Kushiel 03 - [Moirin 01] - Naamah's Kiss

by Jacqueline Carey

  “Oh,” I whispered.

  It was a terrible tale. My heart went out to the young woman at the center of it and the young bridegroom slain. Stone and sea! “How, Master?” I asked. “How and why? Did she court such a fate like Raphael?”

  His shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “I cannot think the child I knew would do such a thing. And yet I cannot say. Perhaps it is a jealous ghost that haunts her. The Empress ever resented Snow Tiger, and she died some years ago.” He looked unwontedly perplexed. “And yet how could Black Sleeve miss such a thing?”

  “Lord Jiang’s sorcerer no friend to her,” Bao muttered.

  “There is goodness and wisdom in him,” Master Lo Feng admonished him. “Never say there is not. It is present in all of us.”

  Bao inclined his head, but his eyes glittered.

  “Enough.” Master Lo struggled to rise, his knees creaking. Bao was on his feet in a flash, helping his mentor upright, tender and solicitous.

  “You rest now, Master,” he murmured.

  “Yes,” Master Lo agreed, leaning on Bao. His gaze rested on me. “So. Now you know what we face, Moirin.”

  “Aye.”

  I sat in contemplation for an untold period of time. The ship’s decks rose and fell, riding the swelling waves. I breathed the Breath of Ocean’s Rolling Waves into the pit of my belly and out through my mouth, trying not to think. Bao returned to join me, sitting cross-legged on the mats. He closed his eyes and breathed the Breath of Embers Glowing. In and out we breathed, complementing one another. His knee brushed mine in a companionable manner.

  “Snow Tiger,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” His face was tranquil. “I do not think she is meant to live behind bars.”

  I didn’t think so, either. “So we do… ?”

  Bao opened his eyes. “We do what we need to. We do whatever Master Lo say.”

  “You said if the spirit Focalor had taken possession of Raphael, it might have been impossible to drive him out,” I reminded him. “How is this different?”

  He shrugged. “Not a foreign spirit. I don’t know. You ask too many questions!”

  “I’m just trying to understand,” I said reasonably. “Which reminds me… Bao, do you think you could teach me to speak Ch’in?”

  “Which one?”

  I blinked. “What do you mean which one?”

  Bao looked smug. “Many different language in the Celestial Empire. Which one you want to learn?”

  “Whichever is most common.” That, I thought, would resolve the matter.

  “Different in different places.”

  “Whatever you speak!” I said in frustration. “Whatever Master Lo speaks! Whatever they speak where we’re going!”

  “Master Lo speak seven different language from Ch’in. Me, only three.” Bao took pity on me. “All right, all right! Stop look like you going to spit! I teach you Shuntian official language. All the scholars speak it.”

  “Thank you.” I was mollified.

  Learning Ch’in—or at least the official tongue of Shuntian, which I learned was the capitol city where the Emperor’s court resided—was a good deal more difficult than I anticipated. One of the first things Bao told me was that I regularly mispronounced his name in a manner that meant anything from womb to cooking pan to rain shower. He said it for me four different ways, with four different intonations. I could hear the difference, but I struggled to emulate it, let alone retain it.

  “What does it mean your way?” I asked after half an hour’s worth of repeating the same syllable. “Your name?”

  He was silent a moment. “Treasure,” he said reluctantly. “Is a common baby-name for a boy.”

  “Oh.” I waited.

  “My mother call me Bao.” His mouth quirked. “Only thing I keep from those day.”

  “Before they sold you to the circus,” I said softly.

  Bao nodded. “When I born after the Tatar raid, they wait to see. Maybe I look like my father or my mother.” He shook his head. “I look like the Tatar who”—he made the lewd gesture—“my mother. She want to keep me,” he added, his back stiff and upright, shoulders squared. “But it is too great shame for my father. She cry when the contract is stamped and the circus take me, tell me I always her treasure. I remember.”

  It was an old hurt and a deep one, and I very much wanted to put my arms around him—but his posture warned me not to.

  “My mother said something much the same to me, once,” I said instead. “And I will never forget it.”

  “Did she send you away?” he asked. “Across the sea?”

  “No.” It was my turn to be quiet. “No, it was the Maghuin Dhonn Herself who sent me. The Great Bear my people follow.”

  Bao understood. “She who make the earth shake when you shout that day.”

  I nodded. “Aye.”

  “Why?”

  I gazed past him at the unbroken horizon. Sunlight sparkled on the endless rippling waves. Sea, and sea, and sea. Somewhere on the far side of it waited a young woman blindfolded behind iron bars, a young woman who had torn her bridegroom apart limb from limb. What it had to do with me, I couldn’t begin to guess. “I would by all that’s sacred that I knew. But I reckon I’ll find out one day.”

  He smiled a little. “I think so, too.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Slowly, slowly, I learned to speak Ch’in.

  For a mercy, the strange intonations were the worst of it. Once I developed a rudimentary grasp of them and began calling Bao “treasure” more often than I did “cooking pan,” it got easier. The structure of the grammar was actually simpler in some ways than Alban or D’Angeline, without a multitude of conjugations to master.

  “That how I learn to speak different language while we travel,” Bao explained. “Make it simple like Ch’in language. Master Lo, he study D’Angeline until it perfect. I learn just enough of the others.”

  “What others?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Tatar, Akkadian, Ephesian, some Bhodistani… many.” I was impressed. Bao eyed me shrewdly. “Smarter than you think, huh?”

  “To be sure,” I agreed.

  I learned other things on our journey, too. I learned that Master Lo Feng had served three emperors and claimed to be a hundred and seventy years old.

  “That’s not possible!” I said in shock.

  Master Lo’s eyelids crinkled. “There is a reason why my old knees creak,” he said tranquilly. “Practice your breathing and contemplate the Way.”

  During our language lessons, Bao told me more in hushed tones. “Master Lo, he do alchemy once like Black Sleeve. Try to make elixir of immortality.” He shook his head. “One day he see is all false. Only the Way is true.”

  “Is that when you met him?” I asked.

  “No.” His voice was curt. “That happen much, much later.”

  As our greatship sailed farther south into warmer climes, I learned that thanks to Bao’s acrobatic training, he could juggle, bend his back into a perfect circle, walk on his hands as easily as his feet, and balance with ease on the narrowest of railings, bare toes gripping the wood, traversing it effortlessly, heedless of the drop below. I learned too that Bao had a deep-seated restless streak that was belied by his discipline in practicing the Five Styles of Breathing.

  When Bao got restless, he picked fights.

  One sunny afternoon, I watched it happen. For the first time since I’d known him, Bao was jittery and ill at ease, unable to concentrate on our meditative exercises. I watched him make his apology to Master Lo Feng, kneeling on the sun-warmed planks, bowing and gesturing to the deck below us where the soldiers were wont to spar with one another. I watched Master Lo Feng nod and lay one elegant, long-fingered hand on Bao’s head in benediction.

  It seemed there was a standing wager at stake. Bao approached a group of soldiers on the main deck and spoke to them, then waited calmly, leaning on his staff while they laughed and argued among themselves. Coins were proffered; he shook his head and said somewha
t in reply. In a little while, two Ch’in women clad in bright silk garments emerged from their quarters, and further discussion ensued, soldiers gesturing back and forth. Standing on the upper deck, I couldn’t hear the details, but in the end, Bao gave a broad grin and nodded vigorous agreement.

  The women leaned their heads together, whispered and giggled. Neither of them seemed displeased at being wagered. I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.

  Master Lo sighed.

  “Do you disapprove, Master?” I asked him.

  He was silent a moment. “No. It is Bao’s nature to fight. He has his own demons to conquer.”

  “Aye?” I prompted. “His family?”

  He glanced at me. “If he wishes you to know more, he will speak of it.”

  I watched Bao fight two soldiers that day. He was good. He was beyond good. I watched him shuck his loose-fitting shirt and caught my breath. His drawstring trousers clung to his narrow hips, and sunlight glistened on his golden-brown skin. Lean muscles surged beneath it in a complicated play of light and shadow. His dark eyes glittered above his high, wide cheekbones. Stone and sea! He was beautiful.

  How had I not seen it?

  His face was at once fierce and happy, oddly calm. He moved with careless grace, sandal-clad feet skipping over the deck. The staff was a blur in his hands, darting in and out, striking with both ends. His opponents fell, rolling, clutching their heads, swords dropping from their hands. The other soldiers roared with laughter, mocking them.

  Bao bowed, tucking his staff into the crook of his arm.

  I watched him go with the women to their quarters, his arms around their waists. He glanced up once to see if I was watching, and I looked away. Master Lo Feng regarded me.

  I shrugged. “He’s very skilled.”

  Master Lo nodded. “Yes.”

  Two days later, Bao brought me a pillow—a real one made of silk and stuffed with soft materials. I was so delighted, I hugged it to me.

  “For this, I could kiss you,” I said. “Where did you get it?”

  He looked smug. “One of the women make for me. I make them feel sorry for you. They curious now. Ask all kind of questions what you like.”

  “What did you tell them?” I asked wryly.

  Bao laughed. “I tell them to meet you they own damn self if they want to know. You want to?”

  “Aye,” I agreed. “I’d like that.”

  After weeks of relative isolation, it was a pleasure to be in the company of my own gender. Mei and Suyin, the two women that Bao had bedded, received me with wary curiosity that gave way to giggling warmth at my futile efforts to communicate.

  “Different tongue,” Bao informed me in D’Angeline. “They from the country, they no speak Shuntian. Also, you sound like a duck quacking.”

  “Oh.” I was discouraged.

  The bolder of the two girls leaned close, studying my face. She tilted her head and peered intently at my eyes, reaching out to brush my eyelashes and eyebrows with one fingertip. Uncertain, I held still and let her. She shivered with horrified delight, then addressed Bao in her own dialect.

  “She never see jade eyes,” he said to me. “She ask if it a witch-sign.”

  “No, of course not.” I frowned. “They were docked in Marsilikos for days. Surely they saw other D’Angelines.”

  He shook his head. “Not close. They stay on the ship.”

  I stared at him. “After six months at sea, travelling all that way, they never left the ship? Are you jesting?”

  “No.” Another head-shake. “They here for the soldiers.” He grinned. “Mostly.” The women conferred, then the bold one—Suyin, I thought—addressed Bao again. Whatever she said made him chuckle. “She say you almost beautiful for a foreigner,” he told me. “If you like, she can help. She shave you eyebrows and show you how to paint them like a willow leaf. Lend you cream to make your skin white. Make you beautiful like a Ch’in woman.”

  I glanced at Suyin, who smiled and bobbed her head, gesturing helpfully at her white-painted face etched with eyebrows as fine and narrow as the blade of a willow leaf. It had a certain haunting charm, but it wasn’t a look I was eager to embrace. “Ahhh…”

  “What?” Bao asked me, his eyes glinting. “You not want to look like a bald egg with a face painted on it?”

  I flushed. “Not especially, no.”

  He laughed. “I thank her for you anyway.”

  Nonetheless, the meeting marked a threshold of sorts. I left it pleased by the warmth that the women had shown me—and they seemed to find me less alarming. I practiced the Ch’in that Bao taught me daily and began to pick up an odd word of different dialects here and there. I kept mainly to my cabin and our deck, but the soldiers and sailors I encountered appeared more comfortable in my presence. They came to consult with Master Lo Feng on matters of health and he treated many of them for ailments and minor injuries. I tended to his snow-drop bulbs, coaxing along their faint song.

  We sailed.

  And sailed.

  My ability to speak the Shuntian tongue improved. My mastery of the Five Styles increased. Betimes I visited with Suyin and Mei and a few of the other women, communicating with gestures and broken phrases when Bao wasn’t on hand to interpret. Mostly, he was. The women enjoyed his company, and I gathered from their demeanor that his prowess with a staff had other implications. I gathered, too, that Bao had a reputation of his own that owed naught to being Master Lo’s magpie; but on that topic, he remained close-mouthed.

  I had to own, it intrigued me. Ever since the day I’d first seen him fight, I’d looked at him differently. But despite having teased me earlier about falling in love with him, on the ship, he treated me with a friendly diffidence that began to irk me.

  If it hadn’t been for Master Lo Feng’s tonic, that might not have changed.

  By my reckoning, we’d been almost three months at sea when Master Lo asked us to sample a decoction he had rendered from the dried and powdered bulb of a Camaeline snowdrop. Bao and I were sitting on our straw mats on the sun-warmed deck, anticipating a lesson in the Five Styles.

  “You are skilled enough to practice this discipline on your own,” he said in his serene manner, pouring liquid from a flask into tiny porcelain cups and extending them to us. “All ways lead to the Way. Now drink.”

  Bao drank without question and set down his empty cup.

  I took a sip.

  At first, it was bitter, with none of the headiness of the joie I’d tasted on the Longest Night. But the taste changed in my mouth. It unfurled inside me, turning to something deep and rich, at once earthy and sharp-edged.

  I gasped, and drank the rest.

  “Very tonic.” Master Lo’s eyes twinkled. “Good for stimulating the blood. I will leave now. Tell me if you experience increased vigor.”

  Beyond the ship’s ornate railings, the changeless sea rolled past us, waves peaking and sparkling in the sunlight. The air was warm, and yet I tasted mountain air. High places, cold places. The bulbs buried in a pot in my cabin sang. My skin prickled, drinking in the sunlight and craving more. Touch, sensation. The golden spiral of Naamah’s gift rose from my core, awoken from slumber. All at once I felt hot and cold, my heart expanding within my breast, beating hard and fierce. “Bao…”

  His eyelids flickered. “Uh-huh?”

  I wanted. Stone and sea, I wanted! “Do you feel it?”

  He sat like a cross-legged statue. “Yes. Lucky for you, I have great strength of will.”

  I straddled his lap. “Lucky for us both, I don’t.”

  I could feel the want in him. I could feel it pressed against me, taut and straining. I lowered my head and brushed his lips with mine. Not a kiss, not quite. “Why don’t you like me?”

  His breathing came hard. “I do.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t show it.”

  “Moirin.” It was the first time in memory he’d called me by name. His hands landed on my hips, flexing. His fingertips dug into my buttocks, warring with
his urges. I pressed myself harder against him. “This is nothing. This is medicine. This is Master Lo’s art, nothing more.”

  I rubbed myself against him. “I don’t care.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?” I glared down at Bao.

  “I don’t know!” he shouted at me. “Because you’re a goddamn witch! Because there are strange forces working here and I want to live through this! All I want is to be a not-so-bad person! Because there are goddamn gods and spirits hovering over you! And a destiny! A god-damn destiny that might swallow me whole! You don’t know me! You don’t even know if you like me! And if you’re not going to fall—”

  I shut his mouth with a kiss.

  It was a very good kiss. I’d learned more than a few things in Jehanne’s bed. I wanted Bao to relent, and he did. His lips softened and parted to admit my tongue, letting it war and dance with his. Hard and deep, I kissed him, tasting fire and heated metal in his essence. It was like breathing in a forge, overheated and intoxicating. We complemented one another. And after a long, thorough kiss, I lifted my head. “Aye?”

  “… in love,” Bao mumbled.

  “I might.” I traced the outer curve of his ear with the tip of my tongue, then spiraled inward, teasing and tantalizing. “You never know.”

  He made an inarticulate noise, grabbed my head, and returned my kiss.

  More fire.

  More hot metal.

  I nearly purred when Bao lifted me, it felt so good. I’d been celibate too long. I wrapped my legs around his waist, nuzzled his neck.

  “Good?” he asked in my cabin.

  “Good,” I agreed.

  And it was good, stone and sea! So good. The vast ship rocked beneath me; Bao rocked and thrust above me, propped on arms corded with lean muscle, his eyes half-lidded and his expression intense, at once distant and present. His phallus filled me and his hips rose and fell, buttocks flexing, joining me at the exact right spot, the exact right angle. I spread my legs wider, arched my back and welcomed him deeper and deeper inside me, my hips rising to meet him again and again, ankles locked around his hips. My blood pounded in my veins, urged onward by the snowdrop bulb’s decoction, until I climaxed hard beneath him, nails digging helplessly into his skin.