“Why don’t you go and find someone human?” he said desperately. “Butcher, or Nuzio. Or one of the bodyguards. You can’t want to have carnal relations with a beast!”
“Oh, don’t I?” She hauled off his right boot. Each foot ended in two small hooves instead of toes, but of course she would have known that before he even entered the cottage. “Butcher’s too quick, too eager to hump you and dump you. Nuzio keeps wanting to try odd things.” She leaned over Cavotti’s knees to unpin his chlamys. “I would try a bodyguard or two if you weren’t here, but you are and I am, and I am going to lay you. Lie back and enjoy it.”
He tried to push her away. She had stretch marks from childbearing. The fullness of her breasts showed that they had suckled. He knew nothing of her history or private life at all.
“Stop torturing me!” he said. “Stop torturing yourself. You know what would happen if I got you with child. You’d produce a monster. It would grow and grow until it burst you. You would die, Giunietta.”
She smiled sadly. “Poor Marno. Yes, that’s true. You can never have an heir now. But you forget I am a seer.”
Despite himself, he could not keep his enormous hands off her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that there are only certain times in a thirty that a woman can make a child. If I lie with every man in Nelina tonight I cannot conceive. Tonight is safe for me and I want you desperately.”
“Then do it,” he muttered. He clasped her to him and rolled back until he lay flat on the boards with her on top of him, like a child. She was not the most beautiful woman he had ever embraced, but she was a woman and willing; and probably the only woman who would accept him ever again.
CHIES CELEBRE
was left cooling his heels in the corridor. He was very angry about that. Furious, in fact. He would see that the guards regretted this insult, if not right away then as soon as he became doge. Whether the council of relics elected him on their own or the Fist ordered them to wouldn’t matter; it would happen. He was also very drunk, not sure which would come first, falling asleep or chucking up. The captain came out and said her ladyship would see him now. Chies snarled at him and marched into the ducal withdrawing room, staggering slightly as he rounded the door.
He had not been in there for years. It was a mausoleum of old junk. It seemed a lot smaller than he remembered, but all the paintings and figurines and pottery looked exactly as they had done then. Most of it should be melted down. The lyre! He wondered if she still played it sometimes. Old Oliva Ancient-Celebre herself was seated on her favorite chair, holding her sewing. She had hordes of women to embroider for her if she wanted. She was also giving him a very sour look, but this was long past her usual bedtime.
He bowed very carefully, neither falling down nor chucking up. “You sent for me, Mama?”
“I have been sending for you for days. You are not of age yet and even if you were, I am still effective ruler of this city.” Old bat in bad mood.
“Been busy.”
“So I’ve heard. You’d better sit down before you fall down. I was going to offer you wine, but I see that would be unwise. Can you still understand me?”
“Course. But you listen to me first! Those thugs of yours turned my friend away at the door. Sent her out in the streets alone in the middle of the night! You better send them to-”
“Yes, I heard. Babila Scarlatti has been rolling around those streets since before you were born, Chies, and I choose that verb for exactitude. A Nymph of Eriander is in no danger.”
“She is not a Nymph!”
“Of course she is. And when I gave you the key to the private door, I never meant you to bring in women like her. I have many times told you not to wander the city without your guards, especially wearing a sword. Tonight I warned them that they will be punished if you get away from them again. Now, about the succession…”
If Babila was a Nymph, that would explain a lot… “What about the secession? Mean succ ession.”
“You did very well the other morning. You impressed the councillors, I’m sure. You certainly impressed Speaker Quarina, because she told me so later. You even impressed me.”
He let the words dog-paddle around in his brain for a while. Then he muttered, “Good.”
“You don’t impress me now.”
“Nag, nag, nag. Why do you always nag?”
“You give me so much to nag about.”
“Treat me like a man and I’ll behave like one.”
“I do and you don’t. I wish you were still a child or already a man.”
“’Snot my fault I’m not.”
She sighed. “Of course not. Let’s try again. Your year comes of age next sixday. Normally your father would have a great celebration, involving the whole city. But we can’t have a formal feast when he is about to return to the Old One. Are you following me?”
He grunted a positive.
“But I could invite the elders to an informal reception.”
He thought about it. So what? “You asking my permission?”
She sighed in that martyred way she had. “I’m asking if you would like a chance to meet them, all of them. And for them to meet you.”
That took longer. “You mean you want them to make me doge?”
She laid the sewing on a table beside her and met his eyes for the first time. “I’m not sure. They have to choose someone, and the only other male in the family is old Arnutho, a third cousin or something. He’s senile and has no children. Chies, do you understand that you would be in great danger if they did elect you? Very great danger. It’s no secret that the Fist is your true father. A lot of people might want to kill you as soon as they hear the news. Stralg is almost certainly going to lose the war, and then who wants his bastard ruling the greatest city of Florengia?”
“You want me killed?” he asked bitterly.
She shook her head. “No. You have more faults than the palace kennels have fleas, but you are still my son and I still love you. I swear that is the truth. You are all I have left. But if you understand the danger, and if you are brave enough to try, then I will support you.”
Needing time to find the trick in this, he said, “How?”
“I will present you to the council. If you can impress them as a sensible, well-intentioned young man-a sober young man, in other words-then they will at least listen to what you have to say. And you can make a case that you are the logical candidate.”
He blinked at her while this sank in, but she was still very fuzzy around the edges. “Why?”
She looked as if she were about to sigh, but didn’t. “Piero always accepted you as his son. I would help you prepare a speech. Who coached you the first time? Who chose that chlamys you wore?”
“Babila.”
“Maybe we should ask her advice, too.” The old crow bent her wrinkles into a smile. “Go and sleep it off. We’ll talk again in the morning. Or maybe afternoon would be better.”
“Much better.” He lobbed a smile back, maximum cute. It worked sometimes. This was one of the times. Her eyes glistened.
“Oh, Chies, Chies! It wasn’t your fault, but what happens from now on will be.” She stood up. “I couldn’t talk you out of trying, could I?”
How small she was! He could bend his head, looking down at her. “No.”
“Then I’ll give you all the help I can, because you’re my son and I love you. I certainly don’t want a kiss, but at least give me a hug.”
A page lit the way to his rooms for him. The outer chamber was a mess. He’d been trying on clothes earlier and had left them all over the floor. He thought about having the boy pick them up and fold them for him, but his dresser would do that in the morning. He told the boy to leave the lamp and go.
Just as well Babila wasn’t there. He had drunk a lot more than he realized. Feeling an urgent need for a chamber pot, he pushed through the bead curtain into his sleeping chamber.
“About time,” a man said.