Ragged corners of rock poked painfully into his back. 'Slaves have no will of their own,' he said hoarsely. He could feel the pressure of her all along the length of his body.
'What does that mean?'
'They are disgraced. They have no honor.'
'Maybe so, or maybe they were just unlucky.' She licked her lips in a manner meant to make him crazy, and it did. 'I wasn't asking about slaves anyway.' She traced the line of his body from chest down his torso to a hip, and slid her hand around to cup one buttock. 'Aui! You have a good, firm shape. We could do it in the crevice over there, and no one the wiser.'
'Stop,' he whispered.
She ground her hips against his until he thought he would burst. 'You're not going to find any trace of your brother after four days looking over this cursed field. I'm bored waiting around, and when I get bored I get in a devouring mood, even if I am one of Hasibal's pilgrims. So I'm going to devour you, right now, because you want it, you're just too shy to say so. You need a little spice to heat you up, get that… tongue… of yours slick.'
She steered him to the crevice, a slit mostly covered by a fall of vegetation sprinkled with orange flowers. He caught a whiff of their sweet scent as she dragged him through the vines. She pressed him down on the dry dirt floor and peeled back his clothing. At first she sat astride him fully clothed, teasing him with her hands and lips as he groaned and writhed, rocking herself against him until she gasped to a climax. Then she loosed her own trousers and straddled him.
He gasped and moaned, delirious, mounting, gone.
'I knew that would be fast,' she said, hands on his shoulders, her pink tongue peeping out between slightly parted lips. 'You'll last longer next time.' She stroked his torso. 'Whew! You have a body a
woman could just devour again and again. Do you want to try it a second time?'
'Eridit,' he said, but her name exhausted him; he could think of nothing to say to her except that all he could think of was wanting her to devour him over and over and over. No wonder they called their goddess merciless.
A fluttering bird's whistle rose on the air.
'The hells!' muttered Eridit. 'That's the signal.'
She scrambled to slip on her trousers as Shai rolled into a tangle of his own clothing. She ducked out from under the crevice as he tried to get everything straightened out so he could dress. By the time he crawled out and stood, an eagle flew so low overhead that he yelped and dropped to the dirt.
'Hurry!' Eridit dashed back to grab his wrist. 'A reeve is here. They weren't supposed to contact us! Edard will be furious! They could break our cover.'
They cut down over uneven ground between ridges of naked rock and bumpy grass-grown slopes. The eagle had come to earth beyond the eroded remnants of a once great spine of rock, a bit downslope toward the depths of the hollow, a landing spot that might conceal the eagle from any folk walking on nearby West Track or more distant Horn. The reeve had already unhooked, and he left his harness dangling free behind him as he strode up the slope.
Edard trotted down to meet him. 'Be quick about it so we're not spotted, you rank fool!'
'Strange, I was here before,' said the reeve, unaffected by Edard's snarling demeanor. 'Be sure I wouldn't have cut my flight short if I'd not been commanded to deliver a personal message to one of your party. I'm called Volias, by the way. The man I'm looking for goes by the name of Shayi. An outlander.' He bent his sour gaze on Shai, but was distracted by the sight of Eridit sauntering up. 'Whew! What's your name?'
'No luck today,' she said with a flirting smile.
'Didn't I see you in Olossi, at the arena? Aren't you the Incomparable Eridit?'
She did not take the bait. 'Beautiful eagle. Is she friendly?'
'That might depend,' he said.
She shook her head with a mocking frown. 'You need work, ver. This is Shai. What's your message?'
'Yes,' added Edard, 'and then get gone. Cursed idiot. Where are you headed?'
'None of your cursed business, is it?' With a sneer, he turned to Shai. 'Captain Anji's wife said to tell you — and I'm just repeating her words, they mean nothing to me, mind you — 'Beware of Cornflower'.'
'What is a cornflower?' asked Eridit.
'She's haunting you, on your trail, out for revenge.'
'If Mai meant the slave girl,' said Shai, 'then she's dead. She vanished in a sandstorm. No one could survive that.'
'He's not too swift, is he?' said the reeve to Eridit.
'Umm. But tasty.'
'Oof! That hurt! All right, Sbayi.' The reeve mangled the name, and seemed to enjoy doing it. 'I think what the captain's wife is trying to tell you is that you've got a demon stalking your tail.'
Hu! His body recalled how it had responded to the sight of Cornflower's slight, pale form, her demon-blue eyes, her passive air. Every one of his brothers had tasted her, repeatedly; he had refrained, but not from disgust. Not from not wanting her. Not at all. He wiped sweat from his brow, shut his eyes, trying to wring from his memory the image of her lying on a pallet dressed in scanty bedroom silks, trying to freeze his body's fresh stirring of arousal.
'A lilu, eh?' said Eridit, who missed nothing.
Edard said, 'If you've delivered your message, get moving.'
'Where's the rest of your party?'
'The rest of the party is smarter than these two nimwits,' said Edard. 'They stayed hidden. You find what you were looking for, Shai, or are you ready to give up on it?'
As Shai opened his eyes, his gaze wandered to the reeve with his harness clipped tight around his torso and his tight leathers beneath, the trousers ornamented by a polished belt buckle engraved with a wolf's head.
He took in a sharp breath. 'Where'd you get that?' he demanded.
'Get what?' asked the reeve indignantly.
'The belt buckle.' Shai raised his right hand to display the wolf ring, sigil of the Mei clan into which he had been born. 'That
belonged to my brother. I recognize it.' The shock of seeing it made him come alive, as if he were already moving, an axe in its downward swing.
The reeve leaped back, raising his baton. 'The hells! Don't come any closer.'
Shaking, Shai lowered his hand, now curled into a fist. He was about the same height as the reeve, but bulkier, and he felt his strength in the way his entire body was poised; but he also recognized the reeve's ready stance.
'Heya, Shai,' said Eridit in a cool, amused tone. 'We're playing for the same side, neh?'
'Want to get out of here now?' asked Edard. 'If you would be so kind, reeve.'
The reeve furrowed his brow, and slanted a glance at Shai. 'Yet it's true, I found it. Here, on this field.'
Shai's tongue rooted; he couldn't speak.
'Down this way,' said the reeve.
'Stay here, Eridit,' said Edard sternly. 'Go gather your gear.'
Shai stumbled over every bump and root that hooked his path, while the reeve glanced back several times, no doubt the better to eye Eridit from the rear. The reeve fetched up near where the stream cut through tussocks of flowering grass and white-barked saplings growing among low-lying rocks. Farther upslope, scrub trees and brush covered the hillside.
The reeve searched along the bank of the stream until he reached a spot dense with human remains left to the weather.
'It was… right… here.' He probed with a boot, and lifted his foot a hand's width with a curved bone caught over the arch. 'I found it under this fellow.'
If a tree had hit him square in the back, Shai could not have dropped harder to his knees. A jumble of shapes and colors pulsed before him: green grass blowing; the white cradle of bare ribs; red-clay-colored cloth pressed into the loam, becoming part of the weave of earth. Nearby, a skull was lodged upside down between rocks in the stream, water flowing through the eye sockets. White flowers bobbed on a nearby bush. From deep in the branches, a bird peeped at him, black eyes gleaming.
