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It's ubiquitous.
That's a word from the Adeptus Mechanicus. A smart word, a big word. Ubiquitous. The man she calls grandfather, no Magos but with his own worn augmetics, speaks like them, so Vinny does too. She tries to. His work — all those piles of papers, all those pneumatic tubes — is ceaseless. Vinny's situation is detrimental but salvageable.
The water, rushing, dripping, rattling through pipes, rusting through metal, soaking her shoes, filling the filthy alley-canals outside — it is ubiquitous. Out of reach, but never out of earshot.
She copies words, relearning how to use her hands. She forges her grandfather's signature to speed his work. The metal along her fingers quivers, grinding against the fine bones of her wrists. The air here smells like mildew: papers slowly going to rot. There is no hope against the sour damp. It's part of life, part of Maref. It's in the very air.
It's horrific.
The fountain keeps gurgling, crisp clean water spilling merrily against the ash and burn of Rykad Minoris. Who for?
It's this — the terrible, pointless waste of a sparkling fountain, all the more nonsensical now against the carnage all around them — that hooks Vinny deep in her ribs. Someone shouts; gunfire rattles in the distance. The fountain sings.
"Rogue Trader," Sister Argenta says tentatively, "are you alright?"
The concern in the Sister's voice isn't for Vinny, really, but for the situation. That's reasonable. She doesn't know them, and they don't know her. The seneschal frowns. Idira Tlass shifts from foot to foot, squinting into the fountain like she might see whatever Vinny sees. They trust her only insomuch as they have no choice to do otherwise.
"Of course," Vinny says, because she is. She's not a woman to fall apart at a fountain. They move on.
When she gives the order, later, she doesn't fall apart then either. A fountain is nonsensical: a waste of clean water, a waste of pipes and pumps and energy. It's absurd for everyone to be looking at her — but here she is. Tears are similarly uneconomical.
So she doesn't cry. She just wonders, stupidly, what will be left. The marble shell of a broken fountain? Something cracked, something hollow? Will it catch the rain? Will something grow again: algae, mold, mildew? No, she learns. It is not like an explosion in a manufactorum. It is not like a slip of a knife, flesh knitting back wrong but still knitting back.
"An exterminatus," Heinrix tells her, "is a total decimation of the planetary biosphere. It won't come back."
He speaks like the Cult of Mars, like her grandfather. Big words, smart words. Ink on paper. Decimation of the planetary biosphere meaning exactly what it sounds like. It meaning everyone meaning water meaning life, meaning if anything could grow back would it change what's ash now, meaning no, of course not.
"Thank you," Vinny says. "That's all."
It feels, honestly, like some kind of joke.
When she first arrived on the Firstforged, they gave her recaf. Later there was wine, and carbonated mineral drinks. When she finally tasted the water, she almost spat it out. It tasted stale; it tasted dead. A strange flat sweetness so unlike Maref's sharp iron bloom, the inescapable rust and algae, the acid under it all. The ship's water felt wrong in her mouth.
It was clean, she finally realized. Filtered to the void and back, spat from some high-ranking faucet for a high-ranking heir.
And now this: what must be a sixth, no, a quarter, fuck, it feels like half of the Lord Captain's lodgings all given over to more of the same. An area larger than a hab, anyway. A ridiculous amount of room for a bath. All that rushing water! Free falling! Clean! She can hear it from the bed, from the desk, surging like the tide – she swears she can hear it from the bridge. Ubiquitous, in her grandfather's salt-rough voice.
She considers draining the whole damn thing. She could install a pull-chain shower instead. Take the excess water and sell it to some middle deck — except she doesn't need to sell water anymore. She's the Rogue Trader. Give it to the lower decks? Increase water rations? Here, drink your fill from the Lord Captain's old bathwater.
She is being idiotic.
A stalwart Rogue Trader doesn't lose herself over a bathtub.
Still, it feels ironic in a nasty sort of way. Vinny Stubbs would've killed for so much hot clean water. She has killed, directly and indirectly, for colder and dirtier than this. Slime in a plasteck tote! Pipe-taps and line splits and false gauges to trick the sensors! A sprawl of Hive, a river of Manufactorum workers all under her thumb. Blood and ink and sweat spilling freer than water, all in service to that water.
Lavinia Von Valancius has got it, now, and she can hardly bring herself to look at it.
When the bath runs red, blood spurting from the high-up spouts, she almost isn't surprised. This was bound to happen, wasn't it? Murk or rust or blood or bile. The humors of the ship unbalancing alongside her own. Her attendants scream, and yelp, and leap courageously towards the offending taps. Vinny lets it lap against her thighs, and imagines it Maref.
It's…odd.
There's very much that's odd on Janus, really; but this is added to her list.
"Lord Captain," Cassia says, "is there something wrong with the fountain?"
Vinny doesn't miss the way Abelard's eyes narrow. Emperor preserve her, she's going to get a reputation for having some kind of complex. At least Argenta doesn't seem to notice this time.
"There's extra spouts." Ignoring Abelard, Vinny touches Cassia's elbow, then points under the gurgling water. "See? One copper-plated in use, two silver or steel that aren't."
The point of them escapes her. They're cleverly done, half-hidden by the fountain's design, clustered at each cardinal on every tier — but only the copper ones are in use. She can hear how the water rushes and drains below their feet, all the fountains on a mass pump rather than individual cyclers. Why the extra spigots? It's a palace on an agriworld. An entire ocean — the first ocean Vinny has seen, in truth, let alone waded into — is just beyond the walk. The plants are lush and green. No one needs to sap fountain water.
"How delightful," Jae exclaims. Vinny casts her a sideways glance, and Jae raises an eyebrow. "For drinks, shereen. For parties."
Vinny's laugh is sharp and startled. Extra spouts for nectar, ambrosia, sparkling amasec. Cut off the water and replace it with wine. The natural evolution of the pointless fountain. Of course. "We'll have to install one aboard the ship."
Cassia cocks her head, eyes flickering over whatever colors dance through Vinny's aura, but she only says: "That sounds nice, Lord Captain. Perhaps you could do that."
It's warm.
Steam rises around them, scenting the air with soft perfume. Water laps against Vinny's arms and breasts, and the curve of her back as she leans towards Jae. The bath in her Dargonus palace is as ridiculous as the one aboard her ship; but isn't it just as ludicrous to have her palace and her ship? Huge luxurious things full of servants and rust and clean water. This is who Vinny is, or where she is. Is there a distinction?
Isn't it time to just get over it all? Lavinia Von Valancius, all the water she could want. She can burn a planet or drown it.
Vinny runs her hands over Jae's shoulder, down the smooth skin and muscles of her arm. This is nice. This is enjoyable. It's easier to find some calm when she has someone to clean and care for.
Jae signs, leaning into the touch. "I could get used to this."
"Aren't you already?" Vinny teases. The comb that lives on the edge of the bathing pool is beautiful: molded silver, mother-of-pearl inlay. It's never tarnished. Someone must polish it. Vinny lifts it now, and begins running it through Jae's hair. "Didn't you have servants, my princess, to do this for you?"
"None so talented as you." Jae's tone is light. "And not in a long time, shereen. No, a Cold Trader's life is lonely, as cold as her trade! A hot bath with a beautiful woman is a joy to savor indeed…"
Vinny works the comb through Jae's damp curls as she chatters, stopping now and again to untangle a knot. Her fingers move smoothly, new augmetics glittering in the soapy water.
"…though of course this is a thimbleful for you," Jae is saying, "after your bountiful sea-world, your beautiful oceans!"
Mare Factorum was — is — snarled with machinery, seas contained in pipes and canals, soured by the huge distant vats where they temper the fresh-forged bodies of Imperial Titans. Potable water came in slimy plasteck containers: little to drink, less to wash, all of it expensive. Official hydration rations were virtually nonexistent. The Mechanicus overseers, rather than expend effort crushing the criminal water trade, simply accounted for it in their calculations.
When Vinny got older and smarter, she clawed her way to selling algae-water instead of just buying it. Join the Waterway, tap some pipes, forge some new signatures. Keep a chokehold on the water you control. Make a lot of money.
Nothing worse than any Cold Trade. Certainly nothing worse than what she's done now as the Rogue Trader. Still the past fills Vinny's chest, small and thirsty and dirty, and she doesn't quite want to spit it up. She's more a gutter than a fountain, even now.
"None so warm and perfumed as this," she finally says, words as easy and empty as Jae's earlier.
"Ah." Jae leans back against Vinny. Her lashes are long and dark, shrouding her gaze as she glances back. "Well, it's fortunate that we're both here now."
Vinny sets the comb aside, then drapes her arms loosely around Jae's shoulders. There's a lot she could say: I keep dreaming that I'm drowning in the fountain on Rykad Minoris or I know your voice well enough to know when you're lying or I don't think there's enough hot water to truly cleanse either of us. There's a lot Jae could say in return. Water gurgles from the wall, ripples lapping against them. Jae's skin is warm against her cheek. "Fortunate indeed."