'They told me that they had given you her room.'
She knew, before she turned, that he had finally come. He spoke the local dialect well, but without any attempt to conceal his heavy accent. Her heart was fluttering against her ribs as she turned to face him.
He had left his cloak downstairs and stood before her in fish-folk finery, filling the doorway with his bulk. It was no wonder Bekin had adored him - she'd had a child's delight in colour and shine. His pantaloons were a deep turquoise, embroidered with silver. His tunic was a lighter shade, slashed open to the navel with sleeves that shone and rippled like the rose silk she wore. His fez was encrusted with glittery stones; he removed it with a smile; his shaved scalp glistened in the candlelight. Despite herself, Cythen flattened against the wall and regarded him with a mixture of fear and awe. His eyes shone as he watched her without blinking, and after a moment she looked away.
'There is no need to be frightened. Little Flower.'
His arms circled the rose silk and drew her tightly against him. Strong blunt fingers pressed around her neck, digging in behind her ears so she could not resist as he forced her lips apart. She willed herself to numbness when he found the knots that bound the silk around her and undid them. Screams of outrage echoed in her mind, but she clung silently, unprotestingly, to his powerful arms.
'You are still frightened?' he asked after a while, running a finger over the curve other hip as she lay limp on the pillows beside him. He was strong, as Walegrin had said he would be, but she did not quite have the nerve to find out if he was a coward as well.
She shook her head when he asked if she was afraid, but could not stop her hands from coming to rest on top of his, stopping his incessant motion. He bent over her, caressing her breast with his lips, tongue and teeth. With a strangled whimper, she stiffened away from him.
'You will see. There's nothing to be frightened of. Just relax.'
He was staring at her: cold fish-eyes peering into her body and soul. All the warnings that Myrtis, Walegrin, and even Ambutta had given her chorused out of her memory and she wished she was Bekin: either dead or willing to love any man. Her confidence went out like a guttered candle. She felt him loosening the heavy belt that bound his pantaloons and knew she could not stifle the next screams that would rise from her throat.
There would be no second chance. She would fall, and probably die here in this room with her sister's ghost hovering in her thoughts. But she was a master of deceit, as she had claimed, which was much more than simple lying or pretending.
'Yes, I'm frightened,' she whispered in a coy, little girl's voice she had just discovered, using the truth to buy a few more moments. She shivered and clutched the discarded silk against her as he let her slide away from him. 'Do you know what happened to the girl who lived in this room? While she slept, someone let a serpent into here and it bit her. She died horribly. Sometimes I think I hear it on the pillows, but they won't let me have another room.'
There are no snakes in this room. Little Flower.'
In the shadows, she could not be certain of his expression, and his accent made it difficult to read the sound of his voice. Recklessly, she continued.
'That's what they tell me. The only snakes in Sanctuary which are poisonous are the Beysa's holy snakes - and those never go far from her in the palace. But she was killed by snake venom. Someone had to have put it in here. But she was only a mad girl from the Street of Red Lanterns, so no one will search for her killer.'
'I'm sure your Prince will do all that he can. It would be a crime among us, as well, if someone had stolen the Beysa's serpent.'
'I'm afraid. Suppose they didn't need to steal the serpent, suppose they only needed the venom. Suppose the Harka Bey are angry because men like you come here to women like me.'
He took her in his arms again, brushing the sweat-dampened hair back from her face. 'The Harka Bey is a tale for children.'
She caught his hand in hers and felt the design of the ring on his hand: a serpent, with fangs that rasped on the ridges of her fingertips. He pulled his hand quickly away.
'I'm afraid, Turghurt, of what will become of me -'
He struck like a snake, grabbing at her throat and wrenching her head around into the candlelight. Her right arm was hopelessly twisted in the silk and her left bent backwards into agony.
'So Myrtis thinks it's me, does she?'
'No,' Cythen gasped, aware now that she had used his real name, as she had been warned not to do. 'She knows it could not have been you who killed Bekin. Only women handle the serpents...' but they were both staring at the serpent ring shining in the candle-light.
'What are you?' he demanded, shaking her jaw until something ripped loose in her neck and she could not have answered him if she had wanted to. 'Who sent you? What do you know?' He bent her wrist back until it was in the candle flame. 'Who told you about our plans?'
Tears flowed through the kohl, washing the black powder into her eyes - but that was the least of her pain. She screamed, finally, though wrenching her jaw free of him was almost enough to make her faint. He caught her again, but it was too late. Even as he beat her head against the wall, someone was banging on the door. She fell back on the candle, extinguishing it with her body, and they struggled against each other in the darkness.
She broke free more than once, digging her filed nails into whatever vulnerable skin she could grab. But she did not have the strength to break his bones with her hands and could not find, in the darkness, the panel that concealed her knife. Someone was using an axe on the door now, and she thought perhaps it would not all have been in vain if they caught him for her death.
He caught her by the shoulder and brought his fist crashing into her weakened jaw. The force and the pain stunned her. She hung limp in his grip, defenceless against his second punch. He heaved her body into a corner, where it hit with a dead-weight thud; then he began moving frantically through the darkness as the axe continued to bite against the door.
Cythen had not lost consciousness, though she wished she had. Her mouth and jaw were on fire, although, ironically, one or another of his punches had undone the dislocation, along with loosening a few of her teeth. She could have screamed freely now, as she heard his glittery clothing dropping to the floor, but the anguish of her failure was too great.
A piece of wood had splintered away from the door. Light from the lanterns in the hallway glinted off the serpent ring which he held before his eyes. She realized that he must think her dead or unconscious, and she thought she might survive if she continued to be silent, but he came at her as a second, larger piece of wood came loose. The glistening serpent's head rose above his fist.
She lunged away from him and felt something strike her shoulder. In the swirl of pain and panic she did not know if the fangs had pierced her; she knew only that she was still alive, still wrapped around his legs and trying to bite him with her already battered and bloody teeth. He kicked free other with little difficulty and made a leap for the window as a hand reached around into the darkness and worked the latch.
Though the door was open almost at once, Turghurt had heaved himself clear of the window before they reached him. And though Cythen protested her health and survival, they made more of a fuss over her and the ruined silk than they did over the escaping Beysib.