Mircea stared at her. Her voice hadn’t changed. It was light, with a tinge of the former amusement still threading through the words.
It was also a lie.
There was no lack of passion here, despite what he had been told. No more than there had been earlier, when she spoke of her Change. It was a fact he found frankly terrifying.
“They told me—” he began.
“They again. You must introduce me to these oracles.”
Mircea refused to be deterred. When would he have this chance again? And he had to know.
“I was told that the pain goes away in time. Not in so many words but . . . that those of us who live long enough, that we forget—”
“Perhaps I will not seek out these prophets, after all.”
“—that I will feel less,” he persisted doggedly. “That it will become easier—”
She laughed again, just as a finely dressed couple was passing by. The man looked startled, the woman actually jumped. They both hurried away.
Mircea ignored them. “Is it true?”
His client looked at him, not unkindly. But the answer was stark. “No.”
He got up abruptly and went back to the railing.
Chapter Fourteen
The battle was still raging, although the blue barge had all but sunk from view. A few pairs were fighting on its overturned hull, but with apprehensive glances at the rising waves. Mircea felt a little like that as well, as if his ship had capsized and he couldn’t swim.
“Then why did you need me?” he demanded. “Unless you cannot feel?”
“That night was a gift to my ladies, who find few amusements here.”
“Then why did they need me?”
For a long moment, there was no answer. Not that he’d entirely expected one. She had been indulging him, he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps for the novelty of it; he had the impression that there were few who were daring enough, or foolish enough, to talk back to her. But there was sure to be a limit and he had likely reached it.
And then she surprised him again.
“It is not lack of feeling,” he was told slowly, as if she was searching for the words. “You feel as much as you ever did, possibly more. But where your emotion centers, what it focuses on, often changes.”
“To what?” he asked softly.
“To whatever was most important to you in life. Other things fade, not into insignificance, but they fade. Like colors after dark. But that one thing blooms . . . like the moon against the night sky.”
To his surprise, she joined him at the railing. He doubted it was for his own benefit; if she wished him to turn around, she had only to command it. Perhaps she wanted to see the battle’s finale, too.
“My master, for instance,” she told him. “Began life as a potter’s apprentice in a small village long reclaimed by the sands. Outside Abydos, if that means anything to you, before there was an Abydos. Before . . . there was much of anything.”
Her eyes came to rest on the consul, still sitting on his throne-like chair amid a throng of hangers-on. But despite that, it took Mircea a moment to realize what she meant. “The consul . . . is your master?”
“As he is known now,” she agreed. “He was called by another name then, meaning little. And that is how he was thought of—small, insignificant, valueless. He was born into a large family, the runt of the litter, you might say. But his father dutifully found him work with a potter when he was old enough. Where he broke as many items as he made, and constantly angered his master. Eventually, famine came to the area, and no one wished to feed a useless boy. He was driven out, to fend for himself or starve.
“He did neither, as it happened. For he met something else that wished to feed.”
“Some . . . thing?”
“I do not know to this day who bit him—or what. He always said it was a god, but who can say? He never heard a name. All he could tell me was what he remembered, blurred by time, so much time. Stumbling into the wastes, just as a great sandstorm was building. It would likely have been the last of him, leaving only a pile of bones to bleach under the desert sun, like so many before and since . . . if he hadn’t met something under the stars.”
Mircea looked at the little creature on the throne. He still couldn’t see him very well, just a slightly misshapen head unburdened by hair or hat or turban, dark as a nut. And a small, bent body, wrapped in a robe so ornate that it completely concealed the form within.
He could not for the life of him manage to see him as a god. In truth, he was having difficulty seeing him as a consul. But based on how everyone was treating him, he supposed it must be true.
“And thus he Changed,” she continued. “And grew, even without a master to teach him. But something else grew, too. The old desire never fulfilled in life, now become an obsession in death. The simplest of human needs: to be loved.”
“We all want that.”
The wind picked up, ruffling the long dark hair she hadn’t bothered to bind as the Venetians did. She brushed it back, her bracelets flashing in the sun, almost blinding. “Yes, we all want that. But he wanted more. All the love. All the adoration. He wanted to be worshipped like the god he believes himself to be. He lusted after it, demanded it—”
“And still does?” Mircea guessed, remembering that strange night in the Rialto.
“And still does.”
Mircea was silent for a moment, trying to process all she’d told him. He wasn’t sure if any of it helped. All he wanted to know was that this pain, this longing, this terrible guilt he felt every time he thought about the past, was going to lessen, perhaps one day to stop. All he wanted was a reason to go on.
“I can’t give you that,” she told him, somehow knowing his thoughts. “No one can. You have to find that for yourself.”
“And what did you find?” Mircea asked, wondering how anyone could find things to live for, over such a span of time.
Her eyelids closed, the heavy malachite dust on them like brushstrokes over honey. “Many things.”
“But the first?” He was pressing and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop. Not like this. Not without an answer.
“The first . . . ,” she murmured. “Oh, yes. That . . . was a surprise.”
Mircea didn’t say anything. He was afraid to move, to so much as breathe. She hadn’t planned to discuss this, he would swear to it. And yet she was, for the moment at least. If nothing interfered . . .
A young couple approached, looking as if they might actually breech the sanctum, to have a word. But Mircea gave them such a glare that they hurried away again. His client laughed and opened her eyes.
“I will tell you, if you like,” she said. “But you may not find it particularly helpful.”
“I will. You said it was a surprise?”
She resumed her seat, leaning back on her elbows, looking up at him. “Yes, but not in the way you are probably thinking.”
A trumpet sounded, signifying a winner to the tournament. The other guests began to file down a nearby staircase, Mircea supposed for some sort of ceremony. He didn’t move.
Neither did his client, except to lay back against the cushions, and stretch her arms over her head. It was a deliberately sensual act, the slide of gold against honey dark skin, the deep emerald sheen over sooty lashes, the sensuous feline arch of her spine, stretching thin silk tight over full breasts.
He still didn’t move.
A smile teased her lips.
“It was a surprise in that it wasn’t about me,” she told him. “For a decade, I had been consumed by my lost ambitions, my old dreams, my pain. To the point that I couldn’t see anything else. Not even the people right in front of my face, who needed my help.