Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 988: Two Apex Women

From the far side, muffled: ”Learn all the tricks so you can pamper me later.”

”Shameless!” Luna laughed.

”Okay, Darling!!” Calypso was ready. ”Miss Maiden, please teach me everything!”

”Let me see if everyone else is situated first,” Yunohana offered, smiling softly.

Two stools down, Bastet had washed herself with the efficiency of long practice, every motion economical, not one drop wasted.

Yunohana, passing, offered her a slim vial. ”Camellia oil. A drop, warmed in the palm. For the ears.”

Bastet regarded the vial, then accepted it as tribute, and her tail gave her away, again.

At the end of the row, Alexandra had claimed Alice’s hair. She worked the lather through it in long patient strokes, the black half and the white half gathered together over one shoulder. Alice sat with her eyes closed, humming something tuneless and happy, her head tilting wherever the fingers steered it.

”Rinse,” Alexandra murmured.

Alice leaned forward. The humming survived the bucket.

The washing took a while with this much hair in the room, but one by one the ladies finished rinsing and padded over to the pool, and the bath finally received the family.

It made Calypso’s case for her. A basin of milky mineral water stretched out to a wall of glass and open screens, the night garden dark beyond them, steam rising off the surface in lazy ropes. It was, honestly, a hot lake.

Calypso reached the water first, of course, and sank in with a groan of joy that rolled across the entire hall. The rest followed at their own pace, sighs rising with the steam as the long day came off shoulder after shoulder, until the whole family floated with little towels folded on their heads.

Scarlet had washed faster than anyone and claimed the stone shelf at the deep end, a bottle from her new cellar standing open at the rim, cups waiting on a floating tray. She filled two of them and slid the tray across the water toward their hostess.

”Come drink with me, shrine woman.”

Just her tone alone told all the girls listening in that she had history with the Japanese woman. Scarlet was many things, but she wouldn’t speak like this to a person she wasn’t very familiar with.

”Thank you, but I will pass.” Yunohana bowed her head slightly to the warrior. ”A hostess should keep a clear head.”

”Shame.” Scarlet swirled her own cup, sighing, visibly disappointed. ”Guess the stories are true after all.”

”...Which stories?”

”That Japan breeds beautiful queens who can’t handle their liquor.” Scarlet knocked her drink back and reached for the bottle again, thoroughly pleased with herself. ”Don’t feel bad about it. I’ll will drink your share too. Call it an easy vict-”

Yunohana lifted the second cup off the tray and drained it in one smooth, unhurried motion.

”Kyoto raises its shrine maidens on ceremony sake,” she said, refilling the cup herself with a perfectly steady hand. ”We are practically weaned onto the barrel.”

”Oho?” Scarlet’s grin spread tooth by tooth. ”Oho! Game on!”

They settled side by side on the shelf, the calmest woman in Japan beside the loudest one in the water, and got along immediately, to the visible confusion of everyone under thirty.

”So tomorrow your Blades seat finally comes out to play,” Scarlet said, pouring for them both. ”I’ve heard stories about that monster for years. How many of them are true?”

”Most, probably.”

”Good.” Scarlet clinked her cup against Yunohana’s. ”Then be a dear and tell them I booked the fight.”

”I will pass along the challenge exactly as worded.”

Luna lasted four minutes in the water before hauling herself out to sit on the rim, legs still dangling in, steam pouring off her skin.

”Gremlin bestie, you’re the color of a boiled shrimp,” Nyx observed from the water beside her knees, arms folded on the pool’s lip, chin settled comfortably on top of them.

”This soup is a weapon.”

Calypso, submerged to the chin beside her and perfectly content, blew a stream of bubbles in commentary. Bastet had melted along the pool’s edge with her ears flat with pleasure, achieving in one minute the exact state she usually needed a sunbeam for.

Kira and Rika, prisoners of war, had stopped resisting somewhere around the first soak and were floating side by side with matching expressions of bliss.

A few cups later, Scarlet looked out at the dark garden and went sincere for a moment.

”You know, back in those first crazy years, I did my drinking in ruins like everybody else. And here your country sits, all pretty, gardens and all.” She tipped her cup toward their hostess. ”Somebody here worked her ass off.”

Yunohana looked into her own cup for a moment.

”Many hands held. Mine only stayed folded.”

Scarlet refilled both cups and left it there.

”Before we fly home, you and I are playing cards.”

”I know hanafuda.”

”Poker, shrine lady.”

”...Then you will teach me.”

”Lady Yunohana,” Sarah said from across the water, with feeling. ”Please don’t. She counts.”

”Counting is legal,” Scarlet said.

...

On the far side of the bamboo wall, Kaiden had a bath the size of a tennis court entirely to himself, the little towel folded on his head exactly as an attendant had instructed.

Through the wall came the tide-slosh of somebody swimming where swimming was not intended, a two-voice complaint about civil rights, and the pop of a cork.

He listened to all of it and grinned up at the ceiling beams.

’When was the last time I just... sat somewhere?’ he wondered, and genuinely came up empty. Between the audits, the flights, the ceremonies, and a family that loved him at concert volume around the clock, he couldn’t remember his last hour of pure, unclaimed quiet.

Nobody in his lap. Nothing to sign. Everyone he loved was thirty feet away, audibly happy, and for one blessed hour, somebody else’s problem.

Japan had pampered him with feasts, fireworks and a prime minister, but this steaming, silent hall was the first gift nobody could have put on a list.

He sank to his nose and let the silence soak in deeper than the water.

...

By the sake’s second lap, Leia had gathered enough courage for the thing she had been rehearsing under her breath. She paddled a little closer to the shelf and bobbed into something halfway between treading water and a bow.

”Um. Lady Yunohana? Could I ask you something? It might be a weird question.”

”Weird questions pair very well with sake,” Yunohana said, refilling her own cup. ”Please.”

”At dinner. The way you poured the tea, and served everyone, and kind of... ran the whole evening without ever once looking busy.”

Leia’s momentum wilted under that gentle gaze, and the rest came out at half volume.

”The three of us watched you all night like a nature documentary. Is any of that learnable? Could you maybe teach us a little? Only if it’s not rude to ask! Mainly, I’m interested in how to increase my ladylike charm to seduce any man I desire!”

”Leia!” Emily hissed, scandalized. ”She leads a country, you can’t ask her for such lessons!”

”She’s exactly the person you ask!”

”For the record,” Sarah put in, ”she’s asking for all three of us. Also for Aria, who’s been in quiet crisis since the tea pour.”

”I am not in crisis,” Aria said pleasantly.