“I will remember this. I will turn your teeth into the decorative inlay for a lap harp,” he told me conversationally. “And your sinews into its strings.”
“Oh, please don’t, that sounds dreadful,” Marit moaned, the only defense I got, because Taran had gone absolutely still next to me.
What’s the plan, Taran? How are we getting out of this one?
Death had pulled himself off the floor and put his urbane mask of civility back over his features, and now he dabbed at his bloody chin with a napkin soaked in spilled wine.
“That seems like a waste,” he said in the tone of an idle observation.
“I’ll tan her leather into hawking jesses. There won’t be any waste,” Wirrea snarled.
“Don’t be hasty.”
Once his face was clean, the god of fire straightened his clothes and came to stand between Smenos and Taran.
“If I don’t like a wine, do I smash the goblet it came in? Thegirl’s got an exquisite voice, and her form would serve. Willfulness is a flaw, but it requires a will to animate it. I don’t allow it inmypriests.”
“You can’t suggest I let this go unpunished,” Smenos said, staring at my collarbones as though imagining the places where he might pry them apart.
“Not at all. But as your guest, I am suggesting that it might be appropriate to consider the insult tome.”
Smenos roughly snorted. “I already paid for the insult to you. Genna’s brat loosened three of my teeth, and I’ll probably piss blood tonight. We’re square.”
“Not that,” Death said easily. “The insult was watching amortalhold the sacred stone of the Mountain in her hand after you’d offered me shelter under your roof.”
While Smenos chewed on that, Death looked back at the fuming Huntress to give her a conspiratorial smile. “I’m saying I’ll take the little redheaded she-cat for my troubles, and I promise that if she’s ever seen in public again, her behavior will not disgrace the Stoneborn.”
I began to edge backward, but Taran’s hand came around my biceps like a vise, holding me in place. Betrayal made my throat close up.
Smenos tilted his head thoughtfully, considering whether I might rightfully be enslaved to the bright-eyed monster who’d burned the world twice over now.
When Taran said nothing for slow, oozing seconds of time, my eyes darted for my knife, discarded on the ground. Death wouldn’t take me easy. He wouldn’t take mealive.Wesha’s mercy, what if that was his plan? What if I was to be turned into another gibbering, terrified puppet by his power? A dusk-soul, to serve forever? I subtly, unobtrusively shifted my shoulder as I prepared to reach for my last hidden blade.
Taran tightened his grip.
“Napeth is right,” he said to Smenos.
I couldn’t help a small noise of despairing outrage, which made Taran twist my arm behind my back and turn us both to face the crafter god.
“Then we’re agreed?” Death asked, looking with interest at my nearly bare, heaving chest.
“No, I mean that she didn’t know any better. Wearedisgraced, but the fault was mine. I am deeply shamed to see my priestess dishonor your hospitality, your trust. I brought her into your home. Let me make this right,” Taran said to Smenos and Wirrea, as serious as I’d ever heard him. Actually, serious like I’d never heard him before.
Death raised his eyebrows, and the Shipwright crossed his arms, listening.
“Let me apologize to your wife,” Taran said, voice vibrating with sincerity. “And I beg you not to shame me further by having a mortal take a punishment in my place. I’m not a child anymore. I’m one of the Stoneborn.”
After a moment’s thought, Smenos looked to Wirrea and her sullen pout. “The little bastard is the one who brought her in the first place. And you did ask for him, didn’t you? Do you want him? Which would you prefer, dear wife?”
Taran turned the force of his beautiful, pleading eyes on the Huntress. “You know that I make a lovely apology,” he said, adding a darker note to his voice, one that made my chest go tight and anxious even as I saw how this might not be a betrayal but only a very, very bad decision on Taran’s part.
No. He couldn’t. She was horrible.
He couldn’t actually plan to go through with it. That had to be the play. While the Huntress put on whatever garments the godsdonned to engage in open adultery, Taran and I would escape. I told myself this even as doubt brewed out of the pinched look on his face.
“I do enjoy your apologies,” Wirrea acknowledged, eyes narrowing. When Taran didn’t dispute this, she drew herself up to her full height, brushed her tunic down over her hips, and let her eyelids fall into slits. Her approach was measured, but the crack of her arm was like a strike of lighting.
She slapped Taran full across the face, hard enough to stagger him backwards and split his lip open. Before he could recover and wipe the spot of red-gold blood away, she lunged up to suck his mouth clean with a hungry noise, her narrow features curving wide with satisfaction when Taran didn’t resist.
