Bastion

caravan. He started a pot of water heating and got the frying pan on the fire. They still had bread, they had eggs, and they had plenty of bacon. That would suffice for toad-in-the-hole, which to his mind, was about the best breakfast there was. The smell of bacon brought out Lena and Bear, and eventually Jakyr, who took over after he’d visited Mags’ discovery.
    “Mags,” Lita said, around a bite of hot egg and bread, “do you want to go hunting for the hertasi bathing room, or shall I? There will be one; the hertasi are as fussy about cleanliness as their masters are. I can tell you what to look for, and you’re probably handier at crawling around caves than I am.”
    “What am I looking for?” Mags asked, not at all averse to trying.
    “Mostly, a small spring. If there is one around here in these caves, they’ll have built the bathing area around it. There’ll be a bigger basin cut into the rock, bigger than the bathtubs that we’re used to, but at the moment, the spring will just run through it.” It was Jakyr who answered, not Lita. Mags looked at him curiously, and he shrugged. “Remember, I’ve been to a working Vale, as opposed to reading about them.”
    Evidently Lita was in good enough humor not to rise to his baiting. She just shrugged and had another bite of yolk-soaked bread.
    Jakyr looked faintly disappointed at her indifference but continued. “It’ll be a variation on how they make their big hot-spring soaking pools for the Hawkbrothers. There would be several of these bathing-basins, but I doubt we’ll find more than one still working, and the bandits probably used it—if they used it at all—for watering their horses and livestock. They probably had no idea it was for taking a bath. Though I could be wrong; for all I know, they were hedonists who lolled about in baths all day.” A quirk of his mouth and a lifted eyebrow invited Mags to chuckle, which he did. “So. Spring, which will be running into a big basin, which will be filled and overflowing into some sort of escape drain into a lower cave.”
    “Think I’ll find it here?” Mags asked.
    Jakyr shook his head. “If there were a good place to put it here, we’d have heard the spring the minute we got inside the caves. It probably won’t be near this one, because the well for drinking water is here. They are fastidious about keeping dirty water away from clean, and they won’t have taken the chance of contaminating the well.”
    Mags nodded.
    “Anyway, the basin just overflows straight into a drain, but if you look at the inlet end, you’ll see a diversion channel for the spring,” Jakyr continued. “They’d probably use dams of clay, and we can too. You divert the water away from the basin, have your bath, let the clean water in to flush out the dirty, and there you go.” He sighed. “If there were Hawkbrothers here, they’d have some way of heating the water, and it would be flowing in hot. But I expect we can use hot stones to get it bearable anyway.”
    Mags sighed as well. That would have been nice. Still, it was far better than no way to get a bath.
    “Or we can use the canvas tub we already have with us,” Lita pointed out, and nodded to what looked like a thick door or thin cabinet propped against the wall.
    “Oh, well, be logical, then!” Jakyr retorted. “Personally, I’d rather tote around one kettle of hot stones than twenty of hot water, not to mention emptying it after!”
    “Suit yourself.” Lita finished her meal and scrubbed the plate and fork clean with sand from the bucket Mags had provided for that purpose. She got up, and stretched. “I’ll see to the vanners. Are we here for the day?”
    “It will take us at least that long to properly set up,” Jakyr replied. “I don’t want us scrambling to get things done and end up with everything only half done. The Guard left us a lot of supplies and other things that need to be stored right the first time.”
    “Sir, yes, sir,” Lita said laconically. Mags was afraid she was going to salute, which might very well have been enough to set Jakyr off, but she didn’t. “Suit you if I set up the stables?”
    “Suits me fine,” Jakyr replied, brusquely. “Mags, you and I went over the inventory and where it’s all stored, so you and I will be doing most of the moving.”
    “I’ll help,” offered Lena. “Amily and Bear can set things up here if you tell them where you want things.”
    The actual moving of things out of storage