As on Grimke, there were signs of orderly withdrawal. Most of the rooms they peered into were stripped of furnishings. This whole corner of the island must be honeycombed, she thought. At the same time, Maia recalled her promise to Brod — that getting through the mystery gate might offer their key to continued survival. So far, this was all very grand and imposing, but not too useful for keeping them alive.
Maybe some future explorer will find our bones, she contemplated, grimly. And wonder what our story was.
Then, Brod cried out, "Hurrah!" Accelerating, he hobbled ahead, leading Maia to a room he had spied. Lights flickered on as he rushed inside, limping toward a tiled basin while murmuring, "Oh, Lord, let it work!"
As if answering his prayer, a bright metal faucet began spilling forth clear liquid — fresh water, Maia scented quickly. 'Brod thrust his head under the stream, earnestly slurping, making Maia almost faint with sudden thirst. In ravenous haste she bumped her head against a porcelain bowl next to his, slaking her parched throat in a taste finer than plundered Lamatian wine, slurping as if the flow might cut off at any moment.
Finally, dazed, bloated, and gasping for breath, they turned to peruse this strange, imposing room.
"Do you think it's an infirmary? Or some sort of factory?" Maia asked. She cautiously approached one of several broad, tiled cubicles, each with a glass door that gaped ajar. "What are all these nozzles for?"
Leaning inside to look at a dozen ceramic orifices, she yelped when they suddenly came alive, jetting fierce sprays of scorching steam. "Ow, ow!" Maia cried, leaping back and waving a reddened arm. "It's a machine for stripping paint!"
Brod shook his head. "I know it seems absurd, Maia, but this place can only be—"
"Never!"
"It is. That really is a shower stall."
"For searing hair off lugars?" She found it doubtful. "Were the ancients giants, to need all that room? Did they have skins of leather?"
Brod chewed his lip. Experimentally, he leaned against the doorjamb and began inserting his arm. "Those little, thumb-size windows — I saw a few in the oldest building of Kanto Library, back in the city. They sense when someone's near. That's how the faucets knew to turn on for us."
More steam jetted forth, which Brod carefully avoided as he waved in front of one sensor, then another. Quickly, the stream transformed from hot to icy cold. "There you are, Maia. Just what we needed. All the comforts of home."
Maybe your home, she thought, recalling her last, tepid shower in Grange Head, carefully rationed from clay pipes and a narrow tin sprinkler head. At the time, she had thought it salaciously luxurious. Back in Port Sanger, Lamatia Hold had been proud of its modern plumbing. But this place, with its gleaming surfaces, bright lights, and odd smells, was downright alarming. Even Brod, who had grown up in aristocratic surroundings on Landing Continent, claimed never to have imagined such expanses of mirrored glass and ceramic, all apparently designed to service simple bodily needs.
"Laddies first," Maia told her friend, citing tradition and motioning for him to go ahead of her. "Guest-man gets first privileges."
Brod dissented. "Uh, we're in a sanctuary — or what must've been one, long ago — so strictly speaking, you're the guest. Go on, Maia. I'll see if I can find something to patch my feet."
Maia frowned at being outmaneuvered, but there was no point in further argument. They both badly needed to clean their many wounds, lest infection set in. Later, they could worry other matters, such as how to feed themselves.
"Well, stay in shouting range, will you?" she asked, tentatively moving her hand toward the controls. "Just in case I get into trouble."
Maia soon learned the knack of waving before those dark circles in the wall. She adjusted the shower to a temperature between tepid and scalding, and texture between mist and needle spray. Then, on stepping under the multiple jets, she forgot everything in a roar of bodily sensations.
Everything save one triumphant thought.
Those cheating murderers and their guns . . . they think I'm dead. Even Leie probably does. But I'm not. Brod and I are far from it.
In fact, she was sure none of her enemies had ever experienced anything remotely like what she luxuriated in now. Even when it came time to scrub and pry embedded grains of sand out of her wounds, that stinging seemed no great price to pay.
Sitting before a mirror broad enough for dozens, Maia touched her unkempt locks, which for weeks had grown out tangled, filthy, uncombed. It was, indeed, free of the dye her sister had hastily applied while Maia squirmed, helplessly bound and gagged aboard the Reckless. I ought to hack it all off, she decided.
