"I want so much to believe you," she cried. "But I dare not."
He gave a quick, one-sided smile. "If that is the case, I can say nothing, do nothing that will end your apprehension." He laid his hand lightly on her arm. "Yet I want you to believe me."
She sighed. "If I knew someone who could tell me you had treated her well, that would be different."
"There are such women, but none of them are here." He laughed sadly. "When we reach Alexandria, you can meet one."
"If we reach Alexandria," she said. "That is a long way across the ocean, you have said."
"Beyond Damascus," Sanat Ji Mani agreed, choosing a city Timur-i had sacked.
"Do you think we will reach it?" She snuggled closer.
"Yes, I do. It is a direct journey across the sea when we are aboard a ship. That is not a difficult matter to arrange: once we reach Chaul, I will be able to get passage aboard one of my ships, or one of Rustam Iniattir's ships, and once the Mameluke Empire is reached, it will be an easy thing to cross to Alexandria." He did his best to minimize the dangers they might encounter; Tulsi was frightened enough without being told of storms and pirates on the ocean, and the desert and thieves in Egypt.
"I know it is never an easy thing to travel— I have been with Timur-i's army most of my life." She tried to break away from him, and although he released her arm, she could not bring herself to move. "It is just that I am lonely."
"Ah, Tulsi Kil," he said tenderly, "so am I."
"Are you? You have said as much, but I wonder how you can be." She sighed and relaxed.
"Why do you say that?" He looked directly at her.
"Because I cannot see how you could endure your loneliness, if you are truly lonely. How can you stand to live?" She waited a moment. "I am so lonely I feel as if the flesh has been stripped from my bones. If you care for those you say you love, and they are lost to you, how can you bear the anguish of it?"
He answered indirectly, recalling his time in the Land of Snows, not quite two centuries ago. "Do you know what it is to be in the high mountain passes, when the wind whips the snow so that it stings and your face is numb— when you know you must continue to move, no matter how arduous movement may be, or die of the cold?" He saw her nod. "My loneliness is like that, when I admit it to my life. Most of the time, I concentrate on the immediacy of things— staying dry, or keeping my life in order— but the isolation is never gone."
"But that is
terrible
," she exclaimed. "To have so many losses, that only increase: how can you continue on?"
"If I value those I love, I do them no honor by turning my back on the life they shared with me." He shifted the arm she was lying on so he could touch her shoulder. "When you perform, you honor your mother and father, do you not? Well, living is how I value those I have loved and still love, though they are lost to me."
She looked past him, staring at a point beyond the walls of the abandoned building. "What if I want to be with you only because I am lonely, and I am afraid only that I will be lonely still?"
"I have known less… reasonable explanations for seeking love," he told her thoughtfully, Csimenae and Heugenet both coming to mind. "Do you want me to persuade you to change your mind so that you can be angry if I disappoint you? I will not. Do you want me to tell you I can end your loneliness? I cannot."
Tulsi made a sound of distress. "Yes, I want you to change my mind, and in part so I can blame you for doing it." She moved suddenly, moving her hand from his chest to his head and pulling him down to kiss him directly on the mouth. "There."
"It is a beginning, if you want to begin," he said to her.
"And you: do you want to begin?" She still held her hand tangled in his slightly waving hair, keeping his head a finger's width from hers.
"Yes, but not against your will to begin," he answered, studying her demeanor; he perceived her doubts and attraction together.
"Here, in this place, I do want to," she said, growing breathless. "I may not want anything other than your company at another time."
"That does not bother me," he said, compassion suffusing his features. "I want what you want, no more and no less."
She was about to challenge him again when she sighed abruptly and tugged his hair so she could kiss him again; this time it lasted longer, and became sweeter as it went on. When she moved back, her face was flushed and her eyes were huge. "That was… not what I expected." She let go of his hair.
"And what did you expect?" he asked, his compelling eyes fixed on hers.
"I… am not sure. Nothing like… what you did." She laid her hand on the side of his face. "I felt… awakened."
Sanat Ji Mani smiled slowly, with deep delight. "If that is what you felt, what can I be but beguiled." He lay still, sensing her need for consideration.
"You are not going to press your advantage?" She sounded confused again.
"I was not aware that I had an advantage," he responded. "It seems to me that I am being tested."
"Are you angry?" she asked urgently.
"No," he said, and knew it was entirely the truth. "I want you to be certain of your decision, whatever it may be, and whenever you may make it."
She levered herself upward so that she could stare down into his face. "I would be furious, to be tested in this way."
He chose to give her an honest answer. "There was a time when I would have been vexed, but that was more than fifteen hundred years ago."
"Are you really so old?" She was studying his face. "You do not look much more than thirty-five or forty."
"I was thirty-three when I came to this life, a mature age then. My family was known for being long-lived." He fingered her hair.
"Were they vampires, too?" She had trouble speaking the word.
"No. They were not." He paused, startled at how keenly he could still feel their loss. "It would not have mattered if they had been."
Without warning, she lowered herself to kiss him again, this time letting the kiss evolve from easy contact to something much more profound, more sensual and complex, filled with promises and hesitation. When she pulled back this time, she was trembling. "What do you want of me?"
"What you seek for yourself," he answered, the incipient joy in his face mirroring her own.
She bit her lower lip. "I do not know what that is."
"Then I will help you to define it, if you want to," he said, warmth in his voice and his eyes.
Tulsi sank down on his chest. "If I become pregnant, I cannot perform, and then we will truly be beggars." She paused. "I was pregnant once; Djerat gave me herbs and it was over. She cannot give me herbs now."
"You will not become pregnant," said Sanat Ji Mani, enfolding her in his arms, wanting to shield her from her experience.
"All men say that. Djerat warned me many times how men lie, and how women must bear the consequences. She was right." She touched his face where the beard began. "Men will do or say anything when lust is on them."
"Many will do," he agreed. "But I do not. Do not fear me for that, Tulsi; there is no reason to, I give you my Word: I will not make you pregnant because I cannot make you pregnant. Those who are undead cannot create life." He brushed her hair out of her face, still holding her close to him.
Tulsi contemplated this for a short while. "That may be true," she allowed at last, realizing as she spoke that she wanted to believe him, to be convinced of his good intentions and her own safety. "But how can you achieve what you need if you do not—"
He laughed once. "There are many ways to find release, not just the one," he answered her. "Those of my blood take the pleasure they give, nothing more and nothing less. What you have, I have. If you want to try, and dislike it, that will be the end of it."
It was her turn to laugh, with an edge in the sound. "You will not demand again what I have given once?"
"No, if it is not what you want," he told her somberly. "There would be no reason to do it."
She scrutinized his features as best she could. "If I tell you that you must not go on, will you stop?" Before he could answer, she went on, "You will say yes in any case, will you not?"
"I will say yes because it is true," he replied.
"Which is either the truth or a lie, and I cannot know which unless I—" She moved atop him again. "How long will it take?"
"That depends on you," he answered. "It will be as long or as brief as you wish."
"Truly?" She waited for him to speak; when he said nothing, she went on. "All right. You may begin, but if I tell you to stop—"
"Then I will stop," he promised her, and drew her down into another kiss, one that opened her lips and evoked sensations she had not known before. As he kissed her, he caressed her shoulders, then
her back, and finally her breasts, his small hands gentle and knowing, unhurried in their elicitation of pleasure.
"Oh!" Tulsi cried softly as she broke from their kiss; Sanat Ji Mani at once stopped what he was doing. "No. Go on," she whispered. "I will tell you to stop when I want you to stop."
He resumed his fondling, then, as his hands moved lower, his lips took up what his fingers had left off, teasing at her nipples until they were hard as buttons. He took his time, searching out the hidden passions of her flesh until she was trembling.
"You can do what you want now," she said, catching her breath in her throat.
"No, not yet," he said.
"Why not?" She pushed back from him on quivering arms.
"Because you are not ready yet," he said, continuing his summoning of her responses; gradually her tension gave way to a rapturous languor. He opened the sea-scented folds at the apex of her thighs and a jolt of satisfaction went through her.
"You can—" She was about to say
fi
nish
when his fingers drew a second and more intense response that plucked the word from her thoughts and left her gasping in ecstasy as her body found its first astounding spasm of fulfillment.
"Now you are ready," he murmured as he moved to nuzzle her throat, and they lay with amplectant limbs, and blended gratification, through the last of the wet afternoon; they neither noticed nor cared when the ceiling sprang another leak.
* * *
Text of a letter from Atta Olivia Clemens at Rome to Rogerian in Alexandria; written in the Latin of Imperial Rome.
* * *
To my most highly regarded friend and the loyal companion of my treasured Sanct' Germain, the hasty greetings of Atta Olivia Clemens, from Sanza Pari, three thousand paces beyond the walls of Rome.
I have only just returned here from Rhodes, or I would have answered you sooner; I hope the delay has not inconvenienced you. I must tell you that I am leaving tomorrow for France; I have learned that an ambitious Baron is attempting to take over my horse-farm near
Orleans, claiming the exigencies of war make it necessary. I intend to stop him.
Yes, I agree with Avasa Dani, Sanct' Germain is as alive as he has been for thirty-four centuries, and although he may be in danger, he has not suffered the True Death. I also agree it is infuriating of him to go off on these journeys on his own, with never a word to anyone. I have never liked his determination to be so far from his native earth without companions or protection. It is most thoughtless of him to put his friends through so much worry on his behalf, going to outlandish places and not informing us of his location or condition. He is a most exasperating man, to be sure. When he returns, you must inform me so that I can give him my thoughts on the matter. To be forever fretting about my oldest and most cherished ally is not something that delights me, and so he should be aware.
There is more disapproval of Wenceslas of Bohemia, and a movement to depose him. The Holy Roman Emperor, it seems, ought not to be a spendthrift sot who passes his time in drunken revels instead of managing the Empire. I cannot suppose that Wenceslas will meekly submit if he is challenged. This may yet lead to internal wars in the German States, which would be most unfortunate, coming at a time when the world is finally beginning to recover from the three Plagues. I mention this in case you should decide to travel into Italy or north, into German territories. This may turn out to be a difficult time in that part of the world.
If you come to Rome, you may, of course, stay at Sanza Pari, whether I am here or not. I will inform Niklos Aulirios to make arrangements for you, in case you have enough of Alexandria and want to wait for Sanct' Germain here rather than there. I confess it would be reassuring to see you again— a reminder that we are all capable of surviving no matter what the world throws at us. You may even bring Avasa Dani if you like. She will be welcome here, if she decides to come with you.
I will have this carried to Ostia today and sent aboard the first reliable ship bound for Alexandria. You should receive it within twenty days, perhaps sooner if the weather is favorable. Send word to me in Orleans if you have anything to impart, as I will send word to Alexandria until I am notified you are not there anymore.
