he’d said and that got to him.
“Lorand Coll, Earth magic,” Lorand responded with automatic courtesy, then dove straight to the really important part. “What do you mean, how was I forced? I didn’t have to be forced to participate, I wanted very much to try.”
“You want to be here?” Mardimil demanded, once again declaring Lorand guilty of some horrible crime as he rose to his feet. “Well, I don’t know why I’m surprised. Of course someone like you would be eager to fight for that nonsense, it’s worlds above anything you’re likely to get under any other circumstance. A pity they don’t believe in taking all their applicants from the lowest segment of our society.”
That sneering ridicule was more than Lorand was willing to put up with. His home town might be small, but it still had its share of monied snobs who considered themselves too good to breathe the same air as common folk. Their children had been just like this Mardimil, but Lorand hadn’t been allowed to tell them what he thought of them. His father had been afraid of reprisals and had refused to “mix in,” but his father wasn’t here right now.
“At least I’m not from the useless segment of our society,” he growled at Mardimil, who was in the midst of leaving the bath. “If I end up without a High position, I’ll still be able to contribute more than I use up. If you end up without one, all you’ll be able to do is go back to being a worthless sponge. If you suddenly lost all your mountains of gold, you’d starve to death in a week. Since I’d survive no matter what, I’d say you need to rethink your conclusion about which of us is really the lowest.”
Lorand expected the man to come back at him with something, but Mardimil maintained an infuriated silence while he dried and dressed, then left the same way. His anger had been perfectly clear, and Lorand wondered why he hadn’t said anything in his own defense, even a flat refusal to concede Lorand’s points. Mardimil could have laughed and called Lorand a jealous fool, and there would have been no easy way to defend against the charge. So why had he done nothing more than dress and leave? It made no sense, unless…
“Unless I told him something he’d been suspecting was true,” Lorand muttered, suddenly more disgusted with himself than with Mardimil. He’d been in a self-embarrassed mood, so he’d let the man’s attitudes push him into speaking a very cruel truth. There was no denying that the vast majority of offspring from wealthy parents were useless, but most of them were perfectly happy to have it that way. What must it be like to be one of the minority, aware of feelings of worthlessness, but refused the chance to do anything about it?
“It would be like living with my father, only worse,” Lorand decided with a sigh. For him, leaving home hadn’t been much of a hardship, and wouldn’t have been one even if he’d had to do it on his own. Aside from his mother and brothers, there hadn’t been anything left behind that he would miss. He also had a trained ability to offer an employer, and hadn’t been raised to consider honest work a shame and a scandal. And he hadn’t gotten used to things that only a large amount of gold would buy.
Yes, there were times when wealth was more of a burden than a blessing, Lorand decided as he forced himself to leave the molded rest area in order to reach the jar of soap. He’d left it near his towel, and the jar was full enough to let him wash once now and then a second time before he left the bath. In between he intended to soak and nap, even though the warm water had already soothed away much of the ache in his body. Later he’d look up Mardimil and apologize, even if it meant accepting a belated and sneering rebuttal.
Lorand washed his body first, knowing his eyes would end up filled with soap when he did his hair. He’d been thinking his hair was too long, but most men in Gan Garee seemed to wear it even longer. If that was the current style he’d have to learn to live with it, or else stand out even more than his clothes would make him do. Master Lugal had been right about those clothes, and as soon as he won some gold he’d have to see about buying new ones. Tight breeches and wide-sleeved shirts, in all colors but drab green, dull blue, and lifeless gray. Those were the only colors his clothes came in now, but once he had that gold…
His hair seemed to be as full of earth as the testing room had been, so Lorand just kept scrubbing at it even when he heard the door open and close again. He thought it might be Mardimil coming back to get in his rebuttal now, but it wasn’t possible to open his eyes and look. When the silence continued Lorand decided it was some other applicant coming in to wash away the sweat of his efforts, and simply continued scrubbing at his hair. Once he got his strength back he’d be able to remove any still-present grains of earth easily
, but right now scrubbing was all that could make him feel clean again.
Lorand rinsed and washed his hair three separate times before deciding he’d done all he could. He’d been able to hear the newcomer moving around without speaking, and it was possible that this man would be friendlier than the last. The least he could do was introduce himself, but that sort of thing went better when you looked a man in the eyes. He reached for the towel he’d positioned right at the edge of the bath, but his groping hand couldn’t even find the bath edge. He must have moved too far the last time he rinsed, and now he needed help to get back where he needed to be.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I seem to have lost the edge of the bath,” he said, speaking in the general direction of the gentle splashes he’d heard. The man had come into the water, and wasn’t far from where Lorand stood. “If you’ll guide me back to it, I’ll introduce myself in the proper way once I can see again.”
Lorand heard a soft chuckle, and then there were two hands on his shoulder and back, turning him in what was hopefully the proper direction. He moved forward with arms outstretched, searching for the edge even as he wondered about the newcomer. The poor man seemed to have very small hands, which must have gotten him teased as a child and ridiculed as an adult. Lorand would have to be careful not to say the wrong thing and upset the fellow; he’d already had words with one of his brother applicants, and didn’t want to get the reputation of being a troublemaker. His hands finally closed on the towel, so he used it to wipe his eyes and soak up some of the water in his hair, then he turned back to the newcomer.
“Lorand Coll, Earth magic, at your—” service, only his mind finished, his tongue too frozen with shock to speak the word—or any other. The man with the very small hands wasn’t a man at all. He was a woman—She was a woman, and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen despite the obvious hardship she’d been through. Golden-blond hair and blue-green eyes, an oval face with the most perfect features, a slender body with large breasts, a tiny waist, and beautifully shaped legs… Perfect was the only word to describe her, that and—
“Naked!” Lorand blurted, his tongue starting to work again at precisely the wrong time. “We’re both naked, and you’re a woman!”
“How lovely of you to notice,” she returned in a warm, husky voice that reached down to caress him in a usually unmentionable place. “I’m a woman and you’re a man, and we’re both unclothed. Do people usually bathe in their clothes where you come from?”
As she spoke she moved toward the deep water, but still hadn’t stopped looking up at him. She was such a little thing, not particularly short but slender and delicate, yes, that was it, delicate. And naked. Her having called it “unclothed” instead hadn’t helped in the least.
“That was a silly question, and I’m glad you’re ignoring it,” she said with a tinkling laugh as she lowered herself a bit more into the water. “Ummm, this feels marvelous, Lorand Coll. I’m Jovvi Hafford, Spirit magic, and I have the feeling you’ve never bathed with a woman present before. I thought the custom of mixed bathing had spread everywhere.”
“Not everywhere,” Lorand answered hoarsely, frantically trying to decide what to do. What he wanted to do was stop staring at her like a virgin boy and casually turn his back to hide his own nakedness, but he couldn’t think how to do that without appearing like an awkward child. And if there was anything he didn’t want to look like in front of this incredible woman…
“Then I really must apologize,” she said in that velvet voice, now sounding completely sincere. “If you’re not used to mixed bathing, then you must be horribly embarrassed. I should have waited until you were through and gone, instead of barging in and intruding. I’ll wrap up in a towel and wait outside, and you can—”
“No,” Lorand interrupted, stopping her as she actually began to leave the bath. “I won’t hear of you waiting for what I know you need so badly, not just to soothe my backward beliefs. It so happens I was just about through anyway, so please let me be the one to allow you your privacy. It’s the least I can do for being so rude.”
Lorand had no idea where all the flowery words and phrases were coming from, he just felt great that they were. He’d read a lot of things over the years that his father had considered trash, but some of the heroes in those books had spoken like that. Maybe that was where it had come from, and if so he blessed his teachers for having made him read them. That was because Jovvi Hafford now smiled at him in a way that made her even more beautiful, and seeing that was worth anything he could imagine.
“That must be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” she replied, speaking what had to be a lie, but a very pleasant one. “I’ll accept your offer if you insist, but it would be perfectly all right if you stayed. I won’t mind in the least.”
“I’d mind staying even less than that, but I think it will be better if I go,” Lorand forced himself to say, then turned casually to the steps. “I’ll be out of your way in no time at all.”
Jovvi didn’t respond to that, so he was able to concentrate on wrapping the towel around his middle as if it were totally unimportant. In point of fact the towel now hid the extreme interest he’d found in the woman, something she’d happily missed seeing while he was in the water. He would have blushed like a firebloom if she’d noticed, but now he was safe.
Or relatively safe. He kept his back turned while he dried himself in record time, briefly wishing his magic could have helped the way Mardimil’s magic had dried him. Jovvi certainly wasn’t watching him, but that wasn’t keeping him from imagining her gaze on him, rating what she saw. Rating what usually wasn’t seen by anyone but other men. Damn it, stop thinking like that before you start to blush like a schoolgirl!
Lorand couldn’t remember dressing ever taking so long, and the fact that he couldn’t hurry in any obvious way just made it worse. But he wasn’t going to add to that by saying anything, so as soon as he was ready he gathered up his dirty clothes and headed for the door. When he reached it he thought he was in the clear, but Jovvi’s voice came just as he began to push through.
“It was nice to meet you, Lorand Coll,” she said in a way that made his toes want to curl. “See you later at dinner.”
“I certainly hope so,” he managed to get out, then finally escaped without looking back. But he’d wanted to look back, and after he reached his room he wondered if she would have minded. She hadn’t seemed to mind when they were in the water, but it wouldn’t have been the same with him fully dressed. No, he’d been right not to impose on her broad-mindedness, especially since he couldn’t match it. Between the two of them, he was the overly-modest old maid.
But maybe that was something he’d get over. Lorand sat down in one of the room’s very comfortable chairs, closing his eyes in order to look at Jovvi again. If he was smart he’d work at getting over his modesty, but meanwhile there was dinner to think about and look forward to… Good thing he hadn’t made more of a fool of himself by asking for directions to a cheap place to eat…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jovvi stood in the middle of the four-foot-wide walkway and trembled, feeling all those emotions of anger and outrage batter at her. She had to calm those feelings and bring them to a peaceful balance, but reaching to them a few at a time hadn’t worked. When she released one group of them in order to soothe another, the first group went back to raging.
She had to cross twenty-five feet of walkway to reach the door that would let her out of that place, but if she tried it with all those feelings storming around her, she’d be knocked off the walkway to her death.
She was really terrified and desperate, but when her quaking mind began to think that she’d never been so frightened in her entire life, some tiny part inside her immediately denied that. Her father had been killed in a mining accident when she was nine, and her mother had been left with Jovvi and her two older brothers and the baby. Her mother, a very minor talent in Water magic was already taking in washing to help make ends mee
t, and the death of her husband was a blow she’d never recovered from.
Some women fall apart when tragedy takes away the one source of strength and safety in their lives, but some grow hard and tough themselves as a replacement for what was gone. Jovvi’s mother had been a pleasant and loving woman who scolded but smiled indulgently when her husband tried to spoil their children. That changed completely and without warning once her husband was dead, as though someone had taken her a great distance away without moving her body an inch. Parli, Jovvi’s mother, turned as cold as an uncaring stranger, and never again looked at her children with love.
But that didn’t mean she stopped looking at them, usually in a darkly musing way. The silver from their father’s death price wasn’t much, but Parli had been paid for each of the children. Jovvi had stood behind the door to their shack’s second room, listening to the stranger her mother had become muttering aloud as she counted and recounted the silver. No matter how carefully the amount was stretched, it couldn’t possibly last more than four or five months. After that they would all starve if she didn’t do something, so she would have to do something.
For a very long time, Jovvi had no idea what that something would turn out to be. Living on almost nothing was very hard, and she and her brothers took to roaming around their part of town, searching the refuse of those who were wealthier. Almost everyone fell into that category, and occasionally they found things that were edible. When that happened she and her brothers shared the treasure, making no effort to bring any of it back to the stranger who pretended to look after them.
Jovvi wasn’t sure just when she noticed that the baby was gone, but Parli certainly didn’t mention it. Nor did she seem particularly upset, so Jovvi thought she understood. The baby had been the weakest of them, and simply hadn’t been able to survive living on almost nothing. The little girl had died, and now Parli was pleased because there was one less mouth to feed.