The tears dried up. Her heart hardened as Anji's threat emerged. 'A handsome baby, indeed. I don't think I've seen a more beautiful child.'
The teeth of his anger closed; if a tone had color, his would have waxed bright with the shiny hard surface of a gemstone, brilliance without warmth. 'I will not let anyone or anything stand in the way of making this land safe for him. So tell me, Zubaidit, how much do you love your brother? Who is confined in my custody. Enough to kill to keep him alive?'
43
Couldn't a man get some sleep? Joss hadn't realized how exhausted he was until the first slug of cordial left him reeling. He might as well have downed ten cups as one, for the way his head spun. A kind soul found him a blanket, and he lay down in the midst of the camp, yet twice just as he'd dozed off some cursed reveler tripped over him, and then that flirting Naya Hall reeve had to drag a young Copper Hall reeve almost next to him and get noisy. Had these young people no respect for others? Couldn't they be bothered to seek out a little decent privacy?
Had he suddenly turned into an elder, rapping his cane on his porch and ranting at high-spirited children to get out of his orchard?
He hauled the blanket up to the berm and shook it out before lying down, on his back, to face the stars. There trundled the Carter and his Barking Dog, materializing to the southwest as the last glow faded. Low in the east, the Oxen trudged on their steady path, rising. There were always two, yoked together. How was it possible Mai was dead?
The Ox is always beautiful.
Peddonon sank down cross-legged beside him. 'Do I smell tears?'
'She was a lovely woman, but I think that her physical features weren't her true beauty. If she talked to you, she talked to you, as if you were all that mattered to her in the wide world. I don't know how confused or frightened she might have been, to walk into the Hundred as an outlander, but she never faltered. She's the one who overthrew the Greater Houses in Olossi. That settlement in the Barrens flourished because of her, didn't it?'
'I wouldn't know. I'm sorry anyone with a kind heart is dead. If you're going to sleep out here, mind if I share your blanket? Kesta stole mine to go sneak off with Nallo, and even as filthy and sweaty as I am, I just don't want to lie smash on the ground.'
Joss scooted over. 'There's your half.'
Instead of lying down, Peddonon stood. 'The hells,' he muttered, looking into the gloom. He snorted. Joss heard soft footfalls. 'Looks like I'm the only one who's not going to get devoured tonight.'
Joss sat up to see — the hells! — Zubaidit approaching along the berm with a blanket slung over one shoulder.
'There's a woman who plans ahead. I'll just take this.' Peddonon grabbed Joss's blanket and yanked hard, toppling Joss sideways. 'Greetings of the dusk, verea. I'm out of your way.'
'Greetings of the night to you, ver,' she shot back, as sweetly as the auntie to whom you've just brought a basket of fresh-picked duha berries. Peddonon laughed and walked off.
'Reminiscent of the first time we met,' said Joss from the ground, noting how her kilt was rucked up to expose a hells lot of long legs. 'Although certainly I'll be hoping for a different outcome.'
He didn't ask why she had come. He knew. She knew. Bodies knew. There were some things you just had to get out of your system.
He stood, and that fast she had an arm around him and her hips shoved against his groin, offering a kiss that lasted so long and got so intense he only broke it off because he belatedly heard cheering and hooting coming from the reeve encampment a stone's toss away. She didn't ease off on her grip.
She spoke in a lover's whisper as she nuzzled his ear. 'Captain Anji wants you dead.'
He broke away as their audience whooped and laughed. She hitched the blanket higher and walked away along the berm with a twitch of that shapely ass, the motion as much a natural phenomenon like wind or rain as a thing he could actually see in the growing darkness.
'The hells!' he called after her. She kept walking. He pulled a hand over his hair, which was spiky with grime from all that digging. Was it only this morning he had buried Lord Radas's corpse deep in the earth? It seemed like a lifetime ago, an act that had severed him from the life he'd lived before. Aui! She had him hooked now, didn't she?
With a laugh, he caught up as she slipped down the side of the berm to open ground. He got an arm around her and reeled her in, and the sheer excitement almost overcame him, but he kissed her hard to relieve some of the heat and then pressed his lips to her ear.
'That's got me going more than the knife did,' he murmured, his free hand sliding down to cup her buttocks. 'You can't possibly ask me to believe you hope to lure me out and murder me by telling me you're luring me out to murder me.'
'Obviously it's working.' Then, a little louder, 'Umm. Yes. Just like that.' Her voice dropped again. 'Can you swim?'
'Of course I can swim, I grew up on the ocean. What threat do I pose to Anji?'
She nuzzled his neck. 'He wants to kill all the cloaks, and he thinks you don't want to.'
'He agreed we need only kill those who were with the enemy-'
She tripped him, and down they went, the words knocked back into his throat by the impact. She was on top, sitting right across his hips, her hands splayed over his chest. She leaned closer and halted with her face a finger's breadth above his, their noses kissing, her warm breath tickling his lips. 'A man can say anything. He threatened me, Joss. He told me that if I didn't do something about you and your infatuation with a lilu appearing in the guise of your long-dead lover-'
'Mark!'
She insinuated a finger through the fastenings of his vest and stroked his bare skin. 'Is that her name?'
'Yes. Ah.'
'A little louder, please.' She ground her hips into his, her kilt wrinkling around her legs, and he really did groan aloud. How long had it been? Best not to consider that question. He had to listen hard to hear her whispering, as crazy as her words seemed here in the darkness out of sight of the other reeves. 'Maybe he envies you your unfortunate good looks, Or maybe he wants you out of the way because you're commander of the reeve halls.'
'Did he threaten to kill you if you didn't kill me?'
'No. He threatened to kill my brother. Let me tell you something.'
How could she talk this through so coolly while he ached everywhere? He crept a hand up her torso and traced the round curve of a breast beneath her tight vest. Her breath caught; her words faltered as she sucked in a sharp, delirious breath; he grinned.
But she mastered herself, bit his lower lip to break his hold on her, and went on in a murmur. 'I love my brother, but I serve the Merciless One. The gods built the land on law. Maybe folk think there are agents among the hierodules and kalos who engage in unlawful activities, assassinating people for coin, for instance. But in truth every case brought before us is carefully considered and only undertaken if three different hieros from different temples agree that a significant breach of justice has occurred and no recourse seems likely through the assizes.'
'That's still taking matters into your own hands, outside the assizes.'
'I am their weapon, not a judge.' She lay down flat atop him, and stretched out her legs. Her toes rubbed his boots. 'To ask me to kill outside the proper channels, and by using a threat as coin, violates the precepts by which every servant of the Merciless One lives. As well force a hierodule to bed a man she despises. It's like a form of rape.'
'What will happen to your brother if you don't kill me?'
Joss knew women's bodies pretty well; when he was with a woman, he was careful indeed to be with her only and entirely. So he felt her attention focus away from him, how the fire of her arousal banked, how her thoughts flew.
'I love Kesh, but I cannot betray the Merciless One to save him. Yet if the Hieros had personally commanded me to kill you
