The Evening Baths

By day the city sleeps; here, after dark, it pours out its quarrels into the steam and walks home lighter.

I come to the Evening Baths the hour after the last prayer, when Aurel-Khar has shaken off the day's heat and the lamps go up along the whitewashed colonnade. Steam stands over the pools and the lamplight breaks on the water into a hundred small moons. I had forgotten this room i…