Free The Hanging Mountains by Sean Williams Page B

Navi will show you where to bathe. We’ll find some clean clothes for you while yours dry. I’ll talk to you again later.’

    With that, he hurried off in the direction of the waterfall. Navi gestured at two uniformed men, who picked up the wing between them and followed Schuet at a more measured pace.

    ‘Be careful with that,’ warned Chu again.

    ‘Don’t worry,’ Navi reassured her. ‘We’re not going far. Just there, where the bank slopes down to the water.’ She pointed. ‘The lake is shallow there, the water clean.’

    ‘Not an actual bath, then?’ muttered Skender, longing for the warm water and brass tubs of the Keep. Even the tepid sinks of the. Black Galah in Laure would have done.

    Navi’s teeth flashed white in the gloom. ‘The nearest is a day’s walk from here. Think you could bear your stink that long?’

    He grimaced. ‘Pass.’ Feeling mud squelching between his toes, he followed Navi around the shoreline to the place she had indicated. Chu’s expression was completely masked by the drying mud, but he could tell she was embarrassed and annoyed at herself, and perhaps dreading the thought of having to wash in front of a bunch of strangers as well. She said nothing, however, and he imitated her stoic silence.

    ‘There you go,’ said Navi when they arrived. She turned her back to give them privacy, and indicated that the others should do so too. ‘Sing out when you’re done. If your new clothes aren’t here by then, put your old ones back on for the time being.’

    Skender splashed into the water with a startled cry. It was much colder than he had expected. Chu gulped a deep breath and dived completely under. She emerged a moment later, shivering and rubbing at her muddy hair, her licence removed and tucked into a pocket, and her skin returning to normal. He resigned himself to doing the same, and dunked himself with his eyes shut and nostrils pinched tightly closed. His robe billowed around him, tangling his arms. When he stood up, the water had turned brown around him, and Chu was unlacing her leather top.

    He concentrated furiously on what he was doing. Tugging his robe over his head, he wrung it out under water and draped it over his bare shoulder. A quick scrub sluiced the last of the mud from his upper body and face. He had no intention of removing his underwear in front of anyone — especially in such frigid circumstances — so he did his best and left it at that.

    When he turned back to the shore, he found that Navi had broken her promise. She stood facing them with her hands on her hips. Her friendly expression had quite disappeared.

    ‘You!’ she exclaimed, pointing directly at Chu.

    He turned to look at Chu who, dressed in sopping singlet and shorts, was occupied with flushing the last of the mud from the delicate folds of the wing.

    She looked up, puzzled. ‘What?’

    ‘Step out of the water.’

    ‘I don’t understand.’

    ‘Do as you’re told, or we’ll come in there and get you.’

    Skender stepped closer to Chu, whose shocked look perfectly matched his own. Navi’s harsh commanding tone was at complete odds to her earlier manner. ‘Hey, now,’ he said to the uniformed woman. ‘You should think carefully before trying that.’

    ‘Be quiet, Skender. This isn’t your problem. It’s hers.’ To Chu she said: ‘I see you clearly now. Put down the wing, Outcast, and come out now. I won’t ask again.’

    ‘Outcast?’ Chu repeated in a soft voice.

    Navi snapped her fingers, and two of the uniformed men splashed into the water. Skender put himself between them, and called on his memory in desperation.

    Stone Mages were rarely challenged on their side of the Divide. Even in Laure — ruled by isolationist bloodworkers — Skender’s status had earned him a certain amount of authority. That had been in part due to Chu’s insistence on introducing him as a full-fledged mage, not the nearly graduated student he actually was, but the fact