He clasped her tight against him. His chlamys was still wet, and her ear was level with his heart, which was thumping almost as fast as hers. His distinctive musky scent was overpowering, intoxicating.
“I will trust you, Fabia.”
She gasped until she got her breath back. “You said you had consulted a Healer of Sinura since we first spoke. I asked my goddess directly.”
“Blood and birth, you said?” His voice echoed deep inside his chest.
“Yes,” she admitted. “Ingeld… Horold Hragson’s wife told me how he impregnated a woman to see what would happen. She died giving birth to his child. It was human, but as big as a two-year-old. I will not be trapped like that. The Mother has authority over birth. I will be able to insist that your sons vacate the premises at the end of a normal lease.” She had asked for confirmation of this the first night after she met Cavotti, and Xaran had reassured her.
“You bribe me. I thought I had lost the chance of children.”
“I want children also.”
The big man sighed in wonder. “You are prepared to trust the Mother of Lies?”
“If she plays me false I will die, but we all die, Marno.” She twisted her neck to stare up at him. Yes, he was incredibly ugly. But he was a lot of husband. “Why else would I have come here tonight? Are you willing to be married to a self-confessed Chosen?”
One of his precious smiles brightened the room. “In your case, yes. And you want me to prove it now? Be warned, all your chthonic powers will not be enough to stop me once I get going!”
“You talk too much,” she said. “Let me see some action.”
LORD DANTIO
spent most of the next five days exhuming his childhood. He attended his father’s funeral and the service for the fallen, but mostly he just walked the halls of the palace and streets of the city, wallowing in nostalgia. He avoided Fabia and Orlad, being heartily sick of the timbre of their emotions after spending so long in their company. They did not remember Celebre, and even he found it much less familiar than he had expected. He encountered few people he knew and escaped their vicinity before they noticed him, but he could not avoid the mind-numbing emotional tumult. Night and day the city reverberated with joy and sorrow in unholy counterpoint until his head ached. On the fifth morning, when the Healers had begun to recover from their treatment of the wounded, he went to a sanctuary and let them mend his shoulder. They refused any gift in return, because the new doge had already promised a huge donation to reward treatment of injuries sustained on the night of the liberation.
The new doge was extremely popular. Dogaressa Oliva had done her best, no doubt, but it was good to have a doge in charge again. And Marno Cavotti himself! The Mutineer ranked just below the Bright Ones in his birthplace now. “Poor man, how he has suffered for us… but he killed Stralg in the end.” Despite the generous tribute Cavotti had paid to both Orlad and Waels during the service for the fallen, neither was being given credit by the Celebrians. The local lad had done it all, won the war single-handed.
That afternoon, while inspecting the fire damage to the temple of Weru, Dantio saw his half-brother Chies skulking amid the slums near the abattoir. Why in the world would he go there? No Witness could resist a mystery, and this one was only a few blocks away. Dantio arrived just in time to see Chies emerge from a doorway, accompanied by a grubby old man who looked seedy to human sight and duplicitous to the Goddess’s. The man locked the door and handed the key to Chies. They nodded to each other and parted. Chies went only as far as the next corner, then doubled back, unlocked the door, and dived inside. He did not see Dantio inspecting cups in a nearby potter’s shop.
Most curious!
Chies had given the man no money that Dantio had noticed, but it very much looked as if Chies had bought or rented whatever lay behind that ugly, warped little door. Or could he be going to meet someone there? Dantio left the store and strolled past the door, but all he could sense inside it was a squalid little room, mostly below grade, with a tiny barred window and plentiful roaches. Its only furnishing was a sleeping platform. Chies was in there, but Dantio’s sight could not determine what he was doing, which was ominous.
What could a boy who lived in the palace want with such a pesthole? Not to take girls to, surely? The temple of Eriander was still in business and male adolescents worshiped there fervently. If it were a shrine to the Old One, Dantio would not be able to see inside it at all, but it certainly looked like the sort of obscure crypt She favored. No doubt a Chosen could consecrate it to Her, although the Witnesses were almost certain that the ritual required human sacrifice. Chies? Was he? Could he be? Did the ducal family now include two Chosen?
He had not been a Chosen in Veritano, or Marno’s men could not have kidnapped him so easily. So what had happened since then? The story of his escape and the wild ride down the Puisa on a stolen boat, all the way to the city-was that credible? Dantio had heard it from people who believed it, not from any who knew the truth of it. It might be worth dropping a hint to Fabia.
Toward dusk on that day, Dantio was tracked down by a Witness as he studied the ducks in the river park. He sensed her approach and went to meet her. She was a bony, aging woman, unveiled in Florengian style.
“Brother Mist, I am Sister Edviga from the palace.” She smiled as she read his annoyance. “The doge has called a meeting and requests that you attend.”
“What sort of meeting?” He fell into step beside her.
“Your family,” she said. “He received his own family this morning, his mother and brothers.” (amusement)
“And?”
“And I am astonished you did not feel it, brother. He practically threw his brothers out bodily.”
In fact Dantio had picked up a trace of that rage and ignored it. “Greed? They want their cut?”
“They are all Ucrists.”
He laughed aloud. How long had it been since he did that?
The Council Chamber was a pentagonal room on the second floor, with three great windows overlooking the grounds and a huge fireplace, which was making the room unpleasantly warm. It was furnished with a single low wheatwood table in the center, also pentagonal, surrounded by cushions. Dantio surveyed the scene with nostalgia, recalling how his father had brought him there once, treating him as an adult when he broke the news that he would have to go as hostage to the ice devils.
His mother stood there alone, staring out a window. Hearing him clear his throat, she spun around, then came rushing to him, arms open. She almost drowned him in a torrent of emotions so turbulent that he could barely distinguish them. He hid his revulsion as best he could.
“Where have you been? I was so worried. Why didn’t you come and see me…” And so on.
“I needed time to recover and I knew you had the others. We have years ahead of us, Mama!” In fact, he had decided he must leave the city very shortly. He had not been struck down, so either the Eldest in Vigaelia had decided to overlook his sins or her anathema carried no weight on the Florengian Face. Next sixday he would set off to visit the Florengian mother lodge and offer to add to its Wisdom, revealing what he alone knew about the war and Saltaja’s death in the Edgelands.
Oliva was shaking her head. “I don’t have Fabia, Marno has. Maybe in a thirty or two she will find some time for the rest of the world. Orlando is lost forever. So cold, so hard! Oh, what did they do to him, Dantio?”
“They made a monster out of him, that’s what. They dehumanized him. But he’s much better than he was, Mama. Give him time. Give him love, but not too obviously. He is trying, I promise you. He will recover. Mothers all over Florengia have the same problem, or soon will have.”