Partisan - Book II

Shiny Things

Dust and grime cling to every crack of skin by the time the three women make it back to Solveigard; utterly filthy is an understated description of what they look and feel. It had poured for an entire day of the trek and the sticky, suffocating humidity that had followed only ensured that every bog of mud and muck they slipped in and waded through stuck to them like a second layer of skin.

Their disastrous appearance achieves quizzical looks when they cross over that indefinable line into the upper echelon of Solveigard City. Surely they know better, surely they know that such appearances cannot be accepted here, in the good part of town, but Fae has such a look on her face that, even with the thick cake of muck making her unrecognizable, no one does much but look aghast as they pass.

The Solveigard native leads the other two down one of the wealthier streets, past pristine brick houses and intricate iron fences to a grand, sweeping one, with gold tipped locks and immaculate landscaping.

"Well, shit, Fae," Tara says, looking up at it.

Fae grunts, underwhelmed by the image.

"Let's go through the back," she says, walking over to the servant's entrance. "Someone can make us baths."

Baths? Tara mouths at Allayria, wonder crossing her face.

Oh yes, here there will be baths—not one bath, with the victor of a haggling and guilt-tripping struggle taking the first turn—there will be a bath for each of them. For the first time in a long time, Allayria is stupidly happy to be in a place like this.

They walk past an elegantly cultivated garden and back to a door on the side of the house. Fae stoops, hand curling up below the bottom ledge of a window, and pulls out a small silver key. In quick order she has the door open and walks inside.

Someone screams.

Tara and Allayria burst in after her, hands curling into fists, but there is only a plump, wide-eyed woman, dressed in a crinkled apron, her hair spattered with flyaway strands. She has both hands clamped on either side of her wide face and a basket lies upended at her feet, white linen strewn across the floor.

"Ester, really," Fae sighs. "I've been gone only six months. You can't have forgotten me yet."

"Mistress Fae?" the woman squeaks, fingers curling down around her chin. "Mistress Fae, is that really–? You look like a cretin–"

"You really do," Tara agrees, scratching at her ear. A rather sizable chunk of dried mud falls on the floor.

"Uh, yes," Fae admits, looking down at her grimy clothes. They hadn't always been brown. "Ester, we need baths."

"Oh. Oh, yes," Ester says, her head bobbing up and down frantically. "Right away. Would it–? Could we–?"

"We'll bathe down here, Ester," Fae answers with a nod. "Just find us unoccupied tubs."

Tara flashes a grin toward Allayria at this.

"Well, I mean," the Beast-caller says in a low voice that doesn't reach Ester's ears, "depending on who's in them they don't have to be unoccupied..."

When Ester returns she leads them down to their respective rooms. She shows Allayria to what must be the male servants' bath, making repeated assurances that the other servants had been ordered to leave the room undisturbed while she uses it.

It doesn't matter to Allayria; she strips down, casting off her filthy clothes with a hiss of relief and stepping into the tepid wash.

Brown bleeds into the water as she slides in and, seizing a scrubber on the flat lip of the tub, she works at her limbs, uncovering pinkened skin as she goes. She pauses when her eyes alight on the wooden bracelet around her wrist. She twists it, feeling the grain underneath her fingers. She visualizes its metal twin, the smooth coldness of it, the fine edge of the rims. Pressing down on her own bracelet, she imagines two dots on his, then a line.