The attendant bowed to Lily and whispered that she was honored to serve the Zhuren’s . . . what? Lily didn’t recognize the word she used and her mindspeech wasn’t as clear as Fang Ye Lì’s. Given how soft her voice was, maybe she didn’t really want to be heard. Was this tiny woman supposed to guard Lily inside the bathhouse? Lily tried to picture her as some kind of aging ninja, capable of guarding dangerous out-realm prisoners. She failed.
Why was she being treated to a bath anyway? Cynna had said their captors were clean freaks, but there were easier ways to make sure prisoners didn’t offend their captors’ noses. Lily shook her head at all the unanswered questions and followed the tiny woman inside.
It was a single room, dim and hot and humid. She caught a faint whiff of sulfur in the heavy air. Heat, humidity, and that sulfuric tang came from the pool that occupied much of the space. A natural hot spring, Lily thought, and wondered if hot springs were common here. Not that she knew what it would mean if they were. She had the vague notion that hot springs were associated with seismically active areas, but that might be wrong.
Low wooden stools were placed around the pool. The attendant pushed her hat back to dangle from its cord, revealing hair the color of sun-bleached winter grass. She bowed and whispered that perhaps the honored lái would remove her clothes and sit?
Ah—that was the word she’d used before: lái. This time Lily caught the meaning that went with it—“new arrival.” A term for fall-throughs, maybe? “Tell me your name first, please.”
“This lowly one is called Ah Hai.”
Surnames came first here, as they did in China. Lily commented that “Ah” was not a surname where she came from.
“I have no family name, honored lái.”
The absence of a family name suggested a tragic lack of standing—bastardy, maybe? Or slavery? Did her bare feet betoken her lowly status? They’d taken Cynna’s shoes away. What did that mean here? Lily wanted to ask, but she needed this woman to feel comfortable answering questions, so she turned the conversation to a less fraught topic—namely, how this bath was supposed to proceed.
Ah Hai was comfortable talking about her area of expertise, and her mindspeech became more intelligible. The basic procedure sounded similar to the way brownies bathed, a communal affair in which you soaped and rinsed off before you got into the hot water to soak. Or to play, if you were a brownie. This bathhouse was usually used by female servants who worked in the compound. Servants didn’t rate a bathing attendant, so Fang had requisitioned Ah Hai, who worked at an upper-class bathhouse in town.
Lily was a prisoner, yet Fang had gone to some trouble to obtain a temporary servant for her. That had to be a status thing. But why? What about Lily made her status high enough that she was supposed to have a bathing attendant?
Ah Hai was happy to show Lily the things she’d brought for Lily’s comfort that weren’t available at a servants’ bathhouse: soft, scented soap; heavy linen toweling; hair oil; three kinds of lotion and two salves. Also a small bamboo flute.
It seemed that Lily was receiving the deluxe treatment. This made her deeply suspicious, but she couldn’t see that it would make any difference for her to refuse the attendant’s services. They needed her alive to give to the G.B., right? Anything else they might do . . . well, they could do it whether or not she cooperated with her bath. Might as well go along and see what happened. She wasn’t crazy about getting scrubbed by someone other than Rule, but he was so damnably far away . . . injured? Alone? Still in Dis? She hated that idea, but it might explain why he felt so distant.
No, that was wrong. If it was a week earlier here than it had been when she left Dis, he wouldn’t be in Dis yet. He wouldn’t even be in California. A week ago they’d still been at Leidolf Clanhome in North Carolina. A week ago, Toby had been at Nokolai Clanhome with his grandfather. He hadn’t been kidnapped yet.
She went very still at the thought, possibilities and improbabilities tumbling through her head. Finally she quit trying to sort them out and sat on one of the low stools to pull off her boots. They laced up the front like combat boots, so she expected them to come off okay in spite of her ankle, which had to be swollen. The first one did; the second did not.
She persevered and ended up with a badly throbbing ankle, two grimy socks, and two bare feet. The blasted ankle would probably swell up even more now. She sighed, stood, and began stripping. When she was naked and uncomfortable about it, Ah Hai snatched the pile of dirty clothes off the floor along with Lily’s boots and socks and hurried to the door.
“Hey!” Lily’s ankle slowed her enough for the attendant to pass everything to one of Fang’s men outside. The door slammed shut again. “Why did you do that?”
Ah Hai bobbed in a nervous bow. “They are dirty, honored lái. They must be cleaned.”
“Is that what the Fist told you? That my things would be cleaned?”
“The honorable Fist Second told me to give them to his man, but surely they will be cleaned.”
“And returned to me?”
“Oh, yes, surely that is so.” She sounded anything but sure. Her frightened smile attempted to placate Lily.
Lily stared at the closed door in frustration. For a long moment she considered storming out of there and demanding the return of her things. But while Grandmother might be able to pull that off, she doubted her own ability to impress armed warriors when she was buck naked. Not in a way that added to her status anyway.
“Your ankle is hurt, yes?” Ah Hai said timidly. “When you are finished soaking, I will wrap it for you and apply salve to your other hurts. I have good salves. If you will sit, honored lái?”
Lily sighed, limped back to the nearest stool, and sat. “Tell me about the Zhuren.”
“They are very great,” Ah Hai whispered.
“Very powerful, yes,” Lily agreed, and began unfastening the braid she’d put her hair in roughly one day and two worlds ago. “We don’t have Zhuren where I come from.”
The woman sucked in a breath in startled sympathy. “I will pour the water now, if you will tip your head back.” She did so, wetting Lily’s hair thoroughly, then began working some of the soft soap into her scalp. Her fingers brushed Lily’s skin and Lily’s lips parted in surprise. Ah Hai was an empath, God help her. It was a very minor Gift, though, so maybe it didn’t cause her too much misery. The little woman might have to touch someone to pick up their emotions clearly.
Not that she’d pick up anything from Lily. Her own Gift blocked all magic, the helpful along with the harmful, although for reasons she didn’t understand, the kind of body sensing healers used did work on her . . . but Ah Hai’s empathy wouldn’t. That must seem very odd to the woman.
Half a dozen questions pushed into Lily’s mind. Her fingers itched to jot them down, but she didn’t have her notebook, a pen, or anything else, and she had to set priorities for this interview. So as Ah Hai lathered Lily’s hair, Lily coaxed her to talk about the Zhuren. Nothing secret, she assured the woman. Only those things that everyone here knew.