They stared at each other for a moment. Sixty-three wives, Imogen thought, and each likely struck dumb or terrified at their first sight of him. He certainly left her speechless on numerous occasions since her arrival.
Cededa stepped over a pile of broken masonry, smaller bits crunching under his boot heels. “Come,” he said. “Tineroth has a library, or what’s left of one, two avenues away.” He paused to glance at her over his shoulder. “Unless you want to see something else.”
“A library,” she breathed out in a reverent voice. If anyone ever built a temple to her, she’d ask them to make it a library. “With many books?” Who cared if she couldn’t decipher the languages in which they were written. There was magic in the feel of parchment and ink.
Again that brief smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “Scrolls mostly, but there are some books. I can’t vouch for their condition.”
As he promised, the library stood two streets away, surrounded by a garden gone wild and choked with weeds and the ubiquitous ivy. Cededa helped her over a swathe of climbing vine, his bare hand warm in hers, his body seemingly unaffected by her touch. While in much better condition than the temple ruin they’d just left, the library showed the marks of destruction like every other building she had so far explored in Tineroth. Half of a staircase led to a second floor and then a third where shelves housed what must have been thousands of scrolls. All inaccessible to her unless Cededa could fly.
He chuckled and shook his head as if he heard her thoughts. “I’ve a few talents at my disposal. Flight isn’t one of them.” He gestured to a far corner, tucked under one of the stairwells. “Start there,” he said. “The newest scrolls are stored in those niches and won’t turn to dust when you disturb them. If you find something that interests you, bring it to me, and I’ll translate.” He nudged her toward the treasure trove and left her to idly explore another part of the library.
Imogen watched him for a few moments. Had he come here when the library stood whole and undamaged? He had once been a warrior king. That was how legend remembered him, yet she fancied he might have appreciated some of the scholarly pursuits.
The scrolls were predictably undecipherable, and in some cases illegible, their ink faded to ghostly scratches on the parchment. She brought Cededa her first armful of documents to translate. He made a perch of an overturned column top and invited her to sit beside him while he read aloud.
Most were inventories of harvest yields or the results of city court rulings. One made Cededa’s eyes flash and his lips thin to a tight line. Imogen glanced from him to the scroll and back again. “What is it?”
“A writ of arrest for the act of treason. My arrest.” He flung the scroll across the vast room before crooking his fingers at her. “Give me the next one.”
She wordlessly handed him another scroll. Who called for the king’s arrest those many centuries earlier? Was it even possible to arrest a monarch then? She didn’t think one could do it now.
The rest of the scrolls were more like the first bunch, dry accounts of trade goods and shipping bills, marriage records and births. She gathered the ones piled at her feet to return them to their cubby holes. “Your world then is much like ours now I think.”
Cededa snorted softly. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad one.” He tipped his chin toward the opposite side of the room. “Try those over there. You might have better luck and discover something more interesting than who bought flax or a pair of oxen.”
His words proved prophetic. The first scroll Imogen extracted from a painted box and unrolled made her eyebrows climb. While the ink might be faded on documents of lading, this scroll retained the vivid hues of both paint and ink.
Pictures illustrated inside decorative frames revealed themselves with the scroll’s slow unrolling, and Imogen’s eyes rounded with each revelation. Niamh’s forthright teachings regarding bed play, even the more intimate details she’d written of her relationship with Varn in her journal, didn’t compare to the lascivious scenes painted on the scrolls.
“You’ve found something that’s snared your attention,” Cededa called out. “Bring it, and I’ll translate.”
Imogen glanced at him and let the scroll roll itself closed. “I don’t think this one needs translating.” She picked her way to him, handed him the scroll and resumed her seat beside him. Her smile widened to a grin at his startled expression.
“They kept these in the library?” His obvious shock made Imogen clap a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter. She cleared her throat and grasped one side of the rods as he unrolled the parchment to its full length.
Each brightly painted square depicted a sexual act—sometimes between a man and a woman, sometimes between a man and a man and sometimes between two women. A few involved several participants. The painter wasn’t what she’d call an artist, and she had a more difficult time deciphering whose limbs and appendages belonged to whom. She peered closer at one of the scenes. Was that a goat?
“Look your fill?” Cededa’s dry question interrupted her perusal. His pale eyes shone in the gathering gloom. “It’s getting dark. We’ll return to the palace so you can eat. Bring the scroll with you. You’re right, it’s self-explanatory.”
“What is it? Instructions for lovemaking?”
Cededa stood and relinquished the scroll to her. “Hardly. More like fucking.” An odd shiver raised gooseflesh on Imogen’s arms at his blunt declaration. “It’s a list of services offered at one of Tineroth’s brothels. Such things were commonly posted outside the business. Odd to find one stored in the library.”
Imogen stared at him and then at the scroll in her hands. Her first glimpse of the painted scenes had elicited surprise and then a tingling warmth that coursed through her body. While she wasn’t at all interested in the finer details regarding the goat, she did want a closer look at the others. Their graphic intimacy flustered her and left her with questions Niamh had not answered in her bid to prepare her daughter for adulthood, even a solitary one.
While her curiosity about the scroll raged, Cededa’s interest had waned almost instantly. Beyond his initial surprise at finding the document here, he’d exhibited no more reaction to it than to any of the dull ones he first translated for her.
Granted, a man with as many wives and concubines as Cededa once possessed, was probably familiar with the how, why, when and where of every scene in the scroll. And more that weren’t painted there. Still, his lack of reaction was something beyond boredom of a thing done many times and reminded her of those moments when he coaxed her to run her hands over his bare torso, trace the silvery outlines of the Tineroth key collaring his throat and shoulders. Then too, he showed no reaction to her touch. Only that first time, when he experienced the power of her malediction, did he show any emotion and that time had nothing of desire about it.
Imogen frowned. She had no misguided notions regarding her looks. She was neither plain nor beautiful. Only unremarkable. Niamh had always praised her, but what loving parent didn’t see the beauty in their child? Still, she wondered at Cededa’s reserve, the absence of either attraction or revulsion to her touch. His was an almost ascetic demeanor, one that confused her, and if she were honest, put a dent in her vanity.
She rose and tucked the scroll under her arm. Her vanity would have to remain dented. The king of Tineroth had generously offered a means for her to live a normal life. She’d not be ungrateful by being discourteous. There were other questions about him she dare not ask, ones far less trivial than why he didn’t react as other men might to the graphic sensuality captured in vibrant paint or the enthralled caresses of a woman cursed with death in her fingers.
“What do you want to know, Imogen?”
So lost in her thoughts, she jumped at his voice, uttered near her ear. Cededa leaned in close, pale features sharp with interest now.
“You startled me,” she admonished and offered him a weak smile. It’s of no consequence, Sire. Just idle thoughts.”
