Kushiel's Chosen (61 page)

Inside, outside; it mattered naught to me. Grasping my hand hard enough to hurt, Kazan strode into the house, drag ging me stumbling after him. I caught a brief glimpse of Marjopí's face as we passed, too astonished to be disapproving. Moving like the wind, Kazan hauled me into his bedchamber and slammed the door shut behind him.

"Here," he said, reaching for me.

"Wait," I whispered; I had regained a measure of composure and guided him to the bed. The room was dimly lit by a single clay lamp. He sat staring avidly at me as I stood before him and loosed the ties that bound my dress, letting it slide from my shoulders. Stepping neatly out of it, I knelt before him to remove his leather boots.

Undressing is the first of the arts of the bedchamber proper that one learns and it is one of the hardest to execute with grace, being fraught with awkwardness in a way that lovemaking is not. I did not practice it often, as an
anguis-sette;
still, I knew what I was about. When I had done with his boots, I rose to remove his shirt. There is a trick to it, sliding one's hands under the hem that they may glide over the flesh as the shirt is raised. I could feel his chest rise and fall with his swift breathing.

It had been a long time; a very long time, as I reckoned such things.

I daresay he took rather longer at it than I had expected. For all his impatience, Kazan knew the value of self-control, and he was no green lad to spend himself in one furious spurt. Conquest was his trade, and he plied it with women as well as enemies. Once inside me, he moved in long, steady thrusts, increasing his pace until it brought me to the brink of pleasure and beyond, then slowing until I whimpered with frustration and dug my nails into his back, pleading in D'Angeline. Only when I had been well and truly plundered did he take his own pleasure, his expression turning far-off and distant as the critical moment came.

When I awoke, the sun was well above the horizon and Kazan was gone.

Marjopí gave me a breakfast of dates and honey with fresh bread to sop in it, giving me the evil eye and muttering in Illyrian. I ate in the bright, sun-lit kitchen, with several house cats twining around the legs of the table, and listened to her until I could endure it no more.

"I understand, a little," I said in Illyrian. "I do not mean harm to Kazan. When Nikanor comes, I will go."

Thus was the pattern of my days and nights of waiting established. I have no words to describe my relationship with Kazan Atrabiades during that time for, in many ways, 'twas stranger than any I have known. By day, it pleased him to think himself my host, and not my captor; sometimes he played the role so well I daresay he forgot it himself, although I never did. By night, it was different, and some times I did forget that I was in his bed because I was a hostage, and not a Servant of Naamah.

And sometimes he was nearly like a friend, which was strangest of all.

Those were times when he was light of heart, and wanted to spin out the night with talk and love-play. It came to be a running jest among his men, to number the reasons why Kazan Atrabiades was short of sleep. "Kazan had fleas in his bed last night and could not sleep for itching," one would say to the others with a straight face. "Do not trouble him today." And the next day, another; "An owl kept Kazan awake all night; beware his temper!" And Glaukos would color, knowing I understood.

"I dream of my brother when he was a boy." Kazan in terrupted me, his voice grim. "He comes to me covered in blood, eh, and asks why I killed him!"

For a short eternity, he only glared, and then the anger went out of him with a shuddering sigh and he sat on the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands. I could barely make out the muffled words. "It was an accident."

Naamah's arts are not only for love, although ignorant people think so. I drew the story out of him that night like a thorn, piecing it together. The Atrabiades line was an old one and noble in Illyria; his father had been a captain in the Ban's Guard, with estates in Epidauro. A gently-bred wife, he had, and two sons; Kazan the warrior, his father's pride, and Daroslav the scholar, his mother's favorite. When he died in a skirmish, Kazan resigned his commission in the Epidauran navy to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Guard.

All of this was some ten years ago, and he but twenty-two or three years of age, a fierce, bright young warrior, rising quickly in rank until he had a unit of his own to command. It was the time of Cesare Stregazza's last great effort as the Doge of La Serenissima to subdue Illyria entirely and place a regent in Epidauro to rule it.

I poured him water from the pitcher on the bedstand; he drank it at a gulp and told me the rest: How the Ban's Guard had ridden down a Serenissiman contingent in the foothills, and learned of an assault to be launched on the armory in Epidauro in two days' time; how they had planned to con ceal themselves within, ambushing their attackers. And how Kazan had relented, and told Daroslav of their plan, that he might observe it from a safe distance.

By all accounts, Daroslav fought very well indeed, wresting a Serenissiman helmet and a full-body shield with the Stregazza arms from the first man he killed. Thus armored, he broke through the Serenissiman line and burst into the arsenal in the flush of first triumph, racing to take his place fighting at his vaunted brother's side.

By the time the ship had entered the harbor, we had all assembled on the beach to greet it. Though I kept my fea tures composed, my heart was beating like a drum. There wasn't much of a breeze, and it seemed to take forever for the ship to cross the quiet bay. I dashed the rain from my eyes repeatedly and struggled to conceal my impatience.

I waited in agony as he conferred with Nikanor, trying to read their conversation in their expressions and gestures. Ka zan was frowning, but he was not in a rage; Nikanor ex plaining. While they talked, men disappeared into the hold, reemerging with heavily laden coffers, which they bore onto the beach under Kazan's scowl. Everyone crowded round, straining to see or hear, and I felt jostled and anxious.

Presently Kazan and Nikanor disembarked, and Kazan ad dressed the villagers, sparing a brief glance in my direction. "The D'Angelines will meet our terms," he announced in Illyrian—I understood it passing well by now, though I spoke it poorly, "but they have claimed six men as surety for our bargain, until it be finished. As surety for their good faith, they send this." And he ordered the locks struck on the coffers.

Gold coins gleamed in the dismal light, fresh-minted D'Angeline ducats, stamped with Ysandre's elegant profile on one side, and on the other, the lily and s'even stars of Blessed Elua and his Companions. A full half my ransom— fifteen thousand in gold, all at once.