When Fercos had blown himself into exhaustion, Lady Drysi sent Humka to whisper in his ear. A short time later the Lady’s own musicians took the stage, with flute, a harp, and a set of small drums. They produced music fine and elegant over a beat that begged the feet to move. Within a few minutes the southerners had taken the floor in couples, joined by those few northerners who had spent time in Koerstadt. These included Isbael and Gadyn and Cairun. Kieve ignored the others, watching as Cairun paced and turned, bowed and stepped back, spun his partner and caught her with the crook of his arm to pace again, and turn, and bow. He moved as though the music was an ocean in which he swam, graceful and confident.
The piece ended. The dancers applauded and the small consort struck up another tune, this one more sprightly. Gadyn turned from his first partner and his gaze lit on Kieve. He grinned and walked toward her. Kieve took two steps and slid behind the tapestry, and from there to one of the service halls. She would not demonstrate her awkwardness in public and Gadyn could not force her to.
* * * *
Ilach had mounted an extra watch group in the Great Hall, where a troupe from down river presented a puppet show. Kieve paused to watch a moment of it. She had seen this play before: a Cheran creation story, it showed the Mother’s transformation into a heifer and her subsequent seduction by the Father, whose lust infected the entire herd. The Maccus figure played the Father, its huge nose and hunchback augmented by the addition of a tremendous phallus with which it knocked the other puppets off the stage. At the triumphant conclusion of the play, Maccus/Father skewered heifer/Mother and carried her about the stage on the end of his phallus, like a bovine flag, while little toys representing people spilled from her ruptured womb. The seminarians loved this play, since it guaranteed a large and raucous audience who would then make penance for their exuberance by emptying their purses into the seminarians’ collection bins.
She re-balanced the box in her arms and walked out of the Great Hall and toward the Crescent Bathhouse. Stars decorated the rim of the horizon, a thick beading of light cut off by the dark overhang of rock. Kieve paused at the broad plaza’s edge and leaned against the parapet, staring at the bulk of the castle. It curved away to her left, layer upon layer bound together by the stone tracery of staircases and occasional splashes of light from lamplit chambers. Moonlight and starlight caught in angles of clean snow. Watchfires glowed from the bastions along the inner curtain, all the way to the perilous stones of Lord’s Walk. A light breeze stirred the windchimes in the bare limbs of the trees below. No silent, racing soldiers decorated the Garden of the Lady tonight.
Kieve shifted the box in her arms. It held the books Taryn had loaned to her: poetry, Comin of Lymon’s treatise on the nature of reality, the fourth volume of Maurin’s History Along the Morat, and the small earthen flute she had bought for him in Three Crossings. Perhaps they could recite poetry tonight, or discuss Comin’s ridiculous theories. Or Taryn could make the ocarina speak in the same earthy tones she had heard in Three Crossings’ tavern. Something, anything, other than more talk of plots and swords and successions and Dalmorat’s dying lord.
Her breath became ice along the cloak’s hood as she walked toward the Crescent Bathhouse. It lay along the plaza like a lazy half-moon, prongs pointed toward the Morat. Taryn said it had been built atop Sterk’s natural hot springs almost two centuries before by Cadoc’s great-grandfather’s brother, Lord Hueil, who led his armies against Dalmorat’s Inguruki. He created the mountain-meadow loveliness of Hueil’s Garden at the tower’s foot and designed the overwhelming tropical beauty of the hothouse plantings in the bathhouse. Taryn said the lord spent his final decade locked in the tower, convinced that, some evil night, his plants would eat him. He believed his friends, barons, servants, and children had been taken over by seeds and spores, and were walking vegetables themselves. He ate meat and only that of carnivores, and toward the end barred everyone from his chamber, communicating through a screened opening in the door. He was dead for two days before anyone knew it. When his courtiers broke down the door, they found a corpse composed of bones and skin and wisps of hair, slumped in the Lord’s gilded throne.
A soft pillow of heat greeted her as she pushed through the first bathhouse door. When she opened the inner door fog bloomed and swirled where the damp air within met the colder air of the entry. Two men dressed in moonstone and wheat, Taryn’s colors, lounged in the warmth. She nodded at them as the bath keeper rose from her chair and came forward, rubbing at her face with the heels of her palms.
“Not catching, is it?” she said, peering at Kieve’s eyepatch. Fog danced about their knees.
“No.” She put the wrapped instrument in her pocket and handed the box to one of Taryn’s servants. “Lord Taryn?”
“Is in the pools.” The keeper plucked a lamp from a bracket and pushed through the curtained doorway of a robing room. She put the lamp on a low table. “You’ll be wanting a scrub?”
Kieve nodded. The bath keeper accepted piece after piece of Kieve’s clothing and took them away. Kieve put the ocarina and a coin into the pocket of a soft woolen robe, put it on, and went into the scrub room. The dark blue cloth brushed at her ankles. When she took the robe off again, warm scented air touched her skin. She scrubbed, standing in the stained marble drain tub, and the keeper poured warm water over her shoulders. When she took the pins from her hair it fell past her waist, sticky and dull with dirt. The keeper made an exasperated noise and took the hair in her hands while Kieve knelt by a tub and covered her eyepatch. Three bouts with soap and the keeper’s strong fingers washed the dirt away. Kieve bound her head in a towel, dismissed the bath keeper with a half-stiver, and walked to the steam pools.
She paused at the entrance. A small azure bird rose from the tree by her shoulder and flew calling across the room. The pools, screened each from each by tubs of flowering plants, were dark save for one in a distant corner. The fragrance of blossoms filled the warm, moist air over the slight tang of sulphur. Starlight shone dimly through the angled glass overhead. She reached to touch the fleshy leaves of a plant, cool and slippery between her fingers. Lianas bearded with moss and studded with blossoms like rich jewels swung from the high tiled ceiling. An orchid glowed by her hip. She dropped her hand from the leaf and the azure bird, settled hidden in a distant bough, released a tumbling rill of song.
“Kieve?”
Her feet moved without noise on the wooden path. Sliding through a loose screen of vines, she found Taryn lolling in a small pool, his body stretched through the water. A crystal lamp, suspended by chain from the distant ceiling, lit a napkin-covered basket, a flask, and two wine cups resting on a marble slab behind his shoulder. Copper hair touched with grey glimmered in the small light. He smiled and creases deepened, bracketing his long mouth. Kieve turned her head from the smile and, dropping the robe, stepped into the pool. Steam swirled upward and the water’s heat pulsed against her skin.
“Quite raffish,” Taryn said. “Towel and patch and nothing more save a tattoo.”
She slid down on the bench beside him until water lapped at her chin, rested her head against the rim of the pool, and closed her eyes.
“Don’t spoil the quiet,” she murmured. “We’ll be interrupted soon enough anyway.”
“We won’t. I bribed the bath keeper to admit no one else.”
She opened her eyes, smiling. “Such a generous man.” She reached for him under the water.
“Kieve.” He laughed, pushing her hand away. “This isn’t the time.”
“Yes,” she said, reaching again. “Yes, it is.” She touched him and grinned. “And you think so too, don’t you, my lord?”
His arm circled her waist and pulled her to him. She sat on his thighs, straddling him as they kissed deeply. She moaned against his mouth.
In another moment they were both out of the water, pushing against each other amid the discarded robes. He found the breath to say, “The wine!” Then she did not grant him breath for anything but
her.
Afterwards they lay tangled together, half in the pool. She took a deep breath and let it go, emptying her lungs and emptying the tension in her shoulders.
“Kieve. I forgot the sheath.”
“Indeed you did. But I have herbs. We are safe.” She stretched her arms over her head, almost touching a flowering vine. “Such a clever, generous man, to buy the bathhouse for a night,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “It’s Isbael’s money.”
Her smile fled. “I don’t want to hear about it. Let me take my bath in peace and wait until the old man dies and leave. Here, I brought you something.”
She stretched to bring the package from the robe’s pocket. Taryn took it, smiling, and pulled open the lamb skin. She slid all of herself back into the pool. He turned the little instrument over in his fingers, and joined her.
“It’s from Three Crossings,” she said. “I liked the black design. It makes a sound like a sad wind, low and far away.”
He raised his eyebrows and put his lips to the instrument, whispering into it while he played with the fingering. After a moment he produced a chain of notes, and a moment later a simple melody that she recognized as an old mountain song.
Lamplight flickered on dark leaves and gem-colored petals, steam rose in ghosts to the darkness overhead. Sensation claimed her, a universe of warmth and touch and smell and sight and music, thought banished. Her thighs ached a little, a good feeling. She put her hand out, admiring the gleam of water along her forearm, and took one of the cups resting along the pool’s edge. The music danced. Rich amber wine, dry and cool and smooth along her throat.
“Thank you,” Taryn said. “It has a pure tone to it. I didn’t expect that from a peasant instrument.”
She smiled. “I brought your books back, too—one of your servants has them. I liked the poetry, especially Timburen’s verses about Death’s seduction.”
He didn’t respond. After a moment she looked at him. He was staring at the surface of the water, frowning a little.
“What is it?” she said.
He shook his head. “It won’t work tonight,” he said. “What we’ve been doing for three years, the wine and poetry and music.”
“And the loving? Why not?”
He spread his hands. “Because Isbael’s back. Because Cadoc’s dying, and he wants you to pledge your oath to Gadyn.”
She stared at him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I need the wine and the poetry and the music. I need your body.” Muscles slid beneath his skin, along his shoulders, under the copper hair of his chest, across his flat belly. Her thighs remembered the curve of his hips. “I am tired of talking,” she said. She sat up against the side of the pool. Water lapped at her nipples. The towel slipped out of place and she took it off, twisted her hair, and knotted it behind her neck. Tendrils drifted from her temples to float in the water.
“Baron Kelyn went to Gadyn withdrawing his support,” Taryn said. Steam wreathed his arm as he reached for his wine. “Gadyn was at sword practice, and almost skewered the baron before Rive and Matyns stopped him. Now the other land-barons hold their breaths, waiting to see what happens. Kelyn spent two hours with a seminarian last night, who left with enough capits to fund prayers for a year, assuring the Baron’s safe passage through the Mountain. In case Gadyn’s temper breaks again.”
Kieve pressed her lips together.
“If you pledge your oath to any of them, it implies that the network goes with you. If the network passes to the next Lord, then no one is safe. To vote against that heir is to guarantee your own harassment at best, death at worst.” Taryn sipped his wine. “I assume that’s what Cadoc told you. That you are to support his son.”
“Taryn. Stop. I can’t talk about it.”
“Your oath?”
“And my patience,” she said. “I am sick of words, I am sick of Cadoc and his dying and his heirs and his province. I don’t want to be sick of you, too.”
He pulled himself out of the pool and sat at its lip, leaning forward toward her. “The other lords are here to see if the network passes along with the sword. Bergdahl and Moel are just as poor as Dalmorat, and Myned only a little less so. Butchering enemies and taking their lands is a fine way to increase a lord’s income, and easier than collecting taxes. The land-barons hate and fear Gadyn and will see that he does not take the sword unless—unless!—they have no other choice. If they are convinced that Gadyn inherits the network, then they must support him, or risk death. If you pledge to oath to Gadyn it is obvious that—damn it, Kieve, listen to me!”
“I can’t talk of this,” she said.
He cursed and slapped his hand flat against the tiles. “Adwyr will manage the network for Gadyn, as he did for Cadoc. But Adwyr is not the symbol that you are. If Gadyn cannot have your pledge, he will kill you to prevent you from giving it to someone else. It is the only sort of choice he understands.”
“Ah. And your Lady Isbael will save me from this fate? While hiding in her room for fear of dog poisoners?”
He took a breath, then let it out with a rush. “She might,” he said. He began emptying the basket of meat dumplings, smoked fish on thin slices of dark bread, a round cheese, a cloth filled with pastries. As he worked the tension lessened along his jaw. She tried to push away thoughts of Drysi and Isbael and Gadyn. And Cairun, who was Gadyn’s dog.
“Tell me about Lord Cairun,” she said.
Taryn hesitated, then resumed slicing the cheese. “There is little to tell. His lands lie to the north, above the Morat, near the top of the plateau. The original seat of the Marubin—a rocky, stony land, as poor as its lord.”
He wrapped cheese around a piece of smoked meat and offered it to her. She shook her head.
“In the city,” she said, “they talked of his entertaining land-barons and guildspeakers. But you say he is poor?”
“True, and true. The money comes to him, but I don’t know how.”
Kieve shook her head at his offer of a dumpling. “He is young?”
“Twenty-four, two years younger than you. Most believe he supports Gadyn, but he has not renounced his own claim. He is not well known, but is thought to be subtle, and a danger.”
“You think everyone a danger.” She pulled herself out of the pool, took a comb from the pocket of the robe, and sat with her feet in the water, running the comb through her tangled hair. Taryn watched her. When she glanced at him he offered her a pastry, which she refused. In their silence the bird sang again and was still.
“Why will you talk about Cairun but not about—”
“Because it is only gossip,” she said, feeling the anger start again. “Because I have spent my day with people nipping at me like wolves, because I thought this the one place where I might find some rest, because if I cannot find a moment’s respite with you, then there is none to be had on this entire cursed rock, because—”
“Ignoring danger does not end it. Your ignorance could kill you.”
“Then so be it!” she shouted, and swung her legs out of the pool. “At least dead I would have some peace!”
“Peace! By the Father, Kieve, we’re only trying to help.”
“We?” she repeated. “Who is ‘we’? You and Lady Isbael?”
“And if it is?”
She cursed. “You don’t want to help me, Taryn, you want to help your mistress to the sword.”
He took a breath and said, “My betrothed, Kieve. If Isbael takes the sword, we will marry.”
She stared at him. He spread his hands. “We have been pledged for over ten years, Kieve, privately. We thought you should know.”
She shook her head. “So all of this, poetry and music, this was a sham? Something to pass the time? You are no different from the others. There is no person safe when the Marubin set their hearts on a thing.”
“It’s not that simple,” Taryn said, and she grabbed up the wine cup and threw it at the tiles. The sound of its shattering filled the bathhouse and left, in
its wake, a startled silence.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Yes. It is.”
She threw the robe over her shoulders as she stalked back through the plantings, thrusting aside the lianas and ferns.
“Kieve!” he called behind her.
“No!” she shouted back, and let the door slam closed.
Chapter 5
She landed on her back, hard enough to push the wind from her lungs, and let the momentum of the fall carry her over and up to her feet. The practice master grinned and came at her. She danced away from him, buying time to catch her breath. A few torches guttered in their brackets along the stones. Above the curtain wall the sky had lightened a little. Pyrs stood by the armory, bundled in his huge shortcoat, staring at her. He had been awake that morning when she rose and, on a whim, she had brought him along.
“More?” the master called. She could hear the smile in his voice. Instead of replying she feinted to his left and they engaged again. This time she caught the moment of leverage and they strained together, balanced. She felt his muscles shift as he prepared to change his hold and in that instant let her anger push its way into strength. She shifted with him, changed her grip, and twisted him over her hip and down to the cold flagstones of the practice yard.
“Damn,” he said, raising his hands. She took a deep breath, straightened, and gave him her hand. He took it and came to his feet.
“That’s good, I like that,” he said. “Control the emotion and you can use it. Otherwise it uses you, and rarely to a good end.” He put a hand to her shoulder and pushed her. “Go eat,” he said. “I still have work to do.”
She bowed but he had already turned away to lay out wooden swords for the cadets, whistling under his breath. The melody came out as a stream of delicate white frost.
Control the emotion, she thought. She had spent most of the night awake at the bidding of her anger at Taryn, unwilling to put it aside, and rose before dawn to seek out the practice master. He had been surprised to see her but still happy to spend half an hour grappling with her in the icy yard. Now her shoulders relaxed and the heat of exercise carried her across the stable yard. Pyrs trotted beside her.
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