Spy's Honor

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.”

“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