"I'm back!"
Blade fended her off. "I noticed. Did you get everything?"
"Sure." She frowned. "What do you need the lovers' potion for?"
"Never you mind." He rose and picked up the bag.
"Wait!" Lilu jumped up and grabbed his arm. "You can't leave now. Stay and have a glass of wine with me."
The assassin scowled down at her. "I haven't the time."
"You do! Please, don't leave yet." Her eyes filled with tears, startling him, and he hesitated, still frowning.
"What is it?"
"I…" She brushed at her cheeks. "I'm lonely. I have no one to talk to. I've done what you asked, won't you just stay a little while, please?" Her brown eyes pleaded, bright with tears.
Blade sighed and put down the bag. "I don't know why I listen to you. You're a nuisance."
"Because you know that you owe me your life, and even you're not so cold-hearted as to forget that."
"How could I, with you to remind me?" He sat on the bed, tolerating her possessive hold on his arm.
She stroked his hair, and he jerked away in annoyance. "My assassin, that's what you are, Blade. When I found you in that gutter, I thought you were dead. I paid that healer good money to set your bones and stitch up your wounds."
"I paid you back."
"The money, yes, but I spent long time-glasses nursing you, feeding you, cooling your fevered brow."
Blade frowned, barely able to remember the blurred images of that time, when fever had fogged his mind and pain had racked him. Vaguely he recalled gentle hands washing his wounds, pressing a cup to his lips and wiping away what spilt from them.
She stroked his arm, smiling. "I washed every inch of this beautiful body of yours."
He glanced at her, startled. "You did?"
"Who else?" She looked at him coyly through her lashes.
"And you never noticed…?"
"'Course I did, what kind of fool do you take me for?"
"Then why do you keep flirting with me?"
"Just teasing you! You shouldn't be so touchy about it."
He eyed her. "So why are you telling me this now?"
She shrugged. "I don't know, I guess I just needed something to talk about, and nothing else sprang to mind."
Lilu rose and poured him a cup of wine from a bottle in the cupboard across the room, ignoring the bottle beside the bed. He took a gulp as she sat beside him again, slipping her arm through his.
"You know, I heard a story from one of my customers the other day. He told me that those men the Queen sent to kill King Shandor all failed, and she sent one man to do the job. Would you believe, he succeeded, and he brought back the Cotti Prince." Lilu's eyes narrowed. "I hope the Queen will flay him alive, one little strip of skin at a time. The man she sent, she's made a lord now, given him lands and riches, which he deserves of course." She glanced at him coyly again. "They call him the Queen's Blade."
"Do they?"
"They do. And they say that he's an assassin, and he now has the Queen's favour."
"Lucky man."
"Yes." She squeezed his arm. "And he's not married."
Blade disentangled himself and stood up. "It's time I was going."
"You owe me, Blade!"
He swung on her. "I didn't ask to be saved! Maybe you should have left me to die."
"No." She rose and stood before him. "You're a good man, and if I hadn't saved you, King Shandor would still be alive to wage the Endless War."
"You think his son won't carry on with it?"
"His son's a prisoner of the Queen."
"He has fifteen brothers." Blade banged the wine cup down on the table.
Lilu shook her head, gazing up at him. "I don't care about that. You could make me very happy. Don't I deserve it?"
"You're asking to be my wife?"
She nodded. "I know what you are, and I don't care. I've had my fill of it. All I ask is a home for my children and money to live on. You can afford it now. No one else would have saved you. I did it out of the goodness of my heart, because you looked like a kind man. You have a noble face. I didn't expect anything in return, and you had nothing then. But you do now, and all I'm asking is a little share in it, not much. I know you'd be ashamed of me, I'd never expect you to acknowledge me publicly, I mean, with your new friends. You could send me to your estate, and I'd stay there, raise my children, that's all I ask."
"No."
"Please, Blade!" Fresh tears filled her eyes, and she clung to his arm. "I can't bear this life anymore! Have you no pity?"
"No, I don't." He regarded her coldly. "You did what you did for your own selfish reasons, whatever they were."
"I couldn't let you die!"
"You thought I might be a meal ticket."
"No!" She hung on when he tried to free himself. "I didn't, I swear! Don't leave me in this dump, I'm begging you. You have no reason to marry, surely you can do it to save me, as I saved you? If you leave me here, I'll die."
"I doubt that," he growled, trying to pry her hands from his arm, but she clung to him like a limpet and sank to her knees, almost dragging him down with her. "Stop this, Lilu!"
"Don't, oh God, don't leave me here!" She buried her face in his thigh, transferring her hold to it and shaking with the storm of wailing sobs that his refusal had unleashed.
Blade stared down at her, annoyed and confused. A vision flashed before his eyes. A little girl knelt in the burning sand, her eyes filled with tears, her hands raised in pleading. A girl with grey eyes and midnight hair, skin that had been as pale as milk until the fierce sun had reddened it. Her eyes were his own, and she wept before a laughing Cotti officer, begging. She had died a few days later. He had wept then, but not since. Somewhere he had lost his pity. He opened his eyes. Lilu raised a tear-stained face, ugly, beaten and abused, her eyes filled with despair.
"All right, Lilu." He raised a hand to stem her leap of joy. "I'll not marry you, but you may go to my estate and live there with your children."
She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him fiercely, ignoring his attempts to pry her free. "Thank you, Blade! Oh, thank you, thank you!"
Lilu rained kisses on his face until he put a hand over her mouth and pushed her away. His rejection did not dampen her joy, she bounced around the room, throwing tattered dresses onto the floor and flinging pots of powder and paint at the walls.
"No more of this! I'm free! I can be with my children."
He glanced around, longing to leave. "Have you a pen and paper?"
She leapt to the dresser and yanked open a drawer. "Yes."
Blade took them and bent to scribble a note, ordering whoever was in charge of his estate to provide Lilu and her children with board and lodging, money for clothes and schooling. It was the first time he had used his newly acquired rank, and signed his name ‘Lord Conash’. Lilu snatched the paper and read it with a huge smile. Blade grabbed the bag and headed for the door.
Lilu reach it first and barred it.
"Now what?" he demanded.
"If only you could know the joy I'm feeling now."
"I'll try to imagine it."
"I was right, you are a good man. It's all there inside of you, hidden away, buried under ice." She tapped his chest. "I wish I could reach it."
"You're wrong; I did it to put an end to your carping. Now I must go."
She tried to stroke his cheek, but he evaded her caress. "My children will know who saved them from the gutter; my sons will honour your name. You're going to be a legend."
"Leave the predictions to Shamsara, Lilu. You've got what you wanted; now get out of my way."
She stood aside, her eyes bright with joy she could not share with him. "Goodbye, Blade. God be with you."
"I doubt that," he retorted, brushing past her into the hall.
On the walk back to the palace, he wondered at his generosity and the momentary weakness that had prompted it. Perhaps she deserved some reward for saving his life. At least now he no longer had to be burdened with the sense of owing her something. He tried to imagine the shock and horror of his undoubtedly well-bred retainers when a broken-nosed whore arrived with five bastards in tow and a letter from their new lord ordering them to care for her. The thought brought a little amusement to brighten his day and compensate for his face's throbbing.