“Consider this,” said Morgan. “Running away and marrying Augustan aren’t necessarily your only two choices. Also, what Augustan said wasn’t a slip of the tongue. One doesn’t become a high-ranking legatus by being a fool. He said it deliberately.”
“What do you mean?”
Morgan set his wineglass on the table. “I’ve known men like this before. Augustan feels threatened because you outrank him. You are an emperor’s niece and adopted daughter; he is merely a legatus and soon-to-be provincial governor. Most men would be proud to make such a distinguished marriage, but Augustan is clearly frightened by a wife who is more powerful than he is. He wants to diminish your power by shaming you, so that you feel that you’re a fraud, that you’re not a true member of the emperor’s family.”
“I never thought of it that way,” said Rhianne.
“You can’t marry this man, because insults are only the beginning,” said Morgan. “Men of this sort can’t tolerate anyone else having power, especially their wives, and also their children. He’ll mistreat the children you’ll have someday, Rhianne. Have you thought of that? If you won’t stop this marriage for your own sake, do it for theirs.”
At a seaside cliff several hours’ walk from the Imperial Palace, Janto summoned a ball of flickering blue magelight, sent it through a series of orchestrated movements, and dismissed it. He sat and waited, shivering in the darkness. Beneath him the breakers rolled in, each one crashing against unseen rocks and retreating with a disappointed hiss. The ocean was a wall of blackness broken only by a field of stars that demarcated where water ended and sky began.
In the blackness, a blue light appeared. Janto froze, watching its movements carefully. Up, to the right, a circle. Left. Another circle. It was the answering signal of his spy ship.
Once he transmitted his message to the ship, it would need four to six days to relay its coded message to the next signal station and return. That was four to six days he would be stranded on Kjall. Also four to six days during which time, if he found a better piece of intelligence, he would have no way to transmit it. But given the number of lives he might save with the information Rhianne had given him, and its urgency—his people on Mosar might not hold out much longer—he’d decided he had no real choice but to send it and hope for the best.
He’d coded his message earlier in the day and had only to put his magelight ball through its paces: up and down, side to side, around in circles, winking in and out. Ral-Vaddis killed in action. Kjallans to purge Mosari ruling class as they did in Riorca. Relay immediately and return.
He dismissed his magelight and waited for the answering signal. It came, and, to his surprise, it was not a simple acknowledgment. The spy ship had intelligence to relay to him as well. He’d brought paper and a quill in anticipation of this possibility, and as the signals came, he transcribed them. Professional signalers could decode as they watched, but he wasn’t experienced enough for that. When the signal ended, he decoded it with quill and paper. Kal-Torres’s fleet sighted off Bartleshore.
Now that was interesting. Kal-Torres, his younger brother, was First Admiral of the Mosari Navy. It was tradition on Mosar that the king should command the island’s army while one of his close relatives commanded its navy. Janto, since he was a shroud mage, was in charge of Mosari Intelligence, a small command his father had hoped would prepare him for the larger command he would inherit later—if, after the war, there was anything left to inherit.
Kal-Torres, similarly, had been captain of a single ship in the Mosari Navy. But when the Mosari and Kjallan fleets had clashed at the beginning of the war, most of the Mosari ships had been sunk or captured, and the First Admiral, Janto’s uncle, had been killed in action. Kal-Torres had broken away and escaped with a small fleet of wounded ships. It was believed they were repairing and refitting at an unknown location. Kal-Torres was promoted to First Admiral in absentia. Apparently now his little fleet was back in action, although what good it might do at this late date, Janto could not say.
He signaled acknowledgment and dismissal to his spy ship, glad to have dispatched his intelligence but anxious about being stranded for a minimum of four days, and began the long walk back to the palace.
Rhianne’s attendants were just leaving when the morning breakfast tray arrived. She wasn’t usually hungry in the morning, but having gone for an early swim in the baths before getting dressed, she had worked up a bit of an appetite. She grabbed one of her Mosari books so she could study while she ate, watching as the last of the servants trailed through the door and left her blessedly alone. Then she sat.
A bit of movement caught her eye. Whiskers? Surely the brindlecat had not escaped her cage.
A strawberry and white ferret leapt onto her blue damask settee at the side of the room, chittered briefly, and curled up to sleep.
Rhianne stared at the ferret, her heart throbbing, all her muscles tensed for action. That was Janto’s familiar. Was Janto here? Perhaps he had sneaked into the room invisibly when the servants were moving in and out, but he hadn’t revealed himself. She looked slowly about the room, searching for signs of his presence.
“Janto?” she called softly.
No answer.
With shaky hands, she reached for one of the covers on her breakfast tray and picked it up. Then she shrieked as the cover was pulled from her hand and replaced on the tray.
The heavy door to her sitting room opened a crack, and Tamienne poked her head in. “Everything all right, Your Imperial Highness?”
“Fine,” called Rhianne. “Whiskers growled from her cage and . . . startled me.”
The door closed again.
She couldn’t see him, but there was no doubt about it. Janto was here. “What are you up to?” she whispered.
Still no answer. Then she felt a whisper-soft touch on the sides of her neck—Janto, still invisible. Her ghostly lover was behind her. She relaxed into the warm, invisible hands, letting them stroke her. Her hair rose, lifted by the ghost. She let him run his hands through it and feather it back to her shoulders.
“Gods, Janto,” she said. “This had better be you and not someone else.”
The hands left her, and she regretted having spoken. A quill and piece of paper lifted themselves from her desk in the corner and moved, seemingly of their own accord, through the air toward her. The paper landed on the table, and the quill wrote Alligator.
“I knew it had to be—” She couldn’t finish because his lips covered hers, and hands cradled her face. She moaned in pleasure and reached for her ghost, hoping to capture his invisible form in her arms, but the moment she made contact, he departed, leaving her lips tingling and her body craving more. She looked around the room, trying to guess where he had gone, but he made no sign.
“All right, so I’m not allowed to grab you. Come back.” She waited.
No response.
She got up from her chair, hunger entirely banished—hunger for food, anyway—and moved about the room. Where was he? She was tempted to fling her hands out and search for him as if they were playing some ridiculous children’s game, but she’d only look like a fool. She wouldn’t find him unless he wanted to be found.
Frustrated, she halted in the center of the room. If she couldn’t chase him down, could she lure him in? She unknotted the double belts of her syrtos and removed first one belt, then the other. She parted her syrtos, and—damn it, why did she have to wear a corset? She would never get the dratted thing off without help. Improvising, she reached into her corset and lifted her breasts up and out. She stroked the nipples that peaked out and closed her eyes, pleasuring herself, all the while imagining it was Janto caressing her.