In the silence, Nyateneri murmured, “Secrets everywhere.”
“Yes,” Lal said. “So there are.” She swung down from her saddle, and after a moment Nyateneri joined her. Lal handed me the three horses’ reins, saying only, “Thank you, Rosseth,” before she hurried toward the inn herself. Nyateneri winked slowly at me and strolled after her. Gatti Jinni continued rolling and squalling on the doorstep.
I did what I could. I took all the reins in one hand, and I put my free arm around Tikat’s shoulders, and I brought everybody back to the stable. The horses crowded me, eager for their stalls, but Tikat came along as docilely as though he were on a rope himself, or a chain: head low, arms hanging open-palmed, feet tripping over weed-clumps. He said no word more, not even when I helped him up the ladder to the loft, raked some straw together, gave him my extra horse-blanket, and wished him goodnight. While I was rubbing the horses down, I thought I heard him stirring and muttering, but when I climbed up again to bring him some water, he was deeply asleep. I was glad for him.
With the horses taken care of, I thought I had better go up to the inn and help Marinesha clear away dinner. I was halfway there when a figure seemed to leap out of the bare ground just in front of me. I almost dropped to the ground myself—those two hunters were somewhere very near, I knew that in my belly—but the shape hailed me, and I recognized that curious sharp voice immediately. It was the old man with the grandson in Cucuroa, the one who wandered into the inn now and again to sit long over his ale and chat with anyone he could find. As handsome a grandsir as ever I’d seen by far, with his bright cheeks, white mustache, and marvelously long, delicate hands. Every time I watched him turning one of our earthenware mugs round and round between them, talking of strange beasts and old wars, I would think, I wish I had hands like that, and a life that such hands could tell and frame. Although I had never seen him with Lal, Nyateneri, or Lukassa, I thought of him in the same way: a southwest wind blowing across my common days, smelling of such stories, such dreams, as all my soul could not contain, let alone understand. His voice made me nervous and irritable if I listened to it for very long, but that seemed right too, then, in those days.
“And there you are,” he said, “and where else should I have expected to find you but journeying between one chore and the next?” He patted my arm and smiled at me out of eyes as blue as Karsh’s eyes, but completely different, eyes like snow in shadow, almost as edged and painful to look at as his voice was to hear. He said, “Tireless child, I am sent bearing yet another task for you. The lady Nyateneri has gone to the bathhouse this quarter of an hour past, and wishes you to attend her there. I volunteered to bring you the message if I met you on my way home. Now you have it and I will be gone, and a very good evening, young Rosseth.” He was already by me with those last words, already easing into darkness.
The summons did not strike me as unusual. The bathhouse at The Gaff and Slasher was a grand one for the time and the region, with two rooms: one for a tub and the other divided by a long trench filled with great stones.
By now Nyateneri would have lighted the fire laid under the stones and some would be starting to glow red. Steam-baths are popular enough in other northern parts, but never much so around Corcorua—Nyateneri was one of the few guests I had ever seen make use of Karsh’s odd and only extravagance, which he loudly regretted building every day that I ever knew him. I never thought to turn and look after the old man, but hurried on the rest of the way to the inn.
At the kitchen pump, I drew two buckets of water and started for the bathhouse. The path was treacherous in the darkness, being cross-laced with thick old tree-roots— even knowing it as well as I did, I could have broken an ankle almost as easily as spilling a bucket—and I went slowly for that reason, and for another as well, which I admit with some shame even now. To raise steam within the bathhouse, I never went inside, but gradually poured the cold water over the hot stones through a channel set low down between the logs. But there was another space, a bit below eye level, a slit as long as my hand and wide as my thumb, through which I had great hopes of glimpsing Nyateneri before the steam hid her nakedness. I offer no defense of this behavior, except perhaps what came of it.
The night was so still that I could easily hear Nyateneri’s soft footsteps, so close. I wished the rising half-moon out of the sky behind me, since I feared that one as quick as she might well notice the golden glint suddenly vanishing when my head blocked the light. Setting down one bucket, I began carefully tilting the other, stooping at the same time to peer through the tiny gap in the bathhouse wall.
For a moment I saw nothing but bark and my own eyelashes. Then something bright flashed across my vision and instantly back—left, right—followed by a swift double thump of feet, as though one dancer had mimicked the step or leap of another. I pressed my face closer against the logs, squinting for all I was worth, and at once caught my longed-for, impossible, mouth-drying view of Nyateneri’s left breast. For just a moment, it filled my vision: golden-brown as summer hills, round as the piniak gourds that spill over the market stalls a bit later in the year, with just their sudden upward lilt at the tips. I heard her voice, speaking in a language that I had never heard, and then a reply in the same tongue. The answering voice was a man’s, and I knew it from the first word.
Nyateneri moved away from the wall, giving me a better perspective on the steam-room. She stood with her back to me now, long legs wide apart and slightly bent at the knees, a dagger in her left hand and a bathtowel wound loosely around her right arm. Beyond her I could see the fire-trench and smell the heat of the huge dark stones. She spoke again, her voice amused and inviting, beckoning with the dagger. Another man replied, and a moment later Half-Mouth moved into my view on the far side of the trench, grinning like a snake as he approached Nyateneri, barely lifting his feet, yet somehow dancing. He carried no weapon at all.
When he was close enough that I could hear his light, unhurried breathing, Nyateneri suddenly flicked the towel in his face and leaped easily across the fire-trench to land half-crouched on the other side. Blue Eyes was waiting for her there, sliding in to come under her guard before she regained her balance. But she had never lost it: the dagger flickered too fast for my one eye at the crack to follow, and she was past him as he drew back and heading for the door. Behind her, Blue Eyes licked at his left wrist and chuckled quietly, not bothering to turn.
I could not see the door, nor Half-Mouth either—I could only listen for the thud of his feet and Nyateneri’s, and judge from Blue Eyes’ placidity that she had not made her escape. An instant later, she was back in my range of vision and on his side of the fire-trench, literally whirling toward him, spinning so fast that her one dagger looked like a dozen. Blue Eyes got out of the way only by springing high into the air and somersaulting over the slash that passed within two inches of his belly. As he came down, he slashed out himself—it seemed only with three fingers, and I never saw the blow land. But Nyateneri tumbled sideways, against the wall, and the two of them were at her, laughing in their awful voices. I heard my own voice then, crying out in despair, as she never did. I think they heard me, too.
It would be nice to think that my useless wail distracted them even in the least, but I doubt it very much. What is important is that Nyateneri doubled herself, kicked out and rolled in a way I can’t describe, and was back across the fire-trench while Half-Mouth and Blue Eyes were still getting to their feet. Half-Mouth was breathing differently now, and what he called to her had no laughter in it, in any language. Nyateneri did a quick little saunter of triumph, flourishing her dagger and slapping her rump in derision. May I be forgiven for finding her beautiful and myself as disgracefully randy as any dog, in the midst of my terror for her.