by Vela Roth
“Get me a clean tunica to wear under the gown,” said Cassia.
Perita tossed up her hands and disappeared into the hearth room.
The soap and water began to ease the burning on Cassia’s skin. It had taken her an extra moment to realize it was not just the heat of anger, but the first signs of a reaction to the seamstress’s handiwork. If Cassia didn’t know her plants, she might have dismissed the subtle irritation as the result of anxiety and sweat. But any gardener knew that within the course of an hour, that discomfort would turn into unbearable itching, then the misery of sores.
The old hag had rubbed stinglily all over the inside of the tunica. The resulting hives would have forced Cassia to depart early from the prince’s temple day celebration. To excuse herself from the king’s presence before the permitted time.
Her heart pounding, Cassia started over and washed herself again.
She dressed herself this time. She didn’t care if the hem of her homespun wool tunica looked wrong under the embroidered festival gown, nor that it was too late to do anything with her hair beyond brushing it out around the obstacle of the headdress. With a frantic light in her eyes, Perita looked Cassia over as if trying to decide which bleeding wound to bind first. Before the girl could attempt anything more, Cassia called Knight to her side and marched out of her chambers.
She would not slam the door. She would not run. She let the door close of its own accord and set out for the Temple of Anthros at a brisk but composed walk.
She took her place in the gallery just as the sun disk settled at her back and the royal mage began his incantations. Not late. She let out a breath of relief and did not look at the king. She wasn’t late. He could not be displeased.
Instead Cassia watched the triumphant warriors below, who stood in Anthros’s house as they did on the field, masters of the war god’s domain in the world. At least none of them would trouble her bed tonight, reliving his triumph by the sword.
The King’s Feast
The moment the Hesperines set foot inside the front gate of Solorum Palace, they encountered the first limb of the Tenebrans’ sprawling feast. The gate did not shut behind the embassy, for it stood open to receive the crown prince’s guests and subjects. But Lio felt the magic that closed around them from wall to wall and foundation to tower. That and the silence.
Voices and clinking tableware hushed. Uncle Argyros and Aunt Lyta did not pause, only followed the king’s chamberlain through the courtyard wearing tight-lipped, benevolent smiles. Lio did the same and kept his gaze on his own people. He feared if he so much as glanced at the mortals who sat at table all around him, they might advance from terrorized silence to screaming. They seemed to find no reassurance in the embassy’s escort, a small army of their king’s guards bearing halberds that appeared useful for performing decapitations. None of the diners moved, although the way their skin hung from their bones suggested they sat before their best meal of the year.
Lio didn’t bother breathing as he made his way between the trestle tables, which stood in trampled mud. On the evidence of sight alone, he concluded the warhorses had paraded through here during the day on their way to the tournament. The scent of dung had to be as unpleasant to the humans as the carcasses on their plates were to him. But he regarded a harmless natural odor such as the manure of living horses infinitely preferable to the stink of the dead flesh that comprised the mortals’ meal.
The fact remained, however, that excrement did not agree with silk shoes, and Lio’s had been a gift. A slight bending of the rules now would spare him extensive cleaning spells later. He walked without letting his feet touch the ground. The long hem of his robes would hide the slight levitation from the easily alarmed mortals. He was so much taller than his fellow Hesperines, they wouldn’t notice either. Especially if they were doing the same thing.
Even after Lio and the rest of the embassy went inside, the celebratory chatter did not resume behind them. Lio did hear ale sloshing in tankards and the breaking of bread, then a great many teeth tearing into flesh. Pity overcame his disgust. The lowest of the king’s subjects would not let even the creatures they most feared deter them. They would pick the bones of the prince’s temple day and get every scrap they could out of it.
The silence followed the Hesperines, stilling the raucous laughter of craftsmen and merchants and their families who feasted in the corridors of the palace. Only when the embassy reached the doors of the king’s great hall did Lio’s sensitive ears tell him conversation had resumed all the way out in the courtyard.
The royal herald announced them, then the chamberlain led them into the king’s presence as the soldiers who had flanked them fell away and took their posts around the hall. Here conversation gave way not to silence, but more formal greetings, the grease that kept the wheels of the Summit from grinding to a halt. Tenebran courtiers were pretentious but not particularly subtle. Lio listened for the implications in their words, whether thinly disguised insults or allusions to what had been said at the negotiations the night before, while he took a breath.
She smelled like life. She had spent several hours close to living soil and growing things, then taken a bath. The mere scent of clean skin had never had this effect on Lio before. Did Cassia enjoy a soak in a tub by the hearth? Or did she lather herself on her feet at a washbasin? Lio clamped his mouth shut over teeth that would be the bane of him from now until he escaped the festival.
She was seated at a table at the very back of the room, as close to being relegated to the corridor as possible while still sitting in the great hall. If he were to turn his head a little to the right, he would find her sitting in a corner the fire pit’s light didn’t quite reach. He would be able to see her just fine. But he dared not look at her.
There and then, facing hours in which he must not show a mouthful of unsheathed canines to the king’s dignitaries, Lio was forced to admit to himself the effect Lady Cassia had on him.
Goddess have Mercy.
It had been so all along. On the greensward his first night in Tenebra, he had philosophized she was an epitome of human nature. In the fortress on his second night, he had reasoned she was a political dilemma. Anything to deny she interested him for more natural reasons.
Why couldn’t he have developed a taste for someone at home? He had all of Orthros in which to find anyone besides Xandra to thirst after. Yet the Drink had become a diplomatic arrangement to him, respectful but dispassionate. He had seen to the Thirst so he remained in able condition to perform his duties. He’d had no heart for anything more. Until he had traveled all the way to Tenebra and gotten foolish with hunger over the most forbidden woman there was.
He would not pretend it was merely thirst. No. This was the Hunger. If he had met Cassia in Orthros as a youngblood out for a night on the docks, he would not merely take a cordial drink and leave it at that. He could see himself inviting her…tempting her…to the Feast.
Goddess have Mercy.
This was not Orthros. This was Tenebra, and she was the sunbound king’s daughter.
Lio had a nose. And eyes. He would not expect himself or anyone else to be immune to her. But letting his appreciation grow into a distraction was entirely uncalled for.
It was for the best that the table allotted to foreign guests was on the opposite side of the room from her, facing the royal table on the dais and the king’s steely gaze. The chamberlain seated the embassy in order of precedence, then beat a hasty retreat. No mortals joined them. These would be a quiet few hours.
A small army of the king’s servants filed in and out before the embassy’s table, each offering each course of the meal. The mortals’ hands were steady, their eyes hollow. Lio’s aunt and uncle refused each graciously, as was expected.
Bits of dead creatures floated in the soup. Rigid slabs of bread served as plates. Couldn’t the humans smell that the dry chunks were only one night away from molding? Soon the bread softened under gravies that ran with animal fat.
Th
e ubiquitous wine was the only nonviolent fare. When his elders accepted some from the servers to show respect for their host, Lio followed suit. He must give Cassia the demonstration he had promised her.
An hour of the grotesque had passed when a great cheer went up throughout the hall. Heads turned toward the doors that led from the kitchens. Men marched in carrying a platter on their shoulders, bearing the corpse of a boar. The unfortunate creature Lady Cassia had mentioned the night before. Excited conversation filled the hall, retelling the events of the royal hunt that had felled the beast, which had been left in the fortnight since to become, they enthused, gamey. Lio had long since given up on breathing, but the taste of burnt corpse invaded his mouth and nose anyway. He swallowed.
He exchanged speaking glances with Kadi and Javed. But none of them spoke aloud. Griping to one another about what passed for food and concealing the conversation from the watching humans probably qualified as a superfluous use of power. Lio wasn’t sure it would have been wise to open his mouth in any case.
At last he had mercy on himself and tried taking a breath. Just as Lady Cassia’s scent had once made him fail to realize a deadly liegehound drew near, now she drowned out the odor of the royal hunt’s victim.
Lio shifted in his chair. She ate this mess like the others, but he didn’t get a whiff of her dinner on her breath. Why could he smell only the layers of her fragrance that always captivated his attention? He would do well not to build up any illusions about her. Appreciation was permissible, distraction inexcusable. Infatuation would be madness.
He began sorting through the smells of the other humans around him. Scent oils were indeed beloved here; soap was not beloved by anyone at all, with one notable exception. The warm, vibrant scent of living blood told Lio some busted lips and broken skin from that day’s tournament still bled. The tang of healing herbs and magic said they had received attention from mages. They had received the greatest attention from their wives, however. In the absence of veils or cleaning spells, it was obvious when two individuals left their unique scents on each other and how much they enjoyed doing so. Lio noticed more than one warrior had celebrated privately with a comrade-in-arms who had fought beside him on the field, and more than one wife preferred the intimate company of her handmaiden to that of her husband.
Clearly, the humans seldom denied themselves the natural pleasures that were forbidden here. Lio concluded that people in Tenebra loved very much as people did in Orthros, despite the mortals’ adamant claims to the contrary.
Not everyone here cared only for titles. Heady currents of genuine enjoyment ran between guests who were happy to see one another or who had watched those they loved win honor this day.
It was not his place to wonder if there was someone here tonight whom Lady Cassia loved. But as he traced the bonds of attraction and affection, lust and love in the room, none led him back to her. He had yet to sense any evidence she had a lover. She would regard such a relationship as unwise. But what one chose to do about one’s desires and what desires one felt were two entirely different matters.
She was not the focus of many guests’ attention. In a few ladies, he sensed pity. A few lords looked at her like bandits sizing up a merchant caravan. Was there no one here who was good to her, worthy of her?
Lio sought the current of her longings, the veins of her regard for others. What greeted his senses was the pulse of her universal wariness toward every person around her. Did her cautious life leave no room for desire? Were pride and anger all that thrived beneath her composed surface?
The Union that had drawn him to her all along now lured him closer. Sights, sounds, smells around him shifted. A flash of awareness transformed what he saw before his eyes. He beheld the room from a different angle, disorienting, yet crystal clear.
A lone, trusted source of comfort lay at her feet. An army of threats surrounded her. Amid their ranks lay a mystery, dark and beautiful, which filled her with equal parts distress and…hope.
She watched someone with black hair and a pale profile outlined against the candlelight. For reasons she could not fathom, her gaze followed a graceful neck partly hidden in a high collar, the silhouette of broad shoulders, and the length of an arm clad in black silk to linger on a long hand that cradled a goblet of wine.
The realization he was looking at himself shocked Lio back into his own mind.
Hespera’s Grace. This went beyond anything he had ever experienced. The Blood Union, even enhanced with his thelemancy, had never actually allowed him to gaze through another’s eyes.
He ought to feel a sense of shame for trespassing so thoroughly on Cassia. To his dismay, he did not. What he felt was gratitude.
That fleeting connection had not felt like a transgression. It had not even been intentional. Like an act of nature or the divine, that honest, miraculous moment had taken hold of him and entrusted her thoughts to him.
By the Goddess, he would be a worthy steward.
His blood raced as if after a long drink. And yet his thirst was worse than ever. Discomfort was a small price to pay for what he had learned. The loveliest woman in the room deemed him worthy of, at least, her notice.
What she felt toward him beyond that, he could not guess. The Union allowed him to feel what another felt. If that person did not allow herself to feel, she made the two of them equally numb. Lio somehow suspected he had a better idea of why she kept looking at him than she herself did.
The grim odors of the banquet hall descended upon him again, and he resigned himself to them. The redolence of the liegehounds who eyed him from under the tables. Their masters’ weighty suspicion and sour ambition. Above all, the two smells that ruled here, such a shock to him on his arrival: cruelty and fear.
But a whiff of innocent contentment drew his attention to his right. On the edge of his vision, he spotted a small child. He had little experience judging young humans’ ages, but the tiny girl’s teeth appeared to be recent arrivals. She wore a dimpled smile of anticipation. As her nursemaid plucked a choice bite from the plate before them, the little girl bounced on the woman’s lap. A hint of spices, human saliva and dessicated flesh told Lio what the nurse lifted to the child’s lips. A bit of meat the woman had chewed soft for baby teeth. As he watched the girl mouth the morsel, he could not smell death. Only the scent of a baby’s scalp and the primal sense of safety that came from a full stomach. He caught himself before he turned his head too far to watch. He didn’t want to ruin their dinner by frightening them with his notice.
Lio let the swell of his Gift within him rise higher and expand his awareness. The humans were much more worthy of attention than their repast, and he passed the rest of the dinner in study.
And what a long opportunity for study it provided. Humans and Hesperines alike enjoyed lingering over their feasts. But mortals did so in a public glorification of death rather than a private ritual of pleasure. At last the Tenebrans finished a syrupy after-course that did not appear to have anything dead in it, and little remained on the tables but the endlessly flowing alcohol.
The dinner guests began to come forward in order of rank and present their gifts to the prince. One mighty warrior and fine lady after another knelt before the dais, dragging behind them servants bearing rich gifts. Then they returned to their seats, making way for those farther down the tables.
At last, from the corner of his eye, Lio saw a short, slim figure approach. One of the last in line, she walked down the right-hand aisle and passed within arm’s reach. Her scent washed over him.
Sweat. Pain. Bile in the back of her throat.
Her whole being was stricken with fear.
For once Lio could look at her, for everyone in the room followed her with their gazes, as they had each gift giver before. He had never seen Cassia in torchlight. The woman before him seemed an entirely different one from she who had spoken to him so boldly under the Goddess’s moons.
Her limbs were rigid with self-discipline, her back straight. She wore a sh
apeless dress the color of bronze weaponry. A tight beaded headdress tamed her autumnal hair. The part left uncovered, he saw now, was ashen brown and broken on the ends, devoid of any healthy gloss. Her olive complexion had lost all vibrancy, and her freckles looked stark upon her clammy skin. Her hound plodded in her wake like a cowed shadow.
Cassia halted in the firelight before her father and dropped to her knees, lowering her forehead nearly to the floor. She held out a length of tapestry. All Lio could see in his mind’s eye was a desperate farmer making the same gesture with a sickle on the temple steps, and emotion cracked like a whip inside him.
He had seen her trespass in a forest by night and wrestle with a beast. He had heard her ask him questions about his ways that challenged everything she had been taught to believe. He could smell her dignity even now. She did not belong on the ground, prostrating herself before that man.
“What have you come to offer Us, Cassia?”
“My love and devotion to Your Majesty.”
“And what to your brother?”
“My prayers on Your Highness’s temple day for another healthy and victorious year. I beg that you accept this humble work of my hands as a sign of my sisterly love.”
The prince glanced over Cassia and her gift, then the crowd again. He fidgeted in his chair.
It was the king who answered. “We accept this gift to Our son and heir. You may rise.”
Leaving her work at the king’s feet, she stood and backed away. Not until she was in the aisle again did she turn to face her seat. As she slid past Lio, it was all he could do to stay his hand from reaching out to her.
Look at me, Cassia. Just one glance. I’ll bargain that glance from you for one of mine, and I will look upon you as no one here ever has.
But she ignored him and returned to her shadowed corner.
