“This isn’t a humiliation.”
“No?”
“No, you’re here. And anyway, it isn’t over. We won’t die here. The people who started this will answer for it.” He said it calmly and with confidence. He wasn’t bragging, just saying what he saw. “So. Who was this man you were with? When you saw the Grave?”
“Komme Medean’s son,” Cithrin said, and took another mouthful of wine. “It’s hard, I think, for Komme. He built the bank from a small concern that his grandfather had started, and he made it into this grand system that covers the world. A lot of it, anyway. And then he had a son who doesn’t understand anything.”
Geder’s laughter was warm and rich and oddly cruel, as if hearing her casually insulting Lauro pleased him.
“His daughter’s smart, though,” Cithrin said. “Paerin Clark’s wife. If Komme wants to see the bank last another generation, he’ll give it to her.”
A gentle scraping announced the return of the prince, and the scattering of stones fell to the ground.
“How was it out there?” Geder asked.
“There was light,” Aster said. “And I heard some men on the road. They sounded angry.”
“Did they see you?” Geder asked a moment before Cithrin could.
“Of course not,” Aster said, and she could hear the grin in his voice. “I’m the prince of ghosts. No one sees me.”
That night was cooler than usual, though she couldn’t tell any difference from the steady depth of Aster’s breath. The wine had blunted her anxiety, but she hadn’t drunk all she had to hand. One more skin lay on the ground just out of reach, and lying in the darkness beside Geder, she thought about reaching for it. But the fact that she wanted it was its own argument against.
The combination of enforced quiet and fear were, she knew, an invitation to overindulge. If she were honest with herself, she had probably already missed an opportunity somewhere in the dark nights with Geder and Aster simply by letting the wine blunt her. On the other hand, sleeplessness wasn’t a very good way to stay alert and focused either. Somewhere in the middle there had to be a balance, a way to calm her nerves without softening them. She didn’t want to grow old and find herself one of the wasted, bleary-eyed drunks living in the taprooms. The potential was in her, and so she lay in the darkness and didn’t reach for the wineskin.
Geder rolled against her, his arm falling across her belly, his face turned to the place between her shoulder and the floor. He was warm, at least, and her mouth didn’t smell better than his. The pattern of his breath told her that he was pretending to be asleep, and she let herself smile at that. It took him time to work up his courage, and she wasn’t at all surprised to feel his hand cupping her breast.
She closed her eyes, thinking through what she ought to do. No, more than that, what she wanted to do. Aster had already proved that he could sleep through hours of candle-light conversation, and even laughter. But what was the protocol about sex with a king? Or a Lord Regent, anyhow. She could refuse him, and her guess was that he would take the rejection gracefully and with apologies. Or at least that’s how she expected Geder to treat Cithrin. If he chose to react as Lord Regent Palliako, that was something else. It would be interesting to know which of his different roles he adopted, but the price of finding out might be unpleasant.
Almost as if at a distance, she noticed her own breath growing shallow, which she thought was odd. And, unfortunately, it removed the option of feigning sleep herself. Surely she couldn’t want him. Could she? She’d only had one lover before, and she remembered reacting this way to his touches, more or less. She shifted her mind, by conscious effort attending to her body. The weight and warmth she found was surprising. Geder’s hand had shifted, his fingers pressing tentatively against her belly, inching slowly down, and instead of awkwardness or discomfort, she mostly felt impatience that he was being so hesitant. Either he was doing this thing or he wasn’t; hovering awkwardly at the edge was undignified. What was he going to do? Pretend his hand had just landed by chance? Oops, how did that get there?
Her laugh was unintentional and deep in her throat. He went perfectly still, like one of the cats trying to sneak past in the dark, pausing in fear.
This was a bad idea. On every level, this was a terrible, awful, awkward, improbable impulse, and the right thing to do was turn to him and tell him so, and make whatever peace they could salvage from having come so very near to catastrophe together. She shifted, her betraying body moving to keep his hand against her. She opened her lips to speak, but somewhere along that path, she was distracted, because instead she kissed him.
Oh dear, she thought as his surprise faded and his mouth softened against hers. That didn’t go well at all.
His hands rose to her, and his breath was shuddering. He was trembling.
“I…” he whispered. “I haven’t…”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I have.”
Cithrin!”
The whisper was like paper tearing. She struggled up from a sleep so profound that she didn’t remember at first where she was or why opening her eyes didn’t have any effect.
“Geder?” she said.
“Cithrin, it’s me!”
Not Geder. Not Aster either.
“Hornet?”
“Do you have a candle?” the actor asked. “It’s near midday and I didn’t think to bring one.”
“No,” she said, sitting up. Oh God, where was her robe? She patted the dusty earth around her quietly, and Geder found her hand, pressing a familiar wad of cloth into it. “No, we used our last one yesterday tracking down Drakkis Stormcrow. Why are we whispering?”
She used the pause to pull the garment over her head.
“I don’t know, now you put it that way,” Hornet said. “Just seemed a whispering sort of place.”
“We talk here too,” Cithrin said.
“We do,” Geder agreed.
Aster chuckled from somewhere off to her left. She fit her arms into the sleeves. There. Decent now.
“I came to call you back,” Hornet said. “It’s over.”
“What’s over?” Geder asked.
“Battle of Camnipol,” Hornet said, rounding the vowels with an actor’s pride. “Dawson Kalliam’s in the gaol and his allies are falling over themselves looking for someone to blame or apologize to.”
“Kalliam surrendered?”
“Odderd Mastellin turned on him. Anyway. Thought you’d want to know, yes? Get yourselves out of here and back to the world.”
“Of course,” Geder said, and she heard the complexity in his voice. Pleasure and regret. The ending of something. “Back to the world.”
Marcus
All through the long night’s ride, Marcus had looked for his escape. He’d strained at the ropes wound around his wrists and ankles. He’d tried gnawing at the leather thong that held the cloth in his mouth. He’d rolled to the limit that the ring and chain allowed. When they came to a stop—the first birds singing up the dawn—his only achievements were that he’d made the bones of his wrist pop painfully and the blood from his broken nose was spread more or less evenly throughout the cart.
The voice that hailed the carter was familiar, but he didn’t place it until the man rose up beside him and smiled with a mouth overfilled with teeth.
“Yes, this is the man,” Capsen Gostermak said, shaking his head sadly. “Good morning, Captain Wester. I’m sorry that we have to meet again under these unpleasant circumstances.”