by Amy Raby
“I would think so,” said Morgan. “Depends how aware he is of his behavior and how it’s perceived.”
“Augustan yelled at the servants and wanted them beaten for trivial mistakes, he was nasty to me when I wasn’t feeling well, and he insulted me to my face. If that was his best behavior, what’s he going to be like when the emperor isn’t looking over his shoulder?”
“He insulted you?”
“Right to my face!”
“What did he say?” Morgan’s forehead wrinkled. “What fault could he find in you?”
Rhianne laughed. “You’re sweet. I have many faults. Ask my cousin, and he’ll provide you with a list. But in this case, Augustan referred to the shame of my birth.”
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Because of your mother.”
“Yes, and my father being a tradesman.”
“Clearly this fiancé of yours is a vile human being.” Morgan pointed to her wineglass. “Drink.”
Rhianne drank. “He is vile, and I have no choice but to marry him.”
Morgan peered into his empty cup, swirling the dregs as if they had a story to tell. “You always have a choice, Rhianne.”
She shook her head. “If I run away, Florian will catch me. He’s got the whole army at his disposal. My mother didn’t outwit Nigellus. He let her go.”
“Perhaps you underestimate yourself.”
Rhianne sipped her wine. She didn’t think Morgan truly understood Florian, even after everything the emperor had done to him. Her uncle was tenacious as a badger; if she fled from him, he’d never stop hunting for her. Besides, she had to be realistic. For all that she might dream of running away with Janto, her Mosari lover remained fanatically loyal to his people and to his mission, whatever that was. And Florian needed her to help govern Mosar. Part of her hoped that Augustan wouldn’t be so awful, that over time she’d win him over, and while their marriage might not ever be wonderful, it might at least be tolerable.
“Consider this,” said Morgan. “Running away and marrying Augustan aren’t necessarily your only two choices. Also, what Augustan said wasn’t a slip of the tongue. One doesn’t become a high-ranking legatus by being a fool. He said it deliberately.”
“What do you mean?”
Morgan set his wineglass on the table. “I’ve known men like this before. Augustan feels threatened because you outrank him. You are an emperor’s niece and adopted daughter; he is merely a legatus and soon-to-be provincial governor. Most men would be proud to make such a distinguished marriage, but Augustan is clearly frightened by a wife who is more powerful than he is. He wants to diminish your power by shaming you, so that you feel that you’re a fraud, that you’re not a true member of the emperor’s family.”
“I never thought of it that way,” said Rhianne.
“You can’t marry this man, because insults are only the beginning,” said Morgan. “Men of this sort can’t tolerate anyone else having power, especially their wives, and also their children. He’ll mistreat the children you’ll have someday, Rhianne. Have you thought of that? If you won’t stop this marriage for your own sake, do it for theirs.”
• • •
At a seaside cliff several hours’ walk from the Imperial Palace, Janto summoned a ball of flickering blue magelight, sent it through a series of orchestrated movements, and dismissed it. He sat and waited, shivering in the darkness. Beneath him the breakers rolled in, each one crashing against unseen rocks and retreating with a disappointed hiss. The ocean was a wall of blackness broken only by a field of stars that demarcated where water ended and sky began.
In the blackness, a blue light appeared. Janto froze, watching its movements carefully. Up, to the right, a circle. Left. Another circle. It was the answering signal of his spy ship.
Once he transmitted his message to the ship, it would need four to six days to relay its coded message to the next signal station and return. That was four to six days he would be stranded on Kjall. Also four to six days during which time, if he found a better piece of intelligence, he would have no way to transmit it. But given the number of lives he might save with the information Rhianne had given him, and its urgency—his people on Mosar might not hold out much longer—he’d decided he had no real choice but to send it and hope for the best.
He’d coded his message earlier in the day and had only to put his magelight ball through its paces: up and down, side to side, around in circles, winking in and out. Ral-Vaddis killed in action. Kjallans to purge Mosari ruling class as they did in Riorca. Relay immediately and return.
He dismissed his magelight and waited for the answering signal. It came, and, to his surprise, it was not a simple acknowledgment. The spy ship had intelligence to relay to him as well. He’d brought paper and a quill in anticipation of this possibility, and as the signals came, he transcribed them. Professional signalers could decode as they watched, but he wasn’t experienced enough for that. When the signal ended, he decoded it with quill and paper. Kal-Torres’s fleet sighted off Bartleshore.
Now that was interesting. Kal-Torres, his younger brother, was First Admiral of the Mosari Navy. It was tradition on Mosar that the king should command the island’s army while one of his close relatives commanded its navy. Janto, since he was a shroud mage, was in charge of Mosari Intelligence, a small command his father had hoped would prepare him for the larger command he would inherit later—if, after the war, there was anything left to inherit.
Kal-Torres, similarly, had been captain of a single ship in the Mosari Navy. But when the Mosari and Kjallan fleets had clashed at the beginning of the war, most of the Mosari ships had been sunk or captured, and the First Admiral, Janto’s uncle, had been killed in action. Kal-Torres had broken away and escaped with a small fleet of wounded ships. It was believed they were repairing and refitting at an unknown location. Kal-Torres was promoted to First Admiral in absentia. Apparently now his little fleet was back in action, although what good it might do at this late date, Janto could not say.
He signaled acknowledgment and dismissal to his spy ship, glad to have dispatched his intelligence but anxious about being stranded for a minimum of four days, and began the long walk back to the palace.
• • •
Rhianne’s attendants were just leaving when the morning breakfast tray arrived. She wasn’t usually hungry in the morning, but having gone for an early swim in the baths before getting dressed, she had worked up a bit of an appetite. She grabbed one of her Mosari books so she could study while she ate, watching as the last of the servants trailed through the door and left her blessedly alone. Then she sat.
A bit of movement caught her eye. Whiskers? Surely the brindlecat had not escaped her cage.
A strawberry and white ferret leapt onto her blue damask settee at the side of the room, chittered briefly, and curled up to sleep.
Rhianne stared at the ferret, her heart throbbing, all her muscles tensed for action. That was Janto’s familiar. Was Janto here? Perhaps he had sneaked into the room invisibly when the servants were moving in and out, but he hadn’t revealed himself. She looked slowly about the room, searching for signs of his presence.
“Janto?” she called softly.
No answer.
With shaky hands, she reached for one of the covers on her breakfast tray and picked it up. Then she shrieked as the cover was pulled from her hand and replaced on the tray.
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 l
over 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 staring 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.”