When it finally came, it took him by surprise. He drifted into a dream without realizing he was dreaming. He didn’t remember much about it: only that it was one of those busy, complicated dreams that make waking life seem simple by comparison.
As he didn’t realize when the dream began, he also didn’t realize when it ended. He thought the weight pressing down on the bed next to him was something happening in his mind, not anything real.
Even when his hand touched warm, bare flesh, he turned that into part of the dream – a part that mingled sweet and bitter almost unbearably. But the soft, throaty laugh he heard then couldn’t possibly have sprung from inside his own mind.
His eyes flew open. “Who the – ?” he burst out. Liv, come to apologize the best way she knew how? Gudrid, come to torment him the best way she knew how? A serving girl, come to make sure he slept sound after all? No matter how kindly Eyvind Torfinn might mean that, Hamnet didn’t want a stranger. To say he didn’t want Gudrid proved what a weak reed words were. Liv… would hurt him more than she helped, though she might not understand that.
“Never mind who.” The answer came in the Bizogot tongue, so it wasn’t Gudrid or a servant. But it didn’t sound like Liv, either. Who, then?
Knowledge smote. “Marcovefa?” Hamnet said. “Why – ?”
“Because I want to. Do I need more reason?” A man would have said it like that. But Hamnet’s fingers told him she was no man. She slipped under the furs beside him. Her fingers began to roam, too.
“How did you get in?” Muzzy with sleep, he knew he was a couple of steps slower than he should have been. All the same, he was sure he’d barred the door when he came in. He hadn’t wanted company. He had it, though.
Marcovefa laughed again. “I am a shaman, remember? If I want to be someplace, I go there. If I want something to be mine, I take it.”
“But -” Hamnet spluttered.
“Hush.” Her mouth came down on his. That shut him up in the most effective way imaginable. He raised his arms to push her away, but they went around her instead. She twisted a little so that his hands found her breasts. She made a noise somewhere between a purr and a growl when he squeezed them.
The bed was wide. He rolled her over so that his weight pinned her to the mattress. His mouth trailed down from hers to her nipples. She sighed and pressed his head down on her. His hand found the joining of her legs. Her breath caught. As he stroked her, she opened them wider. She was wet and wanton, waiting for him.
“Here,” she whispered. “I do for you.” She twisted in the red gloom. Her mouth came down on him.
“Easy,” he said as her tongue fluttered and teased. “Oh, easy. Or I’ll -”
“So what?” She dove deep on him, so deep that she choked a little. That made her pull back a little, but she was laughing when she did.
More than a little of that and he would explode. He knew it, and Marcovefa had to know it, too. He didn’t think she’d come here just for that, so he touched her cheek. She paused and made a questioning, wordless noise. “Let’s do this,” he said, pressing his weight onto her again. He slid in with just the slightest of guidance. They began to move together, as if they’d been lovers for years.
Again, he thought he would finish too soon to satisfy her. When his mouth slid down to her breast again, though, she murmured something in her own dialect. There he was, nearly at the peak of pleasure, and there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed, till delight turned almost painful. Marcovefa gasped and quivered beneath him, again and again.
“Now?” she asked at last.
“Now!” Hamnet said. They were both sticky and slippery with sweat, sliding together. He reached the pinnacle, and seemed to fall from it forever. Marcovefa shivered one more time.
“Good?” she inquired brightly.
“My God,” he answered, and then, “Wait till I can see anything but fire in front of my eyes.” She must have liked that, for she laughed again. The motion made him slide out of her.
“Maybe you sleep now,” she said. Count Hamnet was inclined to think he’d sleep for the next month. This wasn’t love – he’d known love twice now, and known it to turn on him and bite – but he’d never dreamt of so much animal pleasure. And then, mischief in her voice, she went on, “Or maybe …” That wasn’t a complete sentence by itself, but what she did a moment later made it one.
After his sweaty exertions of a moment before, he hadn’t thought he could rise again so soon. He hadn’t thought he could rise again at all, not for days. But he surprised himself. Maybe – more likely – Marcovefa made him surprise himself. This time she rode him, less ferociously than he’d taken her. He didn’t think she used any magic past that which any man and woman who please each other have. If he was wrong, he didn’t much want to find out.
“There,” she said when they’d both spent themselves again. “Is that better?”
“Better than what?” Hamnet asked, which set her laughing all over again. It was better than almost anything he could think of.
Almost. If Gudrid truly loved me, and if she were truly faithful… The thought flickered through his mind like heat lightning on a summer night far to the south of Nidaros. Then sleep did smite him, and the darkness in the bedchamber was as nothing next to the black welling up from deep inside.
When he woke the next morning, he thought at first he’d dreamt it all. That couldn’t really have happened . . could it? But he needed only a heartbeat’s more consciousness to realize he wasn’t alone in the bed. The thin, gray light leaking in through tight-drawn shutters showed Marcovefa asleep beside him, a small smile on her face. Her features relaxed in slumber, she looked improbably young.
His eyes went towards the door. Yes, it was barred. She might have done that right after she came in. She might have got out of bed after he fell asleep. She might have, yes. But he wondered whether it had ever been unbarred at all.
Marcovefa woke up a few minutes later. She looked confused for a couple of heartbeats, as if wondering where she was, and with whom. Then she grinned at Count Hamnet. “Good morning,” she said.
“The night was better.” He leaned over to kiss her. He half – more than half – hoped they would pick up where they’d left off, though he was anything but sure he could rise to the occasion.
But Marcovefa said, “We take care of one thing at a time. Now you are all right for a while, yes? So now we go and see what we can do to these Rulers.” The invaders still didn’t seem to trouble her, even if they had everyone else below the Glacier from Trasamund to Sigvat in something close to a panic.
Hamnet wondered if he ought to resent being lumped with a water wheel that had got out of kilter. Pride and the memory of pleasure warred within him, but not for long. He couldn’t stay offended, not when he remembered how she’d put him back in good working order.
Marcovefa slid out of bed, found the chamber pot, and squatted over it. Like the Bizogots, her folk needed less in the way of privacy than Raumsdalians did. She straightened up, still naked. Hamnet watched her in unfeigned admiration.
He looked around the room. He didn’t see her clothes anywhere. Had she walked through the corridors of Eyvind Torfinn’s house like that? Or – ?
She fluttered her fingertips in a wicked parody of a gesture someone like Gudrid might have used. “See you at breakfast, sweetheart,” she said – and vanished. Hamnet didn’t think she’d made herself invisible. She’d really disappeared; a soft pop.’ of inrushing air said as much.
Could Liv or Audun Gilli apport themselves like that? Count Hamnet shrugged. He didn’t know. He only knew he’d never seen them do it.
He used the pot himself, then dressed in the clothes Sigvat’s servants had given him. They would do for winter wear, though they weren’t ideal. He would have stewed in his own juices wearing them in a summer heat wave here. A slow smile – not an expression he was used to wearing – stole across his face. His juices had done considerable stirring in the night.