Kip took some deep breaths. He forced a grin. “Well, saying ‘Oh, shit’ that loudly is gonna make Cruxer wonder what I just did to you, but other than that? Nah.”
She flashed a grin, but then sobered. “You’re okay?”
“Not yet,” he said honestly. His throat was tight. “Help me forget the where and remember the with-whom?”
Her smiled broadened, and there was nothing in all the world that could quicken his pulse like a devious, confident grin on his beautiful bride’s face. “Draft a little green?” she asked.
“Green?!” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “The last time we tried some green in bed, do you remember what you did?”
“Just a little!” she whispered. The whites of her eyes were already swirling with green. More than a little, and she was shimmying her hips to remove her trousers.
But he didn’t use green. Green was all wildness—which could be wonderful if one was looking to overcome shyness in the bedchamber—but that which is wild hates being caged, and Kip already felt near panic.
It actually took Kip several bifurcated minutes to forget the close confines of the closet. Then, as they made love in the tight space, her head bent back, her hair filling his nostrils with her scent, his hands on her hips, then on her still-covered breasts, her body pushing eagerly against him, slowly, slowly, that old grimy rat-infested closet’s echo faded like bad music heading into the distance as blissful tones of a new song began close by.
And when they’d finished—as quietly as possible, for Cruxer’s sake—he held her still against him and marveled. In the postcoital clarity, he was filled with such love for his wife that fear had been cast out.
The closet had been transformed: no more a trap, no more an echo of the darkest moments of his childhood—it was just a little room. Hemmed in on three sides, he’d wanted to bolt for the exit, but if he had, he’d have missed out on this.
He spun Tisis around and kissed her passionately.
She squeaked, surprised, but then leaned into him, her hand reaching down between them as she made a little moue that asked, ‘Again?’
He pulled away from her lips. “I’d love to,” he said.
She’d tilted her hips, but didn’t press onto him now as she heard his hesitation.
Nor did he push forward. He’d meant to pull away from her hand as well, but didn’t. “Do . . . you want to?” he asked.
“I’m more than willing,” she said. “But I’m also certainly satisfied. I was trying to be quiet for Cruxer’s sake.” Her face went through several fast expressions. She said, “You’re confusing me.”
“You gave me a thought,” he said. “A breakthrough, maybe. But part of me is screaming that I’d be a damned fool to—”
He cut off as she pushed deep onto him, pushing him off balance until his back hit the wall. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then her eyes cleared and she looked up at him sweetly. “My lord,” she said, “thank you for seeing to my needs. Now I believe you have others to attend to.”
She pulled away and threw her clothes into place before he could stop her.
“You are merciless,” he said. “And I adore you.”
“What was your breakthrough?” she asked, pulling her belt on.
“Huh? Oh, oh, right,” he said.
She sighed.
“What do you think is my greatest weakness?” Kip asked.
Tisis paused in pulling her hair back into its ponytail. “For real?”
“Yeah!”
“You’re really going to ask that, right after we . . . had a moment?”
“Fine, fine, what’s my greatest strength?”
“You have lots of great strengths—”
“No, I’m not hunting for compliments,” Kip said. “It’s what you’ve said before.”
“You mean that you see with your heart? That you have compassion—could you put that away now?—that you have compassion that allows you to understand people, even in moments where another man would be sunk into his own needs and plans.”
“Right! And thank you,” Kip said, getting his own clothes back into place. “So the flip side is my great weakness. I see the small stuff, and I lose the big.”
“The small stuff is the big stuff,” Tisis said.
“With people, yeah. But not as a leader. Hey, you mind if I open the door now?”
“Do I look like I just had amazing sex?” Tisis asked.
Kip hesitated. “This isn’t a trick question, is it?”
“Let me rephrase. Do I look like I just had sex in a closet?”
“Still not tracking.”
“Do I look rumpled, Kip? Do I smell like—”
“No—oh, and yes. You and me both, actually.”
She scowled, then gazed at the green mag torch. She drafted a little. “Okay, fine, now I don’t care.”
“You know, you really shouldn’ t—”
“Please lecture me about how much I’m drafting,” she said sharply.
He shut his mouth. “Pot, meet kettle. Objection withdrawn.”
“Go on, now,” she said, opening the door.
Out in the fuller-spectrum light of the room, she definitely looked like she’d just had sex. Hair not all tucked into her ponytail, cheeks flushed, clothes a bit askew.
“Mirror’s right there,” Cruxer said, otherwise stony-faced. “And General Antonius is here to present tomorrow’s training regimen and the daily report.”
Tisis groaned. For all her earlier bluster, she was mortified when it came to her cousin learning anything about her sex life. They’d grown up together.
The call of a million duties delivered one after another, each somewhat different, and yet always stultifyingly the same, threatened to pull Kip back into their games.
“Ask him to wait,” Kip said.
‘Thank you,’ Tisis mouthed, as Cruxer did so.
Kip sat silent, though.
He was being played. In the clamor of a million needs, he’d lost sight of his adversary. Koios had a plan. Nothing here—or at least very little—was by accident.
The thoughts swirled: an ambassador sweats when he shouldn’t, and then doesn’t when he should. Assassins fail at a job that should have been easy. A drafter wears armor, not to protect herself from her enemies but to protect her friends from herself. A map doesn’t report what it should, and . . . maybe . . .
What if it also did show what it shouldn’t?
Kip walked over to the map table.
He blacked out half a dozen of the blooming lights behind them—refugees’ and scouts’ reports that had come from the Great River behind them, reporting about various events, but that altogether told them the river was open when it actually hadn’t been.
It had only taken six reports to lead them astray, because they didn’t expect more: bandits were enslaving everyone in that area they could grab.
Now he ran the map backward and forward without those six reports, and saw a dark area in the map, right behind them, a shadow that they might otherwise have feared.
Koios had done that.
“These are the bad reports,” Kip said. “These are the refugees who are spies.”