“Not good enough.”
Although his words were nasty and deliberate she realized all of a sudden that they weren’t true. It was like she had climbed inside his head. She could tell that the sight of her was enough and she could hear him berating himself. You uxorious beaten little man! His eyes gave it away: how he loathed himself right now. His face told her that any arrows she fired would kill him on the spot.
She saw him understand that she knew. It was instantaneous. Like telepathy. And to her astonishment, he didn’t attempt a charade or try to cover it up. It made her want him in a callow, unexpected way. The expression on his face was beyond her capability to exploit.
It was awkward, embarrassing and thankfully without audience. Instead of victory, Sena felt like she had melted. Her sense of vulnerability ballooned. She couldn’t help it. She was ashamed of the tenderness that had jelled the air.
“You’re right. You are a bitch . . .”
Tenderness noted. Appreciated. Temporarily set aside.
“I was going to leave. I didn’t think you . . .” she shook her head, “would take me back.”
It was a safe thing to say. Moronic and simple and clichéd. After all, Caliph’s expression had made it clear that he did, that he had already taken her back.
Caliph said a few more sour words.
Sena fired back once or twice, explained herself with competent precision. For his part, he did an admirable job of remaining cold.
The parrying went on for two minutes at most, consisting mostly of disingenuous threats.
Finally Caliph sighed to indicate that he was done.
“You can stay here. I’ll sleep downstairs.”
He confiscated a pillow and left the room.
That he told her where he was going and didn’t take a blanket, that he gave the bed to her, were all she needed to know for certain that she had been forgiven.
Her heart started beating again. She knew by any stretch that he had let her off easy. It bothered her.
She followed him from the room, watched him trudge down the grand stairs and plop down in front of the first floor’s fireplace.
He was sulking. A sack of anger on the leather sofa. But she was trained for this. It would be like pressing a deep aposteme, forcing an eruption, getting at the core. She would squeeze his anger out. It would be surgical. Tonight it would be pår
n and . . . it would be pårn because she loved him.
She went down. When she crawled on top of him, when she perched for him in poses that were ludicrous, he didn’t look away. Her motions were smooth and daedal. Exquisite. Outlandish. It was a pantomime, a rising chaos that she stylized and turned, gripped professionally and molded into perfect form. It wasn’t just a striptease or a succubus straddling a man in the huge echoing hall. It wasn’t a pair of imperiled creatures grinding blindly on the edge of salvation. It wasn’t that. It was Sena’s adaptation. A slow-moving, living sculpture. She crafted it with subsecondal precision and gave it to Caliph as a gift.
He didn’t push it away or ridicule it as another cheap pretense. She steeled herself in case he did. Instead he accepted it, embraced it and eventually wore himself out against it, collapsing into unconsciousness that lasted far beyond the dawn.
CHAPTER 35
Caliph realized that Gadriel had found them. They were draped across each other, barely covered by a blanket of black leveret. The High Seneschal had already established a perimeter around the room, using sentries to block every door and passageway that might admit a curious member of the castle staff.
Discreet bits of Sena’s outfit had been swept up and whisked away.
“I’ve commissioned breakfast,” said the seneschal. A bowl of neatly rolled washcloths steamed in his hand like an offering. Two servants erected a set of carved dressing screens, set a stack of plush towels on the table and promptly disappeared. There were slippers and soap and a basin of scalding water at the ready. “King Lewis has arrived from Vale Briar . . . on schedule. The weather is mild so I set him in the north portico.”
A silver tray floated in, laden with coffee, toothbrushes and the morning’s freshly toasted paper.
Along with the Herald, a copy of The Varlet’s Pike lay ominously on the tray. Caliph picked it up, bemused by what story it could contain that would prompt the seneschal to actually purchase such a scandal sheet specifically for the High King’s eye.
When Caliph read it, he was stunned not so much by the content of the article as by the speed of its being turned into print.
A source inside Isca Castle indicated that the seventh of Kam brought the return of the High King’s witch. Refusing to be named, the source claimed the grand hall was the site of an alleged voluble reunion between the High King and his mistress who disappeared late last week.
When asked exactly what voluble meant, the source replied, “I wish they’d save their disgusting sybaritism for the bedroom. They ought to be restrained . . .”
A note was stuck underneath this text, penned in Gadriel’s precise hand that read, Don’t worry. I’ve already found the source of this leak and the culprit has been terminated from our employ.—G.
Well, thought Caliph, I guess I haven’t won over all the staff after all.
King Lewis was reading the same page when Caliph met him twenty minutes later on the portico. The gleaming corpulent man smiled and rose ponderously. He laid the paper aside and shook Caliph’s hand.
“Freedom of the press.” He grinned.
Caliph returned the smile, noticeably abridged and chilled. “Interesting preference in journalism. I’m sure The Varlet’s Pike can offer you several good wallows at my expense. Would you like me to order you a subscription?”
“No.” Lewis fanned his palms. “Already have one, thanks.”
“Great. To be honest I’d hate to itemize that one on the books.”
“You’ve gotten comfortable quickly.” Lewis resumed his seat and hoisted a jelly roll.
“You think so? That’s funny. Comfortable is one of the few words I would not have used to describe my position.”
Lewis bit and chewed and spoke before he swallowed.
“I heard our meeting is being put off until tonight?”
“I’ve arranged a hunt today . . . for your entertainment,” said Caliph. “This evening, after we return we can discuss the business that’s brought you to Isca.”
“How excellent!” Lewis’ voice dispensed disingenuous surprise. “And the prince of Tentinil has come?”
“Yes. Prince Mortiman and several others. Like you, they’ve very recently arrived . . . by zeppelin.”
Lewis took another bite.
“Absolutely ticky!”
The morning sun fired the interior of the castle battlements like a kiln. Its fingers stretched down slowly to warm the men waiting in the courtyard.
They were mounted on horseback, dressed in traditional Naneman hunting clothes.
Caliph had asked Sena to come—an invitation she readily accepted.
Over the last several hours an irrational umbrage had slithered back into his heart, springing from the notion that Sena had returned to harvest her own exoneration.
He tried to chase the feeling away, but it remained. A stigma of suspicion that blurred the once crisp light in which he held her. She hadn’t really stolen anything. She had asked for his forgiveness and he had given it. How could he now begrudge her?
And still . . .
His heart was full of worms. The smell of fresh crap smacked the air as Mayor Ashlen’s horse deposited a steaming pile on the cobbles.