Inda (69 page)

“Are we disgusting?”

Sponge looked up, to meet Hadand’s considering gaze. She’d stepped closer, and he hadn’t noticed. “Huh?”

“Are we—girls, I mean. Are we disgusting to you?”

“No!”

Hadand tipped her head. “It’s seldom that definite, from what I understand. But it can be. Both ways. Our arms mistress loathes the smell of men even more than the sight.”

Sponge, thinking of that grim, spear-backed figure, smiled. “I’m not surprised.”

Hadand’s hands fumbled at her robe, and before Sponge could say anything, she had shed it, and brought her hands up under the generous swell of her breasts beneath the fine linen of her shirt. “I had to stop drilling in a shirt during summer,” she said matter-of-factly. “When I discovered most of the sentries watching as if they’d been struck by lightning. So I nearly die of the heat, wearing a winter tunic if I have to drill outside, but a future queen can’t be waving these things around and causing the lookouts to miss the occasional invading army.”

Sponge laughed.

“Are you the least bit stirred?” she asked.

He looked at the extravagant curves in her hands; he looked at her trim waist neatly sashed with its knife handle curving upward, and watched as she thrust a hip out. He saw what the men saw, the spectacular figure of a young woman who is also in superb condition. But there was no inward flare of heat.

“No.”

“What do you feel?”

Sponge shook his head. “It looks . . . motherly.”

Hadand pulled her robe back on. “I know what to do.” She started toward the door.

Sponge snapped, “Don’t do anything.”

“Why?” She looked back, hand on the latch.

“I don’t want a willow wand any more than I want a dolly.” He used the slang terms for professional lovers—male and female—in a sharp voice, and turned away, pacing back to the window to glare out at the sunlit court.

“Why not?” she asked, sensible as always. “I mean, why not a man if you don’t want a woman?”

Because none of my friends do,
he wanted to say, but he hesitated.

He’d already been through the difficult decision-making process, and was not going to thrash through it all again. There was nothing she could say that was new. They’d grown up aware that the taste for one’s own gender ran through the Montrei-Vayirs, men and women, that no one would be surprised that Sponge was the one in whom it emerged in this generation, though they’d all expected it would be the Sierlaef. He knew that eventually he’d act on it, and everyone would shrug.

But that would be after his friends had gone home forever to their castles to take up their lives as Randaels.

Because far, far more important than sex was that friendship. He would not have his passions separate him from his friends. If it had been any of them who’d turned to men, it wouldn’t have mattered, but this accursed rank as second son of the king—if he formed a craze for one of them, for anyone they knew, there suddenly would be the intrusion of rank. And imagined obligation.

He struck a fist lightly against the window sill.
Nothing,
not even sex, was as important as the free, easy companionship with Noddy and Cama and Cherry-Stripe and the others, an unthinking bond of camaraderie that meant more to him than anything else in his life: unthinking on their parts, both guarded and cherished on his. And sometimes, sometimes, like on the banner game, he didn’t have to think, it just
was
.

The urge to speak, to tell Hadand—talk to her as he always had—subsided. Women had their secrets, and he wouldn’t make his personal life one of them.

The sound of the door closing brought his head around with a wary jerk. She’d gone out while he was brooding; now Hadand slipped back inside, and said, “I sent my Runner for some wine. I could use some, too.”

It came, swiftly, and she poured out two glasses, talking all the while of her first visit to a pleasure house, with the other girls during New Year’s Week. “After all who could take me? Queen Wisthia summons her favorites to her. Ndara has nothing to do with sex, we all know that. Joret was gone, and anyway she loathed the very notion. My mother would have, but I can’t see her again. So Shen Montredavan-An made up a party. I thought I’d be the first clumsy one, the first silly one, and everyone would know, but I discovered that they have people who are trained just to be the first. They are everyone’s first. Did you know that?”

Sponge gulped wine. “Yes. No.”

She poured out more, and Sponge drank it, though he knew he must not return drunk, and he hadn’t eaten all day, so the fire of the wine burned through him with frightening rapidity. But to escape the uncomfortable subject, he drank anyway.

Hadand talked on, making the story funny: her fumbling dialogue, her panic, her discovery just how much fun sex could be, and the inevitable violent crush, thankfully as short as it was violent. After a time she said, “Would you like to try with a girl? If you could have one who knew what to do?”

He glowered, thinking,
And what if I see this girl and can’t raise the staff?
But he couldn’t bear to speak the words. His wine cup crashed down. “What have you done?”

She gave him an exasperated look. “Sponge. You
know,
because the healer
told
us when we got that long lecture about sex, that if you let the heat build you burn up here.” She smacked her head. “If you were able to shed the heat with a trained dolly, and it would make your life simpler, why not at least try?” She waved toward the academy on the word “simpler,” and he realized that once again she had parsed at least some of his inner thoughts.

“Look, Sponge, if it doesn’t work nobody will know. The pleasure house people have to guard their business, and big mouths can ruin it. They talk when someone wants to be talked about, and they also talk when someone is hated. You won’t be either.”

His lips buzzed. “But castle people would find out. They always find out everything.”

“That’s why I sent for a girl,” she said in that practical voice as she used her robe to daub the table clean of the drops of wine he’d spilled, and then poured out some more. “If your friends do find out, nobody pays the least attention. They won’t always be watching you in case you want one of them, and worrying about princes and privilege and favorites and the like. I can just imagine Smartlip trying to seduce you, just to get preference over the others.”

Sponge flung up a warding hand, grimacing with distaste.

“I can see you already thought that out, too. Listen, if this experiment doesn’t work, you can tell everyone I cried after that first time,” she said, smiling crookedly. “Oh, my, was I dreary to Tdor, boring on forever about how much I was so in love. Or thought I was.”

Sponge snickered. He sounded to his own ears like someone else, a second-year scrub who couldn’t hold his wine. “How long did that last, anyway?”

“Two weeks.” She chuckled. “Two very intense weeks.”

A knock at the door.

“Enter,” Hadand called, before Sponge could get his numbing lips to say, “Go away.”

In came a boy dressed in riding clothes, about their age. No, not a boy, though at first she seemed to be one. The strong chin, the adze-sculpted cheekbones, the swinging stride and short curls, all signaled male, but the smoothness of her cheeks, the neck, the hands, were female.

“Meet Dyalen,” Hadand said, and then she was gone—the traitor!—leaving Sponge to blink owlishly at this boy-girl and wipe at his sweaty forehead with shaky hands.

“Where did you come from?” Sponge knew he sounded rude, but he was terrified.

“You mean, just now? From Heat Street. House of Roses. It’s a short enough trip, if you go up the back way through the old sentry walk.” Dyalen flashed a quick grin, then sobered just as quickly. “Hadand-Hlinlaef has been good to my family.” Her voice was low, a husky contralto. “If I can repay her I will.”

The women again, with their hidden webs of loyalty, but he lost the thought, because Dyalen had stepped up, and stroked his hair back from his forehead. With the other hand she took away the wine cup. She bent slightly. Her shirt was open at the neck, showing a brief glimpse of collarbone, and flat breastbone between two small breasts. Boy and not boy.

“Humans actually cleave to both,” she said. “To degrees. Pretty youths, strong women. You probably have friends who like both males and females, don’t you?”

Sponge thought of Flash Arveas. “Yes,” he said. “One, anyway.”
If the others had been like me you wouldn’t be here.

She laughed again, that free laugh, sounding like the Tveis in the bath house. “Come on, get to your feet.”

“What? Don’t we have to—” He motioned toward his inner room, which was his bedchamber.

“Nah.” She grinned, a wide grin with teeth. “We’re going to wrestle. Bet you can’t pin me, either,” she taunted. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.” And she reached up, casually, and slapped him.

He stepped back in surprise. It wasn’t a hard slap, just a sting. A tingling sting, and she laughed again, swatting the air just before his face. “Try to get me back. I dare you.”

He lunged. She caught his wrist and twisted it up behind him, sliding the other hand into his tunic, a fast grope that left a feeling of burning on his skin, kindling in his guts. Wrestling, like boys wrestle.

She smelled of the outdoors—sage and wind, a little of snap-vine oil, and horse. Academy smells.

He lunged, only half trying, but she evaded his grip and danced away, taunting, taunting, until he used some of his fighting knowledge and caught her, just to be flung off again. And so they played at battle, no blows made in anger, and she teased him with voice, with tongue, with teeth, with tutored hands, until the wine, and the warmth, and her easy strength, brought him spiraling down into the sweet urgency of desire, and even then she made him fight for it until he couldn’t hold himself back, and those expert hands brought them together, breath mingling, hearts thumping, until white, searing fire obliterated memories of the past, worries of the future, consuming him in the now.

Chapter Twenty-three

K
ODL’S marines’ third hire forced them through more sudden squalls full of lightning, choppy cross seas, and sinister drifts of fog that hid shoals and rock-bound islands, but this time they saw their enemies. Twice fast, small galleys swarmed out of the islands toward them, but both times they hauled their wind, as the mate of the deck followed Niz’s orders for setting fighting sail. The galleys’ glasses revealed the tops full of sailors armed with composite bows, and more sailors armed with steel lining the rail, obviously waiting.

Both times the galleys veered off and sped back into the fog, oars lifting and splashing in strict rhythm.

The marines were as disappointed as the captain was happy to have avoided battle; the benefit was that he paid off at journey’s end with loud-spoken enthusiasm.

Their fourth hire was found that day. The captain of the
Loohan,
having heard about the marines who scared off pirate galleys, came directly to their lodgings in Khanerenth’s main harbor, begging Kodl to take ship with him at once.

Kodl had been alone, studying the new charts he’d bought first thing off the ship. When the
Loohan
’s captain left, Kodl ran downstairs to the common room, where he found half of his marines eating, and he figured the other half had to be at the pleasure house across the square, spending their earnings a lot faster than they’d made them.

“I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it,” Inda mumbled, awkward and red-faced.

Kodl stopped where he was, observing the gawky teen picking at a ripped seam in the side of his weather-worn, stained, threadbare shirt as Tau and Jeje laughed at him. Who could look at him and guess he was the real force behind the marines’ skill?
When will Inda realize it—and what will he do about it?

“Why don’t you just
buy
one, Inda?” Jeje asked in exasperation. “Your sewing isn’t any better than it was when we were rats! You had plenty of money after the gold bag run!”

Tau crossed his arms and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling as though he’d just discovered a fabulous painting there.

Inda hunched over his food, his ears now scarlet. He mumbled something.

Jeje leaned forward. “What do you mean, you ran out of money? Inda, you didn’t buy any new weapons, and you have never gone upstairs at the Lark. What did you do with it?”

Inda’s shoulders hitched up, and Kodl thought,
Good question
. But a pang of self-loathing forced him to dismiss his suspicions, as Jeje said in haste, “Well, never mind, I know it’s none of my affair. It’s just, we want to look successful, so good liberty clothes make us look successful.”

She instinctively reached for Tau’s arm, covered in very fine linen, then snapped her hand back, and brushed it down the front of her sturdy, green-dyed tunic. Tau picked up his mulled wine and looked intently at it, as though counting the cloves floating on top.

Jeje said, “You got paid today, so how about I take you to the clothes makers’ street tomorrow? They can make you up whatever you like. Sometimes they even have ready made things. You just pull them on and see if they fit.”

“There won’t be time,” Kodl interrupted, and all three looked up at him, Tau self-possessed, Inda miserable, Jeje startled.

Kodl paused, framing the words, but a loud voice from the next table caught his attention.

“. . . yes, we heard that too,” a tall, swarthy man spoke in a masthead voice to another table of sailors, his Dock Talk Brennish in accent. “The Delfs is sailing west, on account o’ the Venn sailing west. Badrik of the
Fleet Deer
says it’s on account of the Venn needing to protect the northern waters from them damned Marlovans on their flying horses—”

Inda choked on a swallow of ale. Dun, at the table directly behind Inda, looked blank; Tau whacked Inda with unnecessary vigor on his back.