“Aye,” I murmured. “That, I heard.”
He straightened his shoulders. “Well, then. I would not be remiss in my duty to a descendant of House Courcel.” He gestured at young Leo and his crew of street-lads, listening and gaping silently. “Shall I disperse this ragtag rabble for you? I can assign a cadre of guards to assist you with your needs.”
I hesitated.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Bao interjected, slinging one arm over Leo’s shoulders, causing the lad’s eyes to brighten. “We like… how do you say it? Ragtag rabble.”
The harbor-master bowed formally. “As you wish.”
After he took his leave, we said our thanks and farewells to Captain Ramchandra, who had escorted us safely to these shores. He bowed to us in the Bhodistani manner, his palms pressed together.
“It has been my very great honor!” he said. “I give thanks to you for restoring Kamadeva’s diamond to its proper place.”
Bao glanced sidelong at me, amused.
I cleared my throat. “It was our honor to do so.”
We had done that, Bao and I. The Rani Amrita had charged us with the task of returning Kamadeva’s diamond, a black jewel forged from the ashes of the Bhodistani god of desire, to the temple from which it had been stolen by Jagrati, a woman reckoned by her own people to be untouchable. I had carried it in a locked coffer for leagues upon leagues, fearful of its temptations.
All too well, I knew its power.
So did Bao, better than I did.
But we had carried it willingly for the sake of our lady Amrita; she who had withstood its allure when Jagrati the Spider Queen bore it; she who had had the strength to surrender it. In the temple where it had resided for many, many hundreds of years, we watched the priests break open the coffer, daring with trembling hands to transfer the diamond with its fiery heart filled with dark, shifting hues into the cupped and open hands of the god Shiva’s effigy.
There, it resided—a blessing ready to be invoked by all who sought it, and not a weapon to be wielded by any one soul.
The bright lady had approved.
“Hey, lady!” young Leo called breathlessly, trotting beneath the weight of one of our trunks. “I know who you are! I remember!”
“Oh, you do, do you?” I glanced at him. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten when I’d left Terre d’Ange, but there was no underestimating the D’Angeline capacity for gossip.
“Oh, aye!” His face was flushed, but his eyes shone. “It was when the biggest ship in the world was in the harbor! D’ye remember, Michel?” he asked one of his companions. The other lad grunted in assent. “We went to look at it every day! From Ch’in, they said. You look like one of their sailors,” he added to Bao.
“Was he uncommonly handsome?” Bao inquired cheerfully.
“No!” Leo’s flush deepened. “I mean, not like one particular fellow. You look like all of them.”
Bao raised his brows at me.
“Uncommonly handsome,” I assured him.
“Anyway,” Leo continued heedlessly, “I remember! We went to watch the ship set sail, too. It was like watching a floating palace set out to sea! And everyone said that half-breed”—he lowered his voice—“bear-witch who summoned demons and ruined Lord Raphael and seduced the Queen was being sent away on the ship! That was you, wasn’t it?”
I sighed. “First of all, they were fallen spirits, not demons—”
He interrupted me. “What’s the difference?”
“Ah… I’m not sure,” I admitted. “At any rate, I didn’t summon them, I just… helped.”
“Those idiots couldn’t have done a thing without you,” Bao scoffed. “Your magic opened the doorway that let the demon through.”
“You’re not helping,” I informed him.
“So you really can do magic?” one of the other lads asked, wide-eyed. He stumbled over a cobblestone, and would have dropped the trunk he was carrying if Bao hadn’t caught it. “Can you turn into a bear?” He looked excited and horrified at the thought.
“No,” I said gently. “The Maghuin Dhonn Herself took that gift away from us long before I was born. Do you know the story of Prince Imriel?” All of them nodded; it was one of the great tales of Terre d’Ange. “Well, that’s why She took it away. Now all my people have left is a small gift for magic meant to conceal and protect us.”
“But it can be used for other things, too,” Bao added. “Good and bad. Moirin was very foolish to use it to help summon demons, but it was not her idea. It was your Lord Raphael’s idea. And she was not sent away. She left to accompany me and my wise mentor, Master Lo Feng, to save a princess and rescue a dragon in faraway Ch’in.” He gave me an inquiring look. “Better?”
“Better,” I agreed.
The lads looked skeptical. “There’s no such thing as a dragon,” Leo said.
“Oh, there is!” Bao grinned. “Maybe not here, but in Ch’in. We have ridden in one’s claw as he soared through the sky and called the thunderstorms.”
“Also, I did not seduce the Queen,” I put in stubbornly. They blinked at me, having forgotten the initial topic in the talk of dragons and faraway lands. “Queen Jehanne,” I reminded them. “Tell me, does her daughter thrive?”
Leo nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, madame! They call her the Little Pearl. She is much beloved in the City of Elua.”
“And his majesty King Daniel?”
He hesitated. “It is said he is… sad. He grieves deeply for the loss of the Queen, and he quarreled bitterly with the Dauphin when Prince Thierry insisted on leading an expedition to Terra Nova.”
I fell silent, thinking and remembering while Leo pressed Bao for more talk of dragons and cursed princesses.
I hadn’t known Daniel de la Courcel well, but I had liked him. Even before Jehanne’s death, sorrow at the loss of his first wife, Prince Thierry’s mother, had marked him. He was a grave and honorable man whose only fault, if it could be called one, was that he was overly cautious. While other countries had launched explorations into Terra Nova, and Thierry had pressed for the right to do the same, King Daniel had refused to allow it.
Not until Jehanne conceived had Daniel relented, promising to let his firstborn son and heir sail off in pursuit of glory if a second child was born hale, securing the line of succession.
Knowing of him what I did, I could well imagine Daniel would have had a change of heart upon Jehanne’s death. He had loved and lost two women; I did not think he had it in him to risk losing a third. He would have refused to remarry and he would have wanted to keep both his heirs close and safe.
But it seemed Thierry had held his father to his word, and now he was in Terra Nova—and Raphael with him.
“Moirin?” Bao’s voice broke my reverie. “We have reached the inn. Do you find it acceptable, or do you wish to inspect the bathing-chamber?”
Meeting his gaze, I saw the sincere concern behind his jesting, and summoned a smile. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
He nodded. “I told you this homecoming would be hard.”
“Aye.” I took a deep breath. “So you did.”
THREE
The inn was fine; more than fine.
An hour after our arrival, I sank into the depths of a generous marble tub, submerging my entire body. I scrubbed months’ worth of shipboard grime from my skin and washed my salt-stiffened hair. Servants of the inn brought bucket after bucket of freshly heated water to replace the dirty water, until the chamber was filled with steam.
The third time they entered, Bao followed.
“Come to join me?” I inquired.
He flashed a grin at me. “Uh-huh. Think there’s room?”
I smiled. “Aye, I do.”
The attendants left, giggling as Bao began to strip off the embroidered Bhodistani tunic and breeches he wore, revealing his lean-muscled fighter’s body. He paused, gazing at me with half-lidded eyes. “You look like something out of those stories sailors tell. What is the word in D’Angeline?”
I stirred the water. “Mermaid?”
“That’s it.” He climbed into the opposite end of the marble tub, dunking his whole head, coming up streaming water. “Soap?”
“Here.” I handed the ball of soap to him and watched him wash, taking pleasure in the sight. The black zig-zag tattoos he had acquired in Kurugiri stood out in stark contrast against the brown skin of his corded forearms, marking the way up and down a secret passage through a mountainous labyrinth, at the top of which the Spider Queen Jagrati and her husband the Falconer made their lair. Or at least they had, until we overthrew them with the help of the Rani Amrita and her army.
We had lived through a lot together, Bao and I.
“Do you ever think of her?” I asked him.
He followed my gaze, lifting one arm and letting it drop. “Jagrati? Sometimes, yes. I try not to. Why?”
I shrugged. Bao had spent long months under her thrall, bound by Kamadeva’s diamond and opium. Believing me dead, he had been content to wallow in darkness. “I just wondered.”
Bao leaned against the back of the tub. “Your presence keeps the memories away, Moirin,” he said in a serious manner; and then his grin returned. “Leo asked me if I was a prince in my own land. I told him that I was, but I gave up my kingdom to be with you.”
I raised my brows. “That is stretching the truth, my magpie.”
“Only a little,” he said in an unrepentant tone. “I’m sure the Great Khan would have gifted me with a territory of my own if I had remained wed to his daughter.”
“It’s possible,” I admitted.
“Anyway, Leo thought it was a very admirable story.” Bao nudged me with one foot. “Am I royalty now that I’m wed to you?”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
His dark eyes gleamed. “No, of course not. I only wondered if I was entitled to be called Lord Bao.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, well.” Bao gave a good-natured shrug. “Still, pretty good for a bastard peasant-boy with no family name.”
“I’ve no lands to my name, you know,” I commented. “None of the Maghuin Dhonn do. We are allowed to dwell in the wild places of Alba in the terms of a sacred trust forged by Alais the Wise many years ago, but we do not own them. I have no title. Lady Moirin is just an honorific acknowledging my heritage.”
“I am only teasing, Moirin.” Bao leaned forward, tugging me so that I slid to straddle his waist. Water slopped over the edges of the tub. Intensity heated his gaze. “I love you, and I would choose to be with you whether in a slum or a cave or a palace. All right?”
I cupped his face and kissed him. “Aye.”
His callused hands slid over my slippery skin, creating a glorious friction. I rubbed myself against him, feeling his arousal.
One of the inn’s servants opened the door to the bathing-chamber, then closed it with a soft laugh.
Bao reached down into the bath-water, grasping his taut phallus, fitting the swollen head between my nether-lips. “You see?” His other hand slid around the nape of my neck, pulling me down for a kiss as he pushed himself into me. “For you, I will even learn to be more like a D’Angeline.” His hips thrust upward. “Depraved and scandalous.”
I drew a long, shuddering breath as he filled me, my fingers digging into his shoulders. “Indeed.”
He smiled. “I have always been a clever student.”
Laughing, the bright lady agreed.
In the morning, with young Leo’s eager aid, we set about procuring passage overland to the City of Elua.
After the close quarters I had endured on the ship, I could not bear the thought of being cloistered in a carriage for days. Mercifully, Bao understood, knowing that there was a part of me that chafed at being confined, all the more so since the ordeal I had undergone in Vralia.
So it was that we bartered with a horse-trader that Leo assured us was reputable for a pair of saddle-horses and a pair of pack-horses. Bao watched with considerable amusement as I introduced myself to all four, cupping their velvety, whiskery muzzles and breathing into their nostrils, touching their placid equine thoughts with my own, leaning my brow against the bony plates of theirs.
“Does she really talk to them?” Leo asked in a loud whisper.
“I’m not sure,” Bao whispered in reply.
One of the saddle-horses gave a dignified whicker. I patted his withers. “Well said, my friend.”
The trader, testing the purity of our Bhodistani coinage bite by bite, widened his eyes.
I smiled sweetly at him. “We will take them.”
He coughed and nodded.
There was scant hope in outpacing gossip anywhere in the world, and least of all in Terre d’Ange. I did not try. Within a day of our arrival, word had gone out ahead of us that Moirin mac Fainche had returned to D’Angeline shores.
I hadn’t expected otherwise. Still, it galled me a little. Only because my reputation had sunk so low in Marsilikos, where I was reckoned to have seduced Jehanne and ruined Raphael. And now, thanks to Bao’s creative reinvention of history, it was rumored I had seduced a prince of faraway Ch’in to my own ends.
It made Bao laugh.
I scowled at him. “I did not seduce you! Stone and sea! You chose this!”
He shrugged with amusement. “No, Moirin. I was helpless before your charms. Haven’t you heard?”
I eyed him. “I wish!”