8. Quinn

After the second half of the company bathed, we were granted a bath.

They divided us into groups of two or three, one soldier escort for each, down the bank of the stream to behind the water trees.

The sun was almost gone and the forest was mainly lit from the two campfires and a glowing pale blue and green moss that grew along the bank and the stream’s stone bed.

As the sunlight faded, the brightness of the mushrooms and moss increased and soon the river looked like it was made of moonlight.

“That might be the most magical thing I have ever seen,”

breathed River from where she sat in her place on the chain strung between two trees, her right hand supporting her on the ground chained by a shackle, her left pointing at the stream.

“It really is,”

I replied.

“And I say that as a woman who does not believe in magic.”

“And we are going to the most magical country in the continent.”

“Are you going to tell me the rumors about dragons are true?”

“Not quite,”

she answered.

"They worship the elements.

Brother Air.

Sister Sea.

Father Fire.

Mother Earth.

And they borrow magic from their four divinities by blood sacrifice.

Well, that and other sacrifices, but I do not know how it all works.”

“Blood sacrifice?”

“Each citizen of Tintar has a leaning towards one of the four.

Usually what one of their parents has.

Nine of ten are small affinities.

Sea Tintarians never drown.

Air Tintarians are light on their feet and an air Tintarian with a strong endowment will always have successful sailing weather.

They offer blood to their god’s element and ask for magic.

I understand they can attain the magic through meditation as well.

Again, most of them only have it in bits.

It is more their history than their present state.

Ancient Tintar used to be overrun with powerful magic wielders.

Fire Tintarians could conjure a wall flame and the like.

Earth Tintarians moved mountains.”

“This is in historical record? This is all real?”

She held her left hand out flat and wiggled it.

“Yes and no.

I have never seen it.

Few outside of Tintar have.

But it is a vital part of their culture.

Their capital city—”

“Pikestully, correct?”

“Yes! Pikestully has four huge temples.

All next to the Shark King’s castle.

And the four archpriests of each element serve the king closely.”

“The lunatic.”

“Yes, Hinnom is a known force of extremeness.

And he is mad.

He apparently swims off the coast to wrestle sharks when he is restless and his hall is decorated with their bones.

His throne is made out of their jaws and sits inside the full jaw of a shark the size of a house.

He apparently harpooned it and had his naval ships drag it to shore.

That’s why all their army breastplates have that tooth sigil.

Sharks are his obsession after power and dominance.

For he is crazy, but he is a military genius.

He has beat the Helmsmen clans back into the northernmost mountains before unmapped wasteland begins.

He has locked up all ports along the continental coast and any other country has to pay a high tariff to use their ports.

And he is not a frivolous man.

Almost all of their taxes go towards their armies.”

Where were we going? I wondered yet again.

What would happen to us? I stared at the gorgeous stream nearby, at the undulating water tree leaves on the surface, the eerie twists of the eroded roots on the bank.

Lizards crawled along rocks, their naps cut short as the sun left with its heat.

Here I was, at my lowest point, even lower, perhaps than the saddest days of my marriage or the poorest day of my first winter in Eccleston.

For none of those days had been in chains.

At my feet I noticed trampled clumps of wild lavender.

My indulgences in Eccleston had only been on books and lavender oil.

My dresses were plain and well-made, repaired when torn.

I had thick boots for the winter and slim leather shoes that tied at the ankle for warmer seasons, which is what I still had on when I was taken.

I saved all my coin.

But I did buy a lavender oil for my nightly sponge bath and washing my hair occasionally at Mischa’s house she had with Brox, where they had had their own well pump in the yard.

With my left hand, I pulled it from the earth and stuffed it under my scribe’s dress at the neckline.

The smell alone cheered me.

As the deer cooked on the fires, we took our turns.

First Eefa, Bronwyn and Mischa bathed, Fletch, the silver-haired man escorting them.

They returned soaking wet but smelling better.

Then the young man named Luka had taken Catrin and River.

The fair-haired Nash had escorted Maureen and Helena and I noticed his eyes rove over them as they stood next to the chain, right hands extended to be shackled.

Helena’s wet robe over her dress clung to her slim frame.

“The water trees’ leaves have a good scent and they’re coated in a sticky sap,”

said Maureen excitedly.

“I used it to wash my hair!”

“She took a risk,”

said Helena.

“But it was effective.”

“Thank gods,”

said Quinn.

“My scalp is filthy.”

“Mine too,”

I groaned.

“Your turn,”

said Alric, stepping up to our chain, his own close-cropped hair damp from his bathing, nodding towards me and Quinn.

He tossed a bar of soap at me as Nash moved down the line and unlocked first Quinn’s and then my shackles.

His voice lowered for only my ears, Alric said, “Do not try me, priestess.

I am at my limit with you.

If you plan flight, you plan your death.”

I ignored him, rubbing my wrist and leaning down to fish the soap out from the grass.

He herded us past the water trees and to a less steep path down the bank.

We stood on a large outcropping of rock just above the surface.

Alric stood with his hands on hips, watching us.

“How deep is it?”

I asked, untying my shoes with one hand, the other holding soap.

He waited a second to reply.

“Your waist,”

he said, gaze on my midriff as I stood up.

I turned to Quinn and held up my right hand.

We took a giddy half-jump down into the cool water, which while it was flowing was not a strong current.

Our feet easily found purchase on the glittering rocks below.

Our white priest robes billowed out around us.

“Oh my gods,”

I crowed, twirling in the water.

“This feels like kissing your lover for the first time.”

I heard Alric shift from his position up on the rock, taking steps away from us.

Quinn gave a strangled laugh.

I guessed she was not one to laugh regularly.

I smiled at her and put my head under, feeling days of grime and sweat dissolve.

When I surfaced I said, voice under the bubble of the water, “I’m going to take my scribe’s dress off under my robes.

You should take yours off.

It’ll be easier to clean our bodies.”

“I’m too nervous,”

she replied.

“But I do need to clean this serge.”

I handed her the soap and started rubbing the lavender between my hands and all over my neck and scalp.

Walking to the water trees, I grasped on their leaves, crumbling them in my hands.

Maureen was right.

They were slimy with a paste-like sap that smelled like citrus and salt.

I took the remaining lavender and made a paste which I worked through my hair, the waves tangling into tighter and tighter knots.

I both dreamed of and dreaded a hairbrush.

But the dirty feeling on my head was gone.

Under the priest robe, I had pulled my arms inside and undone the ties down the front of my scribe dress, taking it off entirely and leaving my shift and stays on.

I thoroughly scrubbed the dress in the water with the soap once Quinn had finished with it.

Then I squeezed the water out of it and slapped it up against the rock, Alric was standing on.

I could put it on under my robe later.

For now, I wanted to be as naked in this water as I could be.

I began to use the soap on myself and my underthings, vigorously as Quinn also took Maureen’s advice with the water tree leaves.

Both of us were starting to smell human again, that sour rankness leaving our bodies.

Between the stars above, which had not been out the last three nights, the phosphorous moss, the river’s cleanness and the scents of all the forest’s growth, I was lulled into a pocket of peace.

I was alive.

I was, still, somehow, alive.

The water was deeper than Alric said, closer to my chest and I let myself float a little, my eyes on the sky above.

“Do you smell mint?”

Quinn asked, walking through the current back from under the water trees.

“Something has a mint smell.”

“I think some clematis can smell like that.”

“Reminds me of home,”

she said, almost to herself.

I sat up in the water.

“You’re from Perpatane?”

Mint grew all over my birth country.

She stopped her approach.

“Are you?”

“Yes! I— well, I left about ten winters ago.”

“Fourteen winters for me,”

she said, mystified.

“What are the odds?”

I laughed.

“Best choice I ever made.”

“It was the most miserable thirty winters of my life,”

she grumbled.

I laughed again.

“Not a follower of Rodwin?”

Her mouth grew tight.

“No.

I am not one to believe one’s happiness should be denied to avoid an afterlife in a make believe hell. Sorry,”

she said, when she saw me grow serious.

“I truly did hate it there.”

“It was surely the least happy twenty-eight winters of my life,”

I offered.

I tilted my head.

“I noticed you said, ‘I left’ not ‘we left.’ River didn’t come with you at first?”

Her gaze flicked to mine.

“So you know?”

“That you are not sisters? Yes, but not I nor any of the other women care.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they are all Ecclestonians and that has been decriminalized there.

And because, if you are like me, spending your formative winters in Perpatane means you think everyone hates you as much as the spirit of Rodwin hates you.”

She nodded.

“It has in Tintar too.

Been decriminalized, I mean.”

“That must have truly been a hell for you, Quinn,”

I said, my tone apologetic for my guessing.

“I should have allowed you your secrets.”

She shook her head.

“No, it’s nice that you know.

And do not care.

Only some of our neighbors knew and they did not offer opinions either way, but, well, I just had my forty-fourth winter and I still look over my shoulder for the sheriff.”

“Gods,”

I muttered.

“Were you jailed?”

“A winter.

My lover and I were found out.

She repented and married a man her parents chose.

Mine disowned me and I served time in prison.

I hitched a ride on a transport wagon to Eccleston the day I got out.”

All sex outside of marriage was an offense both against Rodwin and the law in Perpatane, particularly between two women or two men.

“I’m sorry, again, for guessing.

But I know how you feel.

It never goes away,”

I said.

“The shame.

All of our pleasure is tinged with it.

Especially for women.

Men who defect from the faith seem to be able to walk away more easily.

But we have Rodwin’s chastening shadow over all of our joy.”

“That we do,”

said Quinn.

“Except with River.

I could never have shame for what we are.

My soul be damned by Rodwin.

She is worth a torturous afterlife.”

I reached out to hold her hand in the water.

“That place will never have us again.

Even shackled by these rude Tintarian invaders, we are still free of Perpatane.”

She let me hold it briefly but pulled away.

As if to make up for her withdrawal, she said, “You seem to always know what to say.”

There was a shout from the bank and then the sound of Alric’s walking towards the man shouting.

I heard one of the younger soldiers, it sounded like the one called Tristan who had guarded us outside the priest’s quarters.

“The tall one’s sister is having some sort of attack.

She keeps asking for her.”

“River,”

said Quinn, alert and sloshing through the water, reaching for the hand Alric had extended to her from the rock, having come back in our direction.

He pulled her up and led her up the bank to where Tristan was waiting.