The hand at her wrist slid somehow into the grip of her palm. The other swept around her back. He pulled her close. She yanked her arm to loose it from his and stepped back, but instead of breaking free she found Hanish swept forward, the movement of her arm a gesture in what was suddenly choreography. Her backward step had been so perfectly timed to his forward motion that she almost believed she had initiated the intimacy. Try as she might she could not manage to break the flow of their movements. Before long she stopped trying. It was amazing, really, how well he moved and how much her body enjoyed the swirling pattern they cut across the floor.
“Corinn,” Hanish said, “I cannot pretend to have a noble answer to your question. I have not made the world better. I know that. But I’ve made it better for my people. Believe me, we deserve it. No other people has suffered like mine has.”
“I suppose that’s my fault also.”
Hanish waited a few moments after this, moving through the dance, his eyes furtive in a way Corinn had never seen them, canted off to the side. “Not you, but your people, yes. Your people gave birth to the Tunishnevre. They created it. On winning the throne through all manner of deceit-and if you think I’m treacherous, you should know your own blood, Corinn-Tinhadin turned on my ancestors and cursed them. He was a sorcerer. He had but to speak a thing to make it happen.”
“Santoth,” Corinn said. “You’re talking about the Santoth.”
Hanish nodded. “Tinhadin had a gift that perhaps you have as well, if you knew how to use it. He cursed the line of Mein with everlasting purgatory. No man of my family has found peace in death since-not one in over twenty generations. Our bodies don’t rot. Our dead flesh doesn’t burn. Our souls remain trapped within. We’re not alive, but we linger. Just linger.”
Several other couples had joined them in the open space. They twirled about in imitation of Hanish’s dance, their faces eager for the eye contact he denied them. Corinn thought he might change the subject for fear of being overheard, but he carried on without even lowering his voice.
“There is no greater curse than being forever trapped between life and death,” he said, “allowed neither one nor the other. Can you imagine what it means to be a spirit contained within a corpse for year after year, no end of it in sight? Death comes for all things. All things-humans and beasts, trees and fish-everything is promised release except my ancestors. Except me. This is what the Tunishnevre is. This is why it grows greater with each passing year. This is why your people make sure their own corpses are made into dust and cast out into the wind. Your customs remember the curse and fear it, even if you don’t. I find that’s often the way of things. Collective memory has a wisdom individuals cannot match. I’d like to find a way to free them so that they could truly find the peace and rest of death. Perhaps-should you ever find it in your heart-you could help me do this.”
“Me?”
Hanish nodded. “You may have an importance you have not yet imagined.” “Is it true that you speak with them?”
“In a manner, yes.”
“What do they tell you?”
They bumped against a couple that had gotten too close. Hanish stopped moving, dropped his arms, and spoke quietly in a way that made his voice an intimacy. “They tell me a great many things, Corinn. Right now they are telling me it’s getting too crowded here, Princess. They suggest that we retire.”
They spent the entirety of the next day together. Hanish seemed to have nothing to do except entertain her. On horseback they rode the coast road to the north, flowing over the contours of the plateau, sea to one side, manicured farmland stretching off to the west. His escort of Punisari guards kept a good distance behind them, well out of earshot of their conversation. For the first time they truly spoke without the possibility of anybody overhearing them. They did not, however, use the solitude to speak of anything of any significance.
At a famous spot they stood above a fissure in the rock face that channeled the power of the swells into a foaming eruption of spray. It came rhythmically, like blasts blown up from some undersea bellows. And after lunch they shot quail released one by one for their pleasure. The birds took to flight in a frenzy, the flapping of their wings audible even from a distance. By no means were they easy targets with a bow and arrow. Hanish made only one grazing contact with a bird; Corinn pinned five. There was something satisfying about making a hit: the way the bird’s wings stopped instantly, its course altered, the way it dropped from the sky, a dead weight that twirled with the awkward appendage of the shaft imbedded in it. Once her arrow passed directly through a bird, so smoothly it carried on into the distance and sank into the ground long after the bird had thudded down. Hanish applauded, and she found ready occasions to tease him, which clearly gave him pleasure.
When he proposed that they refuse the evening’s invitation to dinner Corinn did not object. They ate together at the far ends of a too-long table. The main course was scallops simmered in a chili sauce, topped with fragrant herbs. It was wonderful on the palate, a play of sweet and fierce that sent Corinn’s body temperature soaring. They drank a dry, pale wine that made Corinn suck her cheeks absently. Hanish imitated her; Corinn accused him of selecting the fare just to make her look a fool. He did not deny it.
Later, they shared a sweet liqueur on the villa’s main balcony. Below them the sea darkened as the sun passed from view. Before long the moon appeared and shone behind a lacy weave of thin clouds. The breeze carried a chill with it, but not uncomfortably so. Just enough to pimple the skin. Corinn stood near enough to Hanish to smell the scented oils that had been rubbed into his skin. She brushed her shoulder against his absently. Once she felt the electric shock of her breast grazing his arm. Did she intend such moments? Did she orchestrate them or had wine and liqueur-which had pleasantly blurred the edges of the world-made her so clumsy with her body as that? She was not sure.
Holding her small glass out to accept Hanish’s offer of a refill, Corinn asked, “What next? Will you offer me a draw on a mist pipe?”
The question was posed playfully, but Hanish rubbed the grain of the weathered balcony abutment nervously, looking for a moment like a child trying to leave an indentation with just the pressure of his fingers. “Never.”
“Did you bring me here to seduce me? Is that what this is all about?”
Blood rose to Hanish’s cheeks. Even his forehead reddened. She had never seen such an involuntary display register on his features before. “I brought you here to offer you a gift. I fear you’ll throw it back in my face.”
“I strike fear in you, then?”
“You fill me with trepidation, Corinn, in a way that nobody has before.”
Corinn looked at him, her face giving nothing away, waiting. Hanish motioned for her to sit beside him on a nearby bench, from which they leaned forward and gazed over the railing. They sat side by side, near enough that their legs touched at the knee.
“What if I said that this was all yours?” Hanish asked. “This villa, I mean. There is no reason you shouldn’t have the best of everything. You were a princess; you are still a princess. It confounds me that you won’t take me at my word on this. I imagine a day when you and your siblings will gather here and enjoy-”
“You need not buy me, lord. I’m your slave anyway.”
“Please, Corinn,” Hanish said. “This home belonged to a family called Anthalar. You knew them, yes?”
Corinn nodded.
Hanish admitted that he had met one of them himself. It was during the war, before a battle. He had given the young man death, he said. He had always regretted that death. He saw strength in him, pride. He reminded him of his brother Thasren. So angry, so intent on doing right for his people. But it could not have been any other way. Being where he was that day, the young man simply had to die. A life lived truly created regrets such as this. There was no way around it. He regretted the things done to Corinn also.