White Road

headed down the stairs.
    Within the hour servants brought up a small brass tub and steaming cans of hot water from the kitchen.
    “Sebrahn first,” Alec insisted, fully enjoying handing out a few orders after all the ones he’d been suffering.
    “Let me, then,” said Seregil. “You’re too wobbly and you have more than enough bruises.”
    The rhekaro had no bodily functions, and no particular smell, but he still got grubby. This was his first real bath, but he showed no sign of fear as Seregil mixed cans of warm and cold water and poured it over him. Sebrahn just sat there while Seregil washed him with the cloth, then lathered his hair. When the bath was over and he had Sebrahn wrapped in a flannel, they both smelled nicely of rose-scented soap.
    Seregil gave the rhekaro an uncommonly fond look, surprising after their earlier exchange. “I forget, sometimes, how much he resembles you. And even more so now, thanks to Thero. I suppose it’s almost like seeing you at that age. Now then, your turn.”
    With Seregil’s help, Alec sank into the warm water and rested his head on his bare knees, letting Seregil scrub his back and wash his long hair. “Don’t you think I should cut some of it off?” he asked yet again as Seregil’s finger caught in a tangle.
    “It’s up to you, talí, but I like it,” Seregil told him, as always.
    “Then you have to grow yours out again, since you seem to have forgotten the problems.”
    “I am, but I can’t do it quite as fast as our little friend can.” He pulled the chair over to the side of the tub to keep him company as Alec took over with the cloth.
    When Seregil sat down, Sebrahn climbed into his lap. Seregil smiled down at him.
    Sebrahn is as much pet as child
, thought Alec.
A pet that can kill
. Seeing the two of them like that, he wondered,
What do I call this? A “family”?
    But he knew better, and that brought a now familiar tightness around his heart. He brushed it aside. Later. They’d figure things out later. Right now he was just going to enjoy the damn bath!
    “Are you all right, talí?”
    “The water’s just getting cold.”
    Seregil helped him out and wrapped him in a large flannel. Alec leaned against him, the water dripping from his hair onto the floor around his bare feet and soaking the front of Seregil’s shirt.
    “I do feel better.”
    “You smell better, too.”
    Seregil’s warm, deep chuckle vibrated against Alec’s heart. Taking him by the hand, he drew Seregil back to the unmade bed. “Sebrahn, go look out the window.”
    The rhekaro obeyed the now familiar order at once.
    Alec glanced at the door, making sure it was closed. Satisfied, he gave Seregil a push and tumbled them both into bed, pulling Seregil on top of him and holding him tight.
    “What’s this?” Seregil asked, smiling down at him.
    “If you have to ask, then it’s been too long,” Alec saidwith a chuckle of his own. “I keep telling you, I’m getting better!”
    And Alec must have trained the rhekaro well during the long days up here, Seregil thought later, for Sebrahn never took his gaze from the harbor as they rolled and surged and moaned together, tangled in Alec’s long wet hair.
    When Alec woke up again some time later, it was still light out, Seregil was gone, and Mydri was looming over him. “My, aren’t you energetic.”
    The look in those dark eyes left him completely tongue-tied as he waited for another upbraiding, but she just shook her head. “How do you do that nightrunning business with such a guilty face?”
    Sebrahn squatted at the end of the bed, eyeing the healer with an intensity that made Alec nervous. Sebrahn had already been told that the various household members were friends, but if he’d turn on Seregil, all bets were off.
    Mydri shook a colorful little rag and yarn doll from her sleeve and placed it in Sebrahn’s hands. “A gift for you, little one. Be a good—rhekaro and let me see how your Alec is healing.”
    Sebrahn regarded the doll for a moment, then tried to stuff it into his own sleeve as Mydri began her examination.
    She ran cool fingers over the delicate new skin covering the wounds on Alec’s chest and throat. Then she went about feeling his pulse, listening to his heart and bowels, and clucking her tongue over the bruises on his arms. All the same, when she’d finished at last, she seemed pleased. “You’re healing faster than you have any right to, you know.” She glanced over at Sebrahn, who had given up