'More water in yours!" Danis snapped.
'Quiet, you. There's plenty of water in it.
The bird sniffed. 'I don't know why I bothered to warn you of sounds on the roof. Might as well have let him find you naked in bed. Save him so much bother.
'We didn't know who it was,'she said reasonably.
"How did you, ah, realize I was there?" Scortius asked, as she handed him his cup. She watched him take a long drink.
"You sounded like four horses landing on the roof, Heladikos," she laughed. Untrue, but the truth was not for him, or anyone. The truth was a bird her father had sent her, with a soul, never sleeping, supernaturally alert, a gift of the half-world where spirits dwelled.
'Don't make jokes," Danis complained. 'You'll encourage him! You know what they say about this man!
'Of course I do," Shirin murmured inwardly. 'Shall we test it, my dear? He's famously discreet.
She wondered how and when he was going to make his overture of seduction. She took her seat again, across the room from him, and smiled, amused and at ease, but feeling an excitement within her, hidden like the soul of the bird. It didn't happen often, this feeling, it really didn't.
"You do know," said Scortius of the Blues, not moving from his seat, that this visit is entirely honourable, if… unusual. You are completely safe from my uncontrolled desires." His smile flashed, he set down his cup with an easy hand. "I'm only here to make you an offer, Shirin, an agent with a business proposal."
She swallowed hard, tilted her head thoughtfully. "You, ah, have control of the uncontrollable?" she murmured. Wit could be a screen.
He laughed, again easily. "Handle four horses from a bouncing chariot," he said. "You learn."
'Wliat is the man talking about?" Danis expostulated.
'Quiet. I may decide to be insulted.
"Yes," she said coolly, sitting up straight, holding her wine carefully "I'm sure you do. Go on." She lowered her voice, changed its timbre. Wondered if he'd notice.
The change in her tone was unmistakable. This was an actress: she could convey a great deal merely with a shift of voice and posture. And she just had. He wondered again why he'd assumed she'd be alone. What that said about her, or his sense of her. An awareness of the woman's pride, at the very least… self-contained, making her own choices.
Well, this would be her own choice, whatever she did. That was, after all, the point of what he'd come to say, and so he said it, speaking carefully: "Astorgus, our factionarius, has been wondering aloud and at some length what it would take to induce you to change factions."
What she did was change position again, rising swiftly, a taut uncoiling. She set down her cup, staring coldly at him.
"And for this, you enter my bedchamber in the middle of the night?"
It began, more and more, to seem a bad idea.
He said, defensively, "Well, this isn't really the sort of proposal one would want to make in a public-"
"A letter? An afternoon visit? A private word exchanged during today's reception?"
He looked up at her, read the cold anger, and was silent, though within him, looking at the fury of her, something else registered and he felt again the stirrings of desire. Being the man he was, he thought he knew the source of her outrage.
She said, glaring down at him, "As it happens, that last is exactly what Strumosus did today."
"I didn't know that," he said.
"Well, obviously," she said tartly.
"Did you accept?" he asked, a little too brightly.
She wasn't about to let him off so easily. "Why are you here?"
Scortius became aware, looking at her, that she was wearing nothing at all beneath the silk of her dark green robe. He cleared his throat.
"Why do any of us do what we do?" he asked, in turn. Question for question for question. "Do we ever really understand?"
He hadn't expected to say that, actually. He saw her expression change. He added, "I was restless, couldn't sleep. Wasn't ready to go home to bed. It was cold in the streets. I saw drunken soldiers, a prostitute, a dark litter that unsettled me for some reason. When the moon came up I decided to come here… thought I might as well try to… accomplish something, so long as I was awake." He looked at her. "I'm sorry."
"Accomplish something," she echoed dryly, but he could see her anger slipping away. "Why did you assume I'd be alone?"
He'd been afraid she'd ask that.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I was just asking myself the same question. There is… no man's name linked to yours, I suppose, and I have never heard you to be…" He trailed off.
And saw the ghost of a smile at the edge of her mouth. "Attracted to men?"
He shook his head quickly. "Not that. Um… reckless with your nights?"
She nodded. There was a silence. He needed more wine now but was reluctant to let her see that.
She said, quietly, "I told Strumosus I couldn't change factions."
"Couldn't?"
She nodded. "The Empress has made that clear to me."
And with that said, it seemed painfully obvious, actually. Something he ought to have known, or Astorgus certainly. Of course the court would want the factions kept in equilibrium. And this dancer wore Alixana's own perfume.
She didn't move, or speak. He looked around, thinking it through, saw the wall hangings, the good furnishings, flowers in an alabaster vase, a small crafted bird on a table, the disturbing disarray of the bed coverings. He looked back up at her, where she stood in front of him.
He stood up as well. "I feel foolish now, among other things. I ought to have understood this before troubling your night." He made a small gesture with his hands. "The Imperial Precinct won't let us be together, you and I. You have my deepest apologies for the intrusion. I will leave you now."
Her expression changed again, something amused in it, then something wry, then something else. "No you won't," said Shirin of the Greens. "You owe me for an interrupted sleep."
Scortius opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again when she came forward and put her hands behind his head and kissed him.
"There are limits to what the court can decree. And if there are images of others that lie down with us," she murmured, drawing him to the bed, "it will not be the first time in the history of men and women."
His mouth was dry with excitement, unexpectedly. She took his hands and drew them around her body by the bed. She was sleek, and firm, and extremely desirable. He didn't feel old any more. He felt like a young chariot-racer up from the south, new to the glories of the great City, finding a soft welcome in candlelit places where he had not thought to find such a thing at all. His heart was beating very fast.
"Speak for yourself," he managed to murmur.
"Oh, but I am," she said softly, cryptically, before letting herself fall back onto the bed and pulling him down with her amid the scent, unmistakable, of a perfume only two women in the world could wear.
'Well, I'm grateful you had the decency to silence me before you-" 'Oh, Danis, please. Please. Be gentle." "Hah. Was he?
Shirin's inward voice was lazy, slow. 'Some of the time." The bird made an indignant sound. 'Indeed." "I wasn't," said the dancer, after a moment. 'I don't want to know! When you behave-" "Danis, be gentle. I'm not a maid, and it has been a long time." "Look at him, sleeping there. In your bed. No care in the world." "He has cares, trust me. Everyone does. But I'm looking. Oh, Danis, isn't he a beautiful man?