With that, Vetrius rounded on Ashara, beckoning the heathen woman with a single finger. She passed me, head high, crusted blood streaking her chin. Her wide, dark eyes fixed on the depths of Falstaff’s chain veil. The thermae seemed almost to throb with the intensity of it.
Falstaff’s fingers, still pressed together, trembled again.
“Come, laurel.” Vetrius’ timbre had my lips curling, head angling to where he grasped her elbow.
Ashara stood, five paces or so from where I remained rooted, unresponsive to Vetrius’ order or touch. Her eyes flickered overthe expanse of my face, as if searching for an answer to a question I did not know she had asked. Whatever words she longed for, I would give her.
“Ashara?” I mouthed.
Her lids closed, chest rising with a deep breath, a slow exhale parting her lips before she finally obeyed his command. Guided by the Butcher, she turned to leave me once more, her body swallowed in the steam.
Chapter twenty-four
Ashara
The Druid’s Bath
And the good Sister went and took her lips, and offered them to Him to do as He wished. To burn, to smote, to drain. To listenis immutable, to speak is profane. -22:13–14 - The Book of Dendralis
Demetri was alive and yet, remained as unreachable as the man I had mistaken him for upon the Blood Tree’s dais. I’d watched on, helpless, as that laurel turned to stone, immobilised by collar and rod. Though no such leash was tethered to me now, I felt its phantom pull nonetheless, the Butcher leading me towards the bath on its invisible draw.
With a final glance over my shoulder, I looked at Demetri—at the paxiams ushering him towards the opposite arch with three men in tow, their bodies stained grey with ash. Our irises collided, his familiar hickories blazing with a different sort of heat than the usual hearthfire warmth. Honed on their intensity, an understanding passed between us. We would do all we could to find one another again, if only to give voice to the goodbye we’d never the chance, or courage, to say. If only to indulge in one last, small sin.
A rock of resolve settled low in my stomach. I would go through the motions: I would appease the Butcher, play my part in whatever schemes he was involved with, delay the inevitable where I could. But Iwouldsee Demetri again before the end. By the First, I would.
With effort, I forced my gaze forward towards the mosaiced arch, prompted by a curt grunt from the druid, his patience with me long since thinned.
“You as well,” Vetrius called over his shoulder, to a spared woman laurel I was yet to glimpse.
Falling in line behind him, we entered a tunnel smoothed to a rounded curve, its length veiled in tendrils of steam. The passage spiralled downward, swerving endlessly to the left. The mist thinned with each step, the air growing lighter until at last the tunnel widened into a chamber of four squaredwalls, illuminated by brass-wrought pricket sconces. Preserved lavender, chamomile, and rosemary, bound with thin twine, hung from the ceiling in artful bouquets, the musk of cured flora mingling with the salt of the steam. Fingers skimming the surface of a lacquered bench to my right, I passed beneath a shallow alcove carved into the wall, home to an array of glass bottles. I stopped to examine their contents, each illustrated with a bleeding image of the oil within, the ink wetted by the damp air. Rose, mint, lavender, cypress,jasmine.I scoffed, cheeks tingling at the memory of the druid’s sheets.
His hands hung loosely at his sides, as if he did not quite know where to put them, too accustomed to gripping a hilt or clutching the edge of a pulpit. One finger drummed against his thigh.Tap, tap, tap.It was a strange thing, to look openly upon a druid’s arms, his hands, the only parts left bare of cloth or metal. Dark hair dusted their base, veins raised and crossed over his knuckles. The memory of them tightening around my throat only moments ago made it constrict again, as though his touch still lingered there. Would they eventually wring from me the last of my breaths? He cleared his throat, and I lifted my eyes, fixing them on the burning sconce over his shoulder, its heat no match for the blaze rising in my face.
“This is the preparation chamber,” he said, voice rebounding off the tiles. “Strip and leave your clothes on the floor, and—”
His attention snapped to the woman beside me, and I looked too. She tore at her dress with all the frantic urgency of someone aflame. Her bodice gave way, breasts spilling free, and my stomach twisted at the sight of them, mottled green and blue with bruises. I imagined the druid’s cheeks must have burned redder than my own, judging by how quickly his hand flew to the back of his neck and his helm turned towards the wall.
“I didn’t mean stripnow,” he gritted, but she was undeterred. Free of clothes, her legs—as beaten and bruised as her breasts—stomped on the pooled fabric at her feet as if she were crushing grape skins for juicing.
“Sceleste, kopia kutt! Ure! Ure!” She cursed at the garment in her tongue, kicking it away to skid across the tiles and land near the Butcher’s boots. Throwing her head back, she laughed, the booming sound raising gooseflesh on my arm.
Iknewthis woman. Beneath the grey, the ash, the bruises, I knew her. Her skin, once lighter than parchment, was stained with the marks of fists and boots, the worst of it gathered around her middle, where blotches of purple bloomed like peonies across her ribs and hips. What I could make out of her face was swollen and bleeding, mapped with countless nicks and gashes. One eye had vanished beneath the swell of her brow, and her right arm hung limp at her side, the angle of her shoulder all wrong. Even so, no tension pinched her expression, and her wide mouth stretched into a great, open smile, the blood on her chin cracking like clay.
“Esioul?” I asked.
I could almost feel it, the grip of the paxiams as they dragged her away, fingers knotted in the long length of her hair. It hurt to look at her, but I did all the same, forcing myself to trace every place the honourable guards of the Dendralis had chosen to paint her body, each stroke more violent than the last.
But despite it all, she lived. We lived.
Lips pursing, her wide smile collapsed to a scowl as one eye narrowed. Her head shifted between me and the Butcher, who was struck silent for once. He nudged the ash-coated pits’ yarn with the toe of his boot, then lifted it between thumb and forefinger, holding it away from his body as though it might bite.
“Burn it. Burn it. Burn it.” Esioul abandoned her glaring to point at the ruins of her dress, stamping the floor as if it were still beneath her feet and not yet fully dead. Marching to thebottles, her spine and ribs visible under her marbled skin, she uncorked them one by one, lifting each to her nose.
“Ne, ne, hoc nequit,” she muttered under her breath, inhaling deeply, tsking and tutting before casting each bottle aside, letting them clatter to the floor and roll beneath the bench.
The sensation of needles spearing into my cheek had my head turning to the Butcher, his helm angled to the side of my face. Beneath the metal, his eyes were no doubt boring into mine, plagued by the same question: what in the pits was she doing?
“Esioul,” he said, drawing his gaze from me to approach her as one would a rabid animal, hands outstretched. I registered the small splash of surprise at her name on his tongue, certain he’d call her a heathen, just like the rest. Just like Falstaff.
