They passed arched entrances to rooms with hot and cold pools, where other people swam or lounged in the water and talked. The Yendri led him to a room with a heavy door, handed him the teapot and cup, and worked the valve lock that opened the door. Steam billowed out, hot enough to make the hall seem chilly by comparison. Smith peered in and caught a glimpse of boulders and swirling water.
“Go in,” said the Yendri, “Sit, and drink the tea. All of it, as quickly as you can. It will cleanse you. In an hour I will bring you out.”
“All right,” said Smith, and stepped in cautiously. The door closed behind him, and in a moment the air cleared enough for him to see that the room was tank-shaped, with a drain at the bottom. Water gushed from a tap in the ceiling and streamed down the rock walls, which radiated intense heat, and splattered and swirled off the boulders before finally cycling down the drain. There was one curved stone seat, awkward to sit on.
“Drink the tea,” said a disembodied voice. Smith looked up and saw a grate in the wall, high up. He could just discern the Yendri’s face behind it.
“You’re going to watch me?” he asked.
“Sometimes your people faint,” the Yendri replied. “The tea, please.”
“All right.” Smith sipped it grudgingly, but found it surprisingly good, hot and spicy. He drank it all and only when he had emptied the teapot did he notice the aftertaste.
“This isn’t a purge, is it?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Yendri replied. Smith groaned.
In the next hour a great deal of nasty stuff went down the drain, including a couple of old tattoos, exuding from his frantic skin like black syrup. Smith saw dirt from every place he’d ever lived coming to the surface, the yellow dust of Troon, the red dust of Mount Flame City, some gray residue he didn’t want to think about. Occasionally jets of hot water shot from the ceiling, flooding the filth down the drain and almost washing Smith away with it. He clung to the stone perch and cursed the Yendri steadily. The Yendri watched him, impassive; and at the end of the hour shut off the water and came to let Smith out.
Smith had planned to throttle him the minute he could reach him, but collapsed on him instead. He let the Yendri support him back down the hall to a room with a tepid pool. The Yendri toppled him in and told him to swim. Smith decided to drown, but found to his astonishment that his strength was returning, and with it an extraordinary sense of well-being. After he had splashed about a while a pair of hulking bath attendants came to haul him out, slap him with cold towels, and make him drink a lot of plain water.
They led him at last to a massage chamber, where he was soaped and rinsed and oiled and kneaded. Then they applied fresh bandages to his wounds.
By that time Smith felt wonderful and no longer wanted to kill anybody. This made the events of the next few moments all the more unfortunate.
When the attendants had done with him, they indicated he should dress himself again. He floated out to the changing room, seemingly ten years younger than he had been when he left it.
A bulky man in very fine clothes was removing them in there, and three other men stood attendance on him, taking his garments one by one and folding them with care. Smith nodded as he passed them and went to his shelf. It didn’t occur to him until his hand was on his clothes that he knew one of the men. Apparently it occurred to the other man at the same moment.
Smith heard the muttered exclamation and grabbed frantically in his right boot. He turned with a knife in his hand in time to see the other man advancing on him, drawing a blade fully ten inches long.
“This is for my cousins, you pig,” snarled the man, preparing to slash at Smith. Before he could do so, however, Smith acted without thinking and threw his little knife.
Acting without thinking was something he generally did under circumstances such as the one in which he presently found himself. The details of circumstance might vary, but the result was always the same: a corpse at his feet and a great deal of trouble.
He looked down now at the body that had his knife hilt protruding from