A loud snore ripped out of Harmodius’s throat and echoed down the stone steps.
“He sounds as if he’s choking,” she said, and almost giggled.
They were looking into each other’s eyes. It went on too long.
“I’ll…” he began, cursing himself for ten types of a fool.
“I have wine,” she said. Her voice was husky. “In my room.” Her eyes never left his.
He reached out his hand.
She took it. “I want to see your-griffon,” she whispered.
He laughed. She had no idea why. But he took her to the door and produced a key made of wrought steel.
“Will he scream?” she asked. Suddenly she was appalled-that she’d offered him wine, that she’d been so bold about the monster.
He shook his head. “Perhaps when we leave. Let me go first.”
He opened the door and she was shocked-immediately-to find that the room revealed, which had once been a fine solar, was now roofless to the open night, and a canopy of stars rose above her. There were two chairs, and a heavy iron chain, and a-a-
A monster.
Gabriel went forward, crooning, and it-It was huge. It seemed to fill the very large tower room, as big as the whole home she’d grown up in with her mother. It put its head on the ground.
And rolled on its back like an enormous cat.
“Come on,” Ser Gabriel said.
She breathed out and moved forward. And then, almost without thinking, she went straight up to the great thing. She reached out a hand and touched it. “How big will he get?” she asked.
“He’s only half grown, aren’t you, laddy?” Gabriel crooned. “He’ll be big enough to ride in a month or two.”
It had feathers on its head and an enormous, vicious beak, downward and backward curved like a scimitar of horn, and wickedly sharp, and two great black eyes that seemed fathomless. The feathers of its wings marched in endless organic rows, green and black and white and gold-true gold, as if all the gilders in the world had united to work on its feathers. But just behind the mighty muscles of its wings there was a line where downy, almost misshapen feathers marched along with hair, and then, from that line back, it looked to have a coat more like that of a horse or cow-except for the barbaric talons.
It should have seemed ungainly and ugly. Instead, it was-queerly beautiful, like a much-scarred tomcat or a favourite old shoe. She scratched the place on the great belly where the fur and the feathers met, and the great monster made a noise somewhere between a purr and a screech.
“Oh, he likes you,” Ser Gabriel said.
With the purr came some other emanation. Blanche had little experience of matters aethereal-none, really. So for the first time, she felt the tickle of something unseelie in her head.
Ser Gabriel gave the beast a slap on the side of his beak. “None of that,” he said.
Blanche suddenly felt a terrible, wonderful upwelling of love.
Inside her head, Gabriel’s voice said, “Stop that.”
Just for a moment she saw him, in a red doublet and hose, standing on a parquetry floor in some sort of cathedral, with statues and numbers all about him, and a beautiful woman on a pedestal behind him, dressed like the statues in churches.
“I’ll do my own courting,” the voice in her head said. “Down, Ariosto!”
The great creature raised his head and both her eyes met both of its eyes. Its impossibly rough tongue brushed her face. She laughed, although she trembled, and although she suddenly had the most intimate-erotic-picture of Ser Gabriel, and she blushed.
She started to turn away and her shoulder met Gabriel’s.
His lips came down on hers. She didn’t feel as if she was controlling her body, but she fit herself against him from her knee to her head. She had never done this with any boy. She felt wanton, deliciously so.
The griffon watched them, unblinking. Gabriel took his lips away from hers and brushed them against her neck, and then his hand tightened and he pulled her-gently-towards the door.
The great monster made a sound very like a sigh.
Blanche turned back, and Gabriel, lightly but firmly, stiff-armed her out the door.
He shut it firmly. Turned away from her, and locked it.
“If you kiss me,” he said, his voice husky, “I’d rather it was of your own free will.” He turned back. “Ariosto is-A creature of the Wild.” He shrugged.
Blanche realized that she was breathing very hard, that her skin was flushed, and her hands unsteady. She was all too aware that the Queen’s solar was the next door, that they were virtually in public.
She turned to her own door, suddenly quite sure what she wanted.
Utterly unsure how to express it.
“He’s beautiful,” she said.
Gabriel followed her, remaining just a step away.
“Come,” she said simply. She couldn’t imagine a speech that would express her thoughts and feelings. So she went to her door, and opened it.
They walked through the low, iron-bound oak door, and she shut it carefully. She put the small taper in her hand into a travelling stick on a low trunk. Time seemed to pass very slowly. Each of her movements seemed very precious. Graceful. Beautiful. She rose on her toes to fetch something.
I should be asleep, he thought, along with a thousand other thoughts.
She took the dented silver cup from his hand and poured him a cup of wine. She put something in her mouth.
She looked up at him, and took a sip-more than a sip. Boldly. And then put it in his hands and closed her own around his. “If-” Her voice shook. “If you make a baby on me, swear you’ll rear it as one of your own.”
“Blanche-”
“Swear. Or take your wine and go.” She was shaking.
“Blanche-”
“Don’t cozen me!” she said.
He took the wine, drank a fair amount without taking his eyes off her and frowned. He kissed her. It was effortless-they flowed together and were one, for so long that he almost spilled the rest of the wine.
And then she placed her hand firmly on his breastbone. She was not weak.
“Swear,” she said. “I won’t make you pretend you’ll marry me. Just that you won’t do what some noble bastard did to my mother.”
Gabriel sat on the chest. His mind was going around and around, and half of it seemed to be chasing Amicia. And the other half was utterly captivated.
“It is not that I won’t swear,” he said. “It’s that I don’t like what I see in the mirror if I do.”
Blanche’s breath caught. “I know you’ll marry the Queen,” she said suddenly. “I know what I am, and what you are.”
Gabriel didn’t catch himself. He laughed.
“No,” he said. “I can imagine many outcomes, but those pips are not on the dice.” He smiled at her. “And I’m at least as much a bastard as you.”
She leaned back, as if to look at him more closely. “Really?”
He got up. He was overcome with her-the palpable reality of her, her smell, her unwashed hair and the taste of her mouth and the clove she’d just chewed and what that said.
“State secret,” he whispered.
She licked her lips. “I know who your parents are,” she said.
He froze. She felt the tension in his muscles, and he took a step for the door, but it was as if he was in the aethereal. He meant to step to the door, but instead he was holding her. Her warmth went through his hands. Without a conscious thought, he pulled the veil off her hair and put a hand behind her head. Her kirtle opened at the side, and fit like a glove, but he managed to find the skin where her shoulder met her neck.
“Swear, damn you!” she said. She pushed him hard enough that he fell back across the chest. “Or leave,” she said.
“That hurt,” he said, and meant it. “I swear on my sword that any baby we make will be reared as my own.” He caught his breath. “I’m only promising so that you won’t hurt me again.”
She laughed.
The taper gave up-a last flare of light that showed her laughing at his discomfiture, and then darkness. The moon was on the other side of the tower, and her window was closed and shuttered. There was some rustling.