. . . High Kingdom were grown around here. That and the hot water managed to relax her enough to almost doze for a few minutes of soaking. At thirty-eight she could still do nearly everything she’d been able to do at twenty, but she found it took more and more effort plus recuperation was slower, and the last weeks had been hard. A sputtering jerk brought her head up as it slipped below the surface.

There was even a genuine sponge to go with the lavender-scented local soap, which was true luxury these days. Scrubbing briskly helped her back to alertness.

It beats washing with a cloth and a helmet full of water all to hell, she thought as she climbed out. Damn, but I wish this war was over and won.

The floor was some sort of slightly coarse-surfaced stone, easy under her feet and not slippery. She stood and looked at herself in the full-length mirror with a coldly objective eye, and at last nodded satisfaction. Naked she looked less slim than she did in clothes or armor, and the startling muscle definition was clearer. At just a hair under five-ten she weighed a solid hundred and fifty, and she’d never been more than a few pounds either side of that since she got her full growth. Of course, she’d spent a lot of that time doing very energetic things while wearing fifty pounds or more of steel strapped all over her body, besides conscientious training and recreations that included hunting boar, bear and tiger with spears.

“Conrad’s right,” she murmured; the conversation with Rigobert had reminded her of her youth, and so had the ceremonies that marked passages in the cycle of life. “I’m a big blond horse of a woman and I’d never, ever have made it to the Olympics as a gymnast. They were all little pixies and even at thirteen I was getting too tall. Pentathlon, maybe, if I’d switched to track and field in time. Still, I was good.”

She’d kept it up, too; on impulse she bent backward until her palms were on the floor behind her feet, brought one leg up and pointed the toe at the ceiling, then the other so that she was on both hands. Then a ninety-degree side-split, a scissors flip back upright onto the balls of her feet and a tucked back salto flip ending with her arms raised in that rather silly but obligatory ballerinalike posture you used to finish a floor routine—

That brought her face-to-face with the maid who’d just come through the doorway, with a pile of towels in her arms and a bulge-eyed expression at finding a naked and wetly glistening Grand Constable falling out of a midair somersault right in front of her. They were close enough that Tiphaine could feel the warmth of the heated fabric.

“Yes?” she said.

“MyladyIwassenttoattendyouasyouhavenomaid—” came out in a rush.

“Leave the towels,” she said calmly.

“Yyyyyes, m’lady.”