2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows (5 page)

“Most of the men I’ve seen here are clean-shaven so I’m thinking that some of these have to be for that. This blade, probably.” John held up the silver knife. Its razor edge caught the soft light and gleamed.

“What about shaving cream?” Bill frowned. “I’m not all over the idea of shaving with some knife and a bar of soap.”

John set the knife back down and inspected the rest of the brushes, picks, tweezers and tins. He wondered how inexplicable the contents of his own bathroom would have been if he hadn’t known what they were meant for.

“So?” Bill prompted from the water.

“I don’t know,” John said.

“Try one,” Bill suggested.

“Try one how?”

“I don’t know.” Bill shrugged. “Taste one, maybe?”

“They’re not food.”

“How do you know?” Bill asked.

“Because the boy who brought them in said they were for our bath. And that we’ll be having the honor of eating in the Lady Bousim’s company after our baths,” John said.

“You understood all that?” Bill looked impressed. “I kind of got the idea that we were supposed to use them to eat some woman in the bath.”

“Eat a woman in the bath?” John asked.

“Yeah, well, your version does sound a lot less weird, but mine’s much more sexy.” Bill pulled himself weakly from the water and sat on the edge of the marble tub. John tossed a towel to him.

“The kid didn’t say what any of this is supposed to be for?” Bill poked one of the long curved picks.

“I guess anyone from Basawar would know.” John picked up one of the fine brushes. He ran it across the palm of his hand. The bristles were far too soft for brushing hair. He put it back down.

“I wonder how Laurie’s doing?” Bill pondered.

“Better than us, I hope.” John shrugged.

“I bet she got her stuff figured out in a few seconds,” Bill said. “She always knows what all the stuff is in those baskets of soaps and crap. Maybe it’s a woman thing.”

John guessed that Laurie was doing the same thing they were. Hesitantly, he poked his finger into the tin of clear goo. It felt slick and almost oily. Some kind of pomade, he wondered. Or maybe it was a skin cream or possibly an ointment? It could be anything. John wiped his finger off on a towel.

“Salad dressing?” Bill suggested.

“You’re just hungry, aren’t you?” John asked.

“Starving,” Bill admitted. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a salad dressing.” John screwed the caps back on the tins. Bill absently ran his fingers through the long strings of his patchy black beard.

“So,” Bill said, “what are we going to do?”

John shrugged. “I suppose we just sit here and wait. If we can look like we lost track of time in conversation, there might be a chance that one of the servants will try to hurry us along and maybe give us some clue.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s a good idea.” Bill finished drying himself off and then wrapped the towel around his waist. The fluffy white cloth engulfed his emaciated pale body. “I was actually thinking more about what we were going to do in a broader sense. You know, how are we going to live with these people? I mean, we don’t even know the right way to wipe our asses—”

John cut him short with a raised hand. Out in the hall, he heard floorboards creak, as if someone was approaching or just stepping away from the door. They both sat in silence listening, though John could tell from Bill’s expression that he had no idea what he was listening for.

There was nothing. It might have just been one of those noises that old buildings made as they settled. Still, it made John instantly aware of how vulnerable they were. How careful they would need to be. They weren’t alone in a shelter anymore. A vast household of servants and guards surrounded them.

“We have to speak Basawar,” John said softly. “As long as the three of us are here, we’re going to have to remember to only speak in Basawar.”

“Even when it’s just us?” Bill asked.

“Always,” John whispered. He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone might be listening to them even now.

“But I sound like some kind of retard.” Bill scowled. “I mean, it takes me five minutes just to get a sentence out.”

“You’ll get better with practice,” John spoke the Basawar words carefully.

“Easy for you to say, Mr. Show-Off,” Bill whispered.

John refused to respond in English. “Behr, yura’ati vass’atdu Basawar hi.”

“Du, Jahn,” Bill agreed with all the enthusiasm of a sullen teen.

“It won’t be so bad after a while,” John told him in Basawar.

“Wahbai,” Bill responded.

John might have been offended at being called an asshole if he hadn’t known that it was one of the Basawar words that Bill knew and liked best.

From outside the door, John heard the creaking sound again, but this time it grew louder until it became the distinct sound of footsteps. A moment later, there came a light rap at the wooden door. John called for the person to enter and four men in sage green shirts, darker green vests, and black pants came in. The servant boy had been dressed in the same manner. Light yellow embroidered symbols of crossed arrows decorated the high straight collars of the men’s shirts.

Before John offered them more than a greeting, they split into pairs and began grooming Bill and him. The oldest of the servants picked up the tin of goo and began to froth it with one of the smallest of the brushes.

Meanwhile, two other men began working the fine combs through John’s and Bill’s hair. They weren’t rough, but they weren’t gentle either. John supposed that their manner was professional. Still, he would have been reassured by a little more tenderness. When one of the men jerked several hairs out from inside his nostril, John jerked back, barely suppressing a howl of pain.

Bill made a terrible choking noise as the same thing was done to him. The servants seemed unmoved. They had probably forced hundreds of other men to cry out under their ministrations. John briefly entertained the thought that their impassive professional expressions matched those that cold-blooded assassins always wore in movies.

One of the men picked up two of the viciously curved silver picks. John watched him in fascination and slight dread. The man fitted one pick over the other and then selected a small screw that John hadn’t noticed before. He screwed the picks together. In a moment, John realized that the man had just fitted together a pair of scissors.

He combed and trimmed John’s beard, then went after Bill’s.

The old man at last seemed to have worked the goo into a huge white frothy mass. It looked almost exactly like shaving cream. Then, still frothing with the brush, he spilled a little of the red powder into it and then the wood shavings. John frowned.

The old man stepped up next to him and smiled widely.

John smiled back and the old man shoved the now pink woodchip-infused foam into his mouth. A flavor like stale cinnamon seeped over John’s gums. The old man began scrubbing the foam against John’s teeth with another of the brushes.

While the old man brushed John’s teeth, another man went to work on his toenails and fingernails. Then the man began to trim away at the hair on John’s body. John remained as still as he could, listening the clink and click of sharp implements far too close to his most tender areas.

He glanced over to Bill to see how he was managing. Bill looked like a cat being given an enema. John almost laughed.

After everything else, the shaving was quick, painless, and simple. The last tin, the one full of white powder, was worked into a lather and the sharp silver blade was used. Then it was done. The four servants packed up their tools and left Bill and him sitting there gleaming, naked, and dazed. It reminded John of stories of how people were found after alien abductions.

John thought of telling this to Bill, but he couldn’t figure out how to say alien in Basawar. And Bill wouldn’t have understood him anyway.

Bill opened his mouth as if to say something but then didn’t.

A few moments later there was another knock. John called for the person to enter, though this time he was a little more hesitant. The servant boy who had brought them the towels poked his head in. He bowed slightly before fully entering the room. John closed the door behind the servant boy, since his arms looked too full to do it for himself.

“These are for you, sirs.” The boy laid the stack of clothes down on the bench beside Bill.

Every garment was a shade of muted green, ranging between olive and sage. Beyond the color they bore little resemblance to the stiff, formal clothes that the house servants wore. These rustic garments were simple: pullover shirts, long underwear, and heavy pants. None of them had holes but they felt soft and worn in. Probably donations or secondhand goods. Most of the clothes were slightly too short for John and too big for Bill, but they were all warm and clean.

When the servant boy stepped out of the room to retrieve their boots, Bill leaned close to John and whispered, “We look like the Jolly Green Giant and his little buddy Sprout in these getups.”

“Vass’hi Basawar, Behr,” John whispered back.

“Du, du.” Bill scowled at the reminder.

Once they had their boots on, the servant boy led them out of the bath and through the house. Aside from his own bed, John had seen very little of the place earlier.

The tapestry-insulated walls and stone archways seemed medieval and out-of-date when compared with the piping and mirrors in the bathroom. John noticed that there were sconces on the walls for torches. Iron chandeliers filled with unlit candles hung from the ceilings of the larger rooms. The strong smell of burning wood pervaded the building, and with it came the scent of animals, oil, tallow, and lard.

They ascended a narrow stone staircase, which brought them into a surprisingly small room. John had been half expecting some large feast hall full of rough-hewn tables, rush mats, and tankards of beer. He guessed the image had come to him from some half-remembered Robin Hood movie.

Aside from the drab tapestries on the walls and floor, the chamber was nothing like what he had expected. A small fire flickered and snapped behind a decorated screen. At the far end of the room, sharp morning light poured in through tall windows. A highly-polished, rectangular wooden table dominated the chamber. Dark wood chairs circled it. Silver trays of steaming meat and plates of bread and other foods covered the table.

Laurie, dressed in a simple olive shift and a dark green sweater, was already seated. She, like Bill, looked tiny in her loose-fitting clothes. Her long light hair shone white in the hard light.

The three other women seated opposite Laurie looked like plump dolls in comparison. Where Laurie’s skin was red and chapped, theirs was creamy and smooth. Their breasts were full, as were the curves of their hips, unlike Laurie’s body, which seemed as flat and sharp as an assembly of wooden planks. She resembled the table more than the women sipping from delicate bowls across from her.

The woman opposite Laurie was older, perhaps forty-five or fifty years old, while the two girls beside her looked barely out of their teens. All three of them had dark hair and wore it up in ornate, twisting braids. Little strings of silver beads hung from their hair and dripped down the pale green folds of their long flowing dresses. John didn’t know what material their clothes were made from, but it caught the light and shimmered like silk.

“Tumah,” John greeted the women and bowed the same way the servant boy had bowed to him in the bathroom. Bill followed his lead. Laurie twisted around in her seat and smiled at them. Her expression was one of both joy and desperation. John wondered how long she’d been waiting and how well she’d managed to field questions.

All three women stood. The one in the middle beckoned John and Bill into the room. Her hands were small with long white fingernails. Tiny silver chains hung like delicate manacles between the silver rings on each of her fingers. John guessed that she was the noblewoman whom the convoy had been escorting along with her son.

“Gentlemen, we are so glad that you have arrived. Please, won’t you be kind enough to join us in our morning repast?” The lady spoke in the most formal form of Basawar, adding soft whispered honorifics and drawing each word out into the next so that she was almost humming.

John froze, momentarily overwhelmed by the lady’s formality and poise.

Bill immediately deferred to John dropping back slightly.

All through the morning John had been silently preparing himself for another conversation like the ones he had easily managed with Pivan and other soldiers. Direct and to the point, more interrogations than conversations, really.

He’d guessed most of his responses would be limited to yes or no answers. The majority of his effort would have been channeled into listening closely to the questions, so that he made the right choice. He hadn’t thought to expect formality, civility, or niceties. He wasn’t sure that he was up to that level of language yet.

 
He felt one of Bill’s bony fingers jabbing into his side, and realized that he had to respond to the lady’s question.

“Thank you.” John could hear the roughness of his words. “It would be our honor to join you.”