'For allowing it,' Del answered.
Prima didn't much like what that implied. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully as she contemplated the idea. She shook her head slightly, then downed her wine as if to gulp it might wash away her suspicion.
I looked at Herakleio. 'Among the powerful,' I said, 'there are reasons for everything. And results wrung from those reasons.'
Clearly puzzled and irritated by it, Herakleio made a curt, dismissive gesture. 'That makes no sense.'
'The metri knows it does,' I said. 'And for some inexplicable reason, she seems to think I can teach you to understand.'
Herakleio favored me with a withering glance. 'A waste of time.'
I grinned at him. 'Yours? Or mine?' Prima laughed. 'It might be worth watching.' Herakleio glared at her. 'Do you think to live here?'
'My ship is my home,' Prima replied. 'But the metri has said she will receive me here before the other families.' She paused. 'Formally.'
At that Herakleio stood up, stiffly affronted. 'You soil this household,' he announced, and took himself out of the chamber with definitive eloquence.
The captain grinned a slow, malicious grin, then cut her eyes at me as she poured her cup full once again.
'Good food, good wine… good friends.'
I smiled back in kind. 'Or interesting enemies.'
SIXTEEN
AFTER DINNER I paid a visit to the kilted servant, whose name I learned was Simonides, and put my request before him. He agreed it could be fulfilled, and would be by morning. I thanked him and departed, wanting very much to ask him how he'd become a slave, how he bore it, and if he hoped for freedom one day. But I did not ask him those questions, because I knew that a hard-won tolerance of certain circumstances, the kind of toleration that allows you to survive when you might otherwise give up, was fragile and easily destroyed. It was not my place to destroy his.
From Simonides I went in search of Prima Rhannet, whom I found alone in the chamber she shared with Nihkolara. The metri's hospitality had not, apparently, extended to two rooms for such people as renegadas.
Or else she believed the captain and her first mate were lovers.
'What?' Prima asked crossly as I grinned at the thought.
'Never mind.' I didn't enter, just lounged against the doorframe. 'Where's Nihko?'
She was drinking more of the red Stessa wine, sitting on the bed against the wall with her legs drawn up beneath her skirts, tenting linen over her knees. A glazed winejar was nested in the mattress beside her hip. 'He has gone back to the ship.'
'Upset with the dinner conversation?'
'It is his task,' she said lugubriously, 'to be certain all is well with my crew and vessel.'
'Oh, of course.'
Her tone was level. 'What have you come here for?'
'Explanation. Introduction. Education.'
She frowned. 'About what?'
'Herakleio,' I answered. 'You share a past. I want to know about it.'
Coppery brows leaped upward on her forehead. 'You want to hear gossip? '
'Truth,' I said. 'It seems you know it.'
She studied me, assessing my expression. After a moment she hooked a hand over the lip of the winejar and suspended it in midair. 'I have only the one cup,' she said, 'but you may have the jar.'
I remained where I was. 'Is it so difficult for you to be in this household that you seek courage in liquor?'
Her chin came up sharply even as she lowered the jar. 'Who are you to say such a thing?'
I moved then, entered the room, did as Del so often did and took a seat upon the floor, spine set into plaster. I stretched out long legs, crossed them at the ankles, folded arms against my ribs. 'Someone who knows as well as you how to read others.'
She smiled at that, although it was shaped of irony and was of brief duration. 'So.'
'The daughter of a slaver hosted in the house of the Stessa metri, the metri of Skandi-and a woman who once shared a bed with the heir. You must admit it has implications.'
Bright hair glowed in lamplight. 'Herakleio,' she said dryly, 'has slept with any woman willing to share his bed.'
'And you were willing.'
'I was.'
'Even-' But I let it go, uncertain of how to phrase it.
She knew. 'Even. But you see, it was many years ago. Before I understood what was in me. And I fancied myself in love with him.'
'What about him,' I asked, 'is even remotely loveable?'
Prima laughed. 'Oh, you have seen him at his worst. You inspire it in him. But Herak is more than merely a spoiled pet of a boy. There is stone in him, and sunlight as well.'
'And so you slept with him.'
She got up then, climbed out of the bed and came across to me, winecup in one hand and winejar in the other. She sat down next to me, set her spine against the wall even as I had, and handed me the jar. 'Have you never done a thing that took you at the moment as a good thing, a thing that needed doing, only to regret it in the morning?'
'I never slept with another man.' I lifted the pottery jar, set lip against mine, drank. 'Nor ever want to.'
'Oh no, that is not in you.' She said it so casually. 'But what of women? Surely there have been women you regretted in the morning.'
'There have been mornings I regretted in the morning.'
She laughed deep in her throat: she understood. 'But it is true, is it not, that we too often do what we wish we had not?'
'You regret sleeping with Herakleio.'
'Yes. And no.'
'Oh?'
She drank her cup dry, then stared blindly at the opposite wall. In the ocher-gilt wash of lamplight, her many freckles merged. 'He was my first man,' she said, 'and my last.' She saw my frown of incomprehension. 'Oh, there were other men in between. But I realized they offered nothing I wanted, not in my heart. It was women …' She let it go, shrugging. 'But I was afraid of myself, of the truth, and so I sought out Herak again to prove to myself that I was like other women.'
'And instead-?'
'He was drunk, was Herak. He did not even know me. I was merely a woman, and likely his second of the night. He slept hard when we were done, and did not awaken even as I withdrew.' She swirled the lees in her cup. 'By morning I understood the truth of what I was, what I wanted; what I was not, and did not want. So Herak twice had the awakening of me.'
'You are drunk, captain.'
Prima smiled, blurry eyes alight. 'Of course I am.'
'Why?'
'Because I am here. Because Herak is. Because Nihko is not.' She recaptured the jar from me and poured
