“Promise me,” she said quietly, “that you’ll be careful. Understanding with Aldrick or no, be careful of turning your back on him. All right?”
Bernard grimaced, but gave her a reluctant nod and bent to place a light kiss on her mouth. He looked like he was about to say something else, but Amara’s little scarlet shift caught his eye and he raised his eyebrows at her. “What’s that?”
“My costume,” Amara said.
Bernard’s grin was not-quite-a leer. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Amara gave him a very level look as she felt her cheeks warming, and she turned and walked firmly into the bathing room, shutting the door behind her.
Rook was already sitting in one of the small tubs, bathing briskly. She folded a modest arm across her breasts until the door was closed. Then she went back to bathing, while watching Amara obliquely.
“What are you looking at?” Amara asked quietly. The words came out far more belligerently than she had intended.
“A master assassin of the High Lord currently on the throne,” Rook replied, her tone laced with only the barest trace of irony. “I’d prefer I wasn’t alone in the bath with her.”
Amara lifted her chin and gave Rook a cool look. “I am no assassin.”
“Perspective, Countess. Can you say you have never killed in service to your lord?”
“Never with an arrow fired from ambush,” Amara said.
Rook smiled, very slightly. “That’s very noble.” Then she frowned and tilted her head to one side. “But… no. Your training was unlike mine. Or you’d not blush quite so easily.”
Amara frowned at Rook, and took a deep breath. There was no profit in bickering with the former bloodcrow. It would accomplish nothing but to waste time. Instead of replying sharply, thoughtlessly, she began to undress and to bathe herself briskly. “My education as a Cursor did not include… that sort of technique, no.”
“There are no bedchamber spies among the Cursors?” Rook asked, her tone skeptical.
“There are some, “ Amara said. “But every Cursor is evaluated and trained a bit differently. They intend us to play to our strengths. For some, it includes an education in seduction. My training was focused in other areas. “
“Interesting,” Rook said, her tone detached, professionally clinical.
Amara tried to match her tone. “I take it your own training included how to seduce men?”
“To seduce and pleasure, men and women alike.”
Amara dropped her soap into the bath in surprise.
Rook allowed herself the hint of a chuckle, but it died quickly as she frowned down at the bathwater. “Relax, Countess. None of it was by my choice. I… I don’t think I would care to revisit that sort of situation at all if there was any way I could possibly avoid it.”
Amara drew in a breath. “I see. Your daughter.”
“A by-product of my training,” Rook said quietly.
“Her father?”
“Could be one of ten or twelve men,” Rook said, her voice cool. “The training was… intensive.”
Amara shook her head. “I can’t even imagine.”
“No one should be able to imagine it,” Rook said. “Rut Kalarus strongly favored that sort of training for his female agents.”
“It gives him greater control over them,” Amara said.
“Without resorting to the use of collars,” Rook agreed, her voice bitter. She scrubbed at herself with a cloth, harshly, almost viciously. “Leaves their wits intact. Better able to serve him.”
Amara shook her head. She couldn’t even imagine. Her experience as a lover was hardly extensive, consisting of a single young man at the Academy who had dazzled her for three glorious months before dying in the fires that had first brought her to the attention of the First Lord-and Bernard. Who made her feel glorious and beautiful-and loved.
She couldn’t even conceive what it might be like for such an act to be undertaken coldly, without the fires of love and desire to heat it. To be simply… used.
“I’m sorry,” Amara said quietly.
“Nothing you did,” Rook replied. She closed her eyes for a moment, then her facial features began to change. The alteration was neither swift nor dramatic, but when she looked up again, Amara would never have recognized her as the same person. She got out of the tub, dried, and began to dress in her dark clothing. “We’re as safe here as anywhere in the city, Countess. The owner knows who I work for, and he’s proven himself adept at being blind and deaf when necessary, but the sooner we can leave the better.”
Amara nodded and finished bathing quickly, rising to dry off and take up her scarlet “clothing.”
“Easier to step into it than draw it down,” Rook provided. “I’d better help you with the sandals.”
She did so, and when Amara had slipped the armbands around her biceps she looked down at herself and felt more than mildly ridiculous.
“All right,” Rook said. “Let me see you walk.”
“Excuse me?” Amara said.
“Walk,” the spy said. “You’ve got to move correctly if I’m to pass you off as a new pleasure slave.”
“Ah,” Amara said. She paced to one side of the room and back.
Rook shook her head. “Again. Try to relax this time.”
Amara did, growing more self-conscious by the step.
“Countess,” Rook said, her tone frank, “you’ve got to move your hips. Your back. You’ve got to look like a slave so conditioned to her uses that she anticipates and enjoys them. You look like you’re walking to market.” Rook shook her head. “Watch me.”
And with that, the spy paused, her stance shifting subtly. Then she slunk forward, eyes half-closed, mouth curled into a tiny, lazy smile. Her hips swayed languidly with each step, her shoulders drawn back, and her back arched slightly, her whole manner daring-or inviting-any man looking on to keep looking.
Rook turned on a heel, and said to Amara, “Like that.”
The change in the woman was startling. One moment she’d looked like a courtesan in her private chambers with a young lord after half a bottle of aphrodin-laced wine. The next, she was a plainly attractive, businesslike young woman with serious eyes. “It’s all about what you expect. Expect to draw every man’s eye as you pass him, and you will.”
Amara shook her head. “Even in”-she gestured vaguely-“this, I’m not the kind of woman men like to look at.”
Rook rolled her eyes. “Men like to look at the kind who breathes and wears little. You’ll qualify.” She tilted her head to one side. “Pretend they’re Bernard.”
Amara blinked. “What?”
“Walk for them as you would for him, “ Rook said calmly. “On a night you have no intentions of allowing him to go anywhere else.”
Amara found herself blushing again. But she steeled herself, closed her eyes, and tried to imagine it. Without opening her eyes, she walked across the room, picturing Bernard’s chambers at the Calderon garrison.
“Better,” Rook approved. “Again.”
She practiced several more times before Rook was satisfied.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Amara asked her quietly. “Your way in?”
“It isn’t even a question,” Rook replied. “I’ll get you in there. I’ll find where your prisoners are. The difficult part will be leaving afterward. With Kalarus, it always is.”
Bernard knocked on the door, and said politely, “Are you almost ready, ladies?”
Amara traded a glance with Rook and nodded. Then she slipped the headdress onto her hair and fit the false steel collar around her neck. “Yes,” she said. “We’re ready.”
Chapter 43
One would think that sneaking into the citadel of a High Lord of Alera, the single most secure bastion of his power, would be a nigh-impossible task, Amara mused. And yet, when guided by that same High Lord’s master spy, the task was evidently quite simple.
After all, Fidelias had demonstrated the same principle only a few years before, when he led Lady Aquitaine into the First Lord’s citadel in Alera Imperia on a desperate mission to save the First Lord-so that she and her traitorous husband could be assured that they, not Kalarus, would be the ones to replace him.
Politics, Amara decided, really did make strange bedfellows. An idea that acquired an uncomfortable spin, given its proximity to the focus of thought demanded by her current role.