from hers to her nipples. She sighed and pressed his head down on her. His hand found the joining of her legs. Her breath caught. As he stroked her, she opened them wider. She was wet and wanton, waiting for him.
“Here,” she whispered. “I do for you.” She twisted in the red gloom. Her mouth came down on him.
“Easy,” he said as her tongue fluttered and teased. “Oh, easy. Or I’ll -”
“So what?” She dove deep on him, so deep that she choked a little. That made her pull back a little, but she was laughing when she did.
More than a little of that and he would explode. He knew it, and Marcovefa had to know it, too. He didn’t think she’d come here just for that, so he touched her cheek. She paused and made a questioning, wordless noise. “Let’s do this,” he said, pressing his weight onto her again. He slid in with just the slightest of guidance. They began to move together, as if they’d been lovers for years.
Again, he thought he would finish too soon to satisfy her. When his mouth slid down to her breast again, though, she murmured something in her own dialect. There he was, nearly at the peak of pleasure, and there he stayed, and stayed, and stayed, till delight turned almost painful. Marcovefa gasped and quivered beneath him, again and again.
“Now?” she asked at last.
“Now!” Hamnet said. They were both sticky and slippery with sweat, sliding together. He reached the pinnacle, and seemed to fall from it forever. Marcovefa shivered one more time.
“Good?” she inquired brightly.
“My God,” he answered, and then, “Wait till I can see anything but fire in front of my eyes.” She must have liked that, for she laughed again. The motion made him slide out of her.
“Maybe you sleep now,” she said. Count Hamnet was inclined to think he’d sleep for the next month. This wasn’t love – he’d known love twice now, and known it to turn on him and bite – but he’d never dreamt of so much animal pleasure. And then, mischief in her voice, she went on, “Or maybe …” That wasn’t a complete sentence by itself, but what she did a moment later made it one.
After his sweaty exertions of a moment before, he hadn’t thought he could rise again so soon. He hadn’t thought he could rise again at all, not for days. But he surprised himself. Maybe – more likely – Marcovefa made him surprise himself. This time she rode him, less ferociously than he’d taken her. He didn’t think she used any magic past that which any man and woman who please each other have. If he was wrong, he didn’t much want to find out.
“There,” she said when they’d both spent themselves again. “Is that better?”
“Better than what?” Hamnet asked, which set her laughing all over again. It was better than almost anything he could think of.
Almost.
When he woke the next morning, he thought at first he’d dreamt it all. That couldn’t really have happened . . could it? But he needed only a heartbeat’s more consciousness to realize he wasn’t alone in the bed. The thin, gray light leaking in through tight-drawn shutters showed Marcovefa asleep beside him, a small smile on her face. Her features relaxed in slumber, she looked improbably young.
His eyes went towards the door. Yes, it was barred. She might have done that right after she came in. She might have got out of bed after he fell asleep. She might have, yes. But he wondered whether it had ever been unbarred at all.
Marcovefa woke up a few minutes later. She looked confused for a couple of heartbeats, as if wondering where she was, and with whom. Then she grinned at Count Hamnet. “Good morning,” she said.
“The night was better.” He leaned over to kiss her. He half – more than half – hoped they would pick up where they’d left off, though he was anything but sure he could rise to the occasion.
But Marcovefa said, “We take care of one thing at a time. Now you are all right for a while, yes? So now we go and see what we can do to these Rulers.” The invaders still didn’t seem to trouble her, even if they had everyone else below the Glacier from Trasamund to Sigvat in something close to a panic.
Hamnet wondered if he ought to resent being lumped with a water wheel that had got out of kilter. Pride and the memory of pleasure warred within him, but not for long. He couldn’t stay offended, not when he remembered how she’d put him back in good working order.
Marcovefa slid out of bed, found the chamber pot, and squatted over it. Like the Bizogots, her folk needed less in the way of privacy than Raumsdalians did. She straightened up, still naked. Hamnet watched her in unfeigned admiration.
He looked around the room. He didn’t see her clothes anywhere. Had she walked through the corridors of Eyvind Torfinn’s house like that? Or – ?
She fluttered her fingertips in a wicked parody of a gesture someone like Gudrid might have used. “See you at breakfast, sweetheart,” she said – and vanished. Hamnet didn’t think she’d made herself invisible. She’d really disappeared; a soft pop.’ of inrushing air said as much.
Could Liv or Audun Gilli apport themselves like that? Count Hamnet shrugged. He didn’t know. He only knew he’d never seen them do it.
He used the pot himself, then dressed in the clothes Sigvat’s servants had given him. They would do for winter wear, though they weren’t ideal. He would have stewed in his own juices wearing them in a summer heat wave here. A slow smile – not an expression he was used to wearing – stole across his face. His juices had done considerable stirring in the night.
He found his way to the dining room. Eyvind Torfinn was there, eating sausages and duck eggs and drinking a hot infusion of herbs. Gudrid was there, too. So was Marcovefa. The two of them ostentatiously ignored each other. Hamnet Thyssen nodded to Eyvind Torfinn, then walked up to the cook. “I’ll have what the earl’s having,” he said. “That looks good.”
“Help yourself to the sausages, Your Grace,” the man replied. “I’ll give you your eggs in just a bit. Would you like two or three?”
“Three, please,” Hamnet answered. The sausages were venison, their flavor enlivened with garlic and fennel. When he had his eggs – almost as fast as the cook promised – he sat down by Marcovefa. Catlike, she leaned against him.
Gudrid never missed a signal like that. One of her elegantly plucked eyebrows leaped. “This time, of course, it will be pure happiness,” she said in a voice filled with vitriol.
“I doubt it,” Hamnet answered. “It will be what it is, that’s all.”
Gudrid started to say something, then stopped with her mouth open. She must have expected him to come back with something like,
Marcovefa pointed across at Gudrid. “She catches bugs, yes?” she said in the regular Bizogot tongue. Gudrid understood that well enough to close her mouth with a snap, and to redden in anger.
“Maybe we should all leave aside our quarrels, whatever they may be, until the happy day when the Rulers are defeated,” Eyvind Torfinn said, also in the Bizogot language.
His wife understood that, too, which was not to say she agreed with it. As Count Hamnet s own thoughts showed, he wasn’t sure he agreed with it, either. Beating the Rulers was his duty. Getting one up on Gudrid was a pleasure, and one he didn’t enjoy nearly often enough.
At the moment, though, Gudrid’s anger seemed more likely to be aimed at Marcovefa than at him. Gudrid had squabbled with Liv, too, and hadn’t liked what happened when she did. Would she remember that angering shamans and wizards wasn’t a good idea?
“With the Emperors order in my hand, I want to go north as soon as I finish here, Your Splendor,” Hamnet said. “And with me and the Bizogots out of your house, you should have peace again, God willing.”
“May it be so.” Eyvind Torfinn didn’t sound convinced, and Hamnet had a hard time blaming him for that. Gudrid wasn’t happy that he’d prevailed on Sigvat to open the dungeon. As far as she was concerned, Hamnet and Kormak Bersi could have stayed there till they rotted. She wasn’t shy about making her opinions known, either. No, Earl Eyvind probably wouldn’t have a happy time of it once his guests left.
