It was chilly and awkward and they had no comfortable place in the room-and none of that mattered. Their two robes and their drawers on the mosaic floor did well enough. Maniakes expected to find her a maiden, and he did. Past that, everything was a surprise.
He had thought to be slow and gentle, as he had been with Niphone their first night together, bare hours after Agathios set the imperial crown on his head. Lysia did grimace and stiffen for a moment when he entered her to the hilt, but she startled him by taking pleasure afterward. She had no practiced skill at what they did, but enthusiasm made up for a great deal.
She exclaimed in surprise and delight a moment before he could hold back no longer. Even as he spent, he thought of pulling free of her and spurting his seed onto her belly, as he had that once with Niphone. But he discovered that thinking of a thing and being able to do it were not one and the same: even as the idea skittered over the topmost part of his mind, his body drove ever deeper into hers and, for a little while, all thought went away.
It returned too quickly, as thought has a way of doing at such times. "Now what?" he murmured, his face scant inches from hers. He wasn't really talking to her, or to anyone.
She answered with a woman's practicality. "Now let me breathe, please."
"I'm sorry," Maniakes said, and got off her. She had a sunburst print between her breasts from the amulet Bagdasares had given him.
Sliding away from him, she started to dress. When she got a look at her drawers, she clucked to herself. "There won't be any hiding this from the serving women." Her mouth twisted in wry amusement. "Not that I'd bet anything above a worn copper that the servants don't already know."
Maniakes glanced toward the barred door that had given them privacy-or its illusion. "I wouldn't be surprised if you're right." He put on his clothes a little faster than he would have without her words. After running his fingers through his hair, he said "Now what?" again.
"Easiest, maybe, would be to pretend this never happened," Lysia answered. She paused, then shook her head. "No, not easiest. Most convenient, I should say."
"To the ice with convenience," Maniakes burst out. "Besides, you just said the servants will know, and you're right. And what the servants know today is gossip in the plaza of Palamas day after tomorrow."
"That's true." Lysia cocked her head to one side and studied him. "What then, my cousin your Majesty?"
"I know what I'd do if you weren't my cousin," Maniakes said. "If you weren't my cousin, I expect we'd have married years ago, out on Kalavria."
"You're probably right." Lysia hesitated, then went on, "I hope you won't be angry if I tell you there were times when I was very jealous of Rotrude."
"Angry?" Maniakes shook his head. "No, of course not. I-had feelings for you that way. I didn't think you had them, too, not till I was about to sail off to see if I could overthrow Genesios."
"And you were sailing to Niphone," Lysia added. "What was I supposed to do then? I did what I thought I had to do. But now? Whatever we do now, we're going to make a scandal."
"I know," Maniakes said. They also took the chance of having the scandal become all too dreadfully obvious in nine months' time-although actually, if that befell, it would become obvious rather sooner. With that worry in mind, he went on, "The best way I can think of to deal with this is for me to marry you now, in spite of everything… if that's what you want to do, of course."
"It's what I'd like," she said, nodding. "But will a priest marry us? If he does, will Agathios anathematize him? And what will our families say?"
"I'm sure I can find a priest who will do as I tell him," Maniakes answered.
"What Agathios will do… I don't know. He's a political beast, but this-We'll just have to find out." If Agathios thundered of sin, the city mob was liable to erupt. "We'll have to find out about our fathers, too, and our brothers." He had known this would complicate his life. Maybe he hadn't let himself think about how much.
And maybe the same thoughts were running through Lysia's mind. She said, "It really might be easiest to pretend this didn't-" She stopped and shook her head. Plainly, she didn't want to do that.
Neither did Maniakes. He said, "I've loved you as a cousin for as long as I can remember, and I've always thought a lot of your good sense. And now, with this-" Even after they had made love, he hesitated about openly saying so. "-I can't imagine wanting anyone else as my wife." He went over to her and took her in his arms. She clung to him, nodding against his chest.
"We'll just have to get through it, that's all," she said, her voice muffled.
"So we will," Maniakes said. "Maybe it won't be so hard."
After squeezing her once more, he went to the door and unbarred it. Then he opened it and looked up and down the corridor. He saw no one, heard no one. For a moment, he was relieved; we got away with it ran through his mind. Then he thought about how seldom the corridors of the imperial residence were so eerily quiet and deserted. Odds were that the servants were deliberately avoiding going anywhere near that door he had just unlocked.
He clicked his tongue between his teeth. A serving maid wouldn't have to see Lysia's drawers. The secret was already out.
The elder Maniakes took a long swallow of wine. He peered down into the depths of the silver cup, as if he were Bagdasares, using it as a scrying tool. "You aim to do what?" he rumbled.
"To marry my cousin," Maniakes answered. "We love each other, she has the best head on her shoulders of anyone in the family except maybe you, and… we love each other." His ears heated at the repetition, but it was done.
His father raised the cup again, draining it this time. He was careless when he set it down on the table, and it fell over, ringing sweetly as a goldpiece. He muttered to himself as he straightened it. To Maniakes' amazement, he started to laugh. "It does keep things in the family, doesn't it?"
"Is that all you have to say?" Maniakes demanded.
"No, not by a long shot," the elder Maniakes said. "Phos only knows what my brother will do-is Lysia telling him?" He waited for Maniakes to nod before continuing, "The patriarch will scream 'Incest!' at the top of his lungs, you know. Have you thought about that?"
Maniakes nodded again. "Oh, yes." Part of him was screaming the same thing. He was doing his best not to listen to it. The same probably held true for Lysia. That was one more complication he hadn't thoroughly thought through. And yet-"It didn't just… happen out of the blue, you know."
"Oh, yes, I do know that," his father answered. "One day back on Kalavria when Rotrude was pregnant with your boy-" He put one hand out in front of his own considerable belly. "-she told me she'd stick a knife in you if she ever caught you in bed with your cousin."
"Did she?" Maniakes said, amazed. He was, in fact, amazed for a couple of reasons. "I would have guessed she'd tell me that, not you."
"So would I," the elder Maniakes said. "I think being with child might have had something to do with her acting so weak and womanish." He rolled his eyes to show he did not intend that to be taken seriously. "But the point of it is, she'd noticed the two of you. I had, too, but I wasn't so sure. I'd known the both of you longer than she had, of course, and I knew you'd always been friendly. She was the one who saw it was something more than that."
"Rotrude always knew me pretty well," Maniakes said soberly. "Seems she knew me better than I knew myself there." He walked over to the pitcher of wine, which had on it a low relief of a fat old man drunkenly chasing a maiden who was neither fat nor old nor overburdened with clothing. After pouring his own cup full, he raised it to his lips and drank it down without drawing breath. Then he filled it again. "But, Father, what am I going to do?"