Page 73 of While the Dark Remains
I take a breath. “You only startled me,” I say lightly.
He nods but doesn’t say anything more, just turns and strides on into the narrowing tunnel, his shoulders tight.
I gnaw on my lip and follow him. Our footsteps echo, strangely loud, and there comes the distant sound of running water. I blink and see Hilf, his throat ripped out by the lion, blood on the floor. I see Ballast, stripped to the waist in the great hall, whipped by Nicanor in the sight of us all, to prove that Kallias would not spare even his own son, so imagine what he might do to us? I see Ballast and me sitting on opposite sides of his bed, the deck of cards spread out between us, cake crumbs on his sheets. I see Gulla, running into the great hall and begging Kallias to leave Ballast alone, to not hurt him again. I see Ballastlooking up at me through the hole in his ceiling, hear his oath, born of anger and pain:When I am older and stronger, I’m going to kill him.
The sound of running water grows louder. Ballast glances back, his dark-and-light hair glimmering in the torchlight. “Nearly there.”
He leads me down a few more passages before we step into a cavern that stretches far beyond my sight line. Water rushes black over smooth rocks; stalactites drip gleaming droplets into the underground river.
“Beautiful,” I whisper, my voice lost in the echoing roar.
He shouts to be heard over the water: “It runs quieter down a ways!”
So we pace along the river, the spray leaping up to touch my face.
“Here,” says Ballast, leading me down a winding path through the rocks, to where a pool has collected from the river’s runoff. It’s clear as air: In the light of the torch, I can see all the way to the bottom, crystals flashing blue and green among the silt. Best of all, when I dip my hand into the water, it’swarm.
“There are hot springs near here,” Ballast explains. He smiles at me and produces a bar of soap from some hidden pocket. “I thought you might like a bath. And don’t worry. The cave demons never come here—this whole stretch of the labyrinth is protected by the Brown Lady.”
I gape at him. I haven’t had a bath—a real bath—in half a lifetime. Every few months in Kallias’s mountain, Nicanor would drag us from our cages to be cleaned, which meant we stood in a small stone chamber, stripped naked with others of our sex, and were doused with freezing water and scrubbed with brushes so coarse they made us bleed.
But this—
This is a gift.
Violet God’s eyeballs, I might cry.
“You go first,” says Ballast, suddenly awkward. “I’ll wander downstream a bit. Shout if you need me.”
“Thanks,” I say brusquely, to cover my own awkwardness.
He gives me the soap, then wedges the torch between two obliging rocks and walks away.
I pull off my clothes and the filthy scarf that’s still wrapped around my head, then duck into the water. It feels like magic, warm, powerful, safe.
I wash, scrubbing what feels like a mountain’s worth of dirt from my skin, not to mention the blood of the cave monsters caked on my hands. It’s been nearly two months since I last shaved my head, and my hair’s grown, fuzzy against my fingers, not quite long enough for my curls to have made a reappearance. I consider shaving it again, but I’m done with the Brynja who stayed locked in a cage for eight years, the Brynja so afraid that her hair would catch in chains and silks and cause her to fall. No. I’ll let it grow. I’ll just keep it wrapped up until it’s a little longer.
That decided, I wash the scarf, too, spreading it out to dry on the stone as I float on my back in the water. For the first time in a long, long time, I feel peace.
“Brynja?” calls Ballast, a little while later.
“Not yet!” I call back, and scramble to get out of the pool. I dress hurriedly, winding the scarf around my head and knotting it at the nape of my neck. “All right!”
Ballast appears, and I wander downstream while he takes his turn, watching luminescent fish dart through dark water.
When he’s finished, we head back to our camp.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “I haven’t had a bath since before—” I falter, and he glances back at me.
“Since before my father,” he says. “I know.”
I take a breath. “Really. Thank you.”
He offers me a soft smile. “It is the very least that I could do.”
He’s wrong, though. Saga is awake when we get back.
She’s sitting against the wall of the cave, her knees pulled up to her chin.
