Songs of the Earth (44 page)

She glared back, panting. Every breath pushed her breasts against his chest. ‘What are you staring at? Let me go.’

‘I want your word.’ He wanted to kiss her.

‘Fine. You have it. Now let. Me. Go.’

He released her wrists. Aysha rubbed at the fingermarks blooming on her cinnamon skin. ‘You hurt me.’

‘You were trying to hit me.’

‘You deserved it.’

‘For picking you up off the floor?’

One dark brow arched. ‘Spare me the knightly courtesies, please. I’m not some helpless
ammanai
milksop who takes to her bed if she so much as pricks her finger with a tapestry needle!’

‘You would rather I just left you there?’

‘I’m a cripple, you slugwit.’ Scorn stung like a cold razor. ‘Sometimes I fall over. I am quite capable of picking myself up again – Goddess knows, I’ve had enough practice. I do not need to wait around for some man with more hair on his arse than brains in his head to come and do it for me!’

Gair threw up his hands. Impossible woman. Beautiful, impossible woman, and he wanted to kiss her so much it hurt. ‘Are you done, or do you want to insult me some more?’

A gust of wind threw hailstones in through the open balcony doors and he flung them closed with the Song.

Aysha seized his shirt collar in both hands. ‘I’m not done,’ she said, and kissed him.

The Song flew out of Gair’s grasp. Soft lips, stronger than he’d expected. They teased his mouth open, letting him taste her. Goddess in heaven. He took hold of her shoulders and pushed her away. ‘We can’t.’

She stared at him, cheeks flushed. ‘You don’t want me.’

‘It’s not that. Master Aysha—’

‘I told you, Leahn. Just Aysha.’

‘You’re on the Council of Masters. I’m only a student. There’re rules—’

‘Stupid rules!’ she flared. ‘Rules for children, to save them from themselves. Neither of us is a child.’ She let go of his shirt,
smoothing out the creases, and her hands carried on smoothing, right into his open jerkin. Gair swallowed, mouth suddenly dry as fingertips traced his collarbones, mapped out the planes of his chest.

‘It wouldn’t be right.’ She was his
teacher
.

‘That doesn’t make it wrong.’ Down further, outlining the ridges where his abdominal muscles contracted under her touch.

Holy Mother
. He reached for her hands to stop her when she got to his belt, but they slipped out of his grasp like fish.

‘Kiss me.’

No more than a breath on his face. Gair shut his eyes tightly. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m afraid that if I start kissing you I won’t be able to stop.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘You scare me, Aysha. The way you make me feel scares me. I don’t know what to do around you. I—’ Whatever he’d been about to say piled up in his throat and died. She was so close. Too close.

He lunged for her mouth, found it, and somehow it fitted to his. Her lips parted under his tongue. Kiss after kiss, urgent, hungry. Fingers tangled in his hair, her body supple in his arms.
Yes
.

‘I want you.’ Her words were crushed between kisses. ‘I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you fly.’

She tugged his shirt from his belt. Gair shucked off his jerkin, snatched his shirt over his head and gathered her up again. Her touch skittered over him like flames, making him shiver even as he burned.

Aysha’s scent permeated every breath he took: linen and winter and sweet soft skin. The deeper he drew it into his lungs, the more he wanted her.

White teeth nipped at his lip. She hitched forward on the couch, straddling his hips. Goddess, yes! He pulled her closer and she folded her legs around him. The couch creaked under their combined weight, feet skidding on the hardwood floor. Aysha’s shirt
had rucked in the small of her back; Gair slipped his fingers underneath.

She gasped, ‘Cold hands!’

‘Sorry, I—’

‘No, don’t stop. I want to feel your hands on me.’

She fumbled the buttons open, let her shirt fall down her arms. Gair’s hands shook. Swordsman’s calluses snagged on her filmy chemise, but he peeled the silk off over her head.

Tawny breasts spilled onto his chest. ‘Touch me.’ Another kiss, another nip that jolted straight to the base of his spine. ‘Touch me, please …’

She was warm, firm, sleek as a cat. She arched under his caress, pushing into his hands, pressing her hips against him. The couch feet squealed again.

Goddess, he wanted her so much, ached with it. He lifted Aysha up and laid her on the thick
qilim
.

‘Make a light.’ She heeled off her boots, wriggled out of the rest of her clothes. ‘I want to see you.’

A thought flung a fistful of tiny glims into the air, then he had no more thoughts at all, only sensation: Aysha’s mouth under his, her hands undressing him, cool fingers on his overheated flesh, guiding him into her … No time to waste; no time to wait. She moved with him, body rising to meet his, over and over. Her arms locked tight around him.

‘
Khalan bey
,’ she whispered. ‘
Khalan bey!
’

Tanith poured another cup of peppermint tea from the pot on the hearth and settled back into her chair. Oh, her feet hurt. She had been in the infirmary since breakfast, supervising the adepts making a batch of flagwort ointment. Normally she rather enjoyed concocting the various medicaments to restock the dispensary, but flagwort ointment, she freely admitted, she loathed. The iron-hard roots had to be simmered in vinegar until they softened, then
pounded into a paste, then the paste – which stank even worse than the boiling vinegar – had to be beaten into a neutral emollient base.

By the time the bowls were ranged neatly on the shelves in the cooling room the afternoon was well advanced and the wretched stuff still had to be decanted into jars, labelled and put away. She kicked off her slippers to rub her aching feet. The novices could do the labelling tomorrow for a little extra credit, she decided. It would be useful for them to learn that there was more to Healing than just the Song.

It was a pity she would not be there to see the rest of her students take their mantles. She had been dreadfully nervous with her first few classes, but it was so rewarding to see them grasp new techniques under her guidance, and to watch their confidence growing along with their skills. When she had first come to Chapterhouse she had never imagined that she would one day be teaching, but Saaron had had no hesitation in recommending her to the rest of the Council. She would find it a real wrench, leaving the students behind when the time came to return to Astolar.

She opened her book at the ribbon-marker, but the light was fading towards dusk. Reaching for the Song to make a glim she sensed the resonance of another weaving close at hand. It wasn’t any of the other Masters, but the pattern seemed familiar: emerald and amber, with moonstone-white and obsidian and a deep wine-red, threaded through with glittering gold and strands of lustrous pearl. Whoever it was had not learned to guard their colours; they swirled tumultuously, scintillant with powerful emotion. Then she heard the faint, unmistakable sounds coming from the floor above and snatched her awareness away.

Oh. So that was how the land lay. Quickly she spun a glim over her shoulder and focused on her book, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. It was no business of hers what others chose to do in their private time, even if they themselves did not care who
heard them. No business of hers at all. Now, Barthalus’
Essays on Government
, chapter four. She really ought to finish it tonight. Barthalus’ prose was dry as dust, but his book remained the definitive work in its field. With luck it might help her navigate the shoals of the White Court – but only if she could manage to read more than the first three sentences before becoming distracted by the passionate rhythm from the apartment above.

What was she
doing
, listening to them like that? Face aflame with mortification she darkened the illusion spread across her ceiling until all the constellations of Astolar sparkled over her. Evening filled her room with a soft breeze and the sweet song of nightingales, but it was not enough. She knew who wore those colours now. She shut her eyes, her book sliding from her lap to the floor, teacup forgotten in her hand. Spirits hold her and keep her, she knew who he was.

It was difficult to avoid overhearing the students gossip, in spite of her best efforts. Their prurience had shocked her almost as much as discovering just how well informed they could be. Now she knew for certain that at least one of the rumours was true.

The tattoo on the nape of Aysha’s neck was about the size of a gold Imperial, a stylised crescent moon with an arc of stars between the horns. Gair propped his head on his hand and studied it. He had only seen a tattooed woman once before: the Painted Lady at the fair, who wore the lives of the saints in her skin like the Book of Eador made flesh. There had been scarcely an inch of her not illuminated, but he could not recall what she looked like. The tattoo Aysha wore measured no more than an inch across, and he could not drag his eyes away.

She was sleeping now, cradled in the curve of his body. Her breathing was slow and regular, one hand curled like a half-open
flower beside her face. Careful not to wake her, he drew the ruined curtain that served them as a blanket up to her shoulders.

‘You’re staring,’ she murmured, eyes still closed.

‘I can’t help it. You’re beautiful.’ Leaning down, he put his lips to the crescent moon. ‘I didn’t know you had a tattoo.’

‘It’s my slave-mark. That’s the sigil of the trader who first sold me.’

Gair jerked his head back. ‘And you
kept
it?’

She shrugged. ‘I liked the design.’

‘I was going to say I liked it.’

Aysha turned over, curiosity quirking her brows. ‘And now you don’t?’

‘No.’

‘Because it marks me as someone’s possession? I’ve never known any different, Leahn. My mother was property, so I was property too.’

‘It’s repellent.’

‘It’s just ink,’ she said gently.

‘I mean what it signifies. I don’t like the idea of you belonging to someone.’

‘Someone other than you, you mean?’ Amusement sparkled in her eyes. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘People are not objects to be owned.’

‘You are, you’re jealous!’

He pulled her close and kissed her. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘Why, sir knight, I’m flattered.’ Another kiss, longer this time. Aysha pushed her fingers into his hair as it fell around her face. ‘You should keep your hair long. It suits you.’

‘Do you think so?’ He raked it back, but it flopped forward again like a Barrowshire’s forelock. ‘I was too afraid to go near the barber at the Motherhouse in case he tonsured me when I wasn’t looking.’

She tucked a few strands behind his ear.

‘I like it. Bring your comb and razor sometime and I’ll trim it for you, if you want.’

‘You can do that?’

‘That’s how I made my living in the souq – I apprenticed myself to a barber. I was cutting hair before you were shaving more than once a week. Speaking of which’ – she stroked a fingernail along his stubbled jaw – ‘I could give you a good shave too.’

Gair rubbed the tingle from his chin. ‘Is there something wrong with the way I’m doing it?’