the woman forth.
Jihan, beside him, took Tempus’s arm and squeezed, sensing what passed on first
glance between her beloved Riddler and the lady ruler of the Beysib people.
For Tempus, noises lessened, the world grew dim, and in his heart a passion
rose, while in his head a voice he’d not heard clear for years urged: Take her.
For Me. Ravage the slut upon this spot/
The woman’s fish-eyes widened; a snake slithered on her arm. Her breasts were
fair and gilded; they stared at him with come-hither charms and it was only
Jihan who restrained him, prince or no, from doing what Vashanka wanted then and
there.
What Vashanka wanted? Tempus, who never backed away from any fight, took three
retreating steps as Jihan whispered, “Riddler, my lord? What is it? Has she
witched you? I will tear her legs off one by-“
“No, Jihan,” he muttered through clenched teeth in Nisi, a tongue neither prince
nor consort understood. He shook Jihan’s grasp from his arm and rubbed the
depressions her fingers had made: the Froth Daughter’s strength nearly equaled
his own. But neither of them was a match for Vashanka who, Tempus was now
certain, in some way had come again. He was here- more infantile, more
tempestuous than ever, but here.
And what that meant to a man who’d forsaken the Pillager and taken up with Enlil
to balance a curse no longer so sure upon his head Tempus couldn’t say. But
there was no doubt in him that soon he’d take some woman-this one if Vashanka
had His way of it-and consecrate whatever wench into the service of the god.