“Your flattery is like the wine,” Kassia shot back. “It needs to be watered down a little.”
“Forgive me, Kassia. When a man is so dazzled by the exterior, he sometimes forgets what treasures sparkle within.”
“And now you’re becoming shopworn, Karnos. I have heard better lines in street-plays.”
“It’s true I have not attended to the classics as much as I should. But it was Eurotas who said that a woman’s face holds no clue to her heart.”
“Ondimion once said that to quote from drama was to sully the air with someone else’s fart.”
“He did? And I thought him a dried up old pedant. Still, you have proved his point.”
“There is a concept called irony – let me explain it to you.”
“Enough!” Kassander cried. “I wish you two would just get married and have it over with.”
“All intelligent conversation ends with marriage, Kassander – you know that,” Karnos said, waving a slave over for more wine. “Once the woman has her feet in the door the talk is all of budgets and babies.”
Kassia looked the slave-girl pouring Karnos’s wine up and down. “It seems to me you have too many wives already, Karnos.”
“I have an enormous heart, lady,” Karnos told her gravely. “It craves affection, but wilts like a flower when confronted by the brutalities of everyday domesticity. I have constructed my household to shield me from such indelicacies.”
The eyes of every man in the room followed the willowy girl with the wine-jug as she padded back into the shadows. Kassia sighed.
“You are a massive boy, Karnos. The woman who married you would be yoked to a lifelong project.”
“And that,” Karnos said triumphantly, “is the very definition of marriage. I thank you, lady, for putting it so pithily.”
Kassander lay back on his couch. “If the building were on fire, you two would stand inside arguing over who had started it.”
“Argument between a man and a woman is lovemaking without the orgasm,” Tyrias said with a raised eyebrow.
“Ah there we are – someone else farts,” Karnos said. “Can’t educated people converse without digging up the bones of dead men?”
“You’re a trivial bunch,” bull-necked Murchos grunted. “The world is on fire around us, Machran besieged, our fates cast to the whims of the gods, and you sit here sipping wine and indulging in sophistry. I’m glad the men on the walls don’t have an ear in this room.”
“Given half a chance they’d be doing the same, though with a little more raw gusto,” Karnos said dismissively. “Tomorrow we’ll stand on the walls and look Phobos in the eye. For tonight” – he poured a scarlet stream of wine onto the exquisite mosaic of the floor – “here’s a libation to gentle Haukos of the pink face, god of hope and men who drink too much. His palerfaced brother can kiss my hairy arse – saving your presence, lady.”
“Your piety is charming,” Kassia said. She stood up. “Gentlemen, I shall take a turn about the courtyard to clear my head.” She lifted her veil from her shoulders and wound it about her hair.
“Ah – the sun goes in!” Tyrias cried. “Sweet Araian, how canst thou veil thy bright face from me?”
“Put your cup to your mouth, Tyrias,” Karnos said, and rose in his turn. “Lady, will you lean on my arm?”
“Is it steady enough to bear me?” Kassia asked.
“I am a rock,” Karnos told her, swaying slightly. “Kassander, I will walk your sister in the shadows by my fountain. I assure you I am of innocent intent.”
Kassander waved a hand. “Take her, take her.”
The cold air struck Karnos like a splash of water as the pair left the firelit room for the blue shadow of the outer courtyard. The fountain splashed white moonlight in its pool and, looking up, Karnos found himself staring full into the pale face of Phobos, leering over the city like a rounded skull. Kassia shivered and drew closer to him. He could feet the warmth of her skin through the thin silken peplos.
“Phobos is full,” she said. “This is his season.”
Karnos put his arm about her and nuzzled the silk-covered fragrant hair at her temple. “Kassia, we are alive and well and there are ten thousand valiant men standing between you and the barbarians beyond the gates.” He bent his head and kissed her through the veil.
For a second her mouth responded to his, coming to life, and then she withdrew, patting his arm.
“I had always heard that men take liberties in wartime,” she said. And then, “It seems like bad luck, with Phobos looking on.”
“Marry me, Kassia,” Karnos murmured, his hands running up and down her arms, sliding the silk across her skin. He could feel the raised stipple of goosebumps on her flesh.
“That old saw? You have laid siege to my virtue for years, Karnos – what makes you think my walls will yield to you now?”
“You love me, as I have loved you all this time. What better moment to finally admit it than now, when the world is liable to come crashing down around us?”
She looked up at him, that strong jawline he loved, the courage in that broadboned face, the moonlight making the veil covering it as translucent as mist.
“And is the world to come crashing down, Karnos?”
He hesitated a moment, his face sombre, his eyes fixed on hers. Then the old buffoon’s grin flashed out. “You think this city can fall while your brother and I defend it? We are the Phobos and Haukos of Machran.”
She set a hand across his mouth. “Don’t talk like that.”
“The gods can laugh too, Kassia,” he said, kissing her cold fingers. “And Antimone loves those who chance everything for the love of another, whether it be a soldier shielding his brother on the battlefield, or a man risking all for the regard of a good woman.”
She lifted her hand and set it on his shoulder, atop the padding which still covered his wound.
“I would have died, had you not come back to me, Karnos. You will not make me love you more by bleeding in some battleline.”
“I know. And that’s why it is you for me, Kassia -you alone. It always has been.”
She walked away from him, a slim upright shadow greyed by the moonlight.
“You play the fool to win the heart of the mob, but I hate to see you do it. And you surround yourself with slaves so you will not be alone – the only people in this world you trust are old Polio and my brother.”
“And you.”
“If you trusted me you would do as I asked.”
He shook his head helplessly. “This is who I am. The way I live -”
“Is a scandal which makes your name a topic in all the wineshops of the city. You find that useful – I detest it.”
Karnos’s shoulders sagged. “I cannot discard my people. They depend on me.”
“They are your slaves, Karnos.”
“You have never been poor, Kassia. You don’t know.”
She whirled on him. “You damned idiot. You’re too frightened to let go of your past for fear of ridicule. How the mob would marvel if Karnos of Machran became respectable!” “It’s all appearances, nothing more.”
“It is not – it goes right to the heart of you. You will always be the child of the Mithannon. You are Speaker of Machran, Karnos, leader of the greatest city west of the sea. You have nothing to prove.”
“Except to you.”
“Except to me,” she said quietly. She stepped close to him again. “My dear, you are a better man than anyone knows.”
“I am a coward and a buffoon.”
“It is not cowardice to feel fear. You do not need to wield a spear to show me your courage. I know your quality, Karnos – I only wish more people did.”
She stood up on her toes and kissed him. “Now go back to my brother. I will ask Polio to escort me home.”
Karnos returned to the warmth of the inner hall, where the men on the couches reclined with their cups to hand, and the slaves stood about the walls like attentive statuary. He held out his own cup without a word, and Grania came forward to fill it. She smiled at him, but his face felt like wood.
“Karnos,” Kassander said, “Tell these fellows about the time you and I won that drinking contest in the Mithannon. They won’t believe me – they have to hear it from your own mouth.”