With a final leer at Ani, Krake left the room. Garin escorted Ani to the sweet privacy of her usual chambers and joined her inside, the door sliding quietly shut behind him. With hands like silk, he unwound the cape she held around her, and slid his fingers into the cutouts at her waist.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all morning,” he whispered.
Ani raised an eyebrow at him.
“Really, Lord Garin,” she teased, “I’m not sure that’s quite what President Krake meant when he said you should look after his guest.”
She reached out and unclipped the first clasp on his uniform, the one covering the golden dip below his throat. Watching him for a response, she stroked her fingers over his exposed skin.
“Well,” he replied, husky with anticipation, “you of all Illyri should know that I believe in going above and beyond the call of duty . . .”
• • •
Some time later, Ani lay back on her pillows and listened as Garin grumbled about having to get back to work, yet made no move to leave. Ani was sated and satisfied. This time, however, Garin was not.
“Why,” Garin said as he kissed her full on the lips, yet again, “can you not acknowledge me in public? I want to marry you, but I’m not even allowed to take hold of your hand beyond these walls. Do you not feel what we have as deeply as I, Ani? Whenever I leave you I want to shout it from the highest mountains—‘I’m in love with the Archmage Ani!’—for all to hear.”
That, thought Ani, would be very bad. Already rumors were circulating about the closeness of the relationship between the Archmage and the President’s senior aide. If Garin did start broadcasting the truth of it—and Ani’s spies assured her that, so far, he had not discussed it even with his closest friends, but who knew how long his discretion would last?—then she might be forced to silence him. She did not want that to happen. She cared for him, but she cared more to protect her power and her position. She could see no advantage to a public union with Garin, or not yet. When, or if, the time came, it would be her decision to make. Garin, she sometimes suspected, did not fully understand where the true power lay in their relationship.
“Oh, Garin,” she said, “you say you love me, but would you be so willing to shout it if I were merely Ani Cienda, a girl who had nothing?”
“What do you mean?” He stroked her shoulder, absently using his thumb to ease a fold from the sheet that was wrapped around her, his face close to hers, his eyes not moving from her own. They were an unusual color, she thought, even for an Illyri: as dark as evergreen leaves, as clear as water.
“What I mean is, would you be so anxious to tie your happily-ever-afters to mine if I were a creature with no power, and with no influence?”
He nuzzled his face into her hair, and spoke against her ear, quiet yet insistent.
“But you’re not that creature,” he purred. His lips played on her lobe, and she shivered with pleasure despite herself. “You’re not, any more than I am a pauper from the alleys of Lower Tannis. Were you that nobody, and were I that pauper, then yes, I would feel the same about you. Of course I would feel the same. How could I not?”
His breath brushed delicately against the little hairs on her neck. “But, Ani, we’re not those beings. We are what we are; we both hold high stations. Why fight it?”
“But what if I didn’t hold a high station?” she persisted.
“But you do!”
He pressed his mouth against her throat now, open, velvety and tender, and she almost gave in, for his touch was that compelling. But then she pulled away, angry at her own weakness.
“Garin! I mean it.”
“My lovely Ani . . . Archmage Ani . . . Ani Cienda, whoever you choose to believe you are, whatever you choose to call yourself, ultimately it does not matter to me. I only dream of what we could be together.”
He brushed a strand of her hair away from her eyes, twirling it delicately between his fingers, before tucking it behind her ear as she stared down at her hands.
“Please, most precious one,” he said, tracing his fingers around the spiral of leaves tattooed on her cheek, stopping at the ever-watchful eye at its center, “don’t let the things that we are not be what hold us back. Instead, let what we are be that which drives us forward. Marry me! Please, marry me!”
She paused, appearing to consider it, then looked at him straight on, unflinching, a challenge on her face.
“But do you actually love me, Garin,” she asked starkly, “or am I just a good career move?”
His gaze wavered very briefly, but it was enough for Ani to doubt his answer.
“Of course I do!” he responded. “Didn’t I just tell you so?”
She shifted position, moving slightly away from him. He bent toward her to kiss her again, aware that the atmosphere between them had changed and anxious to bridge the distance.
“No,” she said, placing her hand on his chest and pushing lightly. “Enough now. You must go. I have things to attend to. I think we’re done here.”
His temple twitched as he regarded her and he appeared about to ignore her protestations—she watched him start to call up that winning smile of his, the one that always got him what he wanted—but before he could finish, she, in turn, summoned her most practiced glare, and let it blaze cold and bright.
“I am sure your President needs you, Lord Garin,” she said, her tone tolerating no dissent. “I fear you’ve attended to his guest’s needs for far too long.”
At that, Garin moved away, letting go of her shoulder as if it were nothing, giving a shrug, dismissing the intimacy of their time together. His wonderful mouth turned down at the corners, displeased, and she found herself contemplating—momentarily, horribly—what it would feel like to smack him in that same beautiful mouth, to split his lip as if it were a balloon filled with blood. She wanted to hurt him, for she hated that he could hurt her.
“I’m not your plaything, Archmage Ani,” he said. His voice was chilly.
He had that much correct, at least: she, Ani Cienda, was the Archmage, even if Garin couldn’t quite grasp what that meant in real terms. Even in the great, advanced Illyri society, there were those who believed that females were essentially a form of adornment, and even the greatest of them would sacrifice all at the altar of the right male suitor.
“Be that as it may,” she replied, “you forget that I am not to be toyed with either. Before you propose marriage to me again, try to ensure that your motives are pure. Sometimes I fear that you underestimate my intelligence, and my position. I am no mere pawn in your game. I am a queen in all but name . . . but then I guess you’ve never played chess.”
“Chess?” repeated Garin. He looked annoyed. He didn’t like not knowing things.
“An Earth game. The queen is the most powerful piece, not the king. Perhaps you might start considering the implications of this—in solitude—while Krake lunches with me, in private. You shall inform him that you will not be joining us, for urgent business requires you to eat later, and alone.”
Garin opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hands and clapped them together lightly.
“Thank you, Lord Garin. That will be all. You are free to go.”
Quivering with rage, Garin stood and stared down at her, his chest heaving, before he turned and strode from the room, slamming the button that activated the exit and nearly falling over Cocile as he left, for she was crouched outside, listening, or attempting to listen, for the doors of Opula were thick and the walls impregnable. Together the two Sisters watched Garin leave, his jacket still unfastened and billowing behind him. Ani was grim, but her attendant was openmouthed in shock.
“Sister Cocile,” snarled Ani as she rose to shut the door on her aide’s appalled, blushing face, “go find entertainment of your own, damn you. Your voyeurism is beginning to give me the creeps.”
• • •
Ani had lunch with the President in a glamorous dining room beside his office, under yet another glass roof. However, this one was held aloft by old, gnarled trees, echoing the great Palace of Erebos, and their chairs were presumptuously placed at right angles to each other, close and rather too intimate under the cozy curve of branches, hidden beneath a curtain of leaves, like lovers in a bower. How had Syrene handled him? she wondered, but then Syrene was substantially older than her young replacement, and significantly more experienced. Ani ate quickly, anxious to be gone from the presidential palace. The formal meetings with Krake were tedious enough, but the ritual of an informal lunch was nearly more than she could bear.
“Give me a kiss in parting, my dear Archmage Ani,” Krake said as she took her leave, and his limps plumped out of his shining broad face like the peeled segments of a saliva-sticky plum. “Give me a kiss that I may pass on to your beloved Sister Merida.”
Ani’s cold laughter tinkled around them, and instead she plucked the clutch of avatis blooms from where they’d been placed in a vase on the farthest corner of the table.
“Here,” she said, pressing the flowers into Krake’s outstretched arms so that their heavy blossoms were crushed into his chin, their wet stems dripping onto his robes, “give Merida these instead. I’m sure your loving wife would prefer flowers from the glasshouses of the Marque to secondhand kisses bestowed on her loyal husband by another.”
You slimeball, she added to herself as Krake regarded her drunkenly.
“Now I really must take my leave of you, President Krake,” she continued, more sweetly, as she gathered her cape around her.
“Let me call Garin to assist you,” said Krake, his features souring. He spoke Garin’s name as if issuing a challenge, and Ani knew then that he had heard the rumors too. Perhaps this added to his notion that she was available to . . . play. Her flesh crawled at the thought, but it also reminded her of how incautious she had been with Garin. She might have been the Archmage, but her youth made her vulnerable, and she knew that powerful forces on Illyr were looking for an excuse to dismiss her as inconsequential and inexperienced—dismiss her, and worse, for there was no shortage of candidates in the Marque who might wish to replace her should any harm befall her.
“No need for assistance, my dear President,” Ani said.
She took a tiny silver bell from her pocket and rang it. Immediately several of her red-clad aides appeared to lead her away. She pressed her cheek briefly to Krake’s as she left in an attempt to make amends, kissing the air near his ear. He perked up immediately and his hand reached for her as if he wished to extend the embrace, but she was already gliding away.
• • •
Ani did not see Garin again before she left. She chose not to, for if Krake suspected their relationship then others did too, all scheming how best to use any attachment for their own purposes.
But more importantly, she knew that the absence of farewells would annoy Garin. She only wished it didn’t make her feel quite so annoyed too.