“No, I’m very observant. Your flank-mates know, you know?”
“They don’t matter.” Whatever Orlad wanted was fine by them. Fortunately he wanted Waels.
“Now, are you going to strip in here?”
“I s’pose another dip won’t hurt me.”
“That’s all I need-to get a proper look at you.”
Starting to feel flattered, Waels said, “You’re welcome. Admire anything you want.” He tried to look cryptic.
The bathhouse was large and dim, just a log shed built over a creek, full of dank odors of mud and wet timber. Water entered by a trough about thigh height, splashed onto some flat stones, then fed into a pool that took up most of the interior. Some attempt had been made to provide benches and flooring, but mud had spread over everything. There was no one else there-to Waels’s intense relief-but the Revengers had churned the pool to a black wallow.
“The idea is to get yourself dirty in that,” he said, “and then crawl under the dribble to get clean again.”
Benard waded into the wallow, loincloth and all, and sat down with only his head showing. He sighed with delight. And looked expectantly at Waels.
Who said, “It’s very dark in here. Wouldn’t you rather wait until
… I mean…”
The artist chuckled. “I can see very well. Get it over with. I won’t laugh.”
“There’s nothing to laugh at!” Waels said angrily, and stripped to prove it. Funny-he’d been naked around men every day for years and never felt embarrassed like this before.
“Feet a little closer together,” Benard said. “Bend your left knee just a… not so much. Now imagine you’re holding a heavy wine jug against your thigh. A little higher. Oh, yes! Push that hand down with the other one so I see how your muscles would take the weight. Wonderful! Turn around. Thank you. You’re going to be holy Cienu, except you’ll be wearing that gorgeous smile of yours instead of looking like a virgin on her wedding night.”
Waels responded to that remark by jumping into the pool ass-first and throwing a monster wave into Benard’s face. He spluttered and laughed.
For a moment they just sat there in the muddy water and grinned. Benard himself had a mammoth-wrestler’s physique. Orlad did not, but he was much stronger than he looked, able to do wine-jug-at-arm’s-length tricks that even Snerfrik couldn’t.
Waels said, “You’re going back to Kosord now, to finish your statues?”
“Hope so. Ingeld has to bear Oliva there-our daughter. Horold is no threat now. What are you going to do?”
What Waels wanted to do and what he could do were very different. “Don’t know,” he said miserably. “Thanks to you Celebres, Stralg’s brothers are both dead. His sister should be by now. But who’s going to rule after them? Heroes won’t be short of work in my lifetime.”
“Seems wrong to kill for a living.”
How could such a hunk of a man be so unmanly? “You don’t want to be doge of your father’s city?”
Benard guffawed. “Me? You’re joking!”
How could a man with such incredible courage have so little ambition?
Pause.
“Waels…”
“Mm?”
“You love Orlad?”
Any other man who had the cheek to ask that would learn not to very swiftly. “What’s it to you?”
“Just that I’m very happy about it. Orlad’s been hurt more than any of us, even Dantio. He reminds me of castings I do sometimes-a coating of hard bronze outside and a clay center. Of course, in the casting the clay is baked hard, but I think there’s still some human softness left deep inside Orlad. I hope you can find it. He loves you?”
Waels debated breaking another neck, but three in one day seemed excessive. The alternative was to trust this bewildering, tangled sculptor person. “He says he thinks he does. He says he’d rather be with me than with anyone else, and he will never do anything to hurt me.”
“Then he’s being honest, and that’s rare in love affairs. You can’t expect more from him yet. Ask Ingeld. She knows more about love than Eriander, who just peddles lust. Her goddess does, I mean. She’ll advise you. No, I mean it. Talk to Ingeld.”
After a moment, the sculptor shrugged, raising ripples. “I don’t know if this would help… I can’t promise anything. If that birthmark bothers you, I can ask holy Anziel to remove it. She sometimes does favors like that for me. Often she won’t, of course, but you would be incredibly beautiful without it. It would be a sort of present to Orlad.”
Great murderous, frightful, wonderful Weru!
Waels had not really believed Orlad’s account of how his sister had escaped from the satrap’s palace. But… He looked down at his paler limbs, glimmering under the muddy water. Benard’s were almost invisible. He was a black-stubbled brown face floating above nothing.
Trying hard to keep his voice steady, Waels said, “If you can do that, can’t you change all of me?”
Benard looked startled. “What? Why?”
“Because Orlad’s going over the Edge to win back his city and he won’t let us go with him! Fair-haired Werists die on sight over there, he says. I’ve told him I don’t care, but he insists.”
“You love him that much, that you’d go and fight for him?”
“And die for him if I must.”
“You’re sure, absolutely sure…?”
“Oh, yes!”
“That’s beautiful too,” the artist said. “Be quiet a moment.”
He stared at Waels and for a while his lips moved. Then just a stare. At last he frowned in annoyance. “This is harder than I thought it would be. Look, grab a couple of handfuls of mud and rub it in your hair.”
“Why?”
“Shut up and do it.”
Waels hesitated. An extrinsic telling a Hero to shut up? If this was a juvenile joke… If anyone came in… He pulled up two handfuls of black muck and did as he was told, rubbing it into his stubble.
“Now your face,” Benard said.
The mudface said! Admiration of a man’s courage only went so far. Either this artist was gibbering crazy or he was trying to sucker a Hero and ought to be dismantled. But Waels thought about losing Orlad and nothing would be worse than that. He spread more of the revolting ooze over his face.
“And your ears. And neck. Down to your collar. Then either cover your shoulders too or put them under water where I can’t see them. And be quiet again.”
Any moment now half a dozen men would come storming in and start laughing their guts out.
Benard sighed. “All right, wash it off now. I’m sorry. I must be out of favor today. I’m not supposed to meddle in wars.”
Waels ducked under the surface and rubbed his hair and beard clean, or so he hoped. The water went up his nose. He emerged spluttering. His hands were still dirty. He rubbed them. They stayed dirty, didn’t feel dirty, arms the same color…
Benard nodded happily. “Seems I am in favor after all. Praise the lady!”
Waels erupted out of the pool and confirmed that he really was brown all over, the exact shade Orlad was. Miracle! Palms and nails pinker… Black hair! Even the hairs on his arms.
“Oh… Hero?” Wearing a stupid grin, Benard waded out and thumped him on the shoulder.
The new Florengian had to try twice before he managed to croak, “What?”
“I love that baby brother of mine too! Look after him for me, won’t you? Wherever you two go and whatever you do together, you keep him safe!”
HETH HETHSON
— or Heth Therekson, as he must now call himself-said, “Now that my father has gone, of course I am happy to claim his name and acknowledge my membership in such a distinguished family, my lady. To be related even just to you alone is a wonderful honor, a cause to boast.”
He walked across the guard room to a bench and sat down. He felt as if he had been standing a very long time and yet that couldn’t be, because-
Saltaja delicately licked fingertips. She had eaten almost everything on the tray, which had been a meal fit for a Hero in training. She pushed it to the far side of the table. Heth suddenly realized that he was starving. He couldn’t recall eating anything since-