by Sharon Shinn
“They’ve been changed,” he told Justin that night. Just the thought of it had given him his first true smile of the day. “Tayse let Kirra change him! Can you imagine?”
“Are they birds, then?” Justin wanted to know. “Because that’s fast, but, gods! It’s a tricky body to master.”
“I can’t tell what they are. Just that they’re all together and they should be here tomorrow night.”
“Finally you have good news.”
Ellynor made him bundle up for the long walk back from the cottage to the palace. It was almost spring, but the nights were still uncomfortably cold, and Cammon moved as briskly as he could without actually breaking into a run. By habit, he let his mind search the palace to locate the people who mattered to him. For once, Valri did not seem to be in the same room as Amalie; he thought she was with the king, for he could catch the stately aura that he associated with Baryn.
I’m on my way back to the palace, Cammon sent hopefully to Amalie. If you’re alone and you’d like to meet me somewhere. But she stayed stationary in her room, and he sighed. She might be asleep already. She might—with the kingdom in such turmoil already—be unwilling to add any more drama to her life. He couldn’t say he blamed her.
But as he entered the palace and climbed the stairs, it became clear that each step was bringing him closer to Amalie. As he turned down the hallway toward his own room, he felt her presence more strongly still. His pace quickened; he was almost running as he reached his door and pulled it open.
Amalie stood inside.
Even more hastily, he shut the door behind him.
Then he turned to stare. She was wearing a long white nightdress and holding a single white candle. There was no other light in the room. She looked like a column of moonlight topped with a halo of sculpted fire.
“How long have you been here?” he demanded.
“Maybe an hour.”
“If I’d known that, I would have come back much sooner!”
She smiled. It occurred to him that she was a little nervous. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t exactly ask you.”
“Of course I don’t mind! But are you sure Valri won’t come looking for you?”
“She was pretty tired. I think she’s had so much else to occupy her thoughts in the past few days that she’s forgotten to pay as much attention to me.”
But she still seemed tentative. He went straight up to her, pushing aside the hand holding the candle, and kissed her soundly. That made her smile; that made all her uncertainty disappear. The glow that seemed to emanate from her very skin intensified.
“I like that so much,” she exclaimed in a low voice.
He laughed. “Time to put the candle aside, I think.”
She blew it out and let it fall to the floor with a clatter. Now they were both laughing. He put his arms around her and gathered her close, his mind again filled with imagery of moonbeams and reflected fire. She lifted her face and responded to his kisses with curiosity and delight and awakening desire. He was being careful, keeping his hands primly around her shoulders, but she was starting to explore. Her hands slipped under his shirt and flattened against his back. He could feel how much she liked the sensation of skin on skin, how marvelous it seemed to her, how extraordinary. Every kiss seemed to turn her a little brighter, as if she was absorbing all of his own sensations and turning them luminous.
“This feels wonderful,” she murmured against his mouth.
“A little too wonderful. We need to stop a moment.”
She clutched him tighter. “No. No, not yet.”
He kissed her. “I just want to build up the fire. It’s freezing in here.”
So he knelt at the hearth, blew on the coals, and built a fine fire that would burn a good long time. He could hear Amalie moving around the room, and before he could stand up, she had dragged over a thick blanket and began spreading it before the grate.
“Let’s sit and watch the flames,” she suggested, and dropped down beside him. He put his arm around her and felt heat from all directions—from the fire, from her skin, from his own body.
“More kisses,” she whispered, and twined her arms around his neck.
Easy to comply; easy to toss aside thoughts about what anyone else might think of such an assignation. She was so pleased to be with him that his own happiness multiplied. They could have been mirrors, each endlessly replicating what they found inside the other. She was like the moon itself, he thought, taking whatever he had to offer and making it visible, reflecting it back to him. And she liked all of this, every touch, every murmured word, every caress.
“When do I take off my nightdress?” she whispered against his mouth. “I will even take off the sheath with my knife in it, but I will mind Wen’s instructions and leave it nearby.”
He laughed against her lips. “I think you don’t take off the nightdress or the weapon,” he said. “And I don’t take off my clothes. And soon you go back to your room.”
Now she pouted. Instantly, much of the light faded from the room. “You don’t want to make love to me?” she asked.
He sucked in his breath, caught completely off guard. “Amalie! I didn’t—you—is that why you came here tonight?”
She pulled back, affecting haughtiness to hide her disappointment. “Naturally not. I simply came to your room because I was bored.”
He caught her and drew her closer, giving her one hard squeeze and dropping a kiss on the top of her head. Surely it was his imagination that even such a small mark of affection could make some of that glow return to her skin. “Don’t be hurt. Don’t be offended. You have to speak plainly. This is risky for so many reasons. I need to know what you want from me.”
She peered up at him through red-gold hair that was rather mussed and disordered. “But what if I say something and you don’t like it?”
“Well, that happens between people all the time. And sometimes it turns them awkward with each other, and sometimes it makes them angry, but unless they tell the truth it’s all just guessing and mistakes anyway.” He pressed his lips against her cheek. “But I don’t think anything you say will make me angry.”
She leaned into him, comforted but still unsure. “I am terrified that war is coming, but a very small part of me is glad, too,” she said in a soft voice. “Because there will be no more lords arriving at the palace to court me. And there will be no time to arrange for my wedding. And I don’t want to get married.”
“You don’t ever want to get married? Or just not now?”
She spoke slowly and deliberately. “I’m pretty sure I’ll marry someday for the sake of the throne. But I want to know what it’s like to love a man before I end up married to one I don’t love for the rest of my life.”
“You might end up loving the man you take as a husband,” he pointed out.
“Not if I have to pick from the ones I’ve seen so far.”
“There must be dozens of eligible men who haven’t made it to Ghosenhall yet.”
“I want my first lover to be someone who isn’t thinking about a throne when we fall into bed. I want him to be thinking about me.”
“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I find it hard to think about anything but you.”
She shifted in his arms to look him more fully in the face. “You don’t sound shocked.”
“Nothing shocks me,” he said.
She lifted her hands to put them on his shoulders, watching him intently. “But you’re not sure this is something you want to do.”
He kissed her; in a very short time, he had learned that a kiss would always please her. “I’m trying to decide if what you think you want is what you really want—”
“It is!”
“And even if it is, whether it might be so harmful to you that I just can’t do it anyway.”
She was still watching him. “You didn’t say whether this is something you would want,” she said presently.
Of course that needed to be answered with a kiss as w
ell. “I adore you,” he said simply. “You’re in my thoughts night and day. I always know where you are, and I always look for ways to be beside you. I don’t know that much about how men and women fall in love. I don’t know what would have happened by now if you were just an ordinary girl.” He smiled, imagining it. “If you were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I probably just would have showed up at your door every day, asking you silly questions or bringing you stupid presents.”
“Presents aren’t stupid,” she murmured.
“But I would have brought you shoe buckles and coins that had been smashed into funny patterns by carriage wheels, and maybe bird feathers. Not real presents,” he said. “And every time I left, your father would have said, ‘What’s that strange boy doing, hanging about here so much? What’s he after?’ And you’d have said, ‘I don’t know. He makes calf-eyes at me, but he never flirts or gives me pretty compliments.’ And your father would say, ‘Well, is he courting you or isn’t he?’ And you’d say, ‘I don’t know! I can’t even tell if he likes me!’ Because I wouldn’t know how to go about it, you know. What to say. How to tell you that I thought about you every day.”
She was giggling now. “If I were a shopkeeper’s daughter, I’d wait till the next time you came by. And I’d invite you in and say, ‘Come to the back room with me, I have something to show you.’ And my father would be shaking his head, but you’d follow me, and when we were alone I’d put my hands on my hips, and I’d say, ‘Well? Do you like what you see or don’t you? Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you, young man, but if you don’t, stop cluttering up my father’s shop.’”
“You probably would,” he said. “And you’d probably have to! Because I’d be so clumsy and tongue-tied I wouldn’t know how to say the words myself.”
She slipped out of his hold, rearranged herself so she was kneeling in front of him, her hands on her hips. On her face was an expression that was part exasperation, part sassiness. “Well? Do you like what you see, or don’t you?” she said softly. “Do you want me? Because if you do, I’ll take you.”
“I want you,” he answered quietly. “But you’re not a shopkeeper’s daughter.”
Now she put her arms around his neck and leaned in for the kiss he could not have refused her to save his own life. “And shouldn’t a princess get what she wants at least as often as a merchant girl?”
“A princess has so much more to lose,” he said. But his own hands had come up to wrap around her back, to draw her closer.
“I don’t think so,” she whispered. “I think it’s all the same.” She kissed him hard; her hands tightened, and the two of them tumbled back onto the blanket. “Love me, Cammon,” she said. “Please show me how it goes.”
And so he showed her. Or at least he showed her the little that he knew, though they both rapidly learned new tricks and pleasures. Amalie’s skin glowed white in the darkness; her hair was radiant. The fire died down but the incandescence of her body brightened the longer that he loved her. The whole room was bathed in the soft light of her contentment. Or maybe it was just that he could see nothing but Amalie, and his eyes had been bespelled by love.
CHAPTER
28
A messenger from Halchon Gisseltess arrived in the morning, and every key member of the royal household spent the day huddled in conferences. Milo told Cammon that he would not be needed until the evening and he should find some useful way to employ his time.
“What did the messenger say?” Cammon wanted to know, but Milo, of course, would not repeat it.
So Cammon headed down to the training yards, where the Riders were engaged in mock combat. It took a while to isolate Justin, who was deep in a furious battle against Coeval, while just a few paces away, Hammond and Wen tried to cut each other down. All the Riders were strung tight with tension. More than one, Cammon could tell, wished war was upon them already. Enough of this damn waiting! Time to fight! We’re ready!
But no one was ever really ready for war, Cammon thought.
Justin was covered with sweat, despite the chill, when he finally took a break. He pushed back his sandy hair, wet and ragged, and accepted the canteen of water Cammon handed him. “What was the message from Halchon Gisseltess?” Cammon asked.
Justin downed the entire contents of the canteen in five swallows. “He offered to meet with Baryn a week from now to discuss a ‘peaceful settlement of our differences.’”
“Will the king do it?”
“No. Too much danger in leaving the palace and heading to a rendezvous with a man who’s already said he wants you dead. The marlord would have nothing to lose by killing the king without a parley.”
“Does that mean the Gisseltess forces will attack us at the end of the week?”
Justin gave him a sober look. “Or before. The deadline may have been set to make us believe we had that much time.” He handed back the empty canteen. “Spies in Fortunalt tell us the foreign soldiers have landed, all of them dressed in Arberharst colors. A small force could make it to Ghosenhall in a week, though it would take longer to march a full army this far.”
Cammon shuddered. “I kept thinking that war wouldn’t really come.”
“But it has,” Justin said. “When will Tayse and Senneth be back?”
“Tonight, I think. Or tomorrow morning.”
Justin grasped his sword again. “Well, war better not strike until they return.”
Cammon watched the workout a while longer, declined the opportunity to join in, and drifted back toward the palace. But Amalie was still closeted with her father. There was no hope of seeing her, even in a public setting. He sent a thought to her, just a remembrance, to let her know he was thinking about her. He caught her start of happiness when she perceived it.
Oh, she was the easiest girl in the whole world to love, because she took such delight in it; and he would never be able to love anyone else so much; and surely she would break his heart in so many tiny pieces that not the brightest display of moonlight would be able to pick them out and infuse them with remembered brilliance. But despite all that, he could not wish last night undone—despite all that, he could not stop hoping there would be other nights ahead just like it.
He was too restless and too close to miserable to linger around the palace. He left the grounds and spent part of the day helping Lynnette with chores while Jerril was away training the Carrebos mystics. He spent another hour just prowling through the city. He had some vague idea of buying Amalie a gift, but what could she possibly want from him, this girl who received fabulous presents from serramar across the kingdom? It was sheer luck that drew his attention to a glitter of metal in the street, and he stooped down to retrieve a very paltry treasure indeed—a silver coin crushed and reshaped by the wheels of a passing carriage. Smiling, he pocketed it and went whistling down the street.
DINNER was a small and grim affair, with no true outsiders at the table, but Cammon took his accustomed place among the footmen because no one had told him otherwise. Before the diners arrived, he tucked the ruined coin under the plate at Amalie’s place, and as soon as she sat down, he silently bade her to look for it. She bit her lip to keep from smiling as she slipped it into her pocket.
Tonight? he asked. She replied in a wavering but clearly disappointed negative.
Soon, then, he said, and that made her smile again.
She disappeared with Valri, Baryn, and Romar Brendyn once the meal was over. Cammon headed down to Justin’s to await the arrival of Senneth and the others.
“Senneth will be interested to hear that one of her new mystics caught Ellynor this morning,” Justin said.
“Turned himself into a raelynx,” Ellynor confirmed. “He couldn’t find me when he was in any other shape.”
“Makes sense,” Cammon said. “Become a Lirren animal to catch a Lirren woman.”
“But the true question is, what kind of animals would catch spies from overseas?” Justin asked. “Since we’re not as worried about Lirrenfolk at the mo
ment.”
“Oh, now I suppose you want me to remember some kind of bird or dog that can only be found in Arberharst,” Cammon said.
“Well, you might try to make yourself useful once in a while,” Justin answered with a grin.
“The princess says there’s a library full of books at the palace,” Cammon answered. “Maybe we can find some with pictures of exotic creatures.”
Ellynor settled next to Justin. “Will a mystic from Gillengaria be able to take the shape of an animal from another country?” she asked.
“Maybe not,” Cammon said. “But it might be worth a try.”
They kicked around other ideas, tried to guess what Halchon Gisseltess’s next move would be, and wondered what his sister, Coralinda, would be up to now.
“She’s not just sitting quietly in the convent,” Ellynor said positively. “She hates mystics too much. She’s planning to join this fight.”
“Then we have to plan how to stop her,” Justin said.
During their entire conversation, Cammon was tracking the progress of the travelers. He wasn’t good with geography or distance, but he could tell they were steadily drawing nearer. “Almost here,” he said when they crossed into the city and began angling down for a landing. Passing the wall that surrounded the palace grounds, gliding low over the barracks. He flung open the door and dashed out as two owls softly landed and deposited small burdens to the ground.
And then Senneth and Tayse were standing there, and Kirra and Donnal. All seven of them, gathered together again. For a moment, Cammon almost felt whole.
Till he realized there was a part of him that was now missing, and would always be missing, unless Amalie was in the room, too, and that for the rest of his life he would be incomplete, no matter how close he could hold the rest of his friends.
SENNETH had spent the morning with the king, relaying her story. Cammon waited for her outside the study door, and he followed her the rest of the day. There was a great deal to tell her, though, of course, he didn’t repeat the most important news. Senneth, I’ve become Amalie’s lover. No, he told her how he had watched the battle at Danan Hall through four sets of eyes, how he had felt similar skirmishes unfolding across the kingdom. Indeed, the messengers from Kianlever and Coravann had already arrived bearing the grim news. Slaughter at the Houses, followed immediately by outrage and fear. Eloise Kianlever had sustained heavy losses but reported that some of her most loyal vassals had ridden to her aid.
