Had he really never kissed Tisis on the lips?
It was as if without really realizing it he’d been holding on to that for Teia, holding back one intimacy because he’d given away so many others. To kiss Tisis—his wife, for Orholam’s sake!—seemed to finally let the latch fall closed…
The woman’s voice says, ‘You Guile men, so intelligent with your brains, and so cluelessly, hopelessly stupid with your hearts.’
My cheek is stinging from Zee’s slap. Give the woman this, even at fifty, she’s got arms and shoulders to make many young warriors jealous. I’m just glad she hit me with an open hand.
She says, “Our houses and our nations need heirs to knit together the Oakenshields and the Guiles, else this war will never die. We’ve talked this all through. We’ve agreed on this course. We had our chance, Darien, all those years ago, and we missed it through our own pride. It’s a closed door. Don’t make us both pathetic by banging on it. You’ve married my daughter to give us an heir. None of us liked that choice, but we all made it. Now you act like a spoiled child, not willing to pay the price of your choice, and making everyone else miserable with you. Darien, if you give my daughter a child but not your love, you’re treating her like a whore, a broodmare, nothing more than a receptacle for your seed. She’s my daughter, and I won’t have you treat her like that. You will treat her like a lady, like your wife, like a woman making the best of a bad situation, like a woman offering you not just her body but also her heart. If you spurn that, you never deserved my love in the first place.”
“But I love you hopelessly, helplessly.”
“The seeds of love may sprout where they will, but we choose whether to water them and give them light or to pluck them like weeds from the soil. We always have a choice.”
“This choice seems impossible.”
“Seems,” she says, her back straight and eyes pitiless.
And in the mirror of her eyes, I see how callow, how selfish, how self-absorbed I’ve been. This marriage puts me in the arms of a young woman, willing to give me children and love; it puts Selene with an older man who loves her not, and breaks her relationship with her mother at the same time; it puts Zee alone, with her daughter married to the man she herself loves. As a lover, how can she wish her daughter happiness with the man she herself once loved? As a mother, how can she not?
“Is he having one of his fits?” Ferkudi asked.
“No,” Kip said, coming back to the moment. “Just feeling ashamed for my stupidity.” Darien Guile had been more than fifty years old, and he’d loved Zee Oakenshield for more than three decades. When they’d finally made peace, she’d been too old to give him an heir, and he had no sons. He’d had to marry her daughter Selene. Darien had had an excuse for being an idiot.
Kip had been in love with Teia for a few months. Before that, he’d been infatuated with Liv Danavis. Before that, it had been Isa. Always, he’d panted after the safely impossible.
He walked to Tisis and looked down into her questioning hazel eyes, her face more open than he deserved, more beautiful than he could imagine. “Forgive me?” he said.
“Just this once,” she said, smiling.
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. She reacted like red luxin just waiting for a spark. Her body molded into his as if it had been made for it. Her lips were— Big Leo cleared his throat noisily.
—her lips were, oh, Orholam, her lips were the best—
“Hey! Newlyweds!”
“You were the one who reminded him of impending death,” Winsen said.
“‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,’ and all that,” Ferkudi said. “I mean, we do need to let the trap develop a bit. Maybe they have time for a quick throw behind those bushes over—”
“Breaker,” Cruxer said.
“‘Gather ye rosebuds,’ Ferkudi?” Ben-hadad said, incredulous. “You read poetry?”
“I’m a gentle soul!” Ferkudi protested.
“‘And lo! they saw that the ape could speak, and they were much amazed,’” Big Leo said under his breath.
“‘And sore afraid!’” Tisis said, finally pushing Kip back. It took him a moment to realize she was finishing the quote. He hadn’t read either poem. Aside from Master Danavis’s scrolls of military history and tactics and drafting—boy, did some things about the general seem obvious in retrospect—there had been few books or scrolls in Rekton, and fewer people willing to let a fat kid with pie-sticky fingers handle their treasures. His mother had kept books for years, despite her addiction. Finally, most of those had been sold to fund her haze smoking and self-loathing.
“You don’t look like a man who’s just been thoroughly kissed,” Tisis said.
“Mmm. Just putting on a good show for the boys,” he said.
“Come back,” she said. “And I’ll put on a good show just for you.”
“Oh my.”
There was something cosmically wrong with being horny when you left your wife to go to battle. There were traditions to follow, dammit: there was supposed to be a night of passion first, then the husband left deeply satisfied, carrying a nice memory of what awaited when he returned. It was a nice incentive to live.
Of course, unrelieved horniness with the promise of relief if he lived was a nice incentive, too.
Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! I would prefer the other incentive, sir!
Chapter 30
Stand straight and tall.
Done and done.
Maintain the dignity of the White.
That was probably a lost cause, considering she’d just kicked a man in the head in front of tens of thousands of people.
Speak loudly and clearly. Don’t talk fast because you’re nervous.
Karris took a deep breath. Say this for executing a man: it does rather overshadow one’s fear of public speaking.
She looked out over the many thousands of faces staring at her and the charred corpse of High Luxiat Tawleb and the huddled young luxiat Quentin at her feet. She had moved out from under the shadow of Tawleb’s corpse. She had fought enough to know that even a roasted body can drip fluids. Not something she wanted to wear.
But coincidentally, her move had arrayed her so that she stood in the center as judge, and the dead man hung to her left, and now to her right huddled the repentant young luxiat Quentin. It wasn’t an arrangement she had planned—Gavin certainly would have thought of it, standing here like the sign of the three, but then, he’d had a lot more practice with theatrics, and he was able to pull off symbolism effortlessly. Karris would simply have to muddle through, and accept luck when it came knocking.
“Luxiat Quentin Naheed,” she said loudly. “You have earned expulsion from the Magisterium for the violation of your vows. You deserve to be stripped of your title.”
He said nothing. He was already on his knees, and he simply slumped forward. Silent.
“Quentin Naheed, you have earned being disowned by your family for the shame you have brought upon them. You deserve to be stripped of your name. Quentin, you have earned exile from your satrapy for dishonoring the gift of your education. You deserve to be stripped of a home. And most of all… convict, you have earned death for the murder of Lucia Agnelli. You deserve to be stripped of your life.”
Two Blackguards came forward and lifted Quentin to his feet. He wasn’t weeping, nor did he have the ten-league stare of the doomed. He was staring toward Teia, who had pulled off her eye caps, and was meeting his eyes, with a resolute, calm strength Karris hadn’t known the young woman had. Almost too quietly for Karris to hear, Quentin was repeatedly whispering a breath prayer: “Orholam, give me strength for the path you’ve laid before me.”