“Is there anything else I can do for you, lady?”
Nialli Apuilana was silent a moment. She allowed her eyes briefly to close. Then she said, “Yes, a very foolish one, which I’m almost unwilling to speak of, it was so offensive. There’s a brother of yours, who is on guard duty at Mueri House — Eluthayn, I think that’s his name — he is your brother, isn’t he?”
“Eluthayn, yes. My youngest brother.”
“Yes. A few days ago, when I was paying a regular call there, this brother of yours attempted to interfere with me. There was an ugly incident.”
Curabayn Bangkea said, mystified, “To interfere with you, lady?”
Her nostrils flared again. “You know what I mean. He made a crude offer to me, this brother of yours. Without warning, without the slightest provocation, he approached me, he breathed his stinking breath in my face, he — he—”
She didn’t go on. Curabayn Bangkea felt a surge of alarm. Had Eluthayn really been idiotic enough to do such a thing? There probably was provocation aplenty, he thought, staring at Nialli Apuilana’s uncovered breasts, at her long silken thighs thickly thatched with sleek red-brown fur. But if Eluthayn had dared to put his hands on the chieftain’s daughter uninvited—
“He touched you, lady? He made overtures ?”
“Overtures, yes. In another moment he’d have been touching me too.”
“Yissou!” Curabayn Bangkea exclaimed, throwing his hands out to his sides. “The stupidity of him! The effrontery!” The guard-captain bustled across the room toward Nialli Apuilana, so hastily that he came close to clanging his helmet into the lamp fixture dangling overhead. “I’ll speak to him, let me assure you, lady. I’ll investigate fully. He’ll be disciplined. And I’ll send him to you to apologize in a proper way. Overtures, you say? Overtures?”
The lightest of quivers crossed her shoulders, a disgusted shudder, making her breasts tremble. She looked away from him. In a softer voice than she had been using, as though distress and shame were gaining the upper hand over anger in her, she said, “Punish him any way you see fit. I don’t want any apologies from him. I don’t want to set eyes on him again.”
“I assure you, lady—”
“Enough. I’d just as soon not discuss any of this further, Curabayn Bangkea.”
“I understand, lady. I’ll handle everything. I would not have you insulted in such a way, by my own brother or by anyone else.”
Did she soften a little, then? For the first time since she had come in she smiled. A faint smile, but a smile all the same. It could be that her anger was going from her, now that she had said what she had come here to say. Curabayn Bangkea thought he even saw gratitude in her eyes and perhaps something more than that: that something had leaped across the gap that separated him from her. He had seen that look often in the eyes of other women to whom he had offered aid, or other things. He was sure that he had seen it just then. Curabayn Bangkea was a fundamentally self-confident man. A great swell of confidence overcame him now, verging on boldness. Where Eluthayn, young and raw and foolish, had failed, he himself might very well succeed. This could be the fulfillment of his wildest fantasy. Unhesitatingly he reached for Nialli Apuilana’s hands and took them fondly in his.
“If I can venture to make amends, lady, for my brother’s unfortunate boorishness — if perhaps you would do the courtesy of sharing dinner with me, and wine, this evening or the next, I’ll endeavor to show you that not all the men of the house of Bangkea are such crass and unthinking—”
“What?” she cried, snatching her hands away from him as though his were covered with slime. “You too, Curabayn? Are you all insane? You denounce your brother for effrontery, and then you put your hands on me yourself? You invite me to dinner? You offer to prove to me that — oh, no, no, no, guard-captain, no!” She began to laugh.
Curabayn Bangkea stared at her in shock.
“Do I have to go around encased in armor? Must I assume that every soldier of the guards in this city will slobber and leer at me if I happen to come within his reach?” Her eyes were flinty again. She had become the image of her mother. Curabayn Bangkea shrank back before her fury as though he stood before the chieftain herself. Coldly Nialli Apuilana said, “Speak to Husathirn Mueri about the matter of the house arrest, if you will. As for your brother, I want him transferred to other duties far from Mueri House. Good day, Curabayn Bangkea.”
She went storming from the room.
He sat frozen a long while, dumbfounded by the thing he had so brazenly dared to attempt.
How could I have been so foolish? he asked himself.
Even though she had come in here wearing only ribbons and a sash. Even though she had given him that warm, melting smile of gratitude. Even though he had been overcome by the fragrance of her, and by the closeness, and by his own lunatic self-assurance. For all of that, he had ventured into territory he should never have permitted himself to enter. He wondered how much harm he had done to himself. He wondered if he had ruined himself. He trembled in unaccustomed fear.
Then anger, unfocused and wild, directed at the universe in general rather than at any specific target, welled up in him and swept the fear away. In a loud voice he called to his aide in the hall, “Get me my brother Eluthayn.”
The young guardsman came in wearing a cheerful, jaunty expression, but it faded the moment he saw the look on his older brother’s face.
Coldly Curabayn Bangkea said, “You moron, is it true you tried to rape the chieftain’s daughter?”
“Rape? What are you talking about, man?”
“She was just in here, talking about your interfering with her. Making overtures to her. She was furious with me, you simpering little bastard. I tried to calm her, and perhaps I did. But maybe not. By the time she’s done with this, she might bring me down as well as you. What in the name of Nakhaba did you try to do, anyway? Grab her rump? Stroke her breasts?”
“I made an innocent little suggestion, brother. Well, not so innocent, perhaps, but playful. There she was, just about naked, the way she goes around all the time, you know, getting ready to go upstairs to that boy who came from the hjjks, and I said something to the effect that I wouldn’t mind being shut up in a room with her myself for a little while. That was all.”
“That was all?”
“I swear to you by our mother. Just a little come-on, you understand, nothing serious — though I’d have become serious in a moment, let me tell you, if she’d gone for the bait. You never can tell, with these highborns. But instead she went crazy. She began to rant and scream. She spat at me, Curabayn.”
“Spat?”
“In my face, right here. A good healthy wad of it it was, too, that left me feeling filthy for hours. You’d think I’d offended her to the depths of her soul, the way she was raging. To spit at me like I was an animal, or worse than an animal, brother! Who does she think she is?”
“She’s the daughter of the chieftain, in fact. And of the chronicler,” said Curabayn Bangkea heavily.
“I don’t care whose daughter she is. She’s just a spread-legged slut like all the rest of them, brother.”
“Careful. It’s risky to slander the highborn, Eluthayn.”
“What slander? Is she such a model of virtue? She and that boy in Mueri House, they couple like rutting xlendis. The two of them go at it for hours at a time, brother!”
Curabayn Bangkea rose from his seat, grunting in surprise. “What’s that? What are you saying?”
“Only the truth. That day she spat at me, I went upstairs and listened at the door, to see if she had any right being so high and mighty. And I could hear them thumping around. On the floor, they were, like animals. I’m sure of it. And there was no mistaking the sounds they were making. I’ve heard it since, other times. You think Hresh would be amused, knowing she’s coupling with him? Or the chieftain, if she knew?”