Beysa’s innumerable female cousins. She’d sluiced the worst of the muck off her leathers in a still icy stream while he got started on the first flask and reminded himself ten times over that she was more dangerous than beautiful.
They’d talked until dawn: bragging, swapping anecdotes, and finally exchanging the stories they’d sworn no other living soul would hear. Toward dawn, when she was lying on her back again, watching the stars fade, magic passed between them again; Walegrin could have set aside his baldric and undone the damp laces of her tunic. He forbore, contenting himself with one agonizingly chaste kiss as a red-gold sliver of sunlight flashed above the eastern horizon.
“I always wanted a brother,” she’d said in a whisper he wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear.
There was a flicker of motion on the rooftops; nothing he could focus on, nothing that was repeated, but he knew she was coming in from above. Moments later the stairs creaked softly and she stood opposite him in the starlight. The supple leather of her tunic hung loosely from her shoulders and her face was matte-shadowed.
“Puttering gods below-you’re not even sweating!” he greeted her.
“There are places worse than Sanctuary-and I’ve lived in most of them.”
“I spent five years with the Raggah on the Sun’s Anvil-it wasn’t as bad as this and I still sweat like a pig.”
Kama laughed and slid down the wall until her spine settled against the floor.
“Say it’s something I get from my father.”
Walegrin, having once acknowledged that Tempus at his best was a heavier burden than his own father had been at his worst, redirected his conversation to the reason for their meeting. “It’s getting bad at Land’s End, Kama. Since they fished her out of the harbor Chenaya’s like one of those damned Beysib fire bottles. She’s got herself a head full of schemes and any one of them would rip us apart. The Torch’s going to have to do something.”