“Shall we?” he said.
“Apparently,” she replied, suddenly giddy. Barriath pressed his lips together and pretended not to know what she’d said.
As they walked to the door, she looked back at Yardem. The Tralgu’s head was raised, his ears forward. His broad, canine face took her in and saw more than her. For a moment she was at the side of a frozen millpond south of Bellin, shouting down Marcus Wester for interrupting her moment with Sandr. Sandr who stood now not fifteen feet from her with the other players, and a world and a half away. But Yardem only shifted his soft brown eyes from her to Barriath and back to her before nodding and going back to his game.
Near dawn, Barriath finally slept. They’d made it as far as her rooms before their reserve entirely dissolved, and so it was her blankets and pillows that lay in ruins around him rather than his own. True to all he’d said of being proof against cold, he lay with his bare skin in the air, exposed and unashamed and at rest. Naked, he was lovely. No, not lovely. That wasn’t the word. He was fascinating. Strong and vulnerable, a masculine animal at rest. Beautiful for a hard, curiously melancholy definition of beauty. If she’d known better how to draw, she’d have made a picture of him there.
For herself, she could no more sleep than shout down the moon. She sat by the fire grate, feeding in wood for the light more than the heat. Wrapped in a wool robe with a lining of raw silk, her body felt like it had been carved from warm butter. Nothing about her felt tense or tight or weighed down with fear. Not that anything had changed. Her fear was still there, but at a distance for the moment. It was like she’d taken a rib from her body and could consider it in the air, turning it one way and then the other without any discomfort or pain.
The aftermath of sex insulated her from herself, and it felt glorious. Better than wine even, although wine alone never risked getting a girl pregnant. Trade-offs. All the world was made from trade-offs.
The wind outside was picking up. Even through the shutters, she heard it hissing against the stones. There would be snow before midday. Or hail. Or freezing rain. It might give her a reason to cancel her meetings. Once Barriath had gone, she expected she would be able to sleep. And would need to. She pressed her fingertips to her lips idly, feeling the pleasant bruise.
She’d lain with men before now. Not Sandr, thankfully. But Qahuar Em, her rival in Porte Oliva. He’d been a kind lover in his fashion, but half the thrill of it had been that she was betraying him. She’d thought she was using her sex to distract him, and any lingering pleasure that had come from their time together was tainted by the humiliation that he’d known her plan all along. She’d played with bed and intrigue and been beaten.
And then, of course, Geder Palliako while Dawson Kalliam’s insurrection had burned through the streets of Camnipol. He’d seemed so lost then, so much in need of comfort and care. During the days they’d spent in the darkness, hiding from the violence, he’d been powerless even over her. Granted, he’d still been a man of great power in the court, and there were risks in refusing gifts to kings. Had he insisted, she’d have been an idiot to refuse. Not that he was precisely a king, but a Lord Regent was near enough.
Neither adventure in the mysteries of physical love had left her longing to repeat the experience. Not shamed, though. She knew that girls did feel that way sometimes. Often, even. She felt stupid at having been outplayed by Qahuar and permanently unclean from having seen Geder for what he was afterward, but sex itself seemed… foolish? Messy? Undignified and pleasant and playful in roughly equal measures? Except she wasn’t sure she had felt that way about it. Not before tonight.
She thought Isadau would be proud of her. Or if not proud outright, at least subterranianly pleased that she’d made a connection with a man without thinking of it in terms of a marketplace exchange. Barriath was the first man she’d taken for pleasure, without hope of profit or fear of loss.
Someday, she might even take a lover out of actual love. Stranger things had happened. In the grate, the ashes settled, glowing gold and red. She placed another log in among the coals and watched as it smoked and burst into flame.
Barriath’s breath changed as he rose up from the depths of sleep, growing shallow and soft. He moved, his skin hushing across the cloth. She turned to watch him, and she enjoyed the sight. His slow smile graced her.
“What are you thinking, m’lady?” he asked.
About every man I’ve bedded that wasn’t you seemed the wrong thing. She turned to the fire, the tongues of flame blackening the wood. “I’m wondering how you un-sow a field,” she said.
Barriath shifted again, rose to sitting. The wind rattled the shutters, and he pulled a blanket across his shoulders. “I’m not a man of great fortune. But if… if there were to be a child, know that I would—”
Cithrin laughed without considering whether her laughter might be cruel. “No, not that field. Though thank you for the reassurance. No, I was thinking of the world. And the priests. Everything they’ve done with Antea has spread them across the kingdoms and cities like wheat in springtime. And if we don’t gather them all up…”
“Well, you could take out the scarecrows.”
“That was what I reached for. What I did. Sent out letters and bounties. Turned everyone I could reach into crows and sparrows in hopes they’d eat the seeds, but it turns out people aren’t birds after all. Too many of them are going to look at the power the spiders have and see an opportunity for themselves. And we can’t afford to let events teach them they’re wrong. I want some way to call all the seeds back into the sowing sack, but I haven’t got one.”
“No one’s going to try taking control of the priests,” Barriath said. “It’d be like putting a harness on a wildfire.”
“I know. You know. But when a king sees power, that’s all he sees. And there’s nothing a king wants more than power.”
Something shifted at the back of her mind. Something attached to the words. There’s nothing a king wants more than power. She went still, waiting for it like a cat on a riverbank watching for fish. It was there. It was there, just under the surface.
Barriath spoke. “I can’t believe that—”
She lifted her hand. What had she just been thinking? Something about sex? No. Wait, yes. She’d been thinking of Geder. She put the two thoughts side by side like entries in a ledger. There’s nothing a king wants more than power. Geder Palliako, hiding in the dust and dark with Prince Aster. Playing games, telling stories, making ill-considered and tentative love while the boy prince slept. Geder Palliako, the Lord Regent of Antea. Chosen of the goddess, who brought the priests from nowhere. The spiders’ great leader and tool. If anyone alive still held power or influence over the priests, it was him.
But he was not a king. He would never be a king…
“He won’t hurt Aster.”
“What?” Barriath said.
She wasn’t ready to say it, but if she didn’t he’d just keep talking, so she tried. “Geder. He won’t take power from Aster. He won’t… kill him and claim the Severed Throne for himself. Even though he could.”
“I don’t know that’s true.”
“You don’t need to. I know it. That’s enough. There are things Geder wants more than power.”
“Are there?”
Jorey says I should be honest and gentle, and I want to be. Cithrin, I love you. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known. That’s what the letter said. He’d been telling her. All along he’d been telling her and she’d been so busy showing how unembarrassed and mature she was, how their physical liaison didn’t define her, that she hadn’t seen it until now.