“Then yes, and I thank you for it.” She gave him the Kai salute of rank and file to a commander. “I won’t linger, and the Khaskem may find what I learn useful.”
When they finished with their planning, he invited her to join him on the balcony that led off the large solar at the other end of the corridor from the study. “The view is worth suffering my company,” he said and winked.
She sniffed. “I find you annoying, not insufferable. Yet.”
Serovek stopped a servant with a request that wine be brought to the balcony. He pretended not to hear her faint gasp when she stepped onto the balcony and the expansive view of the mountainside from High Salure’s towering perspective.
A clear night and a bright moon cast the landscape into sharp silhouette, turning the tops of the evergreens covering the slopes into claw tips that jutted skyward. Torches lit in the bailey below flickered like jewels. To the north, the snow-capped Dramorins fenced the lands that separated the kingdom of Belawat from the flat plains of Bast-Haradis’s hinterlands in the east. The liquid ribbon that was the Absu slithered through the landscape, the umbilicus of trade between three kingdoms and numerous cities and towns.
Serovek never grew tired of this view. If he actually lived to old age, he hoped his last days would be spent here, looking out at such grandeur, as glorious in the darkness as it was in the daylight. “What do you think?” he asked his silent companion.
She didn’t answer him right away, and he took the time to admire her profile. The frosty moonlight sharpened the angles of her face so that her facial bones looked as if they had been carved from the shards of a dark mirror. Her long nose complimented the curve of her cheekbone, and the hollow below it. She wore her hair shorter than the waist-length tresses Beladine women favored. Hers fell just below her shoulders. Fly-away strands caught in the wind that scoured the slopes to partially obscure her jaw. A few strands stuck to her lower lip before she pulled them aside with the flick of a claw tip.
Sha-Anhuset wasn’t beautiful. Not in the way of Beladine women or even human women in general. Not even in the way of Kai women. But she was sublime, as majestic and unyielding as the distant Dramorins. And just as unconquerable. The first time Serovek had seen her at Saggara, he’d been awestruck. He was no less so now. Maybe even more as he learned more about her and had glimpsed the stalwart heart that beat beneath the armored breastplate.
Her lamplight gaze shifted to him. “Impressive,” she finally said. “And easily defended.”
He snorted. “Planning an invasion, madam?”
“Hardly. Brishen keeps me too busy at Saggara to make plans for conquering High Salure.” A worry line marred her smooth forehead for a moment, though she said nothing more.
“I’ve no doubt of that. We’ll all be experiencing ripple effects of the galla infestation, the Kai kingdom most of all.” He didn’t envy the Khaskem. That the kingdom of Bast-Haradis hadn’t yet disintegrated was a credit to Brishen’s even-handed rule as regent.
A statuesque study in light and shade, she turned to face him fully. “All the Kai owe you a debt of gratitude for fighting alongside the herceges. You sacrificed much. Suffered much.”
Her voice echoed with memory. He knew what she recalled in her mind’s eye because he saw it in his own. Her steady grip on his sword pommel, the resolute horror in her face when she’d skewered him on the blade and embraced him in her strong arms so he wouldn’t fall. A shared intimacy of purposeful savagery in the service of a man trying to save a world from destruction. Nightmares of that moment still plagued Serovek. He suspected they plagued Anhuset as well.
“Not nearly as much as some.”
“Megiddo.”
He nodded. “And others. I’ve heard rumors. The Kai unable to capture the mortem lights of their dead, a loss of magic. All of that has something to do with the galla.”
She’d gone stiff as a spear shaft while he spoke, and her expression closed as tightly against him as the door he’d barred to the kitchen earlier.
“I suppose so,” she said in a flat voice. “If you’re inclined to believe rumors.”
He didn’t press her to expound upon his commentary, and the tightness around her mouth warned him he’d find the endeavor a futile one if he tried. She had, however, confirmed what he’d begun to suspect. The galla were defeated and once more imprisoned, but that triumph had come with more than the price of Megiddo’s sacrifice. The demons spawned by the ancient Gullperi had left their mark on the Kai in ways beyond the razing of Haradis.
She caught him by surprise when she abruptly changed the topic. “You’re a wealthy margrave with influence. Why haven’t you married?” Her sharp teeth gleamed white in the darkness at his wide-eyed stare.
He recovered quickly enough and matched her smile with a wry one of his own. Subtle verbal deflection wasn’t her strong suit. “Who says I haven’t?”
His question took her aback. He saw it in the way her fingers tightened on the stem of her wine goblet and the slight jerk of her shoulders. “Well then, are you or aren’t you?”
Tonight was obviously a night for recollection. None of it cheerful.
He stared into the black pool of wine in his goblet, seeing the vision of a sweet face and brown eyes. He had cared for but not loved the woman he’d married. He’d instantly loved but never had a chance to know the daughter she bore him. He still grieved them both. “I was,” he said. “A decade ago. She was proud. Beautiful. Long hair that she wore tied back with silk ribbons.”
Anhuset’s features eased, and she tilted her head to consider him as if he were suddenly a brand new enigma to her. “You like soft women.”
He chuckled, welcoming her comment. “I like strong women. Soft…” He bowed to her. “Or not.”
They were both quiet for a moment, staring at the shadow-shrouded mountainside that even the bright moon no longer illuminated.
“I’m not sure I’d know what to do with a hair ribbon,” Anhuset finally said, addressing the stars above them.”
“Probably strangle someone with it.”
She choked on the wine she’d just sipped, and Serovek thumped her on the back until she quieted. Then she laughed, and he was lost.
There was the magic of the Kai, and then there was the sorcery of Anhuset’s laughter. The purr of a cat mixed with the promise of a warm fire and the sleepy seduction of a satisfied lover, all bound together into a sound that rolled out of her throat and rasped past her lips to bewitch him.
“I will take that as a compliment and bid you good evening, margrave,” she said, setting her half empty goblet down on the balcony’s railing cap. “I'll see you at dawn?”
He remembered to nod, even as all the blood in his body rushed toward his groin. He’d bless the darkness for its concealment except for the fact his companion saw better at night than she did during the day. “Shall I send a servant to fetch you?”
She declined the offer and wished him a peaceful sleep. He watched her until she disappeared from sight.
Serovek groaned under his breath. “Peaceful sleep. Not likely,” he muttered. He drained the contents of his goblet and did the same with Anhuset’s. He didn’t remember the last time he’d indulged in such a luxury as restful sleep, but maybe this time his dreams wouldn’t be of a doomed monk but of a silvery-haired woman of imposing gravitas and firefly eyes. One could always hope.