Cold Steel

Page 186

He pulled me up off the bed and into his arms with such strength that my toes briefly left the ground. He was not minded to be subtle or coaxing or patient. I floated, the heady pleasure of his kiss like ambrosia, as it always was.
When we paused he spoke in a murmur against my cheek as his hands began to wander their familiar paths. “What makes you think I care?”
I slapped his hand. “Of course you care! Anyway, I can’t bear to see such expensive clothes treated so carelessly. I shall do it, if you will not.”
He sat us on the bed and undid the double row of buttons on my cuirassier’s jacket. “Very well. Did you repair this, love? This is what you were wearing when you were shot. I would have thought it must have been cut off you.”
“I did not want to throw away what they had almost ruined. It felt too much like defeat.”
“It’s beautiful work, making something new out of what was torn.”
“They always think they are about to defeat us. For so long we have been at their mercy.” I grinned. “But now we are going to fight back.”
“Truly, now we can.” He slipped me out of the jacket. “Only your bodice beneath! I see you have not forgotten the Expedition style of dressing, for I must say that you in a simple bodice and wrapped skirt waiting tables on a hot night is what I love best, however beautiful you look in your other clothes. Or out of them.”
He undid the lacing on my bodice. The white pucker of scars on my shoulder he kissed as he began on the fastenings of my skirt.
I reveled in the caress of his lips on my neck and the playful wandering of his hands. “Vai, this is no time for me to risk becoming pregnant. Do you have…?”
“No need, love. Rory gave me the sign that you’re not fertile right now.”
I pulled out of his arms. “You and Rory have a signal arranged?”
“If you’d rather not, we shall stop here.” By the crinkling at his eyes and the wry cut of his lips, he was laughing silently at me. “I can sleep on the floor.”
“You will not be sleeping on the floor!”
“In truth, although I am sorry to have to say this to you, every night at Two Gourds House I returned ready to tell you everything that had happened. But you would drag me to the bed first and make it clear what you wanted before I even had a chance to talk. Naturally, given our exertions, I would fall asleep afterward. Then I was always called away early before we could converse at length.”
“That’s not how it happened!”
“It is!”
Blessed Tanit. Maybe it had been. “I was so very bored all day long.”
His smile faded as he leaned forward to embrace me. “I did listen to what they said to me, love. I do hear you. I want you to know that, before we are parted.”
“I know.” I held him close, for the thought of tomorrow filled me with excitement at the challenge, and yet also with dread at leaving him and Bee.
“All will be well,” he murmured, as if by sheer stubborn effort he could make it so.
I raised my lips to his and, after all, we forgot about the clothes until much later, at which point they were all rumpled and creased.
38
He was gone when I woke in the morning.
I hurriedly dressed and ran down to the courtyard to discover him in his rumpled clothes facing off with Bee across a table. A pot of coffee and her open sketchbook sat between them.
“Broken cups are little enough to go on,” Bee was saying to him, tapping the sketch on the open page. It depicted a porcelain coffeepot and cups shattered into pieces around a tipped-over chair. Fortunately it was not the pot on our table.
I slipped onto the bench beside him, not sure of their mood because his eyebrows were raised and she wore a broody frown. His look acknowledging my arrival shared our night all over again. I smiled in answer.
Bee muttered under her breath, “Blessed Tanit, spare me,” then, in a normal voice, “Do you really know what this is, Andevai?”
He looked at the sketch as his eyes narrowed. “I know exactly what it is. This is Gold Cup House at Lemovis. The Coalition army was retreating north out of Burdigala after we suffered a crushing defeat there. The Iberians were right behind us. The Coalition halted at Lemovis. The mage House called Gold Cup House lies at the edge of the town, on the river. The mansa and I went to them to warn them they should evacuate, because the mage House in Burdigala was burned to the ground during the battle, almost certainly by Drake. Even to that point, the mansa wasn’t quite sure he believed me about fire magic. It’s impossible to make people here in Europa understand, for all such magic has always been strictly contained and controlled by the blacksmiths.”