Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

She smiled, utterly composed.

Crispin felt himself go white as he stared at her. It took him a moment to find his voice. "You appear to have been misinformed. There were no actresses in the Blues" compound when I arrived there," he said very carefully. He knew what she'd meant. He was not going to acknowledge it. "And I was in the kitchen only, no one's private chambers. What are you doing in mine?" He ought to have called her "my lady."

She had changed her clothing. The court garb was gone. She was wearing a dark blue robe with a hood, thrown back now to frame her golden hair, which was still pinned, though without ornament now. She would have had the hood up, he imagined, to pass unknown through the streets, to enter here. Had she bribed someone? She would have had to. Wouldn't she?

She didn't answer his spoken question. Not with words, at any rate. She looked up at him for a long moment from the bed, then stood. A very tall woman, blue-eyed, fair-haired, a scent about her: Crispin thought of flowers, a mountain meadow, an undercurrent of intoxication, poppies. His heart was racing: danger and-rising swiftly and against his will-desire. The expression on her face was thoughtful, appraising. Without hurrying, she lifted one hand and traced a finger along his shaven jaw. She touched his ear, circled it. Then she rose up on tiptoe and kissed him on the mouth.

He didn't move. He could have withdrawn, he thought afterwards, could have stepped back. He was no innocent, had known-fatigued as he was-that measuring look in her eyes as she stood up in the shadow and light of the room. He hadn't stepped back. He did refrain from responding, though, as best he could, even when her tongue…

She didn't seem to care. Appeared to find it amusing, in fact, that he withheld himself, standing rigid before her. She took her time, quite deliberately, body fitted close against his, tongue brushing his lips, pushing between them, then moving down to his throat. He heard her soft laughter, the breath warm against his skin.

"I do hope she left some life in you," murmured the aristocratic wife of the Supreme Strategos of the Empire, and proceeded to slip a hand down the front of his tunic to his waist-and past it-by way of inquiry.

This time Crispin did step back, breathing hard, but not before she'd touched him through the silk of his garment. He saw her smile, the small, even teeth. She was exquisite, was Styliane Daleina, like pale glass, pale ivory, like one of the knife blades made in the far west of the world, in Esperana, where they crafted such things to be works of beauty as well as agents of death.

"Good," she said, again. She looked at him, assured, amused, daughter of wealth and power, wedded to it. He could taste her, feel where her mouth had been along his throat. She said, musingly, "I will disappoint you, I now fear. How can I compete with the actress in this? It was said in her youth that she lamented holy Jad had granted her an insufficiency of orifices for the acts of love."

"Stop it!" Crispin rasped. "This is a game. Why are you playing it? Why are you here?" She smiled again. White teeth, hands coming up into her hair, long, wide sleeves of the robe falling back to show bare, slender arms. He said, in anger, fighting desire, "Someone tried to kill me tonight."

"I know," said Styliane Daleina. "Does it excite you? I hope it does."

"You know? What else do you know about it?" Crispin said. Even as he spoke, she began to unpin her golden hair.

She paused. Looked at him, a different expression in her eyes this time. "Rhodian, had I wished you dead, you would be. Why would a Daleinus hire drunks in a caupona? Why would I trouble to kill an artisan?"

"Why would you trouble to come uninvited to his room?" Crispin snapped.

She laughed again at that. Her hands were busy another moment, collecting pins; then she shook her head and the richness of her hair spilled down, falling about her shoulders, filling the hood of her robe.

"Must the actress be allowed all the interesting men?" she said.

Crispin shook his head, the familiar anger rising now. He sought refuge in it. He say it again: this is a game you are playing. You are not here because you want to be bedded by a foreign artisan." She hadn't stepped back. There was very little space between them and her scent enveloped them both. A dark redness, heady as poppies, as unmixed wine. Very different from the Empress's. It had to be. Carullus and then the eunuchs had told him that.

Deliberately, Crispin sat down on the wooden chest under the window. He took a deep breath. "I have asked some questions. They seem reasonable in the circumstances. I'm waiting," he said, and then added, "My lady."

"So am I," she murmured, one hand pushing her hair back. But the voice had changed again, responding to his tone. There was a silence in the room. Crispin heard a cart rumble past in the street below. Someone shouted. It was morning. Bands of light and dark fell across her body. The effect, he thought, was quite beautiful.

She said, "You may be inclined to underestimate yourself, Rhodian. You have little concept of what the patterns are at this court. No one is summoned as swiftly as you were. Ambassadors wait weeks, artisan. But the Emperor is infatuated with his Sanctuary. In one single night you have been invited to court, given control of the mosaics there, had private counsel with the Empress, and caused the dismissal of the man who was doing the work before you came."

"Your man," Crispin said.

"After a fashion," she said carelessly. "He had done some work for us. I judged it of some use to have Valerius in our debt for finding him a craftsman. Leontes disagreed with that, but had his own reasons for preferring Siroes. He has. views on what you and the other artisans should be permitted to do in the sanctuaries."

Crispin blinked. That might need thinking about. Later. "It was Siroes who hired those soldiers, then?" he guessed. "I had no intention of ruining anyone's career."

"You did, however," said the woman. The aristocratic coolness he remembered from before was in her voice again. "Quite completely. But no, I can attest that Siroes was not in a position to hire assassins tonight. Trust me in this."

Crispin swallowed. There was nothing reassuring in her tone, but there was a note of truth. He decided he didn't want to ask why she was so certain.

"Who was it, then?"

Styliane Daleina raised her hands, palms out, an elegant, indifferent gesture. "I have no idea. Run down the table of your enemies. Pick a name. Did the actress like my necklace? Did she put it on?"

"The Emperor wouldn't let her," Crispin said, deliberately.

And saw that he'd surprised her. "Valerius was there?"

"He was there. No one went down on her knees."

She was amazingly self-possessed. A lifetime of dealing with intrigue and lesser mortals. She smiled a little. "Not yet," she said, the timbre of her voice lower, the glance direct. It was a game, and he knew it, but entirely against his will, Crispin felt the stirrings of desire again.

As carefully as he could, he said, "I am unused to being offered love-making on so little acquaintance, except by whores. My lady, I am generally disinclined to accept their offers as well."

She gazed at him, and Crispin had a sense that-perhaps for the first time-she was taking the trouble to shape an evaluation of the man in the room with her. She had been standing. Now she sank down onto the end of the bed, not far from the chest where he sat. Her knee brushed his, then withdrew a little.

"Would that please you?" she murmured. "To treat me like a whore, Rhodian? Put my face hard to the pillow, take me from behind? Hold me by the hair as I cry out, as I say shocking, exciting things to you? Shall I tell you what Leontes likes to do? It will surprise you, perhaps. He rather enjoys-"