The salt-stained carapace of armor had been thrown open in many places now, and two crewmen emerged from a hatch to unclip the vessel’s nameplate and carry it below. By now he was close enough to see the three uncial characters which spelt out the warship’s name, and to catch a brief glimpse of the geometric patterning of vowel values. It meant more to him as abstract art than as a written word, and he was reluctant even to hazard a guess at how it would be pronounced aloud.
Something like
Te’Na’R
, probably.
In the early evening a bank of fog came rolling in off the sea, and as it overlaid Tuenafen with a damp gray blanket the deep boom of a warning gong began to throb up from the harbor. Sitting cross-legged amid the rumpled quilts of Kathur’s bed, Aldric listened to its sonorous single note and sipped at a glass of wine he did not want or need, trying far too late to ignore the warm and silky skin which pressed against his own, languid and apparently sated at long last. He was acutely aware of a sensation which might have been his own shame.
Kathur rolled lazily onto her back and scored one long-nailed finger up and down his naked thigh, watching him intently through the tangled fringe of her copper-gold hair as she inhaled the sweet smoke curling up from burners near the bed. Something about his expression made her giggle drowsily. “
Ka’s’lai immau-an,’t’ eijo
?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me!” The denial came out far too hard, far too fast. “Nothing at all.” He was lying, and they both knew it. Aldric did not look down; the Drusalan’s bronze-and-milk-white body was a definite, indeed an all-consuming distraction to a mind which already had more than enough to deal with. And Kathur, following the latest fashion of the Warlord’s court in Drakkesborg, had blended
ymeth
with her favourite bedroom incense.
Sex had not been his intention when he returned from the harbor; far from it. The sight of four Imperial battle-rams of an uncertain provenance, and all that they suggested, had squelched any such thoughts as effectively as navel-deep immersion in a bath of ice-melt.
It had not been his intention when she stepped out of her bedroom just as he walked past in the corridor outside, even though in fairness he had already entertained the notion of a visit once or twice.
It had still not been his intention even when he saw what she was wearing: a low, clinging, sidesplit robe that blatantly flaunted her full-breasted, leggy beauty—even in bare feet she was a handspan taller than he was— and whose rich, not-quite-transparent satin clung like a crimson second skin and made it enticingly obvious that there was nothing but Kathur and perhaps a touch of costly perfume underneath.
But when she had reached out without a word and enfolded his face in palms and fingers and bent forward to lay a kiss upon his mouth, his ironclad celibacy had become a thing of wind and straw. In itself and in its apparent brevity the most chaste of gestures, that kiss had yet contained a probing pressure of her tongue between his lips and then the swiftest promissory nip of teeth, hinting at pleasures undefined but yet to come. After such a kiss even the sternest Imperial
politark
would have torn his holy books and smashed his holy ikons and gone a-running after her.
No; up to that point, when temptation had become more than fevered flesh and pounding blood could bear, he could lay hand on heart and swear that it had not been his intention to bed the Drusalan woman. But it had been Kathur’s intention all along.
She
had bedded
him
—and had done so most efficiently.
Efficiently… ? Yes, that was the only word for it. All the others—pleasurably, inventively, exhaustingly— were true enough, but faded into insignificance beside the icy technical brilliance which she had displayed in bed. As if following the steps of a complex but much-practised dance—
is that what rankles, Aldric
?—she had known exactly when and how hard to employ the emphases of tongue and teeth and nails and closely-clutching thighs.
Riding aids
, he thought cynically. But it was the detached skill with which she had aroused him that would not leave his mind—as if she had regarded his initial reluctance as a defiant challenge to be overcome, nothing more. For just once, almost by accident amid the sweaty squirming of their love-making, he had chanced to stare for three full seconds straight up into her eyes. That memory remained with him, and would for a long, long time. Because there had been nothing in those eyes but the spasmodic glitter of physical pleasure. That was all. The rest was an emotional blank.
Even Gueynor, once of Valden and now mistress of Seghar, had felt more for him than Kathur did—and
she
had been paying for her own much-loved uncle’s quick and painless death. Something of which Aldric had not learned until much later.
Efficiently. That was indeed what rankled, what had created the tiny flutter of uncertainty beneath his breastbone. The flutter which might have been guilt at the ease with which he had let himself be manipulated, but which was much, much more. Suspicion burgeoning to certainty that there was another purpose behind what she had done to him, and for him, and only incidentally for herself; a purpose that went beyond simple lust or curiosity or—and he would have accepted the reason gratefully, had it been true—boredom on a foggy afternoon.
With Gueynor or with Kyrin—
Kyrin, O my lady, O my love
, the words came back to him again like a religious chant,
where are you now
?—he would have been lying here, but cuddled together with a quiet affection he would never feel for this Drusalan woman. Kyrin had been right when once she had called him a romantic. Because Kathur made love—and the word “love” was itself a lie—like a whore; all was sensation, nothing was emotion, because emotion and tenderness took time and to a whore time was money. Aldric’s mind flashed to the first time he had seen her, that night when she stalked into the tavern common-room in her furs and with her guards to either side. He had thought then that she was either noble or a top-rank courtesan; now his opinion was more certain.
“
Ai, irr’hem ymau tleiyan
.” The spiked fingernails coursed his spine. “Care killed a cat, my Kourgath. What’s troubling you?”
He shivered—only a marble statue would not—and set his glass aside before suddenly-trembling hands spilled its contents all across his lap. Not, he thought with another luxurious shudder, that such an accident would inconvenience Kathur in the slightest. Not in her present mood.
“
Dakkoyo-do, h’lau-ei
,” he said quickly, releasing himself from her embrace. “I told you: nothing’s the matter. I was thinking, that’s all.”
“
Ehreth kraiy’r hla, Kourgath-tlei
. Then think about me.” She made the suggestion in a voice like cinnamon and hot honey as she relaxed into an inviting sprawl of naked limbs. Aldric looked, and swallowed hard, and closed his eyes and took a deep breath—instantly regretting the last as a double lungful of dreamsmoke hit him, daubing rainbow patterns across the insides of his eyelids and through the echoing caverns of a suddenly all-too-spacious skull.
“
Doamne diu
!” he snarled softly. It needed no translation—one blasphemous expletive tends to sound very much like another—and Kathur laughed at him, then sprinkled another pinch of
ymeth
on the nearest censer. “Lady, stop that… !” Aldric began to protest, then turned it into a half-hearted shrug. “I’m not as used to this stuff as you are.”
“But it should take your mind off those battlerams in the harbor.”
“Battlerams?” His face was a masterpiece of innocent inquiry, a reflex reaction that was entirely wasted because her spy had been with him at the time and had apparently managed to make his report already.
“Battlerams,” she repeated laconically.
“The Imperial military doesn’t like Albans much,” Aldric said, as if that explained everything.
“To the Black Pit with the military! I like at least one Alban very much indeed.”
“Thank you, my lady. But… whose ships are they anyway?”
Kathur’s mouth went very thin for maybe half a second and her heavy-lidded eyes flicked wide open, but Aldric, staring pensively at the crawling glow of sparks in one of the incense burners, missed it all. “Curiosity,” she said carefully, “killed a cat,
hlens’l,”
“Care, now curiosity,” Aldric smiled, a smile as bright and false as paste jewels. “What have the Empire’s proverb-makers got against cats anyway?”
Kathur didn’t seem particularly amused. “And why the sudden interest in battlerams?” she wanted to know. “You’ve been fretting over something ever since you came back from the harbor. Tell me about it; a sympathetic ear might make you feel better.”
“And sympathetic lips?” It sounded evasive even to him, and Kathur didn’t deign to respond; she merely stared, and waited for an answer. Aldric met that stare for maybe a minute; then he gave up, lay down with his head cradled on crossed arms and told her…
Not what she wanted to know, but what he wanted her to know, which was not the same thing at all. Nearly—but not quite. He knew from previous experience that a carefully edited version of the truth sounded more convincing than the best-thought-out lie. And right now he had no honor-bound compunctions about misleading her. None at all.
“In the spring of this year,” he began, “I was a passenger aboard an Elherran merchant galion. Unarmed, of course; it’s well known that none of the Elherran vessels carry weapons. But we were attacked nonetheless—by a battleram. She was sailing under the Grand Warlord’s crest and colors, but I doubt that had much to do with what happened. Her commander claimed that the galion was running contraband; we were somewhat shot up by then and in no mood to argue. But the marine cadre who boarded searched the Elherran from keel to mizen top without finding a thing. So did the
hautmarin
apologise for his high-handed action and offer recompense for the damage? Did he, hell! Arrogant bastard didn’t give a damn!”
“Calm down, Kourgath. It doesn’t matter now.”
“No. Not now. Of course not. You’re right. But can you wonder that I was… uneasy, shall we say?—when I found that pack of bloody commerce raiders in the harbor?”
“I don’t wonder at all. But it’s better not to wonder about what
They
do—not aloud in public anyway.
They
have many ears. And contacts in the most unlikely places.” Kathur’s lips curved in a small, cold smile redolent of many things, and she studied his face for a while as she toyed absently with the silver crest-collar encircling his throat. “You worry too much,” she concluded, and her voice carried a mocking severity. “And about other people’s problems. That’s a bad thing. Positively unhealthy while you’re still within the Empire’s borders. So we’ll have to find something to occupy that over-busy mind of yours. Something to help you relax.”
“Other than
this
!” It was perhaps as well that most of the more subtle nuances of Aldric’s intonation were muffled by his own right bicep, so that all Kathur heard was a real or feigned incredulity. That, and the widening of his one visible eye, was enough to make her laugh aloud.
“This, as you so coyly put it, is mere diversion. A pleasant way to…” her words faltered for the merest beat—an intake of breath as of something almost but not spoken that the Alban failed to notice—and then resumed smoothly, “... to pass the time. And also, if you want to view it so, a way for me to convey a little of my gratitude. And a way which you seemed to appreciate.”
Aldric had heard reasoning of that nature before, and didn’t much like to hear it, again; but given the present circumstances, he forbore to comment.
Kathur nodded, rolled over in bed and reached for a slender silken cord which ran up and out of sight through a brass-rimmed hole in the ceiling; tugged it twice, then twice again, and lay back as if exhausted by the effort. Aldric had watched her, despite his other reservations enjoying the way her sleek body moved; now, as she flopped against the pillows, he hid a smile. “By the looks of you,” he said virtuously, “shuttering those incense burners might be a good idea.”
For just a moment Kathur glared at him, ready to be angry if his baiting should be more than just a joke. She had taken quite enough criticism of her private affairs and conduct from her own brother—who didn’t know the half of it—without more of the same from this, this
hlensyarl
who was no more than a part of her work. She willingly conceded that he was both a better-looking and a more enjoyable part than many who had preceded him; but ultimately that concession changed nothing.
Her instructions had been concise, straightforward and most certainly not open to other interpretations.
Find. Identify. Hold
. They had been delivered twofold, as was the custom; the first no more than a cursory cipher borne on a pigeon’s leg, but the second… Ah yes, the second. That had been carried by no less than a weary, dirty horseman in the yellow crest-coat of the Falcon couriers. The very use of a Falcon had told her much about how this mission was regarded even before she read what he had brought her, sealed by lead in a leather pouch.
The whole thing had Voord’s touch about it.
The arrogance which had employed a despatch-rider forbidden to all but the Imperial Household; that sense for the dramatic which had prompted the risky gesture. And the arid, clinical precision of the prose which told her in graphic—no, Father of Fires burn it, pornographic— detail, what it was she would be expected to do. But then, that was Voord’s way.
He had always been fastidious, had Voord; excessively neat in all that he did, no matter how perverse. Kathur’s mind unwillingly recalled the whimpering, agonized, ecstatic night of her recruitment by the Vlechan, and she shuddered with revulsion at the memory even as conscious effort crushed it back down into the dark and dirty part of her subconscious where it was confined.
Then he had been
kortagor;
now he was
hautheisart
, promoted again at the end of summer for something which even yet remained unspecified. What it might have been, the Drusalan woman didn’t know and would not dare to guess… because if the rumours spoke the truth, Voord was stranger now than ever.