Harry Turtledove - Wisdom of the Fox

"Do you know, I'm not sure," Gerin answered. "You've just made me sure of one thing, though, not that I wasn't already: I couldn't have found anyone better to oversee this library."

"Now you compliment me," she said. "In turn, I want to thank you once more for bringing me here to tend your books. It's not the life I had, but it's far more than I had any reason to hope for."

This time, she didn't just set her hand on his, she clasped it, nor did she pull away when he returned the pressure. He started to lean forward to kiss her, then hesitated, not from lack of desire but out of a scrupulous sense of fairness. He said, "If you're drawn to me, think on why. If it's only because I'm the one who brought you out of Ikos and helped show you how to live in the wider world, think on whether that's reason enough."

She laughed at him. She couldn't have surprised him more if she'd burst into flame. "I am a woman grown, lord Gerin, and you are not my father." As was her way, she sobered fast. "What you are with the lady Fand is something else again, especially in light of what I saw the other night."

That sobered Gerin in turn. Slowly, he said, "The thing is dead. Aye, you saw me leave her chamber." He sighed. "Aye, we'd been to bed—what point denying it when it's so? We won't do that again—no sense to it, not when it was as it was. If she and Van get along, I wish them nothing but joy. If they don't, I probably ought to wish him a hide as hard and thick as his corselet."

"So you should." She smiled again, but not for long. "And is it because what you and Fand knew is dead that you now show an interest in me?"

"Maybe in part," he answered, which surprised her. He quickly added, "But only in small part, I'd say. More—far more—is that you are as you are. Believe me or not, as you will." One of his eyebrows rose, a sort of punctuation by expression. "Besides, you were the one who took my hand. I wouldn't have presumed to do such a thing, not with you being who you are."

"I noticed that," Selatre said. "You'd promised as much when you took me away from Ikos, but who knows what a man's promises are worth till they're tested? When I saw you meant what you said, I—" She didn't go on, but looked down at the scroll in front of her. Unlike Fand's, her skin did not usually show much color, but she flushed now.

"You decided you wanted to take the first step," Gerin said. Selatre kept her eyes on the scroll but, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

Gerin plucked at his beard. What he'd known with Fand had gone beyond the pleasure of the bedchamber, but not far beyond; there was a core of himself he'd never yielded. He'd done that only once, with Elise . . . and after what came of that, he was wary— no, frightened , he told himself—of risking it again. But if he involved himself with Selatre, he would have to risk it; he could feel as much already.

Do you want to spend the rest of your days alone inside? he wondered. It was easier; it was safer; it was, in the end, empty.

"Are you sure?" he asked. Saying the words was almost as hard as going into battle.

Selatre nodded, a little less hesitantly. With something of the feeling of a man diving into deep water, Gerin leaned toward her. He wondered if she would know how to kiss; she'd said she'd been consecrated to Biton ever since her courses failed to start when she reached womanhood.

But her lips met his firmly; her mouth opened and her tongue played with his. It was, in fact, quite as satisfactory a kiss as he'd ever had. When at last they broke apart, he said, "Where did you learn that?"

"In my village, of course." She looked puzzled for a moment, then burst out laughing again. "Oh, I see—you expected me to be not just a maiden but ignorant as well. No. Some of the young men there couldn't have cared less that the god had set his mark on me. I knew I couldn't yield my body to them, but that doesn't mean I led an altogether empty life."

"Oh," he said in a small voice. "I hadn't thought of that. When you said Biton had chosen you, I suppose I thought you'd lived solitary from that time on."

"No," Selatre said again. "It wasn't like that, not until the god called to himself the Sibyl that was and chose me in her place—though only for a brief time." Her face clouded for a moment, then cleared. "But I must say you were right: if that time is ended, I have to live the rest of my life as best I can."

This time, she leaned toward him. The kiss went on and on. His arms closed around her. She stiffened when he cupped her breast with one hand. He took the hand away. "If you're not ready, just let me know," he said. He still wasn't sure how fast he wanted to charge ahead with her. Had he been a few years younger, lust would have overridden thought, but those days were past him, even if Van still sometimes thought more with his crotch than with his head.

Selatre said, "Having come this far, I think it's time to finish the job of returning me to the world. I've heard it can hurt the first time, but if you know hurt may be coming, it's easier to bear."

"I hope I won't hurt you, or not badly," Gerin said. "When I was down in the City of Elabon, another student there had a scroll on the proper way to deflower a maiden as gently as possible. What it said made good sense, though I confess I've never needed to use it till now."

"They write books about that ?" Selatre said, her eyes wide. "If you had one of those in your library here, Gerin, think how many more people you could win to reading."

"You're right, I expect," he said, remembering the illustrations with which the scribe had enlivened the scroll. Then he noticed Selatre had called him by his name alone, without the honorific she'd always used before. It startled him for a moment. Then he laughed at himself. If they were about to be intimate, didn't she have the right to address him intimately?

He was never sure afterwards which of them got up first from the table in the library. They walked side by side down the hall toward his bedchamber. With any other woman, he would have slipped his arm around her waist. With Selatre, he still held back in spite of what they were going to the bedroom to do. If she wanted to touch him before then, she could.

They were three or four strides from the door when the lookout in the watchtower winded his horn. Gerin stopped dead. Grinding his teeth, he said, "Oh, a pestilence! Not now , by all the gods."

He couldn't read Selatre's face. Was that wry amusement there, or maybe relief? If they didn't seize the chance now, would she change her mind later? What was he supposed to do if she did? Pretend nothing had happened? Or—?

Then the lookout shouted, "Lord Gerin, Rihwin the Fox is heading back toward Fox Keep."

"What?" Gerin exclaimed, his worries about Selatre forgotten. "I only sent him out two days ago. He can't even have got out of the land I hold, let alone to Aragis' and back. Has he lost his wits? Has he lost his nerve?"

Selatre said, "You'd better go and see what that's about. Other things can wait for their own time."

"Yes," he said abstractedly. That sounded promising, even if she hadn't promised anything. He barely noticed. He was already trotting for the stairs. Selatre followed more slowly.

Gerin's trot went to a run as soon as he got down to the great hall. He dashed out into the courtyard, sprinted for the gate. Someone called from up on the palisade: "I see Rihwin and the chariot crews that went out with him, lord prince, but he's got more crews with him than just those. Not men I recognize, neither."

The drawbridge was already creaking down over the ditch around the palisade. Panting a little, Gerin waited impatiently for it to drop far enough to let him see out. At last, it did. Sure enough, there was Rihwin's chariot in the lead, but he was bringing back twice as many crews as he'd set out with.