“Lurcanio,” Skarnu said. “His name’s Lurcanio.”
“I told you, I don’t care what his name is,” Merkela answered. “He’s an Algarvian. That’s enough to know. Your sister gave herself to him, and now you have no sister.”
“Aye,” Skarnu said dully. Merkela viewed the world in very simple terms. He’d known that all along. This time, though, try as he would, he couldn’t find any way to believe she was wrong.
She eyed him. She nodded once more, in what looked like grudging approval. And then, in a swift, sudden motion, she pulled her tunic up over her head and threw it on the floor. She kicked off her sandals, yanked down her trousers and drawers, and took the couple of steps that brought her over to the bed. She lay down on it. Now she held out her arms to him. “You have no sister,” she repeated. “But you have me.”
Getting out of his own clothes was a matter of a moment. He lay down beside her, clutching at her flesh as fiercely as she grabbed for him. Very often, their lovemaking reminded him more of combat than of anything he’d ever known with other women. This was one of those times. She sank her teeth into his shoulder as if she meant to draw blood; her nails scored his back and flanks. He squeezed and pinched and prodded her. She pressed his hands to her, urging him to be rougher yet.
And when, not much later, he drove into her, he hardly cared whether he hurt her as well as pleasing her. By the way she moaned and bucked beneath him, she hardly cared, either, or knew the difference. His lips and teeth, jammed against hers, muffled her final cry. A couple of fierce thrusts later, he spent himself deep inside her.
Sweat made their bodies stick and slide against each other. Merkela pushed at him, to remind him to take a little weight on his elbows. He didn’t want to pull away; he hoped he’d get hard again inside her, so they could start again. Now that he was past thirty, though, such things didn’t happen very often. Sure enough, in a minute or two he flopped out.
Merkela reached for him. She wasn’t trying to make him rise; it seemed almost a gesture of respect for an admired foe. “Later,” she said. “There’s always later.”
“Aye,” Skarnu said, though he thought she was talking more to part of him than to all of him.
And indeed, Merkela started slightly, as if his voice reminded her all of him lay in this bed with her. Maybe she needed reminding; even more than a year after they’d started lying down together, she often called out her dead husband’s name at the moment of climax.
Her expression sharpened. She reached out and tapped Skarnu’s chest with a fingernail. “You have no sister,” she said once more, and he nodded again, admitting as much. She turned her head south, in the direction of Priekule. Her voice sank to a throaty whisper. “But oh, the vengeance you can take on her who was once your kin after the kingdom is free once again.”
Skarnu thought about it. What
Nineteen
Hajjaj’s secretary-- his new secretary, his loyal secretary, his secretary who was not an Unkerlanter spy--stuck his head into the Zuwayzi foreign minister’s office and said, “Your Excellency, Marquis Balastro has arrived.”
“Very well, Qutuz. I am ready to receive him.” Hajjaj rose to display the Algarvian-style tunic and kilt he had donned for the occasion. They were making him sweat unreasonably, but that was one of the prices he had to pay for conforming to the diplomatic usages of the rest of Derlavai. “You may bring him in.”
“Aye, your Excellency,” Qutuz said, and went off to get the Algarvian minister.
A moment later, Hajjaj and Balastro were clasping hands. “Good day, good day,” Balastro said. He was stocky, middle-aged, vigorous, and much smarter than he looked. Reaching out to pat Hajjaj’s tunic, he said, “If you were a pretty young wench, I’d be disappointed you were wearing this. As is”--he shrugged a grandiloquent Algarvian shrug--”I can live with it.”
“Your reassurances do so ease my mind,” Hajjaj said dryly, and the redheaded Algarvian noble threw back his head and laughed out loud. Balastro would have laughed out of the other side of his mouth had Hajjaj told him Ansovald of Unkerlant had said something similar not so long before. Foreigners always thought of Zuwayzi nudity in terms of pretty young wenches. In one sense, Hajjaj understood that. In another, the ways it missed the point never failed to amuse him.
Balastro made himself comfortable with the cushions that did duty for chairs in Hajjaj’s office. So did the Zuwayzi foreign minister. Unlike most of his countrymen, he had a desk, but a low, wide one, one he could use while sitting on the carpet: another compromise between Zuwayzi usages and those of the rest of Derlavai.
The secretary came in with a silver tray that held the ritual tea and cakes and wine. Unlike Ansovald, Balastro
