I did not sleep that night. Alegria wanted to sit with me, but I refused her. “Are you sure I can’t do something … make you feel a little better? Any way I can?”
I shook my head. Eventually dawn came. Alegria tiptoed into the room, started to say something, then went back out. I forced myself to bathe, shave, and put on fresh clothes. I was trying to decide what to do when a messenger arrived from the embassy.
There’d been a signal from Nicias. The emperor approved my plan, and told me to proceed at once. His message was full of praise for me, which seemed the cruelest sort of sneering.
• • •
The meeting with King Bairan was very odd. There was the king, Ligaba Sala, Boconnoc, myself, and the secretary. I had my maps and charts on easels and spoke easily, most familiar with my ideas. But it was as if I were standing or, better, floating above myself, just watching. I smiled, made mild clevernesses at the right time, but felt nothing.
My idea, laboriously worked out, was to combine the Wild Country and the Border Lands into a single administrative region. This region would be jointly ruled by Numantia and Maisir. It would be divided into separate subregions following the generally-agreed-upon borders of those bandit kingdoms within the region.
The first stage would be complete military pacification. This would be done by combined Maisirian and Numantian forces. I proposed new corps be established, with officers and men from both countries mingled. It would take two years or so to set these units up and train them, but then we could move through the wild lands, step by step. It would be expensive, very expensive. But would the loss be any less than that from the raids and caravan attacks by these bandits? The cities would be the first to be taken. If they were governed wisely and well, using, whenever possible, the native rulers, the outlying areas might see the advantages of peace.
“So the wolves will become sheep, eh?” Bairan said skeptically.
“No. First we’ll make them into tame wolves, and send them out after their wilder brothers. Then we’ll change them into sheepdogs, for I don’t believe those mountains will ever be truly peaceful. The best we can hope for is that these sheepdogs will be grudgingly obedient under their shepherds from Maisir and Numantia.”
“You’ve studied this well, I see,” Sala said, looking at the maps.
“I didn’t wish to make a total idiot of myself if the plan was completely impossible,” I said. “Now it merely looks like a grandiose unlikelihood.”
Both the king and Ligaba Sala smiled.
“If peace, or something sort of resembling that, came to these regions, Numantia and Maisir wouldn’t have any excuse for war, either,” the king said. “Would they, Ambassador?”
“Not as long as both nations truly wanted peace. But if someone truly wanted war, well, all this would be so much bum fodder,” I said. “A man who wants a brawl can generally find one, even in the calmest tavern.”
“Equal armies, equal governments?” the king said, with a question mark.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “With frequent conferences between the emperor and yourself, or between your emissaries. So no misunderstandings can develop.”
“Interesting,” mused Bairan. “Now, if you’d said you’d just had this idea, I would’ve laughed and thought you mad, or a dreamer, and I’m nervous in the company of either. But since your emperor’s endorsed this plan … hmm. Interesting. Either this has merit, or there’s two madmen about. I don’t know, Ambassador á Cimabue. Perhaps we could set up a couple of regiments and see what develops. Start at one end of the frontier, with one state.”
“Excellent change, Your Majesty,” I said hastily. Of course I’d planned we would begin slowly, rather than jump in everywhere at once, but an idea is always more digestible when one thinks it one’s own.
“Very well. Let’s try this out. Ligaba, would you and the Numantians work out a scheme?”
“Gladly, sir.”
King Bairan stood. “Your emperor chose wisely when he sent you, Ambassador á Cimabue. I think you’ve done both countries a true service, and in time to come, perhaps your name will ring greater than either mine or your emperor’s.”
“I thank you, sir.” I bowed deeply.
Bairan moved toward the door, then stopped and touched my sleeve. “Damastes, you seem disturbed. Is there aught the matter? If so …”
“No, Your Majesty,” I managed to say. “I just didn’t get much rest last night making sure I’d not make any blunders today.”
He looked in my eyes. “Very well,” he said, voice skeptical. “But don’t forget my offer. A matter this imposing must be judged by calm minds.”
• • •
Now there was little for me to do. Sala and Boconnoc began hammering out the details, and it was well for me to stay in the background. I could wallow, I could drown, in my anger and depression.
But there was Alegria.
Thinking of her, thinking of the shabby way I’d treated her, calmed my rage, my hurt, and I forced myself to behave less like a child, and worry about something beyond myself.
I had an idea, and determined to carry it out. Perhaps the setting would inspire the change.
• • •
“At least when I take you out of Jarrah, it’s to a great castle,” Alegria said skeptically.
“A depressing great castle.”
“You are the picky sort. Besides, how could it be depressing, if it’s where your favorite … favorite … whatever I am came from? Damastes, just what am I to you? You don’t have to answer that honestly.”
“Then I won’t,” I said. “Quit yammering, and help me unpack the sleigh. You’re behaving like a nervous bride on her wedding night.”
“Aaah?” Alegria looked innocently around. I threw her into a snowbank. She sputtered, flailed, and I, like a genteel oaf, extended a hand. She grabbed it and yanked. I yelped and fell, face-first, into the snow beside her.
“That was unfair,” I managed to sputter when I surfaced.
“You’re right,” Alegria said. “I’ll pay the penalty and let you kiss me.”
“That sounds like a proposition.”
“Of sorts,” she murmured, and I did as she asked. The kiss lasted for some time.
“Mmmmh,” she said softly when our lips came apart. “I’d say do it again, but I don’t know how snowproof these furs are.”
“Snowproof,” I said. “I had six spells cast to make sure.”
“Then kiss me again.” I did. She ran her gloved fingers across my lips. “Congratulations,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not being a gloomy-mug like you’ve been since … since you know.”
“I got tired of feeling sorry for myself,” I said truthfully.
“Then get up. You were lying again. This snow’s seeping through.” I helped her up, and again she looked at the rather ramshackle low wooden building. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s the meeting place Numantian envoys use when they want to meet Maisirian traitors in secret.”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“I asked Ligaba Sala where a quiet lonely place was I could take someone.”
“I guess,” Alegria said, “Maisirian traitors don’t last too long if Sala knows about this place.”
“Guess not. Now, help me carry provisions.”
I handed her two net bags of groceries. She looked once more at the building. “Quaint,” she said. “I guess that’s what you’re supposed to call a building with a tree growing through its roof.”
“Two of them,” I said. “There’s another down there.”
“Wonderful. I wonder if there’s a fire. It’s going to snow.”
“You go investigate. The embassy said there’s a charm-pole that works as a key hung in that little box beside the door.”
I carried the rest of our supplies onto the porch, then led the horses to the nearby barn. There was an unfrozen spring nearby, and I fed, watered, and curried the animals. By the time I finished, a gentle snowstorm had begun. It was nearly the end of the Time of Storms, and the weather was lightening. But it was still cold, especially for a tropic lad, and I entered the house chilled through.
The house actually was a retreat for members of the embassy, although Sala was the one who’d told me about it, saying it had once been used for clandestine meetings, until King Bairan got tired of that foolishness and had a certain diplomat — he didn’t say if it was Boconnoc or not — greeted by a company of cavalry when he arrived to meet an agent. That ended the political uses for the lodge.
It overhung a frozen lake, with porches all around. There were eight bedrooms, half branching off a hall on one side of the main rooms, four on the other side. The center room was low-ceilinged, but huge. I could’ve almost stood in the river-stone fireplace, and the firewood racks on either side reached the ceiling. Around it were thick fur rugs of various animals. Everything was rough-worked wood, including the furniture. The chairs and couches looked as if they’d swallow you if you got near them, and the nap you’d be forced into might last an eternity.
To one side was a dining room and next to it the kitchen, the larder of which was filled with every sort of bottled or preserved viand imaginable. Heating was by wood, each bedroom having its own fireplace. A hot spring rose on the hill above the house, and the water was diverted into the plumbing system, the cold water for which came from a creek.
Two trees rose through the house, each in one hallway. They were supposedly trees of luck and had been blessed when the lodge was built. The place was utterly unpretentious, utterly charming, and a world of its own.
Exactly what I had hoped.
“Well?” Alegria asked. In the minutes I’d been gone, she’d lit two lamps, found kindling, and started it burning with crumpled paper. Three small logs were set in a pyramid over the crackling flames and were smoking into fire.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you surprised a woman, especially a Dalriada, can build a fire out here in the suebi, amid the wolves and dragons?”
“Not at all. You already told me Dalriada can do anything.”
“I may have oversold the proposition. Come, Damastes. Admire me.”
“I always do.”
“Do you?” She rose from where she’d been sitting, cross-legged on a white bearskin in front of the fire. She’d taken off her furs and wore a soft, loose pair of pants, with a robe top that dipped low and tied at the side in matching leopard-skin-like material. She turned, letting the firelight silhouette her body, and once again murmured “Do you?” She unfastened the tie and slipped out of the top. Her body was firm, nipples hard.
She came to me, and I tried to take her in my arms. “No,” she said softly. “There is no hurry, no haste.”
I lowered my arms, and slowly she unbuttoned my heavy fur coat, undid the ties of my fur pants, and let them drop around my ankles. I kicked off my boots and stepped out of my pants, wearing only a loincloth.
“You’re very pretty,” she said.
“Not as pretty as you.”
She bent and kissed my nipples. I ran my fingers down her sleekness.
“I would like to kiss you,” she said, and her lips parted as she spoke. Our tongues wove together, and my arms came around her, pulling her against me. She pulled away, breathing hard.
“I was taught … the first time should be done slowly,” she said. “But I swear I cannot stand it for long.”
“Nor I,” I said hoarsely, and picked her up in my arms. Her knees folded as if she’d lost all strength, and I laid her down on the rug.
“I want you to love me now, please love me now,” she whispered. “All my places want you, Damastes. Do not stop until they’re satisfied.”
I kissed her tiny navel, ran my tongue inside it, and her fingers fumbled with the ties to her pants. She raised her hips and I slipped her pants off, and she lifted one leg and let it fall to the side. She had but a tiny tuft of hair around her sex, and I kissed it, then moved between her legs, and let my tongue move back and forth down there, caressing the small hardness between her lips.
Her hands moved in my hair as I loved her with my mouth, and her breathing grew faster, harsher. She gasped, jerked against me, groaned, but I didn’t stop. “Come to me now, please now,” she said, and I obeyed, moving up between her legs, rubbing her sex with my cock, back and forth. She was wet with her own juices, wet with my saliva. I pushed slowly, firmly against resistance, and it broke, and she cried out. I didn’t push farther, but moved gently back and forth, fractions of an inch, and then she moved with me, moaning. I moved deeper within her, and her legs came up around me, and she pulled at me. I kissed her, and her tongue searched my mouth frantically. I moved back, almost out of her, then thrust deeply and she cried out again, this time in joy, and I repeated the motion and paid for my long months of stupidity and denial — I gushed inside her.
“Hells,” I muttered.
“Hush,” she ordered, and her fingers moved down, around the back of her thighs, touching my balls, the base of my cock, here, there, and suddenly I grew firm again. Now we moved together, first lovers, but it was as if we’d done it time and again, partners in a long-rehearsed dance, and then she shouted aloud, her head rolling, and her muscles spasmed around me, and I came for the second time. Her face was contorted, eyes closed, and I stroked her wet body for long moments until her eyes opened.
“I was right those long months ago when I said I was lucky.”
“No,” I said. “I am the one who’s lucky.”
“In time, that may be true,” she whispered, and rolled me over onto my back.
“That was once,” she said, and rose to her knees. She knelt and caressed my cock. “Ah, little one, you have not been doing your exercises, or you’d not be tired. You need some encouragement.” She used her tongue on the tip of my cock, then pulled my foreskin back and slid her teeth back and forth on the head. Her tongue touched me here, there, while her fingers stroked my balls, my ass, my abdomen. I was firm once more, and she moved back and forth, taking my entire cock into her mouth, her tongue flat underneath it, and once more the world spun. It was my turn to cry out. She lifted her head and swallowed.
“The real thing tastes better than any of the compounds they gave us,” she said. “Or at least yours does.”
I pulled her up beside me and kissed her.
“Twice,” she said.
We lay contentedly together, caressing each other, feeling the warmth of the fire, and the greater warmth of another, invisible fire about us.
“Would I sound like a fool if I said I love you?” I said.
Her eyes snapped open in surprise. “N-no. Of course not. But …”
“But what?”
“I … This isn’t supposed to … Oh, hells, I’m confused!” Tears started, but she rubbed them away.
“I’m sorry,” I joked badly. “I’ll never say that again.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
She took a deep breath. “I love you, Damastes.”
“Nice that we agree on things.”
We kissed.
“Do you know when I fell for you?” I shook my head. “It was that very first night, when you threw that tablet off the balcony.”
“Now, wait a moment,” I protested. “That doesn’t make any sense. I said no chains, so — ”
“So I put them on. But who said love is a chain?”
I made a face, didn’t answer.
“Forget about her,” Alegria said. “That’s gone. That’s over. Think about something else.”
“All right,” I said slowly, a bit embarrassed, but still curious. “I’ve got a question, but you don’t have to answer it. That first night, you cut yourself, so that people wouldn’t talk about what didn’t happen.”
“Yes?”
“And tonight it seemed, it felt, like the first time you’d made love.”
“I thought you said you were a country boy.”
“I am,” I said. “You’re confusing me.”
“Haven’t you heard any of the old jokes about the poor girl who’s been known to like the haystacks and the bumpkins she finds there, and then some old rich farmer decides he’s got to marry her? But only if she’s a virgin?”
I did remember those ancient jests that invariably finished with some young lad ending up in a place the old farmer thought exclusively his. “I do.” This could have been embarrassing, as Alegria said. But suddenly it struck me as funny. “So as part of your graduation ceremony, when you became a full-fledged Dalriada, you stood in line while a midwife put a certain stitch somewhere?”
“No, you idiot! It was done sorcerously.”
“Ah-ha. Now it’s explained, for certainly you have certain talents I’ve never known in a virgin before.”
“That was part of my training,” Alegria admitted, blushing a bit. “I saw you peep into that room with the … what we called hobby horses. At a certain age, we were introduced to them and required to memorize many positions. As many positions as you lecherous men have been able to devise, and two more.”
It was my turn to turn red.
“Yes,” she went on. “They were used exactly as you thought. And there were other simulacra we were required to be familiar with, some large, some small. The small ones we called lij’s, princes, since we learned the older and more powerful the man, the tinier the toy.”
“That sounds sort of mechanical, and pretty damned unromantic. Not to mention a little painful.”
“Oh, the sisters of the Dalriada aren’t brutal,” she said. “First we learned to pleasure ourselves, when we were little more than babes. Then we were skillfully taught other techniques. Some of this was done in dreams. I remember one sequence well. I would’ve been thirteen, I suppose. He was tall, with a wonderful black beard that tickled when he lay atop me. He gave me great pleasure, and when I awoke, almost as damp between my legs as if I’d really known a man, and realized there was no one there, my heart broke, and wasn’t repaired until the next night, when the wizards of Dalriada sent him to me again.
“I was foolish enough to be shocked and even jealous when I told one of my friends about him, and she started laughing and said she, too, had been loved by him that night. The dreams were sent in cycles, so all of us learned the same things at the same time. There were other men in other dreams. Men and women. Sometimes more than one.
“Most of us had real lovers from time to time. The older women, or our friends. There is a tradition with the Dalriada that older girls take younger ones to teach. For a few weeks that woman you met, Zelen, and I were lovers. I didn’t and don’t feel it was bad, because I read most people will find pleasure where they can. Prisoners slake their lusts on each other, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t been one yet.”
“And I’ve read that soldiers, when they don’t have any virgins to despoil or whores, will secretly turn to their brothers, paying no heed to the punishment they could face.”
“They do,” I said. “But in Numantia there’s no need to be secretive about it. I can’t imagine anyone making something natural against the law.”
“It is here in Maisir,” Alegria said. “Although it’s not enforced unless it’s the only way someone can destroy his foe.
“To change the subject,” she went on, “you realize I’m not supposed to tell you any of this.”
“Why not?”
“Remember, I am — I was a virgin, and that’s an important part of being a Dalriada.”
“You mean the man a Dalriada is … given to,” and the words still came hard, “is supposed to think all her talents, all the things she can do with her body, have been a gift of the gods?”
“Exactly. Specifically from Jaen.”
“By my monkey god Vachan, men are dumb,” I said.
“Maybe, but I think they’re sweet. And worth taking care of.”
• • •
Alegria was almost perfect, I thought, as I fell more deeply in love each day. Her biggest flaw was that she simply could not cook. Not because she didn’t understand the nature of foods — she’d been well taught by the Dalriada, but because she simply didn’t think it was necessary to be precise. A bit too much salt, a bit too few spices, a bit too long in the oven, a bit less kneading than specified — these didn’t seem to matter at the time.
“But after all,” she told me, “cooking isn’t important to a Dalriada. The noblemen we’re with have cooks and bakers and stewards and servants to bring us our meals in bed. Only barbarians would take a delicate flower like myself into the suebi by herself and require her to commit truly unnatural acts such as washing pots!”
“My humblest apologies,” I said, bowing low. “For I am truly a barbarian, Woizera Alegria, and a foreign one at that. Perhaps this task would be more to your taste. Would you be so kind as to attempt to fit your ankles into my ears?”
She mock-saluted and lay back on the bed. “You order me, sir.”
Not that it mattered — she had, as a dutiful student, memorized many recipes, and would recite them to me as I cheerily banged pots and kettles about. I can’t say I was or am a good cook. But I was better than Alegria. Not that we spent all that much time eating, however. At least not in the strict sense of the word.
I wished it had been five weeks instead of five days, but the time ended, and we returned to Jarrah. There was an invitation waiting, one for that very night, one I couldn’t have refused.
I showed it to Alegria, and she shivered, and her face paled with fear.
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure he’ll tell me.”
“Be careful, my love. Be very, very careful.”
• • •
“You may call me azaz, my title,” the small man said softly. “For I permit no one my name. I’m sure you appreciate that knowledge of a sorcerer’s name can give power over that wizard, and even though I fear no one, I cannot see the reason to ever grant the slightest advantage.”
The azaz was the mysterious master of ceremonies, the Maisirian chief sorcerer and most powerful magician. No one in the embassy knew anything about the man who held the post, other than that he was utterly feared. No Numantian, including Ambassador Boconnoc, had ever met him. The azaz, like his predecessor, preferred the isolation of his castle, a five-sided black stone monolith at the very end of Moriton, next to the high wall that held out the Belaya Forest.
When he attended court, he sat in an anteroom or cubicle with a heavy curtain across it. And when he called someone to his presence, he or she always came, even though there might well be no return.
The azaz was a small man, in his early forties, I guessed, balding and clean-shaven. He was sharp-featured and reminded me of another retiring man to be feared, Kutulu, the Serpent Who Never Sleeps. But where Kutulu’s eyes were careful recorders of all they saw, the azaz’s were ice-blue, nearly colorless lances of power and authority.
It might sound as if they had the same blaze as the emperor’s. The emperor’s eyes drew you in, held you, and commanded obedience. The azaz’s glare was almost that of a madman’s. He didn’t need to give you orders, for his power was so much mightier he’d simply crush you if you stood in his way — or if the azaz thought for one moment you might.
He wore pants and shirt of a heavy, rich, dark brown silk, and held a wonderfully carved wand of ivory in one hand, that he toyed with as he spoke.
He met me just inside the anteroom of the castle. It was bare stone, with no decoration except a black banner hanging on one wall, with a symbol on it in red I didn’t recognize. I bowed, introduced myself. Then he said, without niceties:
“I do not like you, Damastes á Cimabue,” and his tone was as casual as if he’d mentioned the weather.
I blinked, recovered. “Why? Because I am a Numantian?”
“I have little love for your people, true, but my dislike is more personal. Do you recollect a man you would have known as Mikael of the Spirits?”
Mikael Yanthlus, Chardin Sher’s supreme magician. I’d gone into the castle he and his master were sheltering in, and laid the Seer Tenedos’s spell, then fled moments before some great demon rose from the earth and destroyed the castle and the rebels it sheltered. Here was yet another link to the past.
“Of course.”
“Mikael and I were friends, or as much as any wizard permits himself friends, when we were boys. He decided he could learn more, faster, by wandering. He did gain much, but was hurled back to the Wheel by you and your emperor. I’ve tried to reach his spirit, or to find where he was reborn, but none of the demons I’ve summoned have knowledge of him. Perhaps he’s still with the gods. Or perhaps he was destroyed unutterably. So I love you but little, Numantian.”
Honesty, I think, requires its mate. “He was assisting a rebel in a foreign land against that man’s rightful rulers,” I said coldly. “He met the fate he deserved, as did the traitor he served.”
“I see your bluntness, which I witnessed at your first meeting with my king, extends to all things,” the azaz said, with a bleak smile. I remembered that curtained alcove behind the king.
“As for Mikael, I can’t say I agree that he got what he deserved, but I won’t argue that his doom was unjust. He was always more ambitious than I. If he’d lived, by the way, I don’t doubt that he would have overthrown Chardin Sher, and then there would have been a contest of wizards to make the gods gape in astonishment.”
I didn’t reply.
“But that didn’t happen. So I’ll have to be the one who tests your great Seer Tenedos,” the azaz said. “If for no other reason than to see if your emperor was able to steal Mikael’s powers when he died. Myself and the War Magicians against Tenedos and his Chare Brethren.”
“I can’t see how this contest can happen, if there’s to be peace between our kingdoms,” I said. “Which there will be. Or are you going to ruin the negotiations?”
“Not at all,” the azaz said. “My king does want peace, and I serve him precisely. As I said, I’m not as ambitious as Mikael was. In fact, I’m a bit suspicious of those who reach toward the stars. I refer to both you and your emperor. I mean no disrespect, but, what, ten years ago or so, he was a disgraced magician sent into exile, and you were the youngest cavalry legate in the army.”
“You know a great deal about both of us,” I replied. “And while I have nothing to say about my emperor’s goals, I can truthfully say that all of my achievements came as a surprise. They still do, to be frank.”
The azaz looked skeptical.
“And,” I went on, feeling a bit angry, “for a man who says he means no disrespect, you’ve certainly gone a very long ways in that direction for my comfort. If all you wanted was to have me here for a slanging match, then may I request your permission to leave?”
“Calm down, my cockerel,” the azaz said calmly. “There was a definite purpose in wanting to speak to you alone. If what I’m about to say came from my master, it would be very easy to misunderstand as a threat. It is not. It is, rather, a warning. As I said, I mistrust those with overweening ambition, which I feel you, your emperor, and even your nation may be guilty of.
“If I’m correct, then there’s a great likelihood this wonderful peace we’re all so enamored of won’t last for more than a few years.
“I’ll give you another reason for my suspicions: The Emperor Tenedos has frequently cited his devotion to Saionji the Destroyer Goddess.”
“Destroyer and creator,” I said, parroting something the emperor had said time and again. “For it’s sometimes necessary to tear things down to rebuild them.”
“True. Your emperor mostly talks of the creator aspect of the goddess. But most priests say Saionji’s creative powers extend only to her control of the Wheel, and regulating how and when each of us is allowed to return to earth. There’s no mention of her being creative as Umar was. But maybe your emperor is in Saionji’s personal keeping and knows more of her attributes than the rest of us.”
“Perhaps,” I said impatiently. “But I’m no priest, nor do I have much interest in the gods or their aspects.”
“Of course not. Soldiers seldom do, except in their dying agonies,” the azaz said. “But this is part of my warning, so take heed. Your emperor may worship Saionji. But it’s my belief such worship draws undue attention from the goddess. Perhaps it already has. In that event, I’d be surprised for her not to demand some sort of blood price.
“Such as declaring war on Maisir,” he said, and now there was anger and threat in his voice.
“You’re wrong, sir,” I said, forcing calm.
“Am I? Perhaps. I hope I am, in spite of my interest in testing your emperor’s magical thews. But if I’m not, take this as a second warning. I know you’re a man of heat and the tropics, and this Maisirian clime is something new. So take the opportunity to immerse a bit of ice in water. See how little of it is above the water. That is Numantia, Damastes á Cimabue, and Maisir is as vast to your kingdom as a mighty ocean berg is to your bit of ice.
“Challenge us at your own peril — yours, your emperor’s, and your country’s.”
I bowed, holding back anger.
“We can both feel relieved, sir,” I said. “For I can give you my solemn word, my oath, which if you know anything of me or my family is one which has never been broken, that Numantia has no desire for war, for any piece of Maisirian soil, or for the death of one soldier, man, woman, or child, whether Maisirian or Numantian.”
The azaz’s cold eyes held me. Neither of us dropped his gaze. Suddenly he nodded, and I was dismissed. I stalked out of the palace to my sleigh.
Riding away from the azaz’s dark estate, I pondered what he’d said. I thought that we had a very deadly enemy in the azaz, but at least he’d shown his feelings.
• • •
Three days later, on the eighth day of the Time of Dews, we met with King Bairan, to discuss the final outline of the preliminary treaty. I’d actually learned to think in contradictions like that. All went well, and the draft would go off to the emperor immediately. I wondered from where the azaz was listening, but set aside the thought.
Peace was in our hands, and as soon as we closed our fingers, it would be ours. Ours for this time, and, I hoped, with the borders brought under control, for all time to come.
• • •
“This is a much better way to celebrate than eating and drinking too much and shouting and singing,” Alegria said breathily. “Is it not?”
She knelt over me, guided my cock into her, then sank down, lying on me, moaning as I lifted my hips, driving into her, our lips mashed together. After a time she sat up, her body twisting as I moved inside her. She slid her legs forward until she was sitting on me, her feet near my head, then swung, lifting one leg across my body.
Her breath rasped as she ground her hips against me, squeezing me with her inner muscles as she did. I almost came, and had to force control as she moved her leg back until it touched mine. She swung around until her back was to me, lifted her legs to either side of mine, leaned forward, hands on my ankles, then stretched her legs out slowly, and I was in a soft, tight vise and jerked upward, no longer able to hold myself. She lifted herself off my cock, slid back up, took me in her mouth as I caressed her with my tongue, and then we both rolled as our bodies convulsed and my mind drowned in warm wetness.
Sometime later, I came back. “Great gods,” I managed to say. “That’s too much like work. I think I need a splint. What do you think I am, a gymnast?”
“Shut up,” she said. “I was the one who had to do all the work.”
“If my cock ever gets hard again, which I don’t think it’s going to,” I said, “I’m going to show you one of my favorite positions. All it requires is a winch, twelve feet of timber, two hundred yards of rope, and sixteen sheep.”
“Bluffer,” she said. “But I do know where there’s some very soft silk cord. If you’re interested.”
• • •
It was three weeks before we heard from Nicias, and I’d begun to be concerned, although I shouldn’t have been, knowing the still-vile weather and the other problems communicating with Numantia presented. But there’d been so few problems thus far, and I’ve always believed luck is a fixed sum, and there is only so much to be spent.
I fretted, and the Time of Dews dragged past.
It was the fortieth day of the time when we finally received word. The emperor had approved the treaty. He’d have a few of the most minor changes to make, and then we could make arrangements for his trip to the border and the grand meeting between the two rulers.
I think everyone in Jarrah went a little mad. There were parties from the highest to the lowest, and no one seemed to have anything for anyone other than a smile and a cheery greeting. The temples were packed, and thankful prayers went up to Umar, Irisu, the special gods of Numantia and Maisir, and almost any deity worth praying to.
Except Saionji. Her flashing swords, her pale horse, would not be called upon.
• • •
Three more weeks passed, and a hasty message came from Nicias. The pirates who roved the coast around Ticao, the province bordering my own Cimabue, had joined together and landed in several places, not as simple raiders, but as conquerors, declaring themselves the founders of an independent country. They had two powerful sorcerers, and the emperor himself had to take charge of the expedition sent there.
The message was full of apologies, reassuring us nothing had gone wrong. As soon as he destroyed these villains, he’d return to Nicias and sign the treaty, and couriers would carry the document south.
I conveyed the message to King Bairan and Ligaba Sala, letting them read the decoded raw text to make sure no one was suspicious, although there wasn’t any cause for wariness. Even a Time shouldn’t cause any problems.
• • •
Lord Boconnoc announced that the fourth day of the Time of Births would be an embassy holiday, and anyone wishing to sample Numantian cooking was welcome. It was merely a pretext to be mildly homesick, and attempt to construct some Numantian dishes from Maisirian materials and long-hoarded delicacies.
There were no more than ten or fifteen Maisirian guests at the embassy that night. Everyone was gathered in the main ballroom, having a glass of good Varan wine before dinner. I, of course, was drinking water. Alegria found the wine a bit tart for her tastes — Maisirian wine was far sweeter than any Numantian vintage, but asked if she could have another glass.
I grinned, and was about to get it for her when the ballroom doors smashed, and a dozen armored soldiers stormed through. Behind them twenty archers trotted in and formed lines along the walls, arrows nocked, bows half-raised. There was utter, complete silence, then a woman sobbed once.
King Bairan stalked into the room. He wore black armor and held a naked sword.
“What … what is …” Ambassador Boconnoc stammered.
“Seven days ago, the army of Numantia crossed the Maisirian border, without any declaration of war,” he boomed. “We received word of this treachery today, and a message the Maisirian town of Zante has fallen and been sacked by your barbarians.
“This is a deed of the greatest infamy. You Numantians betrayed us, with your soft words of treaties, especially you, Damastes á Cimabue, falsely swearing you and your dog of an emperor ever intended peace.
“This was the act of bandits, not warriors, not diplomats, not civilized men. I therefore declare all Numantians beyond the law. As outlaws, you shall be judged, just as your foul emperor shall be judged after his army is destroyed.
“But none of you shall live to see that day. Take them away.”