with fistfuls of her dress. Murad clenched his teeth as he spent himself within, gave her one last savage thrust and pulled away with the sweat running down his face. Jemilla sank to her side in the deeper shadows under the tree. Twilight was fast sinking into darkness and her face was a mere livid blur. The gardens were alive with the birds’ evensong, and he could still hear the buzz and laughter of the chattering guests in the reception hall. Murad refastened his breeches and leaned on one elbow in the resinous-smelling dimness under the cypress.
“You have a direct way of approaching things,” he told Jemilla.
“It saves time.”
“I agree. You have hopes for your child, obviously, but what exactly is your fascination with me? I am no young girl’s dream. And I have been away from court a long time.”
“Precisely. You are not tainted by the events which have been transpiring in Abrusio. Your hands are clean. We could be useful to one another,” Jemilla said calmly.
Murad brushed the dead leaves from his shoulders. “I could be useful to you, you mean. Lady, your name is mud at court. The King tolerates you out of some outdated chivalric impulse. Your child, when it is born, will be shunted off to some backwater estate in the Hebros, and you with it. What can you offer me, aside from the occasional roll in the grass?”
She leaned closer. Her hand slid down his belly and over the brim of his breeches. He flinched minutely as her hot fingers gripped his flaccid member.
“Marry me,” she said.
“What?” Murad actually chuckled.
“I could not then be shunted off, as you put it. And my son’s claims would be all the stronger.” Her hand started to work up and down on him. He began to harden again in her grasp.
“This may be true, but I ask again: what do I get out of it?”
“You become the legal guardian of the King’s heir. If something were to happen to the King after my son is born, he would be too young to be crowned. And you would be regent automatically.”
“Regicide? Is that your game?” He wrenched her hand out of his breeches. “Lady, if something were to happen to the King, I would be next in line anyway, have you thought of that? I would have no need to play uncle to your bastard.”
“You may be the King’s cousin, but you are not of the Hibrusid house. You might find some difficulty persuading the rest of the nobles that your claim is preeminent. With myself as your wife, the King’s only son as your legal ward, your position would be unassailable. Call yourself regent if you would: you would be King in everything but name.”
“And what would you be—a dutiful little wife? I’d sooner share my bed with a viper.”
She sat up, and shrugged. Her bodice had come down and her heavy, dark-nippled breasts were bare. She took his hand and set it upon one of them, squeezed his fingers in on the ripe softness.
“Think on it awhile,” she said, her voice a low purr. “Abeleyn is a travesty of a man held together by sorcery alone. He will not make old bones.”
“I may be many things,” Murad said, “but I am not yet a traitor.”
“Think on it,” she repeated, and rose to her feet, tugging up her dress, shaking grass out of her hair. “By the way, your ship was piloted by one Richard Hawkwood, was it not?”
“Yes. So?”
Her voice changed. She lost some of her assured poise. “How is he? I have a lady’s maid who wishes to know.”
“A lady’s maid with a yen for a mariner? He’s well enough, I suppose. Like me, he survived. There is not much more to be said.”
“I see.” She became her assured self again, and bent forward to kiss Murad’s scarred forehead. “Think on my offer. I am staying in the West Wing—the guest apartments. You can visit me when you like. Come and talk to me. I am lonely there.” She brushed one delicate finger along the scar that convulsed the skin of his temple, then turned and walked away across the garden towards the lights of the palace, her fan fluttering all the way.
Murad watched her go. A peculiar hunger arose within him. There was something about the lady Jemilla which challenged his pride. He liked that. Her schemes were dangerous daydreams—but he would visit her, of that he was sure. He would make her squeal, by God.
He left the shadow of the tree and looked up at the first stars come gleaming in the spring sky. Abrusio. He was home at last. And that murderous nightmare he had left behind him could be forgotten. His venture had been a failure, but it had taught him many things. He had information now that could one day prove useful.
Tomorrow he would visit the city barracks and see about getting back his old command. And he needed a new horse, something bad-tempered and spirited from the Feramuno studs. Something he would enjoy breaking down.
There were many things he was going to enjoy breaking down. Murad lifted his face and laughed aloud into the starlit sky. It was good to be alive.
EPILOGUE
S PRING, it seemed, had come at last. There was a freshness to the air, and primroses had come out in bright lines about the margins of the Western Road. Corfe stood on the summit of the tower and watched the light tumble cloud patterns over the hills. If he turned his head, he could see the sea glimmering on the world’s horizon. A world at peace.
“I thought I would find you here,” a woman’s voice said. She touched him lightly on the arm, her long skirts whispering around her. She wore a crown.
An aged woman. She looked old enough to be his grandmother, and yet she was about to become his wife.
“It looks so quiet,” he said, still staring out at the empty hills beyond the city walls. “As if it had all been a dream.”
“Or a nightmare,” Odelia retorted.
He said nothing. The great burial mounds of Armagedir were too far away for him to see, but he knew he would always feel them there, somewhere at his shoulder. Andruw lay in one of them, and Morin and Cerne and Ebro and Ranafast and Rusio—and ten thousand other faceless men who had died at his bidding. They were one monument he would never be able to forget.
“It’s time, Corfe,” the Queen said gently.
“I know.”
If he looked east, towards the sea, he would find a large, ornate encampment pitched there, gay with the silk pennons and horsetail standards of the Merduks. The enemy had come calling in the aftermath of defeat, not exactly cap in hand but with a certain strained humility all the same. Corfe had given leave for the Merduk Sultan and a suitable escort to pitch their tents within sight of the city walls. His representatives had been permitted into the city this very morning, entering in peace the place they had squandered so much blood to take. They wanted to witness the crowning of Torunna’s new King, the man with whom they would be treating in the days to come. It was too bizarre for words. Andruw would have found it so immensely funny.
Corfe blinked away the heat in his eyes. It was hard, harder than he could have imagined.
“He died well,” Odelia said gently, “the way he would have wished. They all did.”
Corfe nodded. He, too, would have been happy to die that day, knowing the battle was won.
“There is still the peace,” Odelia said with that disquieting prescience of hers. “It remains to be achieved. What you do today is part of that.”
“I know. I’m not sure it is the way I would have chosen, though.”
“It is the best way,” she said, pressing his arm. “Trust me, Corfe.”
He limped away from the parapet with her hand still on his arm and turned back towards the city below. From this height, Torunn looked like some fairy-tale metropolis. The streets were packed with people —it was said a quarter of a million had gathered in City Square—and every house seemed to be flying some flag or banner. The citizens crowded upper-floor windows like tiers of house martins in their nests, and Torunnan regulars in full dress were stationed at every corner.
