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There were a variety of guard traditions in the Empire, both sacred and practical.

The guardsmen of the Imperial family had both. The Guard of Ange, consecrated knights who competed for the honor to live and die for their charges. Among the Great Houses of Argence, there were lineages of guardsmen nearly as long and distinguished as the Houses they served; who ever heard of a Melun aristocrat venturing forth without their attendant Eparde swordsmen? In Segoile, no nobleman left his townhouse without at least two, even if he had to drag them out of a tavern and stuff them into livery before they had a chance to sober up.

Remin’s original House had had its tradition, too. For seven centuries they had been patrons of the Macheis, a warrior family who had trained their sons and daughters as guardsmen with almost religious devotion. There had been many distinguished warriors in that line, a long and honorable history, and they wandered into Remin’s mind just long enough for him to flatly reject them. They had already failed when it mattered most.

He needed better shepherds for his lamb.

Long after Ophele was asleep, Remin lay awake, thinking. War had taught him the hard way never to repeat his mistakes, and she made him question himself. It did worry him that she was so innocent. They would eat her alive in Segoile. In fashionable society, even maidens making their debut affected world-weary cynicism, a jaded air that Remin found both laughable and repellant. As if they knew the first thing about suffering. He didn’t want her to be like that.

Shouldn’t there be room in the world for lambs? The things he had seen in the capital had shocked him. Through all the years of war, it had been some comfort to him to imagine that cultured, elegant world far away, a place beyond his hot, ugly hell. Yet when he went to the capital, all those cultured, elegant people had wanted nothing more than to gobble up every dreadful detail, as if filth was the only thing that could rouse them from the dreadful boredom of their clean, safe world.

Ophele was the peace he had dreamed of, without even knowing it. It soothed something deep in him to watch her look at the world with her clear, clean eyes. He would go through that hell all over again, if only he could watch her enjoy the peace afterward.

The world needed lambs to make the work of wolves worthwhile.

“You’ll be at the storehouse this afternoon,” he told her as they walked to the stables the next morning, turning his head to take a long look toward the distant mountains, where there was still no sign of snow. While she was in the offices above the storehouse, he would be searching among his wolves for someone to guard her while he was gone. “We’ll have a talk with Edemir first.”

Her eyes flicked up to his, widening.

“Both of us?” she asked nervously.

“Yes. I’m not angry that he sent someone to fetch me yesterday. If someone tries to walk off with you, I want to know. Immediately.”

“But he wasn’t,” she objected. “Once that man knew who I was, he stopped and apologized.”

“And if Jacot hadn’t shown up?” Sometimes it was very, very difficult to manage his temper. Remin pushed open the stable doors with a little more force than necessary.

“As soon as I knew what he wanted, I would have said no,” Ophele said stubbornly. “He didn’t seem bad, even if he did want a…” She paused and looked around before she whispered the forbidden word. “…prostitute. ”

Remin gave her a sharp glance as he went to fetch his horse. His saddle was already waiting in its usual place, the leather carefully cleaned. He wasn’t sure what to do. Should he push this point, to make her wary? Overnight she seemed to have convinced herself that no one in Tresingale was capable of doing such a thing, and while he could have absolutely provided evidence to the contrary, he didn’t really want to. What if it made her more timid? It had only been a few months since he had finally coaxed her to speak to him.

“I am not persuaded,” he said, electing to let the issue lie for now. “I’m not going to order Edemir to blindly obey you, wife.”

“I…don’t want that,” Ophele said slowly, her delicate eyebrows drawing together.

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t want to bother you when you’re busy,” she said, with enough emphasis that Remin looked at her in surprise. It didn’t sound like a capital crime to him.

“I don’t mind,” he said, swinging atop his horse and offering a hand to pull her into the saddle before him. “I don’t think you’re a bother, wife.”

“I mind.” She settled into the crook of his shoulder. Out in the open morning air and with everyone else hurrying about their business, Remin wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing their conversation. “It was embarrassing,” she went on, low. “They all made such a fuss, and I didn’t understand why. I wasn’t hurt. And they wouldn’t even listen when I said I was fine, and they made you come all the way back home, as if…as if I were a little girl who wanted her nanny.”

This was the closest to angry he had ever heard his gentle wife, and Remin thought about it as they headed south on the road, his horse’s hooves clacking on the cobblestones. They had no particular destination. These morning rides were one of his favorite parts of the day, a perfect time for this kind of conversation.

“I want to know,” he said finally. “If something happens to you. I want my knights to tell me right away. But…”

Maybe they had all overreacted. Remin’s knights had been away to war as long as he had, with similarly limited contact with women, and Ophele was a particularly petite and lovely specimen that roused every protective instinct they had. Edemir’s message had been pungent and delivered by a secretary who had galloped to the barracks as if his horse’s tail was on fire, and Remin had bolted home in a black fury, expecting to find Ophele terrified and sobbing, if not something worse.

“It wouldn’t have been bad, if it was just a message,” she offered.

“Then I have to be able to trust you to tell me when you really need me,” he said, looking at her seriously. “No telling me you’re fine if you’re not. If I come home to find you’ve been hurt, or something happened, then I will be very angry.”

“I will. And you have to tell me too, if something happens,” she replied, with a mutinous and adorable pout to her lower lip that made Remin want to agree to absolutely anything she asked.

“All right,” he said, feeling a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Since there was no one nearby, he slowed his horse to a walk and bent to kiss those pouting lips, wondering if all men were such fools.

It was a fair distinction to draw for Edemir later that morning, and Remin forced himself to let Ophele make it, when his natural instinct would have been to leave her at the cottage and have a word with his knight himself. Especially when Ophele was red-faced and obviously embarrassed, after yesterday. But Remin thought there was some justice to her complaints about being treated like a child, and he had learned this lesson already, with his squires and soldiers. He couldn’t do this for her. If she wanted his men to respect and obey her, Ophele would have to learn to assert herself.

“I understand why you didn’t want to…explain yesterday,” she began, standing before Edemir in the hallway outside the offices, where at least there were no witnesses. Behind her, Remin avoided Edemir’s eyes to make it clear that he wanted Edemir to deal directly with her. “But if I say not to trouble His Grace, please don’t. We can send a message,” she added, looking up at Edemir. Her fingers knotted together nervously. “Is that fair?”

“Yes, my lady.” Edemir gave her a bow. “I would have been neglecting my duty, if I hadn’t sent a message yesterday. I’m sorry if it distressed you.”

“I understand why you did,” she said, with an odd note in her voice. “But I don’t want to interrupt him unless it’s really necessary. Or any of you,” she added honestly. “I don’t want to be a bother. ”

“Yes, my lady.” That won a smile from the stolid knight. “Though I hope it won’t often be necessary. Are you here for the rest of the day?”

“Yes, except for an hour with Jacot. His Grace said you wanted my help?” she asked, following him into the office as he beckoned her on. This surprise was a few days ahead of schedule, but Remin trailed after her in great anticipation.

“Yes. Rem told me about Master Didion’s request for information about the devils, and there are other reasons why we need to make a study of them,” Edemir explained, wending his way through the worktables to a small space at the back of the room. “Do you remember what I told you about the structure of knowledge?”

“Yes,” she breathed, her eyes widening as they came to stop by an Ophele-sized worktable and chair, set by a narrow window. “Thesis and components? About the devils? Is this for me?”

“Yes,” Remin said, unable to restrain himself any longer. “You’ll be working here in the afternoons, and you can interview my knights and soldiers, around the other duties Edemir assigns. You can ask all the questions you like, lit…wife.”

The pet name almost slipped out, and her smile was so bright, he felt the back of his neck redden and had to avoid Edemir’s eyes for quite a different reason. He had been pleased to have a project like this for her, though it did hurt his pride that the best he could offer was a table and chair in the corner of a warehouse. One day, he would give her an office of her own, with wide windows and wood paneling and carpets of Bhumi silk. An entire library for her reference. With twin pages in livery to carry golden inkpots for her, if that was what she wanted.

But Ophele looked as pleased as if the golden inkpots were already hers, and Remin was glad to be able to tell her honestly that this wasn’t makework. Edemir wanted her on hand to help with the accounts, and Remin greatly preferred to have her interviewing his men than a passel of nosy academics from the Tower, to borrow Miche’s turn of phrase.

“Would you like to begin by interviewing me, my lady?” Edemir asked, with an air of resignation. Having spoken often with Ophele over supper, he knew exactly how bottomless this well of questions could be.

“No, not yet, please,” she said, gentle but decided. “I need to think first. Could I have some paper? ”

That was a good time for Remin to say good-bye, while Edemir went off to fetch her some, and he shifted to block her with his body so he could take her hand unobserved.

“Try to get good descriptions of the wolf demons first, for Sousten,” he said. “You can borrow one of his secretaries for sketching. And keep your interviews to an hour or so, men start losing focus if you question them longer than that.”

“I will,” she said, nodding as if she were engraving the words on the inside of her skull. “Remin, you really need me to do this? It will help?”

“Yes. If we’re going to hunt devils, we need to think about what we’re facing,” he said, in utter seriousness. “Maybe you can find answers to those questions you were asking. And you will spare my men the attentions of scholars,” he added, though that seemed a less likely threat, at present. The Tower had received Edemir’s latest invitation, but seemed in no great hurry to answer it.

“They can’t be that bad.” Her lips curved in a smile, and for a moment their fingers coiled together in a most stimulating fashion until Remin forced himself to let go and leave her to her task.

It made him more determined than ever to do his best for her. In the training yard of the barracks, Remin looked over the assembled men and wondered who he could possibly trust.

The Army of the Andelin had numbered nearly 90,000 men, at its peak. Most of them had returned home with their lords at the end of the war, but thousands had sworn their loyalty to Remin and elected to stay. The bulk stood guard at the walls and border fortresses, but after Remin’s adjustments to his forces in the past few months, five hundred remained in Tresingale. Knights, squires, pages, and common soldiers, they had survived years of war, which made them not just skilled and ferocious, but clever, and lucky.

Remin watched them training all afternoon, marking the best swordsmen, making a mental list of qualifications. He wasn’t pleased at the prospect of relying on other men to guard his wife. It was one thing when it was Miche or Juste; he trusted them implicitly. From the beginning, Miche had regarded her with the protective and slightly overzealous eye of an older brother, and Juste was a monk at heart.

Ophele would have these guards for the rest of her life. She was the Duchess of Andelin; she would never be safe while her father lived. And he needed to trust them with more than just her physical safety, Remin thought, angered anew at Jacot for sullying her ears with such a filthy word. Her guards would protect her dignity and her innocence.

As Sousten so often reminded him, the House of Andelin would be creating their own traditions.

“Juste,” he said as training was ending for the day, and his knights stood panting in their armor, satisfied with their work. “Miche. A word.”

* * *

“Where are we going?” Ophele asked a few days later, when Remin turned south instead of north leaving the cookhouse. Usually, they went straight to the stables, but there was a certain air of excitement around Remin that she was learning to recognize as he headed toward the river.

“You’ll see.” The corner of his mouth kept turning up, and Ophele eyed him as she bit into an apple.

“It’s another surprise?” she asked, crunching.

“Mmm-hmm.” He turned down the lane heading west, matching his long strides to her shorter ones, a dirt road rutted with cart wheels. Ophele had noticed an increase in traffic on this road, usually small groups of men in the mornings and evenings, but there was so much activity everywhere that she hadn’t paid particular attention.

“The sanitation buildings?” she asked quizzically.

“One of them is for you.” Remin was enjoying the mystery like a boy. “A belated birthday present. No need to hurry, we can finish our breakfast first.”

From the outside, neither building looked like much. The pair of long, low structures sat so close to the river that the further one was supported on its far side by massive wooden piers, with a tangle of pipes rising from the water to the back of both buildings. Both were surrounded by high wooden walls, but these were no rough palisades; the smooth boards were laid horizontally and lacquered black along the edges, neat and elegant.

“Oh, this is nice,” she said as they passed through the gates of the nearer building, looking from the diamond-shaped green tiles on the roof to the wooden walkway underfoot; more of those sanded boards, with black lacquered posts supporting them so they floated a foot above the garden. Dangling from the eaves of the roof were many strings of small golden bells, tinkling as musically as the fountains. The sound of water was a clue. “Sanitation buildings…is this a bath?” she asked abruptly, whirling toward Remin. “These are bathhouses?”

“I think we can all agree that the population of this valley needs some bathing,” he said, his black eyes twinkling, and caught her as she leaped on him rapturously. “Do you like it?”

“Yes! Oh, a real bath!” she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him soundly. Remin liked petting as much as she did. “Thank you.”

“You suffered with the cauldron long enough.” He held her easily, her toes dangling, his dark head bent as he murmured, “Though I’d be more pleased if we could bathe toge—”

“Noble lord,” said a woman’s voice, polite and strangely accented, and both noble lord and lady turned to see a quartet of black-haired women approaching on the wooden walkway, bright and curious as birds.

Remin set her down instantly.

“Madam Sanai,” he said, wiping the gentleness from his face as if it had never been there, and Ophele tried to follow his lead, though her own ears felt hot. “Wife, this is Madam Imari Sanai, lately of Benkki Desa. I asked her to come and run the women’s bath. Madam, this is my wife Ophele, the Duchess of Andelin.”

“Welcome to the valley,” she managed, combatting a surge of shyness. Her experience with Auber’s relations had not helped her nervousness with strangers. “I h-hope the journey wasn’t too difficult.”

“We do not complain, noble lady,” said Madam Sanai, extending a polished wooden staff before her as she bowed. Ophele had read that the women of Benkki Desa were called fatal lilies, tall and willowy, with black hair and skin like perfect, unblemished ivory. Her eyes were so dark a violet as to be nearly black. “Noble lord, we must ask you step no further. This place is forbidden men.”

“I read your rules,” he replied, unsurprised. “I’ll inform the men tonight and send out warnings through the camp. You’re sure you don’t want guards?”

“No, noble lord. Men are forbidden,” she repeated. “We will guard our own place. Please say to your men, we will remove profaners forcefully. ”

They looked capable of carrying out that threat, each of them armed with an iron-shod wooden staff and a black whip coiled at their hips. Ophele tried not to stare. She had never seen women like this before. They were dressed simply in sleeveless embroidered tunics and light trousers, scandalous attire by Imperial standards, even more shocking than their weapons.

“I’ll warn them. You’ll likely have to teach a few of them a lesson before the rest get the message,” he cautioned, and looked down at Ophele. “No harm will come to you with Madam Sanai and her ladies, wife. You can ask about their staffs if you want to know why. Do you want to bathe today, or come back another time?”

He must have seen the unease in her face. Part of her wished he could stay. It was easy to be brave with Remin beside her, but the Hurrells had spent the better part of a decade making her wary of strangers, and her old maid Nenot had made bathing a singularly unpleasant experience. Would they be so polite, once he was gone?

“I’ll stay,” she made herself say.

“How do I let you know when I’ve returned?” he asked, turning back to Madam Sanai.

“The small garden at the entrance is for your use, noble lord.” She bowed again. “There is a chime there. Your lady will be ready at noon.”

He glanced down at Ophele, stiff and severe with strangers nearby, but his fingers brushed hers before he departed.

And then silence, with the trees shifting overhead and the soft tinkling of bells.

“Why are men forbidden?” Ophele asked, forcing her wooden tongue to move.

“It is forbidden to disturb the serenity of maidens,” Madam Sanai said firmly. “We are sworn to guard it. Pili, Bilaki, and Huvara,” she said, the other women bowing in a wave as their names were spoken. “We guard and attend the sacred bath. Have you heard this, that bathing is sacred?”

“No, there weren’t many books about Benkki Desa,” Ophele admitted, following as the madam beckoned with her staff. “In Aldeburke, I mean. Where I lived.”

“It means we must keep our silence on all that we see and hear within these walls.” The madam paused at the entrance of the bathhouse, an area recessed into the building with sliding wooden doors open to the sultry summer air. There was a long, low basin of cool water fashioned to look like a stream trickling over smooth, rounded pebbles. “It means you will feel free to ask, and speak, as you please, noble lady. Pili will remove your slippers, so?”

“Oh, thank you.” Ophele stepped out of them, blushing when she found Pili already at her feet.

“In our land, there are many pools heated from the earth, with great virtue in the water,” Madam Sanai explained as Ophele stepped into the shallow stream. “Niravi, goddess of the moon, comes down often to the waters, always in the form of a lovely maiden…”

Ophele listened to the story as she followed the women inside, looking curiously at the paper walls and doors. They admitted light while affording privacy, and many were painted with beautiful landscapes, flowering trees, rolling hills, and fancifully scrolling rivers, as if she had walked into an illustration in a storybook. Intricately patterned wooden doors framed the vistas, and there were a number of plants in low pots, flowering and beautifully shaped. Halfway down the central corridor, Huvara pushed open a sliding door to reveal a small changing room.

“Being a maiden, Niravi understood it may be frightening to be naked,” Madam Sanai remarked. “One may be shy of others. One might be embarrassed, or ashamed. That is why we are sworn to keep our silence. But if it is your wish, noble lady, we will leave you to bathe in solitude.”

Curiosity warred with shyness.

“Will it hurt?” Ophele asked, hating the plaintive question. But with the exception of Celderline, all her baths had hurt.

“No, noble lady,” the madam replied, after a pause. “Pili and Bilaki will attend, and they will be very gentle. Baths are for healing, above all other things.”

Ophele extended her arms to allow them to undress her as Madam Sanai explained the other purposes of baths, beyond the obvious reasons of hygiene, aesthetics, and relaxation. In Benkki Desa, it was a ritual of peaceful contemplation in which the bather sought to understand and embrace their own body.

“And also, for good health,” Madam Sanai added as Pili pulled Ophele’s chemise over her head. “If there is a spot that looks ill, or scratches that do not heal, perhaps. Or if the maiden’s husband has been ungentle… ”

“That’s not…what happened.” Ophele crossed her arms over her breasts, crimson to her hairline. She had gotten so used to the marks Remin left on her body, she had forgotten they were there. But there could be no doubt of the origins of the marks on her breasts and thighs. And oh, stars, the place he had bit her yesterday…

There was a twittering of laughter from the Benkki Desans.

“We saw the noble lord has great affection for his lady,” said Pili, her eyes dancing. They were indigo rather than Madam Sanai’s violet, and Ophele could detect no malice or mockery in them.

“Such marks may show the lady is loved,” the madam agreed. “There is no reason for shame, so? All marks upon the body must be examined and contemplated for their meaning. Pili.” She said something in their tongue, and Pili took one of Ophele’s hands and turned it over, revealing her still-healing palms.

Ophele closed her fingers over them automatically. A lady did not have such hands, let alone a princess. She had been ashamed when she realized Remin had seen them. She had tried so hard to hide them, all those months.

“Are they injuries, noble lady?” Madam Sanai asked serenely.

“I…I worked at the wall.” The words emerged in soft, stiff syllables. The Lady Hurrell that lived permanently in the back of her mind had had a great deal to say about them. “I fetched water for the men there.”

“The work must have been hard, to leave such signs.” If Madam Sanai had an opinion, it was not evident in her face. “But their meaning is for the maiden to decide. Whether these marks are good to you, or hateful. It is our task to touch, to treat, to see them for you. The noble lady must contemplate them. If you wish to change them. If you must accept them. You see?”

“…yes,” Ophele replied slowly, struck by this unusual and rather lovely idea.

A cloud of fragrant steam billowed from the adjacent room as Huvara slid the wall open, scented of flowers and something fresh that went straight to the depths of her lungs.

“His Grace said the lady is sensitive to heat,” said Madam Sanai as they led her to the first of what would be three baths, this one simmering with scented oil. “Please say if it is too hot, or if the lady feels faint. Heat is necessary for cleansing. It opens the skin and draws the blood hot, so? But too much is not so good.”

“It smells nice.” Ophele hissed as she stepped into the steaming water. It was hot, uncomfortably so, but after a moment she thought it wasn’t unbearable. She let her head fall back onto the wide, cradling lip at the back of the tub, and Bilaki gathered up her hair to let it stream over the side, to be washed separately.

“It is not only to meditate upon flaws,” the madam continued when everyone was situated, with Pili and Bilaki seated on low wooden stools and Huvara guarding the door, staff in hand. “The maiden must also see what parts are beautiful.”

Serenity seemed to mean many things. With the patient cajoling of a cleric, the madam questioned Ophele about the condition of her body as Pili and Bilaki washed it, asking about places that hurt, things that she did not like—her second toes were longer than her big toes, was that normal?—and searching for something that she did like, so Ophele would increase her serenity by understanding herself better.

“His Grace likes my hair,” she finally admitted, when pressed. She did not think of herself as beautiful. She was a little brown mouse, plain as a sparrow. But it was true that Remin was always touching and admiring it, and sometimes he liked to brush it for no reason at all.

From the heated tub, they moved her to a second, cooler one, and she could almost feel the cold water flooding into her open pores, mixed with some effervescent solution that made her feel as if she were dissolving into the water. By then she had relaxed enough to ask about their staffs, and the madam explained that some attendants carried whips and staffs, bloodless weapons that would not defile the sacred precincts of the bath, while others strung bells on the bushes to warn if anyone approached.

“Do all women in Benkki Desa know how to use weapons?” Ophele asked, looking a little enviously at Huvara with her wooden staff.

“No, noble lady,” Huvara answered, as if she had felt Ophele’s eyes on her. “Some of Niravi’s attendants are suited for the staff, and others, like gentle Svala, must listen for the bells. But Niravi says this is not a shame.”

This knowledge of self was the core of a maiden’s serenity, and not limited to the bath. A maiden built the sphere of her serenity from contemplation of her naked self, and then carried it forth into the world, a calm core of self-knowledge reinforced by every subsequent understanding.

Ophele wondered if a man’s serenity was any different, or if it mattered that she definitely was not a maiden, as evidenced by the bite mark Pili found on her backside. It was a lovely philosophy, she thought; one that inquired gently whether she wished to change, while forgiving her for what she was. Lying in the third bath as Pili and Bilaki polished her hair and nails with silk, she drifted. She was half asleep when they lifted her from the final bath and let her fall face-down on something soft and cool and sweetly scented, and when they woke her, she felt as if she had been dreaming in the middle of a cloud.

“Noble lady, His Grace has come.” Madam Sanai’s fingers drifted over Ophele’s forehead, deftly manipulating the pressure points at her temples. Pili and Bilaki were behind her, waiting with Ophele’s clothes. But they didn’t just stuff her into them and send her on her way; once dressed, she was given a cup of cool, minty tea while Bilaki brushed her hair, and left her feeling like a gem getting a final polishing.

“Has your serenity increased, noble lady?” Madam Sanai asked at the entrance, in formal tones that required an honest answer.

“Yes,” Ophele replied, in perfect truth, and with the feeling that this serenity was something she could carry with her into the world.

Remin was waiting in the small garden to the left of the gates, sitting on a bench with a cup of tea sitting untouched beside him. He rose as soon as she appeared around the corner, and Ophele felt gratifyingly pretty as she hurried over to him, her long hair floating loose and silky behind her like a banner.

“You look as if it suited you,” he said, rumbling with contentment as he bent to kiss her. “Did you like it?”

“Very much.” She lifted a hand to cover his mouth as he nuzzled dangerously toward her neck. “The walls are made of paper,” she whispered, glancing at them meaningfully.

“That’s not much worse than the cottage,” he grumbled, his face snuffling into her hair, for all the world like a huge black dog. “You smell so good…”

So did he. She caught the scent of something crisp and woodsy on his skin, and when he reluctantly straightened, his black hair gleamed in the sunshine .

“Were you at the men’s baths?” she asked, taking his arm as he turned toward the gate.

“I thought I might as well. Though I can’t imagine what I would do in a bath for three hours. Alone,” he added, with a teasing glint that made her turn pink. Secretly, she thought she would quite like to bathe with him.

“It was three baths,” she explained. “And they fussed over my hair and nails for a long time, and then a massage, I think. I fell asleep. But it was so pretty inside, there were murals on the walls that I loved, forests and rivers, please remind me to tell Master Didion about them. Did they have those in the men’s baths?”

“There was a sea serpent,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching at her excitement. “A blue one.”

“Oh. All I saw was a carp. But it was pretty, with pink and red fins. And I want to send an invitation to Auber’s relatives to come,” she added, looking up at him earnestly. “Not with me, I know, but I want them to know they’re welcome. And that little girl, too.”

“We can.” Remin still hadn’t really forgiven them for hurting her feelings. “I’ll tell Auber.”

“Did they talk to you about serenity, in the bath?” she asked, curious. “Madam Sanai said maidens contemplate serenity, and how we have to accept some things and try to change others. And we have a sphere of serenity that we bring with us wherever we go. Do men get one?”

“According to Master Balad, men’s bathing is about building clean strength,” he answered. “Purifying the body, seeking harmony in all its workings, making the blood flow hot and smooth to the muscles. I don’t think contemplating serenity would get men into a bath.”

“Oh.” This was probably true, but the cynical answer was a little disappointing. “I don’t suppose men would need bells or guards, either. You don’t have to worry about women sneaking up on you to see you naked.” She entirely missed the amused glance he shot her. “But Huvara said they train with those staffs as soon as they turn twelve, did you know that?”

“Madam Sanai said as much,” he replied. “I tested her when they arrived. They are very skilled. Otherwise they’d have guards, whether they wanted them or not.”

“I wish I could have seen that,” she said wistfully. “I never knew women could fight like that. ”

“Well, you can.” His fingers tugged her silky hair to make her look up at him, pleased to grant even the least of her wishes. “Tomorrow.”

* * *