2: Servants of the Crossed Arrows Read Online Free PDF

should go with you.” John attempted to rise, but Pivan laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
    “No. You need rest. Your back was badly injured and you’re fevered. Don’t make me beat you down.” Pivan spoke in a firm, fatherly tone. And John thought that he truly must have had a fever, because he found Pivan’s kindly threat comforting. He laid his head back down against the cool mattress. He would get up in a moment, he thought, and seconds later he fell into a deep sleep.
    After a full day’s sleep, Pivan woke him to tell him that his sister and brother-in-law had arrived and that Lady Bousim had requested that they break their fast at her table.
    “Lady Bousim?” John stumbled slightly over the woman’s formal Basawar title. Pivan frowned at him slightly.
    “I don’t know that I’m…prepared to meet such a person,” John replied.
    “We have baths for that,” Pivan responded, and not for the first time, John wondered how much he miscommunicated with his shaky grasp of the Basawar language.
    Maybe Pivan suspected something of the same nature, because he sent a servant boy along with John to make sure he found his way to the men’s bath where Bill waited.
    Inside, morning light poured through the crude panes of the rock crystal skylights overhead. The light gleamed across the white-tiled floor and reflected in the large mirrors mounted on the stone walls. Several benches stood near the mirrors but otherwise most of the small space was occupied by a huge, white marble tub. Wisps of steam rolled up from the hot waters piped into the tub and the air was filled with the humid, mineral scents of hot springs.
    Bill perched on the edge of the tub, naked and in good spirits. He greeted John with all the asthmatic enthusiasm he could muster.
    “I can’t believe that I’m actually excited to be taking a bath with you,” Bill said, smirking.
    “Likewise,” John replied.
    “Well, who wouldn’t be thrilled to get a glimpse of this awesome body?” Bill flexed his arms and John gave a laugh. It did really frighten him to see just how emaciated Bill had become. John could easily count every one of his ribs and the vertabrae of his spine.
    But things would get better now, John assured himself.
    As he stripped off his clothes, the muscles of his shoulders and back ached. A quick glance in the mirror showed him deep bruises still darkening from blue to purple and several red scrapes.
    “Man, your back looks like a big, ugly blueberry pie,” Bill said, then frowned. “No, maybe more blackberry pie. Wait, I got it! It’s black-and-blue berry.” Bill grinned and then dunked under the hot water. He bobbed back up, leaned back against the white stone, and sighed, breathing easier than he had for some time.
    John slid into the water slowly, taking time to adjust to the heat after so many months of relentless cold. Finally, he eased down and began to wash the filth off himself. Bill scrubbed at his own body, and rafts of mud and dirt floated off them both.
      The water was much deeper at the center of the tub and John dunked his head. At the far end of the tub, a drain carried the fouled water away.
    At last, John hauled himself out of the water and onto a bench. Steam from the bath crept over the mirrors, making John’s reflection look muted, as if lost in a deep fog.
    His long blonde hair looked like a smear of butter. His back, as Bill had noted, was mottled with bruises. Red scrapes gouged across his ribcage.
    At least he was clean. That alone made him feel much better. Free of mud and blood and sweat, he felt as if he had somehow become more human. He supposed it was simply the sense of rejoining civilization with its beds and baths and its rituals of hygiene.
    Of course, those rituals varied from civilization to civilization. And John realized, as he studied the line of small instruments on the marble stand before him, that he was not familiar with those of Basawar.
    The serving boy who had taken Bill’s and his