“Trade is important for more than me,” Rodan pointed out. “My people benefit from open communication between the Realms and the cities therein. Visantium has spices and jewels, silks and nuts, among other things. Most of all, the way they train their warriors is unmatched. They do so well that almost half of my personal guard was made up of Visantium men and women.”
“They remained loyal to ye,” Pike said, wiping at the back of his neck with a kerchief. “Most of them abandoned the palace when Sebastian assumed power. They returned home.”
Rodan nodded. “That seems like them.”
They fell into a silence, Pike handing Maeve one of his blades to sharpen. Though Rodan’s conjured blades never needed it, Pike insisted proper care of weapons be a part of Maeve’s training. Rodan watched them oil the pommel and check the grip for chips or cracks before settling into sharpening the well-used blades.
As Rodan watched his two companions, a measure of peace settled over his shoulders. Whatever trial they would face here they would face together, as they had in Karst. The three of them were stronger together than apart.
Thinking of Karst made him remember the Nyx, and the danger the infestation meant. For all that they beat back the tide threatening the traveling city, Rodan suspected there would be more where that came from. The Nyx would not be so easily vanquished.
He remembered, too, the tang of Maeve’s power. The smell of the potion, and the way it changed as she pushed power into it. She showed him she was capable of such things before, when she traveled the Realms with Sebastian by her side.
She made a few small potions and spells while aboard the ship which led them to Karst, and some on their travels between there and Visantium, but they were little things. Things to help water burble out of the ground, or soothe sunburned skin, or show them the direction they needed to travel.
The potion of light that vanquished the Nyx? That was something else, entire. Something enormous. He watched her build it, saw her drip blood from cuts on her arm into the cauldron while she whispered words at the brew, followed her as she gathered the plants of the prairie and was witness to the building magic upon the air.
The spell workers and potion masters in the Fae court worked at their craft for centuries, and the products of their labor were fantastical things. They grew an ancient tree out of sapling in a matter of moments. They transformed the nature of beasts into the gruesome or the beautiful. People healed beneath their ministrations, or quietly slipped off into a peaceful death.
Yet none of those had been anything like what Maeve produced. Her magic was different. Wild and heady, it took his breath away and left him wondering, once more, how much might be hidden inside of her.
A human was capable of such things, but one able to harness such magics would be born once every few thousand years. The likelihood this is what she was seemed slim.
What if I’m wrong? he thought. What if we bonded, and she died within the next fifty years? The thought of life cut so short made him catch his breath.
Maeve finished with her dagger, passing it to Pike for inspection. He nodded and offered her a smile. She smiled back, yawned, and stood, stretching. “I’m going to bed. Rodan, would you make me some clothes?”
“Of course,” he said, rising with her. Pike glanced up at them, shrugged, and went back to his work. “Lead the way.”
Maeve’s room could be accessed through one of the doors off the private dining room. About half the size of their grand pavilion, it had wooden slats over the windows to keep out the sun and heat. A fireplace, a table with two small floor cushions, and a sizable bed festooned with piles of pillows and covered with sheer drapes to keep biting insects at bay during the night completed the space.
As soon as he closed the door behind them, Maeve whirled and pulled him to her, rising on her toes to capture his mouth with hers. Caught off guard for a moment, he let the kiss deepen and responded in kind, crushing her to him.
She made small noises against his lips, and he walked her backward toward her bed, hands exploring as he did so, grazing her breasts, her hips, her buttocks, her thighs. He followed her as he pressed her down into the bed, her legs rising to wrap around his waist. She raised her hips into him, and he cradled her head with his hands while they kissed, the warmth of her skin evident through the gloves he shifted to fine linen.
Her hands fisted in his shirt, pulling at the fabric to bring him closer.
He nipped at her bottom lip, and as she gasped, he moved his head lower, trailing bites and kisses down the deep V of her shirt before placing his mouth over the fabric and clamping down on her peaked nipple. Her chest rose as she hissed out, her fingers plunging into his hair. He worked her with tongue and teeth, her hips writhing beneath him and her breath coming in faster pants until she let out a low, sonorous moan.
He released her, raised his head, and could sense that swirling mess of colors infecting his green eye. Gods, did he want her! Wanted her more than for her body. Something here sang of the infinite, of pain and glory and wonder. He wanted to sink into that sensation and never come back out.
Rodan nuzzled at her neck and gave the sensitive flesh under her jaw a nip with his teeth. Her nails raked through his scalp as she murmured, “Please don’t stop. Please, please don’t stop.”
He did not want to. He wanted her as much as he wanted to breathe. Nowhere else in his long life had he felt so at peace, so right with the world, as he did in her arms. Yet, the challenge picked at the edges of his mind. The damned challenge Sebastian lay on him. Rodan did not want their first time together to be based on a lie.
His hand slipped down her body, lingering for a few moments on his favorite places, before pushing under the waistband of her leggings. He found her hot and wet, and she bucked into his hand as he began to press and swirl at the delicate bud of pleasure between her thighs. He covered her mouth with his, swallowing up each of her little gasping moans as he brought her higher. His thumb kept up the circling, rubbing rhythm while his other fingers plunged into her again and again.
Her hands smacked down on his shoulders as she cried out into his mouth, her nails digging down into his flesh and her hips rising clear off the bed, pressing into him.
He pulled away, both from her sex and from her mouth, looking down on her with his hair falling like a curtain around them. Her cheeks crimson, her chest heaving, and her lips wet and swollen from their kisses, she looked glorious.
“How do you do that?” she whispered. “Every time you touch me, it feels like you’re touching me for the first time.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Come here.” He rolled over, pulling her with him. She slid over his body, pressed against the length of him, grinding into where his own passions lay obvious against his leg.
“I want to keep going,” she whispered, the side of her face rubbing against his. “I don’t want to stop this time, Rodan. Please.”
“When we make love,” he said, “it will be in a bed we share, on a night where we can enjoy ourselves thoroughly. When you and I are not beholden to keep silent for fear of dishonoring our hosts.” He kissed the hollow at her throat, and she sighed. “And, when I regain my throne, we won’t leave my bedchamber for a week. I promise you that.”
She laughed a little, throaty and low. “I look forward to it.”
He stilled and ran a hand up her side until he cradled her waist. “Does that mean you’ll stay with me, Maeve? You won’t go back?”
She rose enough to stare down on him, her eyes searching his. “Of course,” she whispered. “I thought it obvious. I—I care about you. Immensely.” She licked her lips. “I don’t want to let you go.”
His throat fell tight, and he tried to swallow past it, but it stuck. He thought, for centuries, he was fine. That the Realms remained enough. That the throne was enough. He brushed aside the attentions of thousands of women. But the moment he stood face-to-face with Maeve, all those years ago, everything changed.
She asked
him what he would do for the throne. He said, Anything. I thought I would give up anything, do anything, to maintain that seat.
Yet something had shifted.
Tasked to win her heart, he lost his instead.
Maeve sighed and pulled him into another embrace. “Are you sure we can’t sleep together tonight? We can muss up my bed to look like I slept in it.”
He tried to shake himself from his thoughts. “It would be an insult to our hosts, my love. In any other city, in any other situation, it would take much more to keep me away from you, but here I must tread carefully.”
“Why?”
“Because what I do to one of his subjects, I do to Bairam. Keep that in mind, my beloved. What you say or do with one of them, you say and do to him. Bairam has eyes and ears everywhere.”
She wiggled in his lap. “And he doesn’t like me much, does he?”
“He doesn’t know you.”
“That’s a yes, then.” She smiled at him. “Not everyone is going to like me, Rodan. Not everyone is you or Pike.”
“Their loss,” he said. “Bairam will come around, eventually. He puts his family first in all things, and like we said before, he has been hoping I would marry one of his. He’s bound to be disappointed I have chosen another. I’ll go back to the palace and spend time with him and his family, and if you accompany me he’ll get the chance to know you better and see I’ve made the correct decision.”
She frowned, “What about what we’re supposed to do here, Rodan? Bairam said nothing about any potential issue the area is having, and I saw no evidence of anything wrong when we got here.”
Rodan sighed and pulled her closer. “Being by his side will probably provide us the insight we need to grasp what is wrong with the area—what challenge we must conquer.”
“Sometimes the problems are things affecting only the little guys,” Maeve murmured, stroking her fingers along the back of his neck. Goose flesh rose from her touch, and he closed his eyes as he leaned into her. “Sometimes the people at the top don’t care, because it’s not something which affects them.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
She breathed a long sigh. “Back in my world, there are a lot of things happening at this very moment—things that are immoral and wrong, yet the people with the most wealth and privilege don’t see it as a problem, because it doesn’t directly affect them. Stuff like world hunger, or immigration problems, or the persecution of minority citizens at home or abroad. Stuff that, if it affected them, would devastate them like it has so many others.” She lapsed into a short silence. “It’s so hard to bear, sometimes,” she whispered, “knowing of all the wrongs in the world, wanting to help, and not having the power to do so.”
Rodan witnessed some disturbing things while he walked Maeve’s world, but he gave precious little time to think on them since he was so focused on finding her and bringing her back. Since then, the cycle of traveling, resting, and training gave him little time to ruminate upon what he had seen. Now that she mentioned it, he remembered some of what their talking picture boxes—their televisions—had spoken of as he walked the homes and hallways of that human world.
“The Fae court is something like that,” he said, his words slow as he formulated his thoughts. “They have immense power, great magics, yet they do little to help those they deem beneath them. Is it much the same in your world?”
Maeve nodded against his chest.
“I tried to make sure things are fair in the Realms,” he went on. “That the people here are treated with dignity and respect. Could your people not do the same?”
“If they all came together, they might,” Maeve agreed. “But they won’t, because we’re too divisive as a species. Too quick to blame and hurt one another, to find barriers and ways to separate ourselves.” She shook her head. “It’s not important, not really. Not here.”
He covered her hands with his. “Of course it is important. We speak of your home world. What matters to you, matters to me.”
She gave him a thin smile but shook her head. “It’s okay, Rodan. I don’t want to talk about it now. It’ll make me sad. But I wanted to explain because it’s something that might be happening here. You may not see it as clearly, because your friend is here. I can’t say I understand it all, because last time we avoided Visantium and I do not know its customs. But I know what I saw.”
“What did you see?”
She smoothed down his shirt and tilted her head a little. “The sultan of Visantium keeps himself a fair distance away from the rest of his subjects. When the rich remove themselves like that, it’s because they’re trying to prove a point; they are separate from the rabble. The rest of us are ‘other,’ we’re not worth as much as they are. Trust me, I know the signs. I saw them every day.
“In the other Realms, in the other cities, the rich and those who have less live side-by-side. A grand house next to a modest one. You have capitalism in this society, yes, but it hasn’t run amok the way it has in my world.” She ran the backs of her fingers along his jaw line. “But here? Visantium feels a little more like home.”
Rodan frowned but leaned into her touch. “I’ll keep that in mind. I still think our best bet for finding out what is troubling the city will be to go to him tomorrow, to let him show us around.”
Maeve nodded. “Okay. After tomorrow, I want to go into the marketplaces and the neighborhoods. I want to talk to the real people of Visantium and see what’s going on with them, because otherwise I don’t think we’ll see the whole story.”
He kissed her palm. “I will go anywhere with you, my love.”
She grinned. “I’ll hold you to it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Maeve
MAEVE WOKE WITH A START, a sharp pain in her throat.
Maeve had a half-second of groggy wakefulness to notice the man leaning over her bed before she reacted. She rolled away, a moment before the knife plunged into the pillow where her head would have been.
Maeve slapped a hand to her neck and something warm and wet stung as her fingers grazed it. “Mother fucker,” she swore, rolling off the bed and rising, casting her gaze about for a weapon.
The man was dressed head to toe in black. A black sash covered his hair, nose, and mouth, leaving only a slit where eyes gleamed out of the shadows. Black, they seemed, but they might be any color in the dim light. Before she did much more than flick her gaze away from him, he moved, rolling forward to go over the bed to follow her.
Maeve screeched and fell backward, slamming her shoulder blades into the carved wooden wardrobe behind her. She ducked to the side and ran to the other end of the room as the man rose and slashed at her again, silent except for the whish as the knife sliced through the air.
She almost fell on the bundle of clothing that sat on the table near the window. The open window. She plunged her hand into the clump of clothing and her fingers closed around the hilt of the jeweled dagger Rodan conjured for her back on the path to Ishtem.
Maeve turned and slashed at the same time, the assassin leaping back before her blade grazed his belly. She cried out as she pressed after him, hoping Rodan or Pike would hear and come running. As much as she took care of herself, she could tell by the man’s quick movements and efficient gestures with his weapon that his skills were miles out of her league. She might keep fighting him for a time, but eventually she would become too predictable or make some stupid mistake, and then the creature would have her.
The man ducked and dodged, practically dancing as he backed away from her advances. Maeve stopped before she cornered him and skipped back herself, holding her blade at a middle guard and breathing heavy.
The man’s head bobbed up and down, and those glittering dark eyes assessed her. Checking her pose, the little movements she made as she awaited his next move and deciding exactly how much of a threat she posed. She had seen that move before. A cold chill leaked down her spine like running water—the sense that death drew closer, and there wasn’
t much she could do about it.
She hated that feeling.
Heart pounding, she backed up a little more, not daring to take her eyes off the man. She wished she had studied the room and its exits better, so she understood how far away she stood from one of her companions or from escape. She took a deep breath to scream for help when she heard racing footsteps, and a smile broke out across her face.
“You’re in trouble now, asshole,” she said, as Rodan and Pike both burst into the room from opposite ends, Pike breathing heavy but Rodan composed as always. Both of them were dressed in their sleep clothes, but each held a blade or two naked in hand.
The assassin glanced between the three of them, his arms up in guard position, before he suddenly relaxed, standing up straight and lowering his arms. With extreme calm, he reached into the back of his mouth, yanked, and bit down on something.
Rodan rushed forward.
The assassin dropped to the floor.
Pike cursed.
“What’s happening?” Maeve asked, her voice a little too high for her own liking.
Pike stepped further into the room, so he stood by her side. Still in her ready stance, she relaxed as he came near. “He bit into a poison tooth,” he explained. “It is an old Visantium trick, one the royal guard adopted long ago. It’s so no one can question you if you’re captured by the enemy.”
Maeve shuddered. She had heard of such things in her world, but they were only in books and television. Things spies did in the Cold War. She never thought she would see something like that for herself. “So, he killed himself? That quick?”
Pike nodded as Rodan straightened, a scowl on his face. “He’s dead alright,” Rodan said. “Before his body hit the floor if I’m any judge.” He glanced back at Maeve and his face paled a little. “You’re hurt,” he murmured, rushing to Maeve’s side. “You’re covered in blood.”
Maeve looked down. The neck wound must be bleeding badly for one side of her shirt to be so red with blood. She touched the wound and winced, pulling wet fingers away. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.”
Catching Pathways Page 28