The other nodded and pinched her nose. “Prahvekht.”

“Do you have something you want to say?” I snarled.

Their smiles slipped from their lips in an instant. Retreating to the other end of the pool, they regarded me with furrowed brows and tight mouths, their expressions cold and brooding. Somehow, their wary glowers stung even harsher than their mockery. They knew I didn’t belong here now.

With my cheeks scalding in mortification and anger, I rose to my feet and tugged the linen wrap around myself. As I padded across the marble floor, one made a sound like the nickering of a mare. That meaning was abundantly clear.

The men’s bath was separated from the women’s by a high stone barrier with keyhole-shaped embrasures where the wall met the ceiling, so that I could hear the boys’ indistinct voices, but I couldn’t see them. Easing open the door leading from the women’s bath, I followed the corridor along until I came to another identical door and strode inside without hesitation.

At this hour, the men’s section was mostly unoccupied. Aside from Vanya and Mikhail, the only other bather was a burly man who froze at the sight of me and fled as though afraid I’d spoil him, clutching his towel around himself as he pushed through the door.

Mikhail and Vanya sat on submerged ledges at separate ends of the bath, no doubt enjoying the hot water just as much as I had. They turned as I approached.

“Toma, what are you doing in here?” Mikhail sputtered, grabbing his own towel from the floor and yanking it into the water.

Vanya’s reaction was just as absurd. He sloshed deeper into the pool and turned his back to me, hands shielding himself as he yelled at me not to look.

“I can’t even see anything!” The water was so murky with minerals that everything below the surface was reduced to a pale blur. But his torso was exposed, and I found my gaze lingering on the smooth, lithe muscularity of his back, following the trough of his spine up to where his damp hair coursed over his nape, slick and the deepest maroon, like a partial decapitation.

A long, narrow scratch arched from his left shoulder blade downward, so fresh that ruby droplets welled to the surface. I wondered if the same dour attendant who had tortured me with a scourge of birch leaves, her kneading knuckles, and handfuls of anise-scented sea salt had also thrashed him hard enough to draw blood.

“Vanya, how’d you get that scratch?” I asked.

“The idiot tried having the bannik read his fortune,” Mikhail said dryly, but I caught a hint of worry in his voice. Being clawed by a bathhouse spirit was never a good omen.

“Forget about the bannik. Toma, you’re going to get us kicked out.” Vanya hastily waved a hand in the direction of the door. “Go back to your own. This isn’t a mixed bath.”

“I won’t bathe then.” I sat at the pool’s edge, dipping my legs in the water but keeping my towel wrapped around myself. “I’ll just sit.”