And taking away Rod's mirth, too.
Was Onthras dead? Or snatched away somewhere else? Or had he been some sort of illusion all along?
Rod doubted it. Yet there was no way, by the Falcon, that he was going anywhere near that bed now.
It was back to his uncomfortable heaps of clothes, and trying hard to sleep, to dream of destroying this tower behind Malraun's back.
Or so he hoped. Rod collapsed back onto the heaped garments with a sour sigh. Could anything be managed behind Malraun's back?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
"Irrance," Lady Tesmer's voice came coldly out of the darkness, "come back to bed. All of this lordly striding about in the darkness disturbs my slumber. And just what do you think you'll need that sword for?"
"I–I was thinking of war, and… and ruling Ironthorn," her husband mumbled. He waved the slender naked longsword with both hands as he spoke, but he was brandishing it a little less flamboyantly than he'd been flourishing it a moment or two ago. For an instant, as it sliced empty air, it caught moonlight through the tinted window-panes, and its edge blazed up a cold bright blue. "It… it found its way into my hand, somehow. Felt good there."
"Time was when other things would find their ways into your hands at this time of night, and more than one of us would feel good, thereby," Telclara Tesmer said bitingly. "But the years have wrought changes, haven't they?"
"Clara," her lord replied quietly, his voice a little sullen. "I wish you wouldn't do this. I really do."
"I wish I didn't have to do it, but if I don't, you start to swagger like a game-cock and strut around spewing nonsense. Dangerous nonsense."
When he made no reply, she added sadly, "One of the maids heard you talking to our warriors this evening. Calling yourself 'Lord of Ironthorn' again."
"Well, and so I shall be!" Lord Irrance Tesmer said sharply. "Soon, too, from what the Master gave me to understand! At long last, to rule this-"
"Irrance, the Master gave you nothing of the kind. I heard his every word, remember? Now put down that sword before you hurt yourself or break something, and get over here!"
"I-" Lord Tesmer was not a foolish man, no matter how often his wife proclaimed him so. Nor did his temper tend to ride down and trample his caution. With foes and threats he knew well, his wisdom steered his gallop time and again into prudent ways. Telclara's voice was more familiar to him than anything else, and he knew that particular tone very well.
"Yes, dear," he replied meekly, carefully laying the sword down on the crudest and least expensive of the three seats in the room-the one she wanted replaced, the moment she found just the right chair to serve in its place-and wending his way through the concentric arcs of hanging tapestries to their great new fortress of a bed.
The bed, grandest in all Falconfar, for all he knew. It was what Telclara wanted-everything was what Telclara wanted-and towered up in the center of the room like a great Stormar temple idol. Lord Tesmer felt like a thief slinking into a castle every night. Telclara's castle.
A glow was kindling in it. When he ducked past the last tapestry, brushing aside its translucent fall of white silk, he saw his wife had awakened the light of her enchanted mirror and held it under her chin so he could see her smiling at him in welcome.
It was a kind smile, devoid of sneer or anger, but the warm affection she meant to convey was marred by the coldly steady radiance of the mirror lighting her face from below. It gave her an eerie appearance, as if some fell spirit had stolen inside his wife's body and taken it over, to use it to lure him into its clutches.
Irrance Tesmer forced a smile onto his own face and held out his hand, but was unable to keep the gesture from seeming tentative.
"Lady?" he asked gently, feeling once more the uncertain courting lad he'd been, so long ago.
Her smile widened and went tender. She beckoned him, deftly undoing the catch at the throat of her bodice so it fell open, baring her to her waist.
Lord Tesmer swallowed. By the Falcon, but she was still beautiful!
"Tel," he whispered, daring to use the pet name he'd called her by when they were both young, as he put his arms rather gingerly around her, "you look… look so…"
She was deftly drawing apart his night-wrap, thrusting the long robes back over his shoulders to bare him, too.
"Tell me," she murmured. "Not how you think I look, but what you want to do to me."
"Take you," he said hoarsely.
She drew her knees together against his chest, to hold him at bay. "There will be a price, Lord Tesmer," she said gravely, sounding gentle but firm-neither teasing nor scornfully dismissive.
Irrance frowned, not knowing how to take this. "My Lady?" he asked gently.
"Treat with me as an equal, Ranee," she replied, addressing him as she had when he was a young and splendid lion among men. "You hate the bite of my words, and how I rule you; you think I know this not? So in return you give me sullen silence, and play the war-commander behind my back, and tell me little of how you order our soldiers and what they do. Little enough, and less truth."
Lord Tesmer was still and silent against her knees for a long time before he brought the edge of one hand down between them to ease them gently apart, and murmured, "It will seem odd to discuss tactics, as I would with my warcaptains in the stables, as we…"
"Couple," she murmured helpfully, and added in a whisper, "Let's try it."
He smiled, shaking his head in rueful wonder, then commanded sternly, "Begin."
"You have been readying our soldiers for war," she replied without hesitation, parting her legs and reaching for him between them, the mirror in her lap now.
He surged forward, lowering himself onto its glow, and replied, "I have. Mindful of what you said earlier, of mayhap fleeing Ironthorn rather than conquering it."
"Meaning, I hope, you're taking every care not to get caught up in fighting?"
He hesitated, then lowered his mouth to her breasts rather than replying. She smiled thinly as he licked, nipped, and sucked, then closed her fingers around his most tender of areas, tightened them into a claw that made him stiffen and gasp, and said pleasantly, "My Lord Tesmer, I do believe I have somehow failed to hear your answer."
"Falcon, Clara, don't-" That gasped protest ended in a little cry as her fingernails almost met through his flesh.
"You no longer want to try it?" she asked him sadly, putting all the reproach she could into her gaze.
Their noses were perhaps the length of her hand apart; she saw him wince as much as she felt it.
"I… I do neglect to tell you things," he admitted. "Out of habit, it now seems."
"It does indeed," she agreed softly, letting go of what she'd clawed and stroking it in gentle apology. "Please, Ranee."
He drew in a deep breath, nodded in very much the same manner as her favorite gelding customarily tossed its head, and said in a rush, "Well, we can't dwell in Ironthorn and not daily draw blade or bend bow when those of Lyrose and Hammerhand menace us, surely?"
"Of course not. Yet you seem strangely reluctant to tell me just what frays our warriors have tasted these last few days. I'm neither blind nor an idiot; I would know if we were besieged, or many of our soldiers were rushing off elsewhere in the vale-and we are not and they are not. Which means whatever fighting they've been doing can't be more than a skirmish or two, at most… wherefore I find myself puzzled indeed at your reluctance to discuss it. Irrance, what's going on?"
He made as if to pull back from her and sit up, but she moved with him to keep them joined, clasping her arms and legs about him with sudden strength. They stayed pressed together on the bed, the radiance of the mirror leaking out from between them.