Dust and Light (16 page)

“We would feed and care for her. Teach her of the goddess and her mysteries. She might come to be an initiate, destined for the mystic functions of a priestess. Or she might serve as a bath attendant, assisting those who seek cleansing here. Her mother’s blood might win out and take her to the scullery. There are many ways to serve the goddess. It would not be your concern.”

“I don’t know. . . .”

Her facile talk stung like salt on raw flesh. I wanted to ask if whoring was a proper service for a pureblood’s bastard, as it had been for a prince’s. Or if child whoring in a god’s house was somehow holier than child whoring in a dyer’s alley. It was this woman’s responsibility to know what went on here.

The high priestess laid a hand on my shoulder. “Let this telling rid you of false love and useless guilt, Seeker. Dedicate yourself to Arrosa’s service, not forsaking the gods of your house, but rather opening yourself to her care. Release the boundaries of your will, so that from this day she may guide you in the proper ways to fulfill the needs of body and heart.”

Sincere piety wreathed her voice and posture. Yet was it solely imagination that I felt her life pulse racing? Did she think a halfblood child might fetch higher fees? Bile stung my throat.

“I’ll prepare an agreement as I’ve outlined,” she said, as if replacing her
silken mantle with a shopkeeper’s apron. “We shall nurture the child to the goddess’s service; you will relinquish all right and interest in her. Would you prefer to wait here or to take advantage of the goddess’s cleansing rite? We’ve private rooms and baths for the gods’ chosen, and attendants especially trained in pureblood customs.”

The baths had brought me here—the scent of ephrain revealed by my bent. I should follow that thread as my grandsire would pursue a clue unearthed by his.

“The baths sound most excellent. What better than to rid myself of the stink of this whole affair?”

“My handmaid will guide you.” She rang a bell hung at her belt. “When your devotions are concluded, she’ll return you here to seal our bargain. An offering of gold to acknowledge our service in this matter is not necessary, but would be most welcome in such difficult times.”

I touched my forehead in respect. I would have preferred to see the woman pilloried. To speak of children as if they were hounds to sell and train should itself be a crime.

T
he sylphlike handmaiden led me
into a hive of warm, moist halls that reeked of ephrain and moonflowers. Her filmy gown clung to her body in the damp. It was impossible to look away.

Was it my own guilt or the aura of this house that made me feel more unclean? As with marriage, pureblood customs in the matter of casual mating were, of necessity, stricter than those of ordinaries. I understood that and accepted it—and with it the guilt of my own sin. Even so, to think that under the aegis of a goddess any man might be offered the same pleasures he could buy in the streets—even the most debauched . . . I doubted any amount of water or prayer could wash away the reek.

“Through there,
domé
.” The young woman pointed me through a narrow, foggy passage. “A bath attendant will meet you in the changing room and accompany you to the private pools. May you find healing and joy in the divine lady’s hand.”

Answers
. That’s what I wanted.

Moisture beaded the stone walls and dripped from the barreled vault. Jeweled lamps cast colored beams through the eddies of steam, guiding me to a small chamber.

As I entered a small room, a slender young man wearing a white loincloth
crossed his arms over his breast and bowed. “Welcome to divine Arrosa’s baths,
domé
. I am Leo, and will attend you through the cleansing rite.”

Behind him, a lattice wall woven with flowering vines separated the small chamber from some larger space. Heat rose from the tiled floor as if the fires of Magrog burned just beneath.

With silken grace, the attendant slipped around behind and removed my pelisse. A simple gesture toward my face and I passed him my mask. He laid both in a carved chest.

The scent of sandalwood and flowers mingled with the aroma of a strong vintage as Leo took a pitcher from a shelf and filled a bronze cup. When he passed the cup to me, I inhaled its aroma. Wine, yes, but something more pungent, too, that carried a searing pleasure straight to every one of my joints.

Between the heat and the heady scents, I was near panting. Fearing to lose my head completely, I took only a sip.

“Though I am ever Lord Deunor’s servant,” I said, “the goddess Arrosa has summoned me here this night. I am unfamiliar with her customs.”

“Be easy,
domé
. Our purpose is to soothe the cares and urgencies of common life that Lady Arrosa may touch your soul.” Leo gestured to the cup in my hand. “The wine contains a tincture prepared from herbs grown in temple gardens. Drink deep that you may hear the songs of the goddess. If you will permit me to remove your garments, I’ll guide you first to the tepidarium to cleanse and anoint you, and then to the hot pool, the caldarium, where the goddess shall make known her will. Command me as you desire. I am accomplished in all ways of soothing a body’s needs.”

He extended a hand toward my buttons and laces. “May I?”

“Yes, certainly . . .” In no time at all, everything but my shirt and underdrawers lay in the sandalwood chest. Leo motioned me to the stone bench. His breath was soft on my thighs as he knelt in front of me, unfastening the wrist bands of my sleeves. His pale hair smelled of moonflowers. The pungent wine boiled in my blood.

All ways of soothing a body’s needs
. Had he answered my first question already? He seemed entirely unembarrassed. I felt a bumpkin; how was I to learn what he meant? I needed to understand what was done with female children and if the child I had drawn was familiar to any here.

“You’re quite skilled, Leo,” I said, grasping his wrist. “But in my house a woman does such tasks as these.”

His head popped up, his brow creased in concern. “The temple provides male bath attendants for purebloods,
domé
, out of respect for your strict customs. But of course, if you prefer, I can fetch a female attendant.”

“My head . . . I get terrible headaches. Female voices . . . and hands . . . are more soothing.” One of my uncles had forever claimed his wife’s was the only voice he could tolerate. “A female will . . . enter the bath with me? Soothe me? She wouldn’t mind?”

“We rejoice to answer divine Arrosa’s call to service.” Was it the heat that caused the slight flush across his back? Or inflamed my own fiery cheeks? I hated this.

The youth bowed and withdrew.

I had taken only a few calming breaths when someone stepped from behind the lattice—not a child, but a woman near my own age. She was lovely—dark, liquid eyes and thick black hair shorn close to her head as some men wore it, though there was no mistaking her sex. A sleeveless white tunic set off perfect skin the hue of hazelnuts.

She bowed. “
Domé
. Leo says you prefer a female attendant.” Her voice flowed deep and thick like dark honey. “I am Eliana. Command me.”

Unseemly thoughts sent urgent messages to every part of me, threatening to obliterate reason.
Command
her? I dared not even consider her removing the rest of my garments or—Great Deunor give me strength—bathing alongside me. I dared not even stand up just now. Rather my eyes fixed on the floor tiles in front of my bare feet . . . which helped not in the least, as the tiles’ designs glorified Arrosa’s works in every possible variety.

“I—” The next word refused to come out. How did I ask?

“Leo also said you were new to our lady’s baths, and, perhaps—please take no offense,
domé
—
unsure
what to expect?”

I took another desperate sip of wine.

“True.” My croak would label me as approximately fourteen.

“I attend men every day—mostly ordinaries, as you would refer to them, but also others of the gods’ chosen—and I am neither shocked nor offended by men’s bodies as they respond to the songs of the goddess. Nor do I consider such responses as an invitation to step beyond the boundaries of your comfort or my own. . . .”

Though delivered in cool sobriety, her reassurance contained some essence beyond pious business. Enough to encourage a glance upward.

She had clasped her hands behind her back. Her gaze was fixed on the
wall above my head, but a portrait artist learns early to notice nuances of expression. Those dark eyes sparked like summer lightning, and her well-proportioned lips hovered on the verge of a smile, as a kestrel hovers above its prey.

“. . . though, naturally, the Goddess of Love moves in ways beyond understanding to heal and nurture those who seek her cleansing. Her service is a joy and a devotion to me. Ask what you will.
Whatever
you will.”

And there was my first answer. Whatever I wished was available from a bath girl. And she was neither afraid nor repulsed.

In my current state, even such a loveless act would have been quite easy. Save for discipline. Save for the pervasive odor of debauchery. A child of eight or ten would find no joy in serving men. Had they plied
her
with tinctured wine?

Arrosa’s rites made good sense. To wash away pent anger and frustration, to empty out one’s surfeit of grief or the stench of failure and replace it with bodily abandon must surely rank with the holiest of experiences. But I could not. Certainly not here. But she had to think I could.

“The goddess already moves in me, I think.” My eyes explored Eliana’s womanly body with deliberate thoroughness. “Proceed.”

S
tretchin
g out my arms, I stood cold and unembarrassed as the woman Eliana removed my shirt and underdrawers. She closed the chest and led me around the vine-covered lattice.

A mantle of mist drifted over a rectangular bathing pool designed for one or two, not a public throng. The tepidarium chamber was grand, though, ringed with a variety of ugly statues, both male and female. Across from the lattice wall, an open arch and a few steps down led into a smaller chamber filled with billowing steam—the caldarium, the hot pool.

Eliana poured water into a bowl and mingled in droplets from several flasks along with rose petals from a basket. Dipping a linen square into the bowl, she invited me to recline on a cushioned bench beside the pool. I stretched out on my left side, and she began to wash my back.
Goddess Mother . . .

Questions, Lucian. The lily child.
“Have you grown up here?” I said, propping my head on one fist.

“Nay. My mam was a tap girl at a sop-house outside Avenus. Serving the Goddess of Love kept us from starving after my da was killed soldiering.” Her firm circular scrubbing moved lower and her voice was low and throaty and inviting. “Mam taught me
all
her prayers and rites.”

She dipped the cloth again and worked down my right leg from buttock to foot. My fist clenched stone hard as I fought to keep my mind on business. I must remain this unpleasant pureblood who had come here to discard his inconvenient bastard.

“Then how did you come here?”

Her strong, sure hands rolled me to the other side. Then she began again. “Mam believed the goddess would grant me a better life than hers. She held off till I was fourteen. I hated waiting.”

“Only fourteen,” I said, as she stretched my arm toward her and began washing at my shoulder. “So young?”

“We’ve several much younger here in the household. The goddess takes us when she will.”

Would they truly send a child to a grown man? I needed answers before I fell into my old sin. Despite my disgust, her closeness, her touch, the damp heat of her as she bent over me, was entirely distracting.

“Do all of them come from taverns and sop-houses?”

She sat back on her heels and met my glare, puzzled. “Certainly not. Yet what does it matter,
domé
? Divine Arrosa purifies us. Sanctifies our work. Makes holy our giving.”

My left hand clenched, recalling the cold, dead flesh my fingers had traced. The bruises. The stillness. Eye sockets that housed no spark. The shift stained with blood. Blood entirely
un
holy.

I yanked my arm from her grasp, shoved her away, and shot to my feet. I towered over her. “I am one of the gods’ chosen,” I bellowed, echoing every arrogant pureblood rant I’d ever heard. “How dare this temple provide me a tavern whore’s daughter old enough to birth brats of her own? You are all the same! You’ll lure me to take my pleasure with you, then try to steal my magic. Send me an innocent. And young; the younger the better. I prefer smoother, cleaner hands.”

Eliana rose, all dignity, eyes lowered. “
Domé
, we have strict rules. Our youngest cannot participate—”

“The goddess brought me here to seek solace after a broken love. You’ve all convinced me of the necessity, assured me of your service. I must be
free
of this!” I clamped my hands to my skull. “Do as you are bound by your goddess. Bring me the solace I require.”

Eliana retreated without turning her back on me or meeting my gaze. Indeed, my blood was pounding, my discipline near fractured by wine and lust and horror. Until these three days past, I had never truly comprehended the depravity of the world. I felt tainted. Filthy.

I snatched up one of the damp linen squares and scoured my face.

The distant music had stopped. Faint drips and seeps punctuated a heavy stillness. Had my ruse worked? With every moment that passed,
new doubts crept in. The woman had appeared so quickly, but now . . . What if they had summoned the Registry?

No.
The Registry would never heed a complaint from an ordinary, not even Irinyi, unless it was a matter of her own contracted pureblood. Did she even have one?

More likely they were fetching a child . . . preparing her. Holy gods. And here I was, naked as a plucked goose.

Hoping the goddess would forgive yet another violation, I slipped into her pool only half cleansed. The pleasantly warm water closed over my head, tickling and teasing my skin as if filled with constantly bursting bubbles.

I stayed under as long as breath allowed, scrubbing at my hair and every bit of flesh I could reach. If refreshment was a sign of Arrosa’s favor, then I had done her no wrong.

Shaking my head like a wet hound, I surfaced for breath and inhaled for a second plunge. A quiet sneeze arrested my movement.

Without rippling the water, I turned, peering into the shifting lamplight. No one was there, unless . . .

I rubbed droplets from my eyes. Behind one of the statues a shapeless lump of gray moved ever so slightly, resolving itself into a slight girl in a gray tunic and bare feet.

My outrage near burst its bounds. Horrid and depraved to send a child to a naked man for his pleasure. But how much more cruel to send her alone.

“Come out,” I said softly, propping my arms on the edge of the pool, determined not to frighten her. “Come into the light. I promise I won’t hurt you. Whatever you think. Whatever anyone’s told you.”

She edged out from behind the statue but kept her back pressed to the wall. Her hair was dark and short, her pale face all eyes. She clutched a bundle of some kind—linen, perhaps, very like the cushions on the bench.

“Come, sit on the bench. I’ll stay in the pool if that pleases you better.”

Still not a word, and still she moved sidewise. Deliberately. Toward the caldarium arch.

I lunged from the pool just as she broke into a run. Long strides took me across the chamber, through the caldarium arch, and down the steps. I caught her just as she reached a stair beyond a second archway. Clamping a hand over her mouth, I hauled her back to the tepidarium. No one
beyond this chamber must hear us. Fortunately the tepidarium itself had no hiding places and no detectable magics.

When I sat her on the bench—harder than I intended—and transferred my hands to her upper arms, she bit off a whimper and averted her eyes. Her flat chest heaved like a bellows beneath her ungraceful garment. She could not have reached her womanhood as yet.

Suppressing fury, I squatted in front of her and kept my voice low. “I’m not going to hurt you. Honestly. I just want to talk a little. Stay still and I’ll let go.”

“Didn’t mean no harm. No offense. Didn’t know there was a Seeker.” Her murmur was soft, as if meant for herself alone. Her eyes were squeezed shut. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean no harm . . .”

“We’ll just talk. I won’t hurt you. . . .”

Both of us continued our litanies, as if creating some new musical counterpoint spoken in whispers. When at last I felt her muscles stop straining, I loosed my grip, finally removing my hands and opening my palms as if to show her she was free. But I didn’t remove them so far as to prevent my grabbing her again did she take advantage.

She was no sacred bath attendant sent to pleasure a man, but a servant
.
Her gray tunic and leggings were the coarsest kersey, her face smudged. The small hands that clutched her bundle of dirty linen were cracked and reddened, though she could be little older than the dead girl child. Ten at most. Her dark hair was cut short and ragged. . . .

“They made her look like you,” I said softly. “Like a scrub girl. Dressed her in rags. Blacked her hair; chopped it off.”

Her eyes popped open so wide I thought they might swallow me. “Please, lord, please. Just wanted to see a bit of magic. Please don’t—”

I grasped her arms again, careful not to pinch, and I shook her gently. “Hush. Look at my face. I’ll not tell. I’d never hurt you. I’ve a little sister not much older. I’ll take my hands away and not touch you again, if you just stay still and answer me. Tell me your name, and I’ll work a bit of magic for you.”

“Name’s Gab,” she said, flinching so violently, my chest near cracked.

“Good. That’s good. Forgive me for hauling you over here so roughly, Gab, but I can’t let anyone hear us. I need to know about the little girl. You know exactly who I mean, don’t you?”

She shook her head briskly.

“The truth, Gab, and I swear I’ll tell no one you were here watching. We must be quick.”

Whoever was coming to supervise my devotions, it was not this child. Guilt nagged at me for detaining her, but I was sure she knew the dead girl. This might be my only opportunity to learn more.

“Now, again. What was the girl child’s name, the one who was so hurt, the one they dressed up to look like you?”

“Priestesses called her Fleure, but she said that weren’t her true name.”

Flower
 . . . Gods, the lily.

“Do you know the man who hurt Fleure? I want to make sure he can never do that again. Not ever. May Deunor, Lord of Fire and Magic, be my witness, all I want of you is a few answers.”

“Don’t know his name. She were so scairt of him, she daren’t speak it, nor even her own. She called him the devil lord, and said if he ever come to fetch her, she was done for.”

A lord. That was something. “All right, Gab. That’s good. When he’d come to visit her, did you ever see his face?”

She shook her head and clutched her bundle tighter. “He didn’t never visit her, not since he brung her. She said he’d come to the temple sometimes, but always chose men to bath him, so I wasn’t allowed near. But on that night I was scrubbing the front steps, and he marched right past me and I knew who it was right off. He were dark and hairy, as she always told me, and he yelled at Hostler to cool his horse and rub it down good, or he’d whip him. And his boots were shined like a black mirror glass. I called him the Bear Lord with Shiny Boots.”

Damn, damn, damn!
If only I knew something of court nobles. Perhaps Bastien did.

Gab was shivering. “I tried to get to her to warn her, but it took me so long, she was already fetched. Her pretty dress was left lie, and her fine shift and her gold hair.” She swallowed a sob. “She said he’d ever swore to rip out her hair. She were so pretty. So kind. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know.” The answer lay in words like soul-dead savagery and demonic cruelty—dry concepts that had taken on their terrible life for me only after my family’s slaughter.

“Just one more question,” I said, glancing at the lattice wall and the caldarium archway. I wanted much, much more, but could not allow Gab to get caught. “Who among the priestesses and others in the temple helped him? Did you see?”

Her smudged brow crinkled. “Didn’t see nobody. By the time I got down here and saw what he was about with her—” She heaved a great, wet sob.

“Here? He brought Fleure here to the pureblood baths and was . . . lying . . . with her? Hurting her?”

“Had her head dangling over the pool. Not swyving, but blacking her poor cut-off hair, so’s it was ugly like mine—as you said. He’d his other great hand on her neck, choking so she couldn’t cry. Weren’t no one else with ’em.” Gab’s lips thinned into a line much too hard for a child. “But ’twas sure Motre Varouna would have took him to her. She tends all the young ones, pretties them, and chooses which go to Seekers what ask for their sort. And she’s the one knows about hair blacking or soaking the color right out, as a Seeker might want it. She—”

Gab inhaled sharply and twisted her neck toward the lattice wall. She stayed sitting, but quivered like a trapped rabbit. “Please, please let me go, lord,” she whispered. “I’m whipped if I’m caught here with a Seeker, less’n they’ve asked for one like me special.”

Multiple footsteps approached from behind the vines. But I had to know. “Is there a drain here? That’s where he took her, isn’t it? The drain?”

“Down the stair.” Her throat was so constricted the words scarce made it through, but she stayed put and pointed to the caldarium.

“Good. Now run,” I said, waving her away, “but peek back this way when you’re well hid.” As she scurried off, I snatched one of the jeweled lamps and quickly bound it to the inflation spell I’d worked in the hirudo. With a word and an infusion of magic, fountains of brilliant light—ruby, emerald, and sapphire—filled the chamber between the pool and the lattice wall, as if the goddess herself had arrived from Idrium.

Under cover of the light beams and gasps from the direction of the lattice wall, I slipped into the pool again. And I opened my palms in thanks toward the caldarium arch, where two great dark eyes reflected my paltry bit of magic.

I
knew Motre Varouna instantly. Not
from her soft young body or the dimples that framed her all-encompassing smile. Indeed I had expected anyone called
motre
or “second mother” to be a crone or at least of the maturity of the high priestess, not a woman younger than I.

No, it was the woman’s fingers gave her away. Her knuckles were white as ivory, as the tips gouged the slim shoulder of a girl in her early teens. When the woman said, “
Domé,
” and bowed so gracefully, those fingers
slid subtly up the child’s neck and into her shining, unbound hair. A telltale yank and the girl winced and slipped gracefully to her knees, her sleeveless silk shift floating about pale, trembling limbs. The child wore nothing else.

The woman’s plump fingers, rigid as a stone spider, settled atop the girl’s bowed head in a mockery of affection. It made me want to vomit.

“I am Varouna, servant of Arrosa, mistress of the temple’s younger charges,” said the woman in a voice like cream. “I have prepared one of Arrosa’s newest servants to assist you in your distress, Seeker. She yearns for the goddess’s mysteries and will do anything required to aid your devotions. She trembles, as do I, at this glory we viewed as we arrived! Was it an offering of magic to the goddess or her bounteous response to your devotion?”