"My name is Erishen."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Erishen." She smiled and said something in what sounded like a skrayling tongue.
"I am sorry. I remember little of our language. My transition was… painful."
That at least was no lie. The nightmares still troubled him from time to time, even now that he understood what they meant.
"No, it is I who should apologise," she said. "I was so glad to learn that another of my kind was in the city, I just thought…" She sighed. "You are not her."
Mal smiled. "Not her, certainly."
She smiled back. "Have you ever been female? Or are you one of those who prefers to be the same sex each lifetime?"
"I cannot remember."
"No matter. Though you really should try being female one day. These human bodies–" she guided his hands to her waist "–are pleasingly soft."
Before he could reply she shifted on the chaise and straddled his lap, draping her hands over his shoulders. Her breasts were level with his eyes now, and the silken curves of flesh spoke to his need more eloquently than words.
"No," he whispered. "I am pledged to another." He wasn't sure why he said it. He and Coby had exchanged no betrothal vows; indeed she rejected him at every turn. And yet he had always hoped…
"Then you are fortunate." She looked away but did not abandon her seat on his lap. "My amayi is dead. I am the last of our kind here in Venice."
Relief washed over him. If she was telling the truth, at least he did not have to worry about dealing with two guisers at once. The one in front of him was handful enough. Two hands full, at least. He chided himself for this unseemly thought, but she was after all very beautiful and he had been chaste these many months.
"When I die," she went on, "I must take my chances and hope to survive childhood, unprotected and unguided. Have you ever died in childhood?"
Mal shook his head. An odd question anywhere else, but here with her it made perfect sense.
"I have, many times. Plague, most often, though once my careless nurse let me fall into a canal and drown."
She spoke so matter-of-factly, but Mal could see the pain and loneliness in her eyes.
"How long have you been alone?"
"One hundred and forty-seven years," she said without hesitation. "My amayi was assassinated by a political rival. A human." She spat out the word.
"When did you come to Venice?"
"Four centuries ago, near enough. We fled to England after the Birch Men tried to sell us as slaves, but that was not far enough. They were everywhere in those days. Then we found this little group of islands in a lagoon, in a forgotten corner of Christendom. And so we made our home here."
She began to unbutton his doublet.
"Why don't you take this off?" she murmured.
"The doublet?"
"That too."
He slipped his hands under her skirts and up her thighs, expecting to feel the soft folds of stocking tops and then bare flesh, but instead his fingertips encountered smooth silken fabric, loose but enclosing, like–
"Breeches?"
She smiled and stood up, raising her skirts to waistheight to reveal rose-coloured breeches, like a boy's. Like Coby's. Mal shoved the guilty thought aside. This was business, even if it promised pleasure.
"Why do you think they call them Venetians?" Olivia said. "Even we women wear them, to protect our virtue."
Mal parted his knees so that he could pull her between them, and began unfastening the points that held the silken breeches in place. At last the flimsy garment fell away, sliding over the graceful curve of her hips to the floor. Mal swallowed as his prick stirred more insistently. Olivia ran her fingertips over his groin, making him gasp, then she unbuttoned his slops and tugged the waist-string of his drawers loose. As soon as his prick was free she climbed astride him once more and caught his gaze with her own as she lowered herself onto him. Gritting his teeth in an effort at self-control, he pulled her closer and bent his head to her bosom, tongue slipping between bodice and flesh to seek out her nipple like a bee questing for nectar. Sweet Mother of God, it's been too long…
"Take this out, and we can be as one," she whispered, fingering the pearl in his ear.
He made an affirmative noise, and felt her deftly unfasten his earring one-handed. He tensed, expecting some kind of magical assault. Nothing, only the warmth of her lips on his earlobe, her teeth nipping the edge of his ear… With a groan of pleasure he surrendered to the moment.
The world dissolved around him, not into the darkness of the dreamworld he knew so well, but a sunny glade by a brook. He and Olivia twined naked in the grass, the sun warm on their flesh. Above them, red and gold leaves fluttered in the breeze. She rolled over on top of him, silhouetted against the light. Her hair was short and spiky now, like Kiiren's… Mal's stomach constricted as he gazed up at her. Greyish skin and slit-pupilled yellow eyes. A skrayling. He pulled away.
"No!"
"What is wrong, my love?" She looked around the glade. "This is your dream, not mine."
"What have you done to me? Have you been haunting me from afar?"
He closed his eyes, trying to force himself awake. He was in Venice, in Ca' Ostreghe, not in an imaginary forest built of Erishen's memories. He blinked and opened his eyes.
Olivia sat sprawled on the floor where he had evidently pushed her off his lap, her eyes bright with tears. Mal hastily fastened his breeches and helped her up.
"Forgive me, my lady, I am unaccustomed to–"
"No, it is my fault." She dabbed at her eyes and nose with a lace handkerchief. "I intruded upon your thoughts, seeking to know you better. It was a great discourtesy."
He helped her onto the couch. "How… How do you do that? Pass into another's mind without going through… the dark places."
"Practice," she said. "And discipline. Do you really not remember anything of your former life?"
"Only what you have seen," he replied cautiously. "I am as ignorant of our ways as a child."
She glanced up at him through dark lashes. "I thought you said you were pledged to someone. You have an amayi, to take care of you in the end times and beginnings?"
"Not really. I have human friends, lovers, but…"
"But they cannot know what we are."
"No."
"Then how did you become one of the Unbound?"
Unbound? Was that the guisers' name for themselves? "I don't remember much of anything. It was dark and…" And I was afraid.
She took his hand and squeezed it. "Next time it will be different. Next time I will be there for you, and you for me."
He looked down into her green eyes. The pain and loneliness in her voice was genuine, he was sure of it. What would it be like to walk down the centuries together, man or woman, turn and turn about as they pleased? It was an intriguing prospect, but one that would make him the enemy of his brother, and of Kiiren. And yet he had to learn to control this thing inside him or he would never have peace, with Olivia or with Coby.
"Please, my lady, will you teach me?"
"How to dreamwalk?"
"Yes."
She smiled. "Of course."
She took him in her arms again, not as a lover but as a friend offering comfort. Mal laid his head upon her breast. Dear Lady in Heaven, what am I doing?
But reply came there none.