A few folk tended garden spaces in empty lots. Autun had not quite filled out the space between the walls built in the days of Taillefer, or else old buildings had fallen down and not been reconstructed, with the dirt around the foundations left to go to seed. A woman and man straightened from poking at freshly dug troughs to watch the soldiers pass. Like the child at the storehouse door, they called out no greeting, nor did the captain nod at them to acknowledge their presence. Their silence troubled Alain, who had an idea that relations between townsfolk and soldiers had once been easier.

The baths lay at the base of the palatine hill. The original structure was built by the old Dariyans, but it had been refurbished a hundred years ago and had not deteriorated overly much since then. Sorrow and Rage sat under a portico with a pair of nervous minders to guard them. Within the stone halls a pair of old women held sway, although it was true they were assisted by a quintet of younger, fairer lasses, banished to the back chambers as soon as the soldiers came in.

"This one," said Captain Lukas, pushing Alain forward. "I'll be back to fetch him."

They took him to a room where he stripped. The attendants examined him with the look of women who have seen every possible thing the world has to offer. They even pinched his buttocks and measured the span of his arms with cupped hands.

"Pleasing enough," the taller commented to the shorter in a murmur he was not meant to hear. "Too thin."

"Aren't they all these days?"

His clothes were taken away and two buckets of water brought by a gangling youth, who retreated as soon as he set the buckets on the stone floor.

"Raise your arms!" said the old woman.

Obedient, he raised his arms.

"Shut your eyes!"

He shut his eyes.

The water hits so hard he thinks his heart will seize. The cold sluices down his face, his neck. He is wet through in an instant and so cold he goes stiff, lips locked in a grimace, limbs in a rictus.

How can anything be so cold?

Then he remembers that cold causes him no injury, not as it does humankind. He is drowning in his vision. He must open his eyes, and quickly. Why did the ship surge in the waves so suddenly?

He opens his eyes as the water streams past, as a weight nudges him, then pushes, hard, and he flails through the water trying to get his bearings so he can reach the surface.

He is surrounded by merfolk.

They are circling, as for a kill.

They mean to kill him.

"Why?" asked the taller crone sarcastically. "Why? You don't think we're letting you get in the baths as filthy as you are? You wash that dirt off first. Then you can soak."