“If it please you, sir,” she said. “I’ll take you to where all of your questions can be answered.”

Tier could have overpowered her, and would have if she had been a man. But if they, whoever they were, sent a woman to get him, it could only be because overpowering her would get him nowhere.

“You’ll have to give me a moment,” he said, “until I can see again.”

As his vision cleared, he saw that the woman was arrayed in flowing garments that hinted broadly at the body beneath.

A whore’s costume, but this woman was no common whore. She was extraordinarily beautiful, even to a man who preferred his woman to be less soft and breakable. Even if the net of gems and gold that confined quite a bit of equally golden hair was paste and brass—and he wasn’t at all sure it was—the cloth of her dress was worth a fair penny.

“Can you see, yet, sir?” she asked.

“Oh aye,” he said congenially. He’d bide his time until he had enough information to act. “Lead on, fair lady.”

She laughed gently at his address as she led him out into a winding corridor. Behaving, he thought, as if he were a customer, rather than a man who’d been imprisoned for weeks.

The hall ceiling was so low he could have easily touched it with a hand. On either side of his cell there were doors that opened to his hand and revealed rooms that looked much like his. The woman was patient with him, waiting without murmuring and pausing with him when he stopped by an iron door twice as wide as the one that led into his cell. The door stuck fast when he tried it.

The woman said nothing. When he took the lantern from her and adjusted it brighter so he could look more closely at the doors, she merely folded her arms under her full breasts.

He ignored her until he was certain that the door was hinged on the other side, with two iron bars (barely visible in the narrow space between door and frame) in place to keep the door shut. If he’d access to a forge he could fashion something to unbar the door—but they were unlikely to allow him such.

He handed the lantern back to his hostess and allowed her to lead him.

The hall continued around a sharp bend and ended in double doors. Just before the walls ended, there was a door on either side. It was the left-hand door the woman opened, stepping back for him to precede her.

The smell of steam and the sound of running water emerged from the opened door, so he was unsurprised to enter a bathing room. He knew what one looked like because the Sept of Gerant had held war conferences in his—saying that the sound of the water kept people from overhearing anything useful. But that austere chamber had as much to do with this one as a donkey had with a warhorse. A golden tub of a size to accommodate five or six was brim full of hot, steaming water with a tall table near it holding a variety of soaps and pots of lotion. But by far the most impressive part of the room was the cold pool.

Water cascaded from an opening in the ceiling high above and poured onto a ledge of fitted rock where it was spread to fall in a wide sheet to the waist-deep pool below. He could tell the pool was waist-deep because there were two naked, frightened, and obviously cold women standing in it.

“Sssst,” hissed his guide in sudden irritation. “You look as if you are about to lose your virtue again. Does this look like a man who’d hurt women?”

She softened her voice to velvet and turned back to Tier. “You’ll forgive them, my… sir. Our last guest was none to happy with his captivity and took it out on those who had nothing to do with it.”

He laughed with honest amusement. “After that speech I would certainly feel like a stupid lout to try any such thing,” he said.

In the brighter light of the bathing chamber he could see that she was more than beautiful—she was fascinating, a woman who’d draw men’s eyes when she was eighty. He mentally upped her probable price again. So why was he being offered such service? The thought pulled the smile from his face.

“So I’m to clean myself before being presented, eh?” he said neutrally.

“We will perform that service, sir, if you will allow us,” she said, bowing her head in submission. “When you are finished bathing, there are clean clothes to replace the ones you wear now. This is for your comfort entirely. If you choose, you may stay as you are and I’ll take you in now. I thought you would prefer not to appear at a disadvantage.”

“Disadvantage, eh?” He glanced at his clothes. “If they kidnap a man at the tail end of a three-month hunt, they get as they deserve. I’ll wash, but you ladies get yourselves out of here or my wife will have my head.”

The women in the pool giggled as if he’d been witty, but they waited for a gesture from the woman he’d followed before they left the pool. They wrapped themselves in a couple of the bathing sheets folded in piles on a bench and exited the room through the same door he’d entered.

“You too, lass,” he told his guide. “The high-born you serve may be comfortable with help, but we Rederni are competent to wash ourselves.”

Smilingly she bowed and left, shutting the door behind her. He hadn’t noticed a latch, but he heard a click that could be nothing else so he didn’t bother to try the door. The waterfall was more intriguing.

Four leaps gave him a fingerhold on the lowest ledge and he climbed the rest with relative ease. When he found the opening the water fell through in the corner of the ceiling, it was grated with iron bars set in mortar.

He slid back down and splashed uncaring of his battered clothing into the cold pool of water. He hadn’t expected such an obvious way out, but he needed to know what he dealt with. Eventually he’d manage a way out—in the meantime there was no need for filth.

He washed the clothes on his body first, then threw them into the waiting hot tub, where he’d soap down both them and himself when he was ready.

The cold water poured over his face, clearing his head and his thoughts as he scraped away dirt.

He hadn’t heard anyone enter, but when he stepped out from the waterfall, there were clean clothes waiting for him.

He ignored them and settled into the tub of hot water, soaped himself off, and gave rough service to his clothes. Rinsing everything in the cold pool, he draped his clothes where he could. Shivering now, he dried himself and examined the clothing she’d left for him.

It was serviceable clothing, very like the filthy garments he’d taken off, though less worn. He fingered the shirt thoughtfully before donning it. The leather boots fit him as well as his old ones, lost somewhere during his captivity.

As he tied the laces of his boots, his guide returned, her timing too accurate for guessing. Someone had been watching him—he hoped they enjoyed the show. She held a tray with a comb and a plain silver clip and held them out. He ran the comb through his hair and pulled it back into a queue which he fastened with the clip.

He turned around once for her perusal and she nodded. “You’ll do, sir. If you’ll follow me, the Master awaits your presence.”

“Master?” he asked.

But she’d given him all the information she intended to. “Come,” she said, leading him back to the corridor.

The double doors at the end of the hall were open this time and a haze of smoke drifted into the corridor along with a desultory drumbeat and a hum of conversation. But he had only a moment to glance inside and get an impression of some sort of public room with tables and benches scattered around, before the woman opened the door directly across from the bathing room and gestured him in.

In size and lack of windows, the room resembled the cell Tier had been living in, though here the stone floor was covered with a tightly woven rug that cushioned his feet. A pair of matching tapestries hung on one wall. The only furnishings in the room were two comfortable-looking chairs flanking a small round table.