He turned his horse away from the edge and back toward the newly erected camp. Nothing stayed hidden forever. He would find Tineroth and the girl who hid there. He had time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Imogen stared up at the remaining two spires of a tumbled-down temple. Ivy dripped from their roofs in lacy curtains, creeping toward the flat table of an altar open to the sky. “Tell me of this temple. What god did you build it for, and did you worship him yourself?”
“Not a god,” Cededa said beside her. “A goddess. And no, I didn’t worship her. I worshipped no one, except myself on occasion.” His amused look held more than a touch of self-mockery. “I don’t even remember her name. A deity of spring maybe, or fruit trees. I recall her supplicants offering pomegranates.”
“And you weren’t a supplicant.”
“Hardly.”
In the three weeks since her arrival in Tineroth, Imogen occupied her time with exploring the fabled city and killing its king with her touch. He stood at the top of the temple steps with her, looking none the worse for her fatal caresses. Dressed in worn silk that had once been finer than any ell of cloth she’d ever seen, he surveyed the fallen worship house with a bored expression.
She didn’t truly believe he could lift her curse, but she couldn’t discount what she saw. What she felt. Cededa had touched her face with a bare hand and didn’t drop dead at her feet. That alone had stunned her almost speechless. And she had touched him many times since then at his invitation. He might not possess the ability to break the curse, but his resistance to it left her almost as euphoric as he when he discovered the nature of her malediction, though his joy was a macabre thing. Never had she met anyone so thrilled at the idea of dying.
He was a mystery. Sublime, beguiling, malevolent. Cededa had been a model host to his unexpected guest, but Niamh’s words were never far from her thoughts.
“His people called him Cededa the Fair, then Cededa the Butcher.”
Even without those disturbing words, she recalled the effigy on the catafalque, the cruelty captured in marble, untouched by time or weathering. He stole her breath, and not just because of his physical beauty.
Cededa motioned her to follow him, and they picked their way through the cascade of rubble spilling across the temple floor. “The father of one of my wives designed this temple,” he said. “This one and several others throughout the city. I’ll take you to see them, if you wish. One is still mostly intact.”
Imogen’s pulse raced as it always did now when Cededa offered to escort her through Tineroth, describing the city as it had once been—a thriving metropolis bursting with life and noise. Raised on Niamh’s colorful tales of her time in Berberi, she easily imagined similar scenes in ancient Tineroth. “Oh yes, please. I want to see the entire city before I leave.” She paused, caught by his first remark. “One of your wives? How many did you have?”
The idea didn’t surprise her so much as intrigue her. Niamh might have kept Imogen isolated from the wide world, but she didn’t keep her ignorant. While the kings of Berberi and Castagher married only one woman, there were other monarchs who married several, each occupying a position in the spousal hierarchy.
Cededa’s mouth, with its natural sneer, quirked into a brief smile. Imogen instinctively pulled away when he reached for her hand. He waited, palm turned up, until she entwined her fingers with his. “Come,” he said. “I’ll show you. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a husband to anyone, and stone recalls better than I do the names of those I took to wife.”
He led her to the remains of a nave and a lone column, it’s top third broken off, but still standing. Cededa scrubbed away the layer of lichen from part of its surface to reveal symbols carved into the stone. Imogen recognized the similarity between the writing here and that on the bridge beneath the statues. Fascinating, and for her, unreadable.
Her companion traced one line of script with a fingertip. “A monk was assigned to record the names of the women I married. This is the architect’s daughter. All I remember of Elsida was fine skin and a crooked-tooth smile. She was my thirty-seventh wife, I think.” He shrugged at Imogen’s raised eyebrows. “I’ve lived a long time and married for many reasons; none for affection.” His gaze drifted, as if he looked inward at a memory long buried. “I remember Elsida’s father better. A man of vision who saw buildings as living beings. I think he left a small part of his soul in every temple and house he designed or built.”
Imogen surveyed the temple’s shattered shell and hugged herself. If the gods had any pity, they set free whatever lingering soul thread the architect had woven into his creation when it was destroyed. She hugged herself, chilled even in the city’s humid warmth. “What are the other names?” she asked.
Cededa’s gaze turned outward once more. He leaned closer and read the names aloud, pausing sometimes with furrowed brow as if trying to recall a long-dead wife’s face. His hand rested flat atop one name. “Helena. The most beautiful woman ever born. She bore me seven children.” He read more names, and Imogen counted sixty-two wives before he paused at the last name. She took a wary step back as his demeanor transformed, reminding her of their first encounter, when he threatened to cut her throat with his glaive.
His pale blue eyes were cold, and he drew his hand away from the column as if the stone burned. “Gruah. My last wife, my judge, and my punisher.”
Caution warred with curiosity. Imogen wanted to know more of this Gruah, but every survival instinct she possessed buzzed a warning that such an idea invited severe consequences. Even if she were fog-brained, she couldn’t misinterpret the warning in Cededa’s frigid expression.
A tense silence swelled between them before she grasped her courage with both hands and changed the subject. “How many children did you have? Just the seven by Helena?” Hard to believe this icicle of a man with his deathless stare had once been someone’s father.
He blinked and met her eyes, as if seeing her for the first time. His features relaxed a little, and Imogen breathed a soft sigh of relief. “With that many wives, not to mention the concubines, I fathered armies of children.”
And outlived them all, she thought. How sad. Immortality exacted a heavy price. “Did you have a favorite child?”
The space between his eyebrows knitted into a pair of lines. “At first I did.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really know most of them. Seventeen raised revolts against me. Six planned my assassination. Two almost succeeded.” His lips twitched as she stared at him slack-jawed. “Why so appalled? Rebellion and regicide are bedmates in the game of kingship, witch’s daughter, and they usually start with one’s siblings or offspring.”
Cededa the Butcher. What had he done to earn such a ghastly title? What made his children hate him so much that more than a dozen led rebellions against him and six tried to kill him? Maybe it wasn’t him so much as their own greed and thirst for power. Hard to become monarch yourself when your parent didn’t age or die of sickness. Still, she didn’t truly believe him a harassed innocent, not with such a brutal moniker attached to his name. And he called his last wife his judge and punisher. What did he mean? An icy wash of fear sluiced down her spine.
Her expression must have given away her thoughts. Cededa’s faint amusement disappeared. He watched her the same way a hawk watched a mouse hiding in a wheat field. “Afraid, Imogen?” he asked.
His tone was dead, flat. Pride might tempt her to deny it, but no one in their right mind would lie to this man. “Yes.”
Something flickered in that piercing gaze. Regret. “It wasn’t my intention,” he said in a warmer voice.
Imogen’s fear faded as quickly as it appeared. “I believe you.” She didn’t lie about that either.
