Am I the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire any more? Thalia thought. Am I anything more than a woman with nothing of her own at all? But she smiled back at him. ‘As impressive as bedding an outcast Altrersyr Prince?’
He rubbed his eyes and stretched lazily, folding his arms around her. He seemed so different to the sad figure afraid to look at her, afraid of the men with him. So confident and careless. So utterly at ease with himself and the world. Certain of himself. Certain of her. The grief that had woken in her faded away again as quickly as it had come. He is so very beautiful, she thought. And not just beautiful. A feeling of peace in her looking at him, as she felt standing at dawn in her Temple listening to the Great Hymn, her hands damp and scented with flowers. Joy and certainty and clear calm.
‘Let’s just stay here all day. Have some food brought up to us, and a couple of bottles of something sweet to drink. Bread and honey and wine, ripe yellow peaches I can taste in your mouth when I kiss you. Get deliciously drunk and fuck for hours. We can just stay here together, the descendant of Amrath and the High Priestess of Sorlost, making love in a lumpy bed to the sound of goats bleating. In bright sunlight, and in the evening shadows, and in the dark by candlelight. And tomorrow we can wake up and do it all over again. It would make a change from killing people, anyway, which is all I seem to have been doing recently. And then the day after tomorrow …’ Marith smiled brilliantly, an idea suddenly catching him, lighting up his face. ‘And then the day after tomorrow we’ll start out for Ith. You’ll be the most beautiful woman at the court of Malth Tyrenae. I’ll have them dress you in gold and silver, with diamonds in your hair, and make them prostrate themselves at your feet.’ He kissed her again, full of joy and excitement. ‘And then after that …’
‘How did you get that scar?’
They lay curled together, the rich warm light of full morning bathing them both, making Marith’s body white silver and Thalia’s dark bronze. She traced her fingers over the mass of heavy scabs on the back of his left hand.
‘I told you, I killed a dragon …’
‘No!’ She laughed. ‘That’s too absurdly romantic to speak of.’
‘It wasn’t at the time.’ He laughed too. ‘And then some … other things happened. Mostly involving swords. Mine and other people’s. Stopped it ever healing.’
She leaned over and kissed his face. ‘What about the marks around your eyes, then? Did you kill a manticore? Or a cockatrice?’
‘No. No!’ She started back from him. He kissed her face in turn, filled with guilt and shame. ‘Don’t ask me about that. Please.’
She said, ‘A woman?’ But then she looked into his eyes, and her own eyes widened a little as if in fear, and she was silent.
‘Nothing interesting.’ He kissed the scars of her left arm and then her mouth. Her breasts. Her throat. The dark things receded. He kissed her stomach. The smooth soft curve of her hip.
And then there was a loud knocking on the door, and Rate shouting that they needed to get up, and that he knew exactly what they were doing in there but didn’t expect it would take Marith very long so he might as well get it over with, he just hoped Marith could properly rise to the occasion, if they knew what he meant. Thalia sat up with a cry. Curse Rate. Curse him and kill him and let the dogs eat his corpse. He should have died back in Sorlost.
‘It’s all right.’ Marith stroked Thalia’s face, helping her to pull her dress on and comb out her hair. He kissed her hands as she did so. Long, slim fingers, dark in her black hair … Utterly distracting. Mesmerizing, like everything else about her. Desire for her burned in him like nothing he’d ever known. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw her face, shining, brilliant with light. ‘He’s just jealous. He’s not an outcast Altrersyr Prince making love to the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire. And also the entire inn must know what we’re doing.’ He pulled on his own clothes. He’d ripped his shirt taking it off last night, he discovered. Thalia laughed at that. ‘We should go down to breakfast,’ he said, ‘before Rate breaks the door down trying to see you naked.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ith, with its forests and meadows and mountains rich in gold and quicksilver, where the old gods had walked before the world was changed.
Why it had not occurred to him to go there, now seemed a mystery to Marith. He was their kin, the only child of the king’s own sister. He was fourth in line to the throne, for gods’ sake! They would take him in and make him again what he was. He would be a prince in exile, building a court around him, claiming his rights as heir to the White Isles. But it somehow hadn’t crossed his mind, when the ship carrying him into exile dumped him unceremoniously on the quayside of a run down Immish fishing port and sailed straight away again, leaving him with nothing but the clothes he stood up in and twelve gold marks to his name, entirely and utterly alone for perhaps the first time in his life.
The fact that his father’s men had fed him enough hatha to poison a small town during the journey had possibly had something to do with it, it occurred to him. He might not have been thinking particularly clearly by the time they left him at the Skerneheh docks. Remembering how to stand up had been about the limit of his intellectual capabilities. And then … They’d given him enough money to break himself with and he’d more than obliged them, failing only to actually just drop dead in a gutter one night. Until Skie found him, and somehow death in battle had seemed marginally less unappealing than death choking on his own vomit. Everything after that had been happenstance. Chaos and confusion and still half-hoping he could just die on them. Blot it out. Make it all go away. And now here he was, somehow not only alive, but bedding the holiest and most beautiful woman in Irlast. That was probably worth something, in the balance of things.
They came down to breakfast hand in hand, to leers from Rate and several of the other guests. Marith smiled back at them. He held his head with a confidence he hadn’t felt for a long time, easy in himself, cheerful, almost without pain. The light shone in Thalia’s face, warming him. He was surprised the other men couldn’t see it. Or perhaps they did, for they watched her softly and their leers died away.
He sat down opposite Tobias, poured himself a bowl of smoky-scented tea. He was hungry and thirsty. Normal feelings. Even the physical pain of his hatha cravings seemed to have subsided for the moment.
‘We’re going to Ith,’ he said cheerfully.
Tobias looked at him. ‘We are, are we?’