He had always felt the pangs when he thought about… her presence, he supposed. Her voice, her touch, her features all felt like something perfectly natural to his world, as much a part of it as sunshine and air. When he had been touching her, even only so much as holding hands, there had been a kind of peaceful resonance in the touch, something warm, reassuring, and deeply satisfying. It was the memories of their loss that had brought on the unpleasant sensation of loneliness. Even now, the memories should, by all rights, have brought on more of the same.
But they didn’t. Why?
He had just finished rinsing himself of the soap when it hit him, all at once.
Tavi snarled a muted curse, heaved himself out of the tub. He seized a towel, quickly swiped it over his body, and snatched up a plain robe folded on a nearby chair, shoving his still-damp arms into it. He stalked out of the bathing tent into the central yard.
The wine tent was in an uproar of one kind or another, and Tavi emerged in time to see Bors lumber up to its entrance and go inside. He spotted the blind woman beside one of the tents, still playing her reed pipe, and stalked toward her.
“What are you doing}” he hissed at the woman.
The blind woman set her pipe down and her mouth quirked into a smile. “Counting the days until you realized who I was,” she replied. “Though I was about to start counting the weeks. “
“Are you insane?” Tavi demanded in a harsh whisper. “If someone realizes that you are Marat-”
“-they will be considerably more observant than you, Aleran.” Kitai sniffed.
“You were supposed to be in Ceres at the family reunion.”
“As were you,” she said.
Tavi grimaced. Now that he knew who “Gerta” truly was, the disguised elements of Kitai’s appearance seemed painfully obvious. She had dyed her fine, silvery white hair to crude black and let it grow matted and tangled deliberately. The pockmarks on her face were doubtless some kind of cosmetics, and the blind woman’s bandage covered her exotic, canted eyes.
“I can’t believe the First Lord just let you ride away.”
She smiled, and it showed very white teeth. “No one has ever told me where I may or may not go. Not my father. Not him. Not you.”
“All the same. We need to get you out of here.”
“No,” Kitai said. “You need to learn to whom the Parcian merchant’s factor reports his information.”
Tavi blinked at her. “How did you…”
“If you recall,” she said, smiling, “I have very good ears, Aleran. And as I sit here, I learn much. Few guard their words near a madwoman.”
“You’ve just been sitting hereT
“At night, I can move more freely and learn more.”
“Why?” Tavi asked.
She arched her brows. “I do what I have done for years now, Aleran. I Watch you and your kind. I learn of them.”
Tavi let out a short, exasperated breath, but touched her shoulder. “It is good to see you.”
She reached up and squeezed his hand with hers, her fingers fever-warm, and she made a small, pleased sound. “I did not enjoy your absence, chala”
There was a shriek from the far side of the Pavilion, then a mussed, besotted legionare flew out of the wine tent. Bors came out after him a second later and applied sweeping kicks from his great booted feet to wherever he could reach upon the drunk, until the man had been driven from the Pavilion.
Kitai withdrew her hand from Tavi’s, and the spot felt peculiarly cool in the absence of her heated skin. “Now, Scipio Rufus. It will be strange for you to be seen conversing with a simpleton. Go away. You’ll scare off the game.”
“We must speak again,” Tavi said. “Soon.”
Kitai’s lips curled up into a sensual little smirk. “There are many things we must do, soon, Aleran. Why ruin them with talk?”
Tavi flushed, though the sunset was particularly red tonight, which might have hidden it. Kitai lifted her reed flute to her lips again, hunching down once more into her role. Bors returned from evicting the rowdy drunk and settled down into his spot by the fire. Tavi shook his head and returned to the bath tent to await the return of his laundered clothing.
He closed his eyes and sat listening to Kitai’s flute as he did, and found himself smiling.
Chapter 12
Vorello’s Pool was one of the most beautiful places Isana had ever visited. Centered around a crystalline pool in the base of a rocky grotto, the whole of the dining house had seemingly been built from the trees and vines planted within the grotto and growing as living partitions, bridges, and stairways. Tables were arranged upon rocky shelves around the pool at varying heights. Several tables were set upon flat stones rising from the pool itself, and employees of the hotel would ferry customers out to the tables with graceful boats propelled by furies within the pool’s waters.
Furylamps cast luminous color over each table, and the colors constantly, slowly shifted and changed from hue to hue. From a distance, it looked like a cloud of fireflies hovering over the surface of the water. More lights within the pool itself shone up, also changing colors over time, casting shadows up the walls of the grotto and half-shadowing each table.
Singers, mostly young women, stood upon a number of raised rocks or sat upon the low-hanging branches of one of the trees. They sang songs of beauty and sadness in quiet, hauntingly lovely voices. Instrumental music supported the voices, drifting through the restaurant with no evident source.
One of the staff showed Isana to a table, set upon a rocky outcropping over the pool, framed by the embrace of the long, strong roots of a tree above. She had hardly settled into her seat before Bernard and Amara arrived, with Giraldi trailing in their wake.
Isana rose to meet her little brother’s bearish, affectionate embrace, and knew at once that something had happened. Her entire sense of him was filled with a brimming excitement and mirth that she hadn’t felt in him since… Isana drew in a sharp breath. Since he’d been married. She stared at his face for a moment, his own happiness drawing a smile onto her face, then glanced aside at Amara.
The Countess looked as she always did-distant, golden, and difficult to read. She had the warm, honey brown skin characteristic of the folk of sunny Parcia in the south, and her straight, fine hair was almost the precise same shade, giving her, in stillness, the appearance of a statue, some work dedicated to a huntress figure, lean and intense and dangerous. Isana had come to know that it was only part of the Countess’s personality. Her beauty could best be seen in motion, as she walked or flew.
Isana glanced aside at Amara, and the Countess avoided her eyes. Amara’s cheeks flushed with color, and her usual reserved expression changed, becoming something young and girlish and delighted. She fidgeted in place, and she and Bernard’s hands found one another without either of them seeming to be aware of it before she became still again.
“Well,” Isana said to her brother. “Shall I order a bottle of something special?”
“Why would you ask that?” Bernard said, his tone smug.
“Because she’s not stupid,” growled Giraldi. The old centurion, grizzled and stalwart despite his limp, stepped around Bernard to bow politely to Isana. She laughed and gave him a fond embrace. Giraldi smiled, evidently pleased, and said, “But don’t buy any special drink on my account. Just something that will make me think the food tastes good if I drink enough of it.”
“Then you’ll need almost nothing,” Amara said. “The food here is wonderful-though the gourmands from my own home city disdain it. They hate it when any cook makes them eat too much by daring to exceed their expectations, I think.”
Giraldi grunted and looked around. “I don’t know. Awful lot of upper crust in this place.” He nodded at a table above their own. “High Lady Parcia, there, having dinner with High Lady Attica’s daughter. Couple of Senators, over there. And that’s Lord Mandus, from Rhodes. He’s the Fleet Tribune in their navy. They aren’t the sort of folk that eat decent food.”