knew. Knew that no one touched him from behind, that it was one of their little
games, that he let her do that. It made a little frisson of horror. Like other
games they played. Soft hands came up his back, rested on his shoulders.
He turned round with both wine cups and she took hers and a kiss, lingering
slow.
They did not always go straight to bed. Tonight he took the chair in front of
the fire; she settled half beside him and half into his lap, a comfortable
armful, all whisper of cloth and yielding curves and smell of rich musk and good
wine. She sipped her wine and set it down on the sidetable. Sometimes at such
moments she smiled. This time she gazed at him in a way he knew was dangerous.
He had not come tonight to look into those dark eyes and forget his own name. He
felt a cold the wine could not reach, and felt for the first time that life or
death might be equally balanced in her desires.
Ischade treading the aisles of the barracks, surveying murder-satisfied. Sated.
It was not death that appealed to her. It was these deaths.
“You all right?” he asked of the woman staring so close into his eyes. “Ischade,
are you all right tonight?”
Blink. He heard his pulse. Hers. The world hung suspended and day or night made
no difference. He cleared his throat or tried to.
“You think I better get out of here?”
She shifted her position and rested her arms on his shoulders, joined her hands
behind his head. Still silent.
“I want to ask you,” he said, trying, in the near gaze of her eyes, the soft
weight of her against his side. “-want to ask you-” That wasn’t working. He