CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Calantha escorted me to the bath chamber. While my door was no longer locked as if I were a prisoner, my new freedoms apparently still required guards posted at the end of my hall as a precaution, the Komizar claimed, and I had no doubt they reported back to him every single time I so much as poked my head out the door. I also had escorts, who were essentially guards too, everywhere I went. Last night when Calantha walked me back to my room, she hadn’t spoken a word. This morning seemed to bring more of the same treatment.
We entered the dreary, windowless bath chamber, lit only with a few candles, but this time instead of a wooden barrel, there was a large copper tub. It was half full of water, and waves of steam shimmered over the surface. A hot bath. I hadn’t thought such a thing existed here. The sweet scent of roses filled the air. And bath oils.
She must have noticed my steps falter. “A betrothal gift from the clan,” she explained flatly, and she sat on a stool, waving me toward the tub.
I disrobed and eased into the scalding water. It was the first hot bath I’d had since leaving the vagabond camp. I could almost have forgotten where I was if not for Calantha’s baubled blue eye staring at me and the milky one gazing unfocused into the shadows.
“Which clan do you belong to?” I asked.
That got her attention. Both eyes were focused on me now. “None,” she answered. “I’ve never lived outside of the Sanctum.”
This revelation puzzled me. “Then why did you have me braid my hair to show off the kavah?”
She shrugged.
I sank down into the tub. “That’s how you solve all your problems, isn’t it? With indifference.”
“I have no problems, Princess.”
“I am your problem, that much is certain, but even that’s a mystery to me. You both prod me and thwart me as if you can’t make up your mind.”
“I do neither. I follow orders.”
“I think not,” I countered and ran a soapy sponge down my leg. “I think you’re dabbling with a bit of power, but you’re not quite sure what to do with it. You test your strength now and then, bring it out of hiding, but then you shove it away again. All your boldness is on the outside. Inside you cower.”
“I think you can bathe by yourself.” She stood to leave.
I took a handful of water and threw it at her, splashing her face.
She bristled, and her hand flew to the dagger at her hip. Her chest rose in deep, angry breaths. “I’m armed. That doesn’t worry you?”
“I’m naked and unarmed. I’d be a fool not to worry. But I did it anyway, didn’t I?”
Her eye blazed. There was no indifference in her face now. Her lip lifted in a condescending sneer. “I was like you once, Princess. Answers were simple. The world was at my fingertips. I was young and in love and the daughter of the most powerful man in the land.”
“But the most powerful man in—”
“That’s right. I was the daughter of the last Komizar.”
I leaned forward in the tub. “The one who—”
“Yes, the one your betrothed killed eleven years ago. I helped him do it. So now you know, I am quite capable of being bold. Arranging someone’s death is not so difficult.”
She turned and left, and the heavy door rattled shut behind her.
I sat there stunned, not quite sure what to think. Had she just threatened to orchestrate my death? I was young and in love. With the Komizar? What did she think when she found out about our marriage? Was that why she had been so silent? Surely she had more reason now to kill me.
I finished my bath, the luxury of it now gone. I rubbed the sponge over my arms, trying to think only of the baths where Pauline scrubbed my back and I scrubbed hers, how we poured pitchers of warm rosewater over each other, the baths where we laughed and talked about love and the future and all the things that friends share—not murder. I couldn’t quite absorb it. Calantha had helped the Komizar kill her own father.
And yet she hadn’t drawn her dagger on me, even though I saw the rage in her eye. I had pushed her just as I intended, but didn’t get the answer I expected. Still, much was revealed. In the heartbeat of a second, beneath all the scorn that masked her face, I saw a girl, a younger Calantha, one without an eyepatch, who was terrified. A small glimpse of truth.
She is afraid.
Fear and thannis were two things that seemed to grow easily in this kingdom.
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