‘Rate doesn’t …’ He stopped. ‘Come on then.’ Took her hand and whirled her into the twisting mass of figures. The dance was a fast one, half running, stepping out patterns as they crossed and re-crossed the beaten ground. The ribbon of dancers traced in and out of the torches, the light casting Marith’s face in crimson, Thalia’s deep gold. He began to laugh giddily, his breath fast as they went. Their feet pounded out the rhythm of his heart.
They danced for hours, not the descendant of Amrath and the High Priestess of Great Tanis but only a man and a woman enjoying themselves, swirling and stamping and jumping to the music’s roar. Marith drank strong, sour wine and local spirits that burned the throat until he was stumbling on his feet and tripping over his words and Thalia was laughing at him. The shadows were just shadows cast by torches. The people were just dancers, wild and alive.
Finally, Thalia was exhausted and Marith’s head was spinning and the torches were beginning to burn down. The celebrants were yawning, drunk and weary with aching feet. In the east, the sky was beginning to turn grey. Rate had disappeared on the arm of the woman he’d been leering at. Alxine and Tobias were nowhere to be seen. They went back to the inn, where Thalia helped Marith up the stairs, laughed pitilessly as she watched his fuddled attempts to remove his boots. They fell into bed laughing, Marith dimly aware it was him they were laughing at. He pressed his face into her hair and she kissed his forehead, her lips cool on his flushed skin. ‘That’s nice,’ he whispered muzzily. ‘Nice. Carin used to do that.’ His voice drifted. ‘We’ll have dances like that at Malth Elelane, when I’m crowned. When I make you queen.’
He fell asleep immediately, a deep calm sleep, his face soft and weary. Thalia lay a little while listening to his breathing, watching him in the faint light.
Nobody in the village woke early the next morning. It was almost noon by the time Marith wandered downstairs, to find Thalia sitting talking with Alxine at a table in the inn’s courtyard. He frowned at the sight of Alxine speaking to her, her face animated and smiling, honey and breadcrumbs on her lips.
‘Marith!’ She turned to him and his heart leapt at the way she spoke his name. She offered him bread, poured him a cup of water from a stone jug. Brackish and dusty, warm in the sun. He sat down on the wooden bench next to her. Put his arm possessively around her waist.
‘You came down without me,’ he said stiffly.
‘I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so peaceful.’ She giggled at Alxine. ‘And I needed some fresh air. My Lord Prince reeked of stale alcohol and was snoring fit to wake the dead.’
Marith frowned. ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked. Didn’t like it, her talking to Alxine like this. Sour in his head. And something else pulling at him, a vague disquiet at the back of his mind, blurred by sleep and alcohol. There was a strong desire in him just to start drinking again and not stop for the rest of the day.
Alxine said, ‘Tobias is seeing to the horses. Rate is …’ He and Thalia both laughed. ‘Rate is upstairs, trying to avoid last night’s remarkably well-built conquest’s remarkably well-built husband.’
Their laughter softened him. He kissed Thalia, leaned his head on her shoulder. ‘Some things, you’ll have to get used to, Thalia, my beloved. You have possessed my heart and my soul, my love, but even for you, oh most beautiful, the sun will not rise again at dusk. Although that may in fact refer to something else. And don’t ever suggest I snore.’
‘The Altrersyr do not snore, then?’ said Thalia in a very solemn voice.
Marith laughed himself. ‘Be grateful my aching head is soothed by your sweet voice, my lady. I think you forget to whom you speak. The Altrersyr do not take such insults lightly. My father has killed men for less. No, we certainly do not snore.’
Thalia glanced around her and then said sweetly in his ear in Literan, ‘The High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying may insult whosoever she chooses. Especially when they still smell like a distillery.’
‘I’m sure I do, oh, most beautiful.’ Marith closed his eyes. ‘Drink, dance, enjoy yourself, you bade me. Can you be so cruel as to condemn a poor slave for obeying his mistress’s every command? And how you come to know what a distillery smells like, I shall refrain from enquiring.’ The world behind his eyelids was golden in the sun. Her hair tickled his face. He could almost hear her heartbeat and the blood pumping in her veins. She began to sing one of the songs from the previous night, very low and quiet, so gentle he could not make out the words, only the dull soft drone of the tune. Her voice was like honey. He dozed on her shoulder, his whole world her scent and her voice and the sunlight on his upturned face.
They discovered what the festival had been for the following afternoon.
The village was quiet and oddly strained, a strange hesitancy hanging over the place, as though the carnival of the previous night had been a beginning, not an end. ‘They are waiting for something,’ Alxine said thoughtfully. Thalia only shook her head. ‘Nothing like this is done in Sorlost,’ she said when Alxine suggested it must be some part of the festival. ‘It is like … It is like the moment of twilight. I don’t like it.’
It is like the moment before I kill a man, Thalia thought. It was not that the people were not about: they bustled in the main square, clearing away the rubbish, setting things straight, sweeping the ground clean. Children danced around, tired-eyed and still overexcited, running and shouting and getting underfoot. But there was a feeling in the air like a gathering storm, faces raised sometimes to the sky, muttering something only to be told to hush.
Tobias came in after a while, dusty from attending to the horses. The stable boy, Thalia gathered from his mutterings, had also enjoyed the festivities rather too much. Tobias stamped his hand down heavily on the table when he sat down, calling out loudly for more food. The noise woke Marith, who sat up groggily and almost fell off the bench.
‘Good morning, Tobias.’
‘It’s well after noon,’ said Tobias coldly.
Marith shrugged. ‘Ah, well. Nothing important happened this morning anyway.’
The innkeep’s wife came in with fresh tea, more drinking bowls, a plate of bread and curd cheese. Tobias ate hungrily. The woman smiled broadly at Marith, who smiled back at her, sighed, and poured himself a bowl of tea.
‘Today, is it, you’re leaving?’ the woman asked Marith. She glanced up at the brilliant blue sky. ‘Good day for it.’
‘Today, and as soon as possible,’ Tobias said shortly.
Marith winced.
Alxine came to join them again, having gone off for a wander around the village.
‘We’re going,’ Tobias told him as he sat down. ‘Get Rate while I sort out the supplies.’
They met a short while later outside the stables. Marith saddled up his horse then helped Thalia carefully into the covered back of the cart, arranging cushions and blankets for her. She yawned widely.
‘Oh, I’m so tired. I should be used to staying awake all night.’
He wrapped a light blanket carefully over her, even though it was hot. A caring thing, he thought vaguely. ‘Sleep for a while. I’d join you, if I could.’
‘You’ve been sleeping all morning.’