She raised her head, straining up on her toes to kiss him. There was longing in the kiss, and desire; he responded instinctively, giving her the reassurance she wanted. The reassurance went both ways, he knew; he was over twice her age and it was gratifying to know he was himself still desirable.
Luco’s green eyes slid deliberately to the settee by the table.
Perhaps he allowed her too much, he thought; he was scheduled to sleep with Argo that night, and she would be right to resent...
He wondered if there was time. Luco’s face was flushed; her hands slid over his doublet as she took pleasure in the power she had to arouse him. Necias decided there was time.
His burly arms swept her from the floor; she laughed, her arms going around his neck. There was a childish pleasure in her laugh, and a childish kind of triumph. He bore her to the settee, burying his face between her neck and shoulder, inhaling the perfume of her pale hair. She was perfectly shameless, his latest wife, afraid of nothing, laughing in defiance of convention. He adored her fearlessness, recognizing something of his own younger self in it, but he recognized as well the danger of her, that he might all too easily let this become obsession, forgetting his other wives, his many responsibilities — yet the knowledge of the danger was itself arousing. Luco had given him much when she’d entered his life: a sense of youthfulness he had largely forgotten, the sense that every day held adventures, that every change was not an ominous portent of decay. Certain conventions could be sacrificed for this.
But not all. Brito, his first and senior wife, would still play hostess to Tegestu. It was not to be forgotten that he owed her as much, if not more.
*
The palace of Acragas Necias sprawled over most of a city block in one of the newer quarters of the city, with a water gate that permitted access by the Acragas merchant fleet to the warehouses that fronted the canal. The bulk of the palace was constructed of the grey stone brought from inland and then fronted with brick. The brick was chiefly a dull red, but was patterned with sun-yellow and pale blue in geometric designs: Arrandal was famous for its brickmakers and the best was displayed in the Acragas palace, the patterns complimenting the architecture, accenting and commending the design, pleasing but not dominating the eye. Chimneys, twisted and ornamented, curled skyward; stone beasts, both natural and mythological, peered from the gables and gutters and the panes of glass cast inward light that was stained with the colors of the rainbow. Nine hundred people lived within its sprawling confines: the Acragas family, their servants, employees, and guests; fifteen hundred worked daily within its walls.
Tegestu and his small escort were led from the water gate through courtyards of increasing size, each guarded by a brick-fronted tower, each decorated with carvings of stone and embellished with ornate clocks. The palace as it stood was not defensible against a skilled force — Brodaini could take it in an afternoon — but it was proof against the usual threat, a city mob, and a few weeks’ work could transform it into a respectable fortress. The outer layers were guarded by flenssin, mercenaries in gaily-colored, arrogant costumes that contrasted vastly with the tall, brawny Brodaini in their simple, purposeful military dress. The inner courts were guarded by junior members of the Acragas family who had the duty in rotation; their armor fit badly and their stance as they carried their pikes and great two-handed swords was awkward.
Word of Tegestu’s prompt arrival had been passed ahead, and Necias was there to welcome him in the vast audience hall, his clothes adjusted and the crumbs of tea-cakes brushed from his doublet-front. Necias glanced up at the balcony of the partillo, seeing five of his six surviving wives leaning over the rail, including Luco in her green gown. He seemed to sense a flash of indignation in Luco’s eyes at being dismissed to the company of her sister-wives, and he smiled a satisfied smile at the remembrance of pleasure. Then the trumpet calls began, sweet, ornamented, echoing from the high groined ceiling, and the Brodaini delegation strode in.
Necias had cleared most of the usual loiterers and petitioners from the hall as a compliment to Tegestu; there were a few high-ranking members of beggru Acragas, the trumpeters in their gallery, a handful of messengers, and the guards spotted at the entrances — these, and the wives at the partillo rail, were all. The enormous room, usually thronged with people, was almost empty — all this in courtesy to Tegestu, a symbol of the Brodainu’s importance in that Necias had cleared away his other business.
Despite the years of cooperation between them and a frequent exchange of messages, requests, and commands, Necias saw Tegestu only rarely in person, and then chiefly on ceremonial occasions. Their tasks had been carefully delineated: Necias concerned himself with broader policy, and Tegestu with military security. The Brodainu rarely had reason to leave his keep, and Necias had less reason to enter the Brodaini quarter — perhaps because of this, perhaps because of the special tension between them, Necias felt an increasing apprehension as Tegestu approached. He felt, with a certain awful clarity, the fact of the Brodainu’s alienness, his utter lack of civilization, his fanatic contempt of life. Tegestu was old, over seventy, thin and seemingly frail; yet he walked with rigid, disciplined martial vigor; his belt weapons rode easily at his side, where he could snatch them at need. The lack of ornament in his dress and armor spoke of an overwhelming concern for the functional, with which the elaborately curled, dressed ringlets of his white hair contrasted weirdly — to Necias an almost psychotic contradiction. The alert, arrogant, expressionless countenance the Brodaini assumed in public — the mouth tightened to a grim line, eyes intent and restless, head held high — seemed, for a frightening instant, the face of a dangerous madman, a murderous fanatic and a conscienceless killer.
No. Necias thought, rejecting the fear. Tegestu is no less human for all his strangeness. I can comprehend him if I try.
And then the Brodaini were across the long hallway, the trumpets were crying their final triplets, and the five warriors came down to one knee and bowed their ringleted heads.
“Rise, friend Tegestu. Rise all, loyal friends,” Necias said. He had always been embarrassed by the Brodaini insistence of rendering him homage, as if he were some half-civilized baron from the outback receiving a delegation of his shepherds, but he knew they thought it necessary and he’d long ago resigned himself to the sneers of his political enemies — “old Necias preening himself among his worshiping flenssin.” His usual style was to receive his visitors in one of the smaller anterooms, rise from amid his staff of secretaries and mounds of papers to give the visitor a roaring embrace, and then carry on his business while coping with a good many interruptions — but the Brodaini expected something more formal, if not majestic.
Do the Brodaini greet visitors with trumpets? Necias suddenly wondered. Or do they use them only in war? Do they call their vassals “friend?” Have I been offending them all these years without knowing it, skating on the edge of their tolerance?
The thoughts brought a hesitation to his usual decisive, noisy manner. “Come, Tegestu,” he said. “You and I must speak, hey. Your men, ah...” He slowed as he observed that one of the Brodaini was female. “Your soldiers will be entertained here. Ahastinas,” he turned to his steward, “call the musicians for our guests.”
“Thank you, cenors-stannan,” Tegestu said, and bowed. Necias gestured to his secretary and interpreter, the poet Caltias Campas, a tall dark man with a cynical smile and a way with the ladies, and led Tegestu into an anteroom, hearing behind him the rattle of armor that marked another obeisance. He had probably just been rude again.
He opened the four-inch-thick door and led his party inside. Brito, standing by the teapot, curtsied as her husband and Tegestu entered. Necias nodded abstractedly in reply, and then to everyone else’s surprise Tegestu dropped to one knee in a bow fully as elaborate as that he’d given Necias.