Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

Icy water splashed his face as he caught himself on a hitching post, finding his balance although the ground still seemed to tilt and rock.

Captain Lukas swore. “Bitch of a weather! Feel that rain! You’d think it was still winter, by how cold it is!”

Alain blinked rain out of his eyes and shook his head to clear it. The shower had taken them all by surprise as it swept across the courtyard. Dogs and men ran for shelter. The captain laughed and shamed his men into moving more slowly.

“What? Are you running at the first cold drop? What, are you prissy snails?”

The vision, come so fast and unexpectedly, faded as the sights and smells of the compound drowned him. They passed between the kitchens, which smelled of porridge and smoke, and a storehouse, whose door was propped open. Inside, a score of folk huddled in the interior around a cluster of beds, sitting, lying down, coughing: a sickroom, perhaps. A child at the door watched them walk by with wide eyes and a somber expression.

“You’ve been on the road too many days,” said the captain. “The lady does not like the smell of the road. Baths first.”

“Can I take the plunge, Captain?” asked one of the escorts.

“Eh! I’d like a good washing, Captain!” said another.

“There’s some new wash girls at the baths, I hear,” laughed a third. “Not like in the old days, if you take my meaning. More to our liking.”

“Hush,” Captain Lukas said, but he wasn’t angry at his men. If anything, the comments caused him to lapse into a thoughtful silence.

These barracks lay near the southern gate and were not particularly close to the palace complex, which sat on a hill. The streets had little traffic considering the time of day. Twice they passed warehouses, each one guarded by a dozen soldiers.

“What do they guard?” Alain asked.

“Grain. As precious as gold.”

A few folk tended garden spaces in empty lots. Autun had not quite filled out the space between the walls built in the days of Taillefer, or else old buildings had fallen down and not been reconstructed, with the dirt around the foundations left to go to seed. A woman and man straightened from poking at freshly dug troughs to watch the soldiers pass. Like the child at the storehouse door, they called out no greeting, nor did the captain nod at them to acknowledge their presence. Their silence troubled Alain, who had an idea that relations between townsfolk and soldiers had once been easier.

The baths lay at the base of the palatine hill. The original structure was built by the old Dariyans, but it had been refurbished a hundred years ago and had not deteriorated overly much since then. Sorrow and Rage sat under a portico with a pair of nervous minders to guard them. Within the stone halls a pair of old women held sway, although it was true they were assisted by a quintet of younger, fairer lasses, banished to the back chambers as soon as the soldiers came in.

“This one,” said Captain Lukas, pushing Alain forward. “I’ll be back to fetch him.”

They took him to a room where he stripped. The attendants examined him with the look of women who have seen every possible thing the world has to offer. They even pinched his buttocks and measured the span of his arms with cupped hands.

“Pleasing enough,” the taller commented to the shorter in a murmur he was not meant to hear. “Too thin.”

“Aren’t they all these days?”

His clothes were taken away and two buckets of water brought by a gangling youth, who retreated as soon as he set the buckets on the stone floor.

“Raise your arms!” said the old woman.

Obedient, he raised his arms.

“Shut your eyes!”

He shut his eyes.

The water hits so hard he thinks his heart will seize. The cold sluices down his face, his neck. He is wet through in an instant and so cold he goes stiff, lips locked in a grimace, limbs in a rictus.

How can anything be so cold?

Then he remembers that cold causes him no injury, not as it does humankind. He is drowning in his vision. He must open his eyes, and quickly. Why did the ship surge in the waves so suddenly?

He opens his eyes as the water streams past, as a weight nudges him, then pushes, hard, and he flails through the water trying to get his bearings so he can reach the surface.

He is surrounded by merfolk.

They are circling, as for a kill.

They mean to kill him.

“Why?” asked the taller crone sarcastically. “Why? You don’t think we’re letting you get in the baths as filthy as you are? You wash that dirt off first. Then you can soak.”

“So cold!” he said between gritted teeth. Goose bumps had erupted all over his skin, but he could not tell if it were the cold water or the upwelling of fear that made him shiver uncontrollably.