“Did you like that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, black eyes reflecting the teardrop glow of the candle in the center of the table. “We pickle seaweed in As’arem, also. Tell me more of the smugglers on Kelthann. Do they dispose of all the plundered goods our faction seizes?”
Vurgrom snorted. “Don’t you ever get bored, talking about raiding and the like? It’s a beautiful night.” Perched on a balcony at the top of the house, they had a fine view of bright Selune and her tears shining in a cloudless sky, the wavering yellow lights of Immurk’s Hold running down to the harbor, the dark, heaving vastness of the sea, and the waves crumbling to pearly froth near the shore. Far out on the water, a ship’s lanterns glowed at the bow and stern. “Too beautiful for my list of gripes about greedy, thieving, gutless go-betweens.” He covered her cool, silken hand with his own, and experienced the usual pang of excitement.
She must feel it, too, for her flesh quivered. But her voice remained steady and cooclass="underline" “I wish to know about your dealings so I can give you whatever help you require.”
“If you and Umberlee deem me worthy,” he said dryly. “Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me again what the goddess expects, so I’ll know what to do to measure up.”
She eyed him quizzically, but he was sure she’d accede to his request. She never tired of talking about Umberlee. Even he, who doted on hermuch as he’d struggled against such a needy, mawkish emotion-grew weary of it sometimes.
Sure enough, she rose, and clasping his hand, drew him to the balustrade. “Behold the sea,” she said.
“All right.”
“On the” She hesitated then frowned. He had to suppress a smirk of anticipation. “Are you all right?”
“Perhaps your cook has not yet learned how to prepare food that agrees with me. My stomach… never mind. I am well. On the surface of the waves and beneath them, every moment, a thousand thousand predators kill and devour their victims. Most people understand this, even if they rarely bother to think about it.”
“I follow you.”
“Now recognize… recognize” she paused to massage the round mark on her forehead”recognize all those separate deaths as aspects of a higher unity. Comprehend that the sea itself, acting through its creatures, is the killer. Per… perceive it for what it is, a gigantic set of eternally gnashing, tearing jaws.” “Umberlee’s jaws,” he said.
“Yes, and to find favor in her sight, you must embody the same qualities. You must be fearless and ruthless. You must take” She swayed and grabbed the balustrade to keep from falling. “Something is wrong with me.”
Vurgrom let the leer stretch across his face. No need to hold it in anymore. “I drugged you, dear one. It will wear off by morning.”
Or at least it would if she were human. The apothecary couldn’t guarantee it would affect a shalarin in precisely the same way. But Vurgrom had decided it was worth the risk to bring an end to his frustrations. As it would, one way or another.
To his surprise, Tu’ala’keth still had the strength to tear her hand from his and stumble a couple of paces backward. Of course, she had nowhere to run in the confined space of the balcony. “You… are a blasphemer.”
“How do you figure?” Vurgrom replied. “Weren’t you just now telling me the Bitch Queen wants me to be bold and merciless and take what I want? All right, then, I’m taking you. That’s the test, isn’t it, to see if I dare. Well, watch me.”
Tottering, she gripped the skeletal hand dangling on her breast and gasped the opening words of an incantation.
He lunged and punched her in the jaw, snapping her head to the side and spoiling the cadence of the spell. He wrested the sacred pendant out of her fingers then yanked it from around her neck.
“No magic,” he told her and hit her again. Her legs buckled, and her arms flopped to her sides. He grabbed her before she could collapse and hauled her to the table. He swept the dirty dishes crashing to the floor to make a space then thrust her down.
The coral tunicsilverweave, she called itshould have come off easily. She wasn’t fighting anymore, and the armor was split all the way down the back to accommodate her fin. But it clung to her somehow, perhaps by virtue of an enchantment.
The more he struggled with it, the angrier he became, while desire burned hotter and hotter inside him. For an instant, he felt like a stranger to himself, as if his urgency was unnatural, or some sort of malady, but he pushed the reflection aside. If his need was a sickness, then satisfaction would provide the cure.
Finally, with a soft clinking, the silverweave pulled apart. In his frantic yanking and fumbling, he’d evidently released some sort of hidden catch. He didn’t know how or where, but neither did he care. He only had eyes for Tu’ala’keth’s narrow torso with its subtly inhuman contours and gill slits on the collar bones and ribs. In that moment, it seemed both the strangest and most desirable thing he’d ever seen, and he stretched out a trembling hand to caress it. As if his excitement had kindled a comparable ardor in her, she shuddered violently.
Tu’ala’keth and Anton stood arguing in the narrow side street. He offered his objections to her scheme, and she refuted them. Yet when he finished, she felt obscurely disappointed.
“You didn’t,” she said, “make the one point that might almost have deterred me.” She’d thought that by now, he understood her well enough to think of it.
“What point is that?” he asked.
“I intend to cloud Vurgrom’s mind, not my own, and to beguile him properly, I must allow him to touch me from time to time. It will be repulsive and unnatural for me.”
“Can you bear it?” Anton asked. “Act as if you enjoy it?”
“Yes.” Within limits, she thought. “As I told Shandri Clayhill, I will be a hunter stalking her prey, and that is a sacred act.”
“Good,” said Anton, except that he wasn’t Anton anymore. Somehow, between one heartbeat and next, he’d swelled into hulking, blubbery, leering Vurgrom. The pirate chieftain flung his arms wide, pulled her into a crushing embrace, and planted his lips on hers.
His mouth stankand tastedof wine and gluttony. Viler still were the mustache and whiskers, the bristling hairs jabbing into her skin. She suffered it while she silently counted to three then squirmed be free of him.
He lumbered after her, and the chase was like a dance, flickering from one day and location to the next. On the verandah, in the solar, in his suite and aboard the small sailboat he kept as a toy, she lured him in and pushed him back again.
“It’s a matter of balance,” she told him, “of pitting one emotion against another. As long as you fear to offend me as much as you yearn for my touch, you won’t demand too much, and I can tolerate you.”
“Can you tolerate this?” He was Kassur now, complete with eye patch, and he thrust out his hands at her. Yellow flame leaped from his fingertips, inspiring a jolt of terror that shocked her from her delirium.
Unfortunately, reality was equally nightmarish. Confused, for the first moment she understood only that the “balance” she intended to keep her safe had somehow tilted precipitously. She was on her back with Vurgrom leaning over her, mauling her. His ruddy face with its broken capillaries was contorted with passion, and it was plain he meant to use her as brutally as he’d treat a slave.
When she tried to clench her fists and pummel him, her limbs flailed uselessly, and she felt a burning throughout her frame. For a moment, she imagined the fire from her delirium had somehow accompanied her into the waking world to sear her in truth. Then, however, she realized the feeling wasn’t really heat but rather a kind of starved frenzythe panic of a body no longer able to breathe.
Vurgrom had divested her of her silverweave. Most likely he didn’t understand she needed it to survive out of water, for she naturally hadn’t told him of her vulnerability. Now if she couldn’t recover the coral mesh quickly, that sensible reticence would be the death of her.