City of Blaze (The Fireblade Array) (7 page)

Artemi kept her silence.

“Clearly I am not helping your situation, so I will leave. If you need me then you must call on me. In the meantime-” He reached to his belt. “-will you take this?” He held out the rose with hopeful fingers. “Its odour is more pleasant than mine, at least. It is not much use to me anymore, and a pretty girl ought to have it.”

Artemi’s shoulders relaxed slowly. “That’s it?”

“Well, I’m sorry it’s not a full bouquet but I didn’t have much time to prepare.”

Her face broke into a dazzling smile; her cheeks dimpled. She took the rose from his hand. “Thank you. Lord Forllan, isn’t it?” Her voice sounded steadier.

He nodded.

Her bearing changed suddenly. “Lord Forllan, the rose is lovely but kindly do not approach me again. I am a very busy woman.” And with that she moved past him, blue and gold fading into the grey murk of the halls.

Silar clasped his hands behind his back and began to walk the way he had come, his facial expression a forgotten concern. Women made no sense at all. They did not think him some sort of predator, surely? He definitely needed to bathe. A short bath, a shave and then on to the bar was required; Baydie’s secret stock of wine would sort him right out.

Back in his rooms, two men hauled a great cauldron each of hot water over to the bath and began pouring. One of them added soap to it - the same, bloody soap used by the whole castle. It made his rooms smell like the blasted laundries! The other man tipped a smaller pot of water onto glowing grate that lined one wall, and the room was filled with steam.

“Thank you.” Silar nodded to the blue-suited men as they left. He unbuckled his black coat and pulled off his boots. The day had been an exhausting one. His shirt did not smell very good at all. He tore it off as fast as he could. The sword he placed against the bath edge, his trousers dropped to the floor with a satisfying clink of metal buckles, and he stepped into the water. It felt gloriously hot as it drifted over his thighs, soon enveloping him in its calescent embrace. He lifted both feet so that they rested at the end of the bath and sank the rest of his body beneath the rippling surface. Staying under for a few minutes, he emptied his mind of everything: every conversation, every image and every smell that had passed before him that day.

It was during these moments that his most pressing concerns could come to the fore. All he had to do was to sweep clean his mind and permit only the most important matters to enter his thoughts. He relaxed every muscle and began to think of nothing. The rose floated in the mind space he had created. The petals fell from it and beyond, emerging from a haze, was Lady Allain. She looked tough, resolute. He did not have to worry about her. Her image drifted past him and the mists reformed, making many shapes. They twisted and resolved into a thousand men in black and green coats. Some fell to their knees in pain while others ran forward as if to attack.
No surprises there
. Perhaps a third of them had fallen. He could expect a similar proportion to be out of action within ten days. He swept aside their figures, turning them into another ripple of mist. A new character emerged: Morghiad. He stood firmly upon feet of rock, giving the impression that he could weather all storms. But something… something was wrong. Something had weakened him.

Morghiad’s apparition commenced the basic training moves needed for a duel. Each sweep of the sword was precise and efficient, each of his steps perfectly timed. The only visible hole in his armour was his face: it had lost its stony composure and instead conveyed… uncertainty. Then, the ground beneath him started opening up into great fissures that were filled with horrible, piercing white light. Morghiad continued to move smoothly between the traps, but sweat was beginning to show on his brow. He was afraid. In an instant he stopped the moves and looked behind him. He dropped his sword to the floor and then, almost as suddenly, he evaporated. Hot fire burst across the vacuum, filling every corner of Silar’s mind. From amidst the flames a striking, pale young woman materialised, her hair forming part of the flames themselves.

“Blazes!” Silar erupted from the bath water, spilling it over the sides and sending droplets onto the blade of his sword. He needed to get women out of his head, not into its deepest recesses! The meditation had not helped nearly as much as it should have. He grabbed a rough sponge and commenced scrubbing at his body in haste. “Bloody blazes,” he muttered again.

The ceiling curved in a beige hemisphere above Artemi’s head, seemingly imitating the insides of an eggshell. She eyed the small grooves in it, wondering which craftsman had left each mark and how many centuries ago they had done so. Three candles burned in the wall hollows around her, providing barely adequate illumination to read.
Achellon
was a favourite book of hers. It described the mythical lands which had given rise to their world: lands which were a physical embodiment of Blaze Energy. Achellon was a place supposedly bathed in bright light, where no one knew pain or suffering, where no one was another’s servant. The people there had the power to manipulate the environment of this world, deciding when it rained or when an earthquake should strike. This seemed a trivial power to Artemi, since wielders were able to instigate such phenomena without much more than a sneeze. It was a welcome escape though, offering a window onto somewhere less troubled with the issues of her home.

She felt at the roughness of the pages. It was hardly a high-quality copy of the text, but remained the best she had been able to obtain. Some of the letters had been printed at odd angles and there were a few typographical errors; none detracted from the overall effect, however. The illustrations were beautiful, simple engravings that had been coloured by hand. She marked her page and closed the volume, running her fingers over its embossed card cover. She longed for more books to add to her collection. She had read this one so many times.

Artemi placed it atop the other text:
Ebb and Flow of Noble Warfare
. That was an interesting one, arguing that some battles were more legitimate than others. Armies seemed to enter fights at the whim of their commanders, whose decisions were frequently made upon the basis of hysteria and public perception. Was Calidell’s army so committed and blind? Cadra’s two newspapers would report the number of casualties sustained following a battle, but she doubted any of those included deserters.

The servants’ cellars were unusually quiet this evening. Some event unknown to her or a chance effect had quelled a large proportion of the cries. That, and a lot of them seemed to have visitors. Artemi wondered at the new tranquillity - well, relative tranquillity. She glanced over at the white rose that Lord Forllan had given her earlier. What would it be like to have a lover, to be married and have children? Artemi supposed these things would happen to her some day, though not with a blond-haired, gurning soldier. She certainly had not planned on washing linen forever.

The idea of sex did bring fears of its own, however. After all, it would not be safe commencing a relationship when she was not yet mature enough to withstand
nalka
, no matter how much she cared for the man. Still, she had received the education necessary to understand the workings of it and to know what to expect. By rote, she knew of the six levels of pleasure and the mating bond it produced. She knew that the sensations were shared. She knew that this bond had to be maintained for nine years before a child could be produced. It seemed a surprise the population managed to maintain itself in the face of conflict at all. However was a woman to put up with the same man clambering into her bed every fortnight for nine years? Her mother had managed it, once.

A noise from the next chamber broke her flow of thought. Galabril evidently had a guest, and that usually meant Artemi was going to have to listen to them both all night. Wonderful. She pulled the red blanket over her head and wedged an arm over each ear. The sound still seemed to be working its way through. The soldiers of legend were supposed to be able to fight after a month of going without sleep, but Artemi did not think she could stand a second night of it. She cursed and squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that would somehow affect the noise. It was no good. She sat up and instead attempted to
embrace
the noises they were making. Artemi was starting to feel unwell, and the candles about her seemed to be waving in amusement at her predicament. She grabbed one and tried to distract herself with the melted wax, dripping it onto the floor. Another breathy gasp wafted in from the proximate chamber.

She set the candle down in its slowly hardening puddle and knelt in front of it. A strange sense of curiosity swept over her. She had seen lovers writhing atop one another plenty of times in the cellars, but she had never really studied them. She ought not to, really. It was their business, after all. Then again, the sound was in
her
chamber, and it was not perverse to investigate sounds that invaded
her
space, surely? She blew out all of her candles, leaned forward slowly, placed her hands on the hard mud floor and began to crawl toward the edge of the ragged curtain. Once there, she lowered her chin to the ground and peered underneath. A black bed roll was immediately visible, its surface pitted with age. The toes of a female foot flexed away on top of it, curling like the tendrils of red ivy. With her eyes, Artemi followed the top of the foot along its parent leg. The knee was too high behind the curtain to be visible. Below where it should have been she could see the lower thighs of a man. His knees dug into the mat beneath as he pressed forwards.

Artemi swallowed. She really should not be doing this. She laid her head on one side and adjusted her angle to gain a better view. She could see his hips now, insisting upon Galabril’s own. They moved against one another with a slight asynchronicity. Galabril’s arms were gently wrapped about her partner. The weight of his upper body rested upon her breasts, forcing them to swell outwards. The woman’s face, and the expression it held, was hidden behind her lover’s. All Artemi could make of his features was a mass of twisted, brown hair. She watched them for what felt like a few more minutes, but was probably another hour. They progressed through two levels as she watched: stopping to breathe through each moment of ecstasy. Finally, their movements were reduced to almost imperceptible displacements. They appeared afraid to stir too far from the position they held. At the last moment Galabril stifled a scream, sending Artemi reeling to the wall of her chamber at the unexpectedness of it.

Taking a deep breath, she resumed her spying posture and observed that they were still lying with legs intertwined, breathing hard. They would not part until their bond was complete. Artemi moved back onto the bedroll and pulled the red blanket over her. Her cheeks felt flushed. She felt enormously guilty at having witnessed their act. She also felt... hot. Artemi put a hand to the top of her thigh. She tested the heat with her fingers and then whipped them away in an instant. She was not going to be a victim of lust. She would not be any idiot’s lover!

Sleep eluded Artemi for a while as she catalogued the things she had seen. When it finally came to enfold her in darkness, she was so exhausted that nothing could have prevented it. A stampede of warhorses hammering through the caverns could not have disturbed her.

The fresh shirt supply was becoming dangerously low. Silar slammed the wardrobe door shut and shrugged into his clothing. He was in a foul mood. Perhaps he could end the day on a good note with some light drinking. Boots on, he stamped out of the room and down a narrow corridor to the left. It branched off in several directions along the way and undulated with steps that seemed to follow impossible directions. Finally, after descending a particularly pitched set of stairs, Silar approached the castle’s bar. Much like the great halls, it was oversized, designed to cater for more people than he dared to count. A polished wooden bar ran down the centre of most of the length of the room, swarmed by many serving women that rushed to and from the barrel taps.