Spy's Honor hat-2

by Amy Raby

  The heavy door to her sitting room opened a crack, and Tamienne poked her head in. “Everything all right, Your Imperial Highness?”

  “Fine,” called Rhianne. “Whiskers growled from her cage and . . . startled me.”

  The door closed again.

  She couldn’t see him, but there was no doubt about it. Janto was here. “What are you up to?” she whispered.

  Still no answer. Then she felt a whisper-soft touch on the sides of her neck—Janto, still invisible. Her ghostly lover was behind her. She relaxed into the warm, invisible hands, letting them stroke her. Her hair rose, lifted by the ghost. She let him run his hands through it and feather it back to her shoulders.

  “Gods, Janto,” she said. “This had better be you and not someone else.”

  The hands left her, and she regretted having spoken. A quill and piece of paper lifted themselves from her desk in the corner and moved, seemingly of their own accord, through the air toward her. The paper landed on the table, and the quill wrote Alligator.

  “I knew it had to be—” She couldn’t finish because his lips covered hers, and hands cradled her face. She moaned in pleasure and reached for her ghost, hoping to capture his invisible form in her arms, but the moment she made contact, he departed, leaving her lips tingling and her body craving more. She looked around the room, trying to guess where he had gone, but he made no sign.

  “All right, so I’m not allowed to grab you. Come back.” She waited.

  No response.

  She got up from her chair, hunger entirely banished—hunger for food, anyway—and moved about the room. Where was he? She was tempted to fling her hands out and search for him as if they were playing some ridiculous children’s game, but she’d only look like a fool. She wouldn’t find him unless he wanted to be found.

  Frustrated, she halted in the center of the room. If she couldn’t chase him down, could she lure him in? She unknotted the double belts of her syrtos and removed first one belt, then the other. She parted her syrtos, and—damn it, why did she have to wear a corset? She would never get the dratted thing off without help. Improvising, she reached into her corset and lifted her breasts up and out. She stroked the nipples that peaked out and closed her eyes, pleasuring herself, all the while imagining it was Janto caressing her.

  And there he was, her ghost lover, touching her breasts, licking them, kissing them. The corset was in his way. The ghost seemed to grow frustrated with it, and soon he was behind her, tugging at the straps and untying them, freeing her from the confining garment. Her loosened syrtos came off over her head, the corset fell to the ground, and her legs swept up out from under her. She bit her lip to stifle her cry of surprise—it would not do to have Tamienne poke her head into the room now and see her suspended in the air, wearing only her shift.

  Janto carried her into the bedroom. She couldn’t see him, but wrapping an arm around him, she could feel he was entirely substantial beneath his shroud. When they reached the bed, he tossed her onto it without ceremony. The goose feather pillows and comforter deflated beneath her with a pouf of escaped air. Rhianne reached for her ghost lover, but her arms met only emptiness. She looked around. Where had he gone this time? Perhaps he was getting undressed.

  “Close the door,” she suggested.

  Moments later, the bedroom door swung closed.

  She sat up in bed, poised and ready to pounce on him like a cat, but she had no idea where he was. He could come from any direction. The comforter sank on one side of the bed. There he was! She swiped the air, hoping to grab him, but missed and found herself tackled, borne to the bed by her invisible lover. Heat pooled between her legs. Deprived of anything to look at or listen to since he couldn’t speak through the shroud, she could focus only on sensations. His weight, pressing her into the down comforter. The strength of his arms, pinning her wrists. His skin, smooth and dry as it moved against hers. His mouth, hot and insistent as he kissed her again and again.

  “I wish you would talk,” she said through the kisses.

  Her ghost lover released her wrists and pulled her shift off over her head. He placed his hand on her side and made a circular motion.

  He was talking with his hands, but Rhianne didn’t know that language. He tugged her gently into position, and she guessed that he wanted her on her side. He moved to spoon her, hugging her back to his chest. He was still invisible, but all over her, so present with his touch that it almost didn’t matter that she couldn’t see him. He entered her like silk. The hand beneath her reached up to cradle her breast, and the other touched that place that made her buck against him.

  She couldn’t hear his voice get huskier or his breathing get heavier, but she could feel him. Each thrust, in this odd but exquisite sideways position, was an undulation of their joined bodies, and as his excitement grew, his grip on her tightened, and the undulations came faster and harder. Her pleasure swelled within her, reaching its sweet tendrils throughout her body, until it burst, white-hot. She cried out in surprise and desperate joy as her ghost lover completed his final thrusts.

  She collapsed on the bed, and when she next opened her eyes, she saw Janto’s arm around her.

  “Now you’re visible. Can I finally talk to you?”

  He turned her in his arms and cradled her head on his shoulder. “That’s the trouble with the shroud. It’s all or nothing, both sight and sound. I can’t make myself audible but not visible, or the other way around.”

  She punched him lightly in the side. “I can’t believe you came in here and made love to me like a ghost. Without saying a word!”

  He laughed. “You liked it. Admit it.”

  “I liked it a lot. I never thought of lovemaking as a game, but that was fun.”

  “Why be lovers if you can’t have fun with each other?” said Janto.

  The thought made Rhianne a little sad. She couldn’t imagine Augustan playing games in the bedroom. It would be all business for him.

  “You haven’t turned me in to the authorities yet,” teased Janto.

  “I still might.”

  Janto shook his head. “You’re never going to turn me in.”

  Rhianne gave him a withering look. He had her dead to rights. She would neither turn him in to be tortured and killed here on Kjall, nor would she send him home to Mosar to be killed there. She didn’t want to be a traitor to her country. But she’d prefer that to being a murderer. “Listen. What’s going on between us can’t last. Your country is going to be conquered, and I’m going to marry Augustan. Neither of us likes it, but we can’t change it. You have to go to Sardos or Inya. Not because I’m going to turn you in, but because there isn’t an alternative. If you stay here, someone besides me will catch you.”

  “But if I leave, I’ll miss out on another enchanting visit to the Forest of Ejaculating Trees—”

  She laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “They’re called bow oaks! And you haven’t done much better. On our first date, you took me to a beating.”

  “You make a good point,” said Janto. “Clearly I have no notion of how to seduce an imperial princess.”

  “Be serious for a moment,” said Rhianne. “You have to leave the country before you’re caught and killed.”

  “We’ve had this discussion already,” said Janto. “It didn’t turn out well.”

  “You want to help your people,” said Rhianne. “I understand and respect that. But when Mosar is conquered, your duty to your people ends. Then you can go to Sardos or Inya with a clean conscience.”

  “My duty to Mosar never ends,” said Janto. “Not if it is conquered, not if it is burned to the ground. Not even if it sinks into the sea.”

  Rhianne rolled her eyes. “Could you be any more stubborn and exasperating?”

  “You are no compliant lapdog yourself,” said Janto, pulling her closer. “I regret that we cannot marry and have stubborn, exasperating children.”

  His words brought a lump to her throat. There were nights when she lay awake star
ing at the ceiling, terrified of her upcoming marriage to Augustan, and fantasizing about a life with Janto, complete with children. Maybe not stubborn and exasperating ones—she imagined them intelligent and kind, like Janto—but she’d take them however they came. Janto, perhaps sensing her melancholy, rubbed her back. She closed her eyes, letting herself drift.

  “Janto,” she said drowsily, “do you think a husband ought to stop his wife from drinking at a party, if he thinks she is drinking too much?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Janto. “Does the wife have a drinking problem?”

  “No,” said Rhianne. “She only drinks at parties. She might have been drinking more than usual at this particular party because she was upset.”

  “I’m sorry she was upset. Were other people drinking?”

  “Everyone was drinking. Almost everyone.”

  “Was the husband drinking?”

  “Not much.”

  “I think Augustan can go climb a lorim cliff in a thunderstorm,” said Janto. “If he depresses his future wife so much that she wants to drink, he’s the last person who should complain about it.”

  Rhianne laughed into his chest, but it was a sad laughter, one that walked a line between mirth and tears. “How did you know I was talking about Augustan?”

  “You’re transparent as rainwater, love,” he said. “Part of your prodigious charm.”

  19

  Janto hurried to meet Iolo and Sirali, who waited for him in the darkness beneath the trees.

  “You’re late,” said Iolo. “We were starting to worry.”

  Janto shook his head. “Sometimes it’s hard getting out of the palace. Closed doors and all.”

  “What were you doing in the palace?” asked Iolo. “Searching for intelligence or visiting your princess?”

  “Both,” said Janto. “Everything valuable I’ve learned so far has come from Rhianne. How’s Micah been since the sackcloth treatment? Will we need to repeat the treatment?”

  “That first evening he came to hand out abeyance spells, his face was white as a pox boil,” said Sirali.

  Janto nodded eagerly. “We scared him. That’s good.”

  “Right, and a few days later, he did what we thought he’d do. He pulled a couple women aside and tried to get them to tack—”

  “To what?”

  “Change sides,” explained Sirali. “He offered them extra rations, special favors.”

  “And?” This was the part of the operation that worried Janto most, that Micah might find one or two women willing to betray the others. If he could divide the women, he might regain his power over them.

  “Linna was one of them he tried. He pulled her aside, asked her who set up that business the other night. She blinked at him, innocent-like, and said, ‘What business?’ He wouldn’t explain what he meant—couldn’t come out with it. He’d go at the subject sideways, and she’d sidle away.”

  “Did anyone, uh, tack?”

  She shook her head. “We agreed that if anyone did, we’d spit in her oatmeal every day, and worse.”

  Janto feared for Sirali, since if Micah did convince someone to name the instigator, that person, not knowing much about Janto, would name her. But Sirali seemed not to fear this prospect. Janto had the impression that Sirali had already been through the worst life had to offer, so something like this didn’t intimidate her much. “Was that the end of it, then?”

  “No,” said Sirali. “A few days later, he got cod-proud again and grabbed Mori.”

  “Grabbed her! You mean—”

  “Right, and I’m not finished,” said Sirali. “A dozen of us rushed him. We didn’t plan it. Didn’t even think about it. It was gods-inspired, like we all had the same thought at once. He let go of Mori’s arm and ran like a field mouse from a grass fire.” She grinned, exposing her crooked teeth. “He’s not touched a one of us since.”

  Pleased, Janto held out his hand to Sirali, and they interlocked index fingers in the gesture of shared victory.

  * * *

  “I have figured something out,” said Rhianne as Janto materialized in her sitting room the next day. “You always arrive at mealtimes. I think you’re using me for food.”

  “I’m definitely using you,” said Janto, lifting the cover off her dinner tray. “But not for food. It would help if your doors opened at other times of the day.”

  “If you left me a note, I might know when to expect you,” said Rhianne. “Then I could arrange for the door to open at the proper time.”

  Janto tasted her potato-and-leek soup. “I prefer surprising you.”

  “If you wish to have dinner with me, there’s a price to pay,” said Rhianne.

  He looked at her, eyebrows raised, with the spoon still in his hand.

  “You will tell me something about yourself.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “I told you about my background, how Florian stole me away from my real parents, how Lucien and I were the terrors of the palace because we were the backup children, of interest only as future marriage prospects. But I know almost nothing about you.”

  “I’m a shroud mage. I speak five languages. I climbed lorim cliffs as a boy—”

  Rhianne shook her head. “I mean your family. It’s obvious you’re nobility. I want to know about the people close to you.”

  Janto drizzled oil onto a slice of bread. “How much do you know about Mosari politics and history?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  “And the royal family?”

  “There’s a king and a queen. Two princes.”

  “Mosari nobility, what do you know of them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t want to lie to you,” said Janto. “I can’t tell you my zo name or the names of my family members, because if I did that, I’d be putting people in danger—”

  “Your zo name?”

  “You don’t know what that is?” He shook his head. “You’re supposed to govern my people alongside Augustan, and you know nothing about Mosar.”

  “My uncle doesn’t believe in educating women, at least not about politics and other countries. That’s why I recruited you to teach me the Mosari language myself.”

  “Well, when a Mosari mage soulcasts, if he does it successfully, he is given a new name. Like Ral-Vaddis—that’s a zo name. If you have a zo name, then you’re part of our zo caste. It means you’re a mage.”

  “Is Janto a zo name?”

  “No. I have one, but I don’t use it here,” said Janto. “Too dangerous.”

  “Make up names for your family members. I don’t care,” said Rhianne. “Just tell me about them. What are they like? Are your parents still alive?”

  “They were alive when I left Mosar.”

  “Do you like them? Hate them? Why do I have to drag details out of you? You’d think I was performing an interrogation.”

  “Of course I like them,” said Janto. “They’re good people.” When she glared at him, he added, “My younger brother and I were competitive. We’d try to seduce the same women.”

  “Oh?” She felt a little jealous of those unknown women. “Who usually won?”

  “My brother.” Janto placed a cheese slice atop a pear slice and ate them together. “He’s taller. Handsomer.”

  “Those women were fools,” said Rhianne.

  “Naturally,” said Janto. “Look, I’ll tell you a story that might actually mean something to you. I went through my magical training with one of my same-age cousins. I’ll call him Bel. Are you familiar with the root called jovo?”

  “I’ve heard the name before, but I don’t know anything about it.”

  “It doesn’t grow here. Only on Mosar. We warn our children not to chew it, but some do anyway. It has an effect like wine but more powerful. It fogs the mind and produces euphoria. If you chew it once, you feel compelled to chew it again and again. Over time it rots your teeth, and I think it must rot your insides too, because jovo addicts die young. Bel and I went through magic
al training together, and we became friends. He was, at the time, chewing jovo, but he was discreet about it, and I never caught on. He soulcast into a cliff bear, which made him a stoneshaper.” Janto stopped to take another bite of pear.

  “We parted ways because our training diverged, but we stayed in touch. He became an accomplished stoneshaper, but his jovo chewing caught up with him. He was disciplined repeatedly for not showing up to work and for shoddy or unsafe workmanship. Finally he was brought before my father, an authority within our family.

  “My father believed that the only way to induce Bel to behave more honorably was to remove him from the island of Mosar—get him away from jovo entirely. He wanted to send Bel to sea as a sailor in the Mosari Navy. After a year or two of no access to jovo, he might safely return to stoneshaping.”

  “That sounds like a good idea to me,” Rhianne said.

  “I thought so too. But Bel was horrified at the prospect of going to sea where his magic would be useless and he’d have to perform hard labor and be separated from his friends. He implored me to speak to my father and change his mind. He had learned his lesson, he said, and would never chew jovo again, if only I would spare him this fate. I liked Bel, and I believed him, and we were chronically short of stoneshapers. We needed several for a building project at Silverside Mountain. So I persuaded my father to find a spot for Bel at Silverside.” Now he paused to take a sip of wine, as if bracing himself.

  “Several sagespans later, there was a cave-in at Silverside, in which we lost not only Bel but a dozen other mages. In the investigations that followed, we learned that Bel had been disciplined several times at Silverside for showing up under the influence of jovo and that his inappropriate thinning of a key structural pillar had caused the collapse.”

  “Janto, I’m so sorry,” said Rhianne. “You sound like you feel that accident was your fault. But you couldn’t have known your cousin would lie about the jovo again.”

  “I should have known,” said Janto. “In hindsight, it seems obvious. Addicts always have problems giving it up. My father’s solution was the right one. At the time, I thought it was harsh, but those two years on a ship might have saved Bel’s life. They would certainly have saved the lives of the other mages. The compassion I showed Bel did him no favors.”