Wet footprints speckled the marble where slaves had padded to and fro only moments before, lighting the hundred candles that ringed the floor. They were gone now, the doors closed and sealed for his privacy. Baros Tsen T'Varr lowered himself gingerly into the pleasantly stinging water and sniffed, taking a deep lungful of steam and the scent of Xizic. He smiled. Across the water, his lady Kalaiya smiled back, a slave but a very special one. And actually I like my slave and my apple orchards better than my baths, though it would pain me to lose either. Our little secret, eh? For there wasn't anyone in the many worlds more special than Kalaiya. To Tsen, at least.
He took a deep breath and then another. The Xizic scent rose around him. He'd let Kalaiya choose today and she'd gone for something a little different. Deeper and more subtle than his own favourites. His eyes narrowed as he tried to place it. ‘The finest oil of the desert from Shinpai,’ he guessed, and watched her face. From all the way across the desert on the far coast of Takei'Tarr. And her own scent hid behind it like her face hid behind the steam.
She kept him guessing a moment and then her smile brightened and she nodded. ‘You always have to be right. One day I'll trick you, you know.’
‘I hope so.’ He sighed deeper into the water and tipped back his head until only his nose and his eyes were above the surface. Sometimes when he looked at her and saw that little prickle of resentment that every slave carried with them, somewhere deep down he wondered at himself for keeping her, for not letting her go. I love her. I should let her fly if flight is what she wants. He thought exactly the same thing every time he saw her. But he never did and never would.
‘You look happy today,’ she said when he sat up and looked at her again. Her face was soft and warm, glistening in the damp heat, slightly mocking perhaps but always kind.
‘Life is good, my dear.’ More ritual words to go with the ritual of thought. He said them every time they bathed and usually he meant it. The life of a t'varr to a sea lord was a fine thing. On other days he might have laughed at that — unless your sea lord is Quai'Shu with his impossible schemes of dragons. But not today. Today he brought with him something wonderful.
‘Are you back here for long?’ She'd been his favourite for years, taken from the desert by Cashax slavers long ago, and he'd found her, and she'd understood him at once, better than any of the Xicanese. She knew his secrets and she kept them and so he was good to her. And he liked her. A lot. That little thing so rare.
‘Not for long, my dear. But when I return I'll take you with me. Some things will be so much less awkward that way.’ And how wonderful it would be to have her with him again all the time, just like it had been in Xican before. He half-sat, half-lay in the water, letting its almost painful heat wash through him. He was sweating already. A bathhouse was a place for sweat. And for reflection and drifting and the numbing of thought.
According to the strict definition of duties, a t'varr was responsible for arranging things. Huge things. If Quai'Shu wanted an eyrie in which to raise dragons, his t'varr found it for him, as Baros Tsen had done. And if Quai'Shu desired his whole fleet to sail to the western realms to steal dragon eggs, why then Tsen T'Varr would dutifully make sure that those ships were available and properly provisioned, and if he wept with fear at how few of them might return, he kept such concerns to himself — or more likely brought them here to the steam and Kalaiya's ever-patient ears. But every expedition across the storm-dark is a dance with catastrophe, is it not? What's done is done. It will be what it will be. Yes, and plenty more trite platitudes besides. Put it away. Sweat out the anxiety. Enjoy an hour to yourself. Every day was worse now, wondering how many ships would be lost this time. All he could do was fret. In Xican he didn't even have the eyrie to distract him any more but at least now when he went back there he wouldn't go alone.
Kalaiya leaned across the bath and took his hand, gently massaging his palm, tugging at his fingers. It was an unconscious thing she did without any thought and he loved her all the more for that. ‘You're thinking again,’ she chided. ‘When all is ready, does it not pass from you? You provide the ships, Baros Tsen T'Varr. Our sea lord's kwen has the duty of crewing them and sailing them and his hsian is responsible for what they do when they get there, not you. Is this eyrie not simply a different ship?’
Tsen purred. ‘As if Quai'Shu ever lets Jima Hsian do anything! Now there is a terrible post if ever there was one.’
Kalaiya cocked her head, still pulling at his fingers. ‘Unless what you want is a quiet life lying in your bath, stroking your rather over-large belly and wondering how next to amuse yourself. Yes, yes, it sounds quite terrible.’
Lucky apostate. And I bet you'd find these preposterous demands a thoroughly welcome diversion, Jima Hsian. You could amuse yourself trying to work out what in the name of Xibaiya this alchemist is actually doing. Then again, that's what you're already at, isn't it? Making your predictions? He laughed. ‘Do you know what Jima said when our lord demanded I find him a flying castle where he could grow dragons? “Challenges to the intellect do give a little pepper to a life of pleasurable hedonism and mild over-indulgence, eh Tsen?” I said he was more than welcome to it. But I've built it now. It's mine.’ And you're not having any of it, not any of you, not after all the effort I put into the bathhouse there. Ha! He took Kalaiya's hand in his own. ‘Hsians deal in ideas. Kwens in men. T'Varrs in things and money.’
‘Not the oil in the machine, but the machine itself,’ she laughed too, and her laughter was like music.
‘I miss you so much, every time I leave.’ He shook his head. The machine itself — it was certainly a T'varr-ish thing to say.
‘You don't miss me, you miss this.’ She gestured around at the steam-filled cave, but she knew he meant it.
Tsen smiled and leaned forward. ‘I did give our lord's eyrie its own bathhouse, and it is rather fine.’
‘And was the company rather fine too?’ Her eyes glittered, but they danced with mockery, not with jealousy. She knew him too well. He pulled his hand away and closed his eyes, sipping on a glass of sweet apple wine from his own orchards. The design here was his, and lying in the water was like lying in the warm sea at night, the illusion of endless open space above and to every side.
Kalaiya touched his arm. ‘Where are you, Tsen? Look — the veins in the marble glow below the water. They didn't used to. Have you even noticed? I like it.’