In Which the Sorcerer Proved So Easy to Seduce that All My Previous Failures Seem Embarrassing in Retrospect. In Which I Will Be Forgiving Myself, as for a Good Number of Those Attempts, I Was a Vulture.
This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
The sorcerer eyed me critically. “Surely that cannot be true.”
We sat in what could loosely be considered a dining hall, if your standards only demanded a longish table and the space to fit it in. Cobwebs hung in every corner and dripped from the table’s underside, their creators occasionally revealing themselves in black scuttling shapes that quickly disappeared. Only a narrow window saved the room from complete gloom. Merulo had ignited a set of wall-mounted candles with a gesture upon entering, but as the wicks were ill-tended, they promptly extinguished their own flames in pools of lopsided wax. Merulo didn’t notice; he stood proud as a cat before a fresh-killed mouse as I examined the wax-paper bundle of pretzels.
I thought carefully. “When we were kids, my brother gave me a stuffed dog. He used my father’s stockings, and stuffedit with sheep’s wool, to make it soft. Of course, I was caned upon its discovery, it being a less-than-consensual clothing donation, but I slept with that thing damn near every night.” I plucked a pretzel from the paper, trying not to drool over the thick chunks of salt that coated it. “This is the second nicest thing, then.”
“And now, knowing what I can provide, you should have no need to seek the attention of . . .others.”
I pulled a face at the mention of Gareth. “Why would I, when I have a full-service sorcerer?”
“And . . .” He pulled a chair from the table with a screech, then hesitated, apparently noticing the spiderwebs for the first time. In the end, he remained standing, his fingers clenched, talon-like, around the top of the chair. “I hoped we could talk.”
“About what?” I asked. Then: “Oh God, that wasn’t your first time, was it?”
“No!” He flared his hands in alarm. “Of course not. Though perhaps . . . it’s been some decades.”
Some decades. Good lord, how old was this guy?
The sorcerer squirmed for a moment, looking as if biting insects had invaded his underclothes, before stammering out, “And . . . for you?”
“Oh, you know.” I tried for a charming look, jutting my chin out, only to remember that I was working with a more feminine aesthetic now, one that didn’t hinge on a craggy jaw. “People like my looks, so I get around.”
I imagined that might intimidate him even more, my comparative breadth of popularity and experience, but if anything, he returned to his usual self. “They like your looks,” he repeated.
“Sure.” I sat back so that natural light fell across my clear, lovely skin. “Most people do.”
“Nothing else, then. Just your looks.”
“Ah.” I realized the trap I’d fallen into. “I mean . . . People do like me, you know.”
“Ah yes, I remember you weeping outside that bar because your fellow knightslikedyou so much.” The candlelight shadowed his face, making it hard to read.
I sat up, stung. “There’s no need to be nasty.”
“I’m just trying to understand. There’s never been anything deeper than that? There’s never been anything . . .” He hesitated. “. . .more, that you wanted?”
I thought about it. In most of my encounters, I did stand to benefit in some way: in the gathering of valuable intelligence, or in avoiding a particularly nasty advancement on the sorcerer’s territory—though sometimes, I did settle for purely social gains. This, however, did not seem like a response that would please him.
“Never mind. Your silence is answer enough.” He sighed, kneading at his forehead.
“You had fun, though, right?” I asked, slightly panicked. “And you like the way I look?”
The last of his vulnerability dissipated, and I saw once more the sorcerer who had threatened me with Benedict. “I have work to attend to,” he said. “You have distracted me enough.”
“Okay,” I said, still clutching my pretzel. I raised it to him. “Thank you for this. And, uh. Maybe I could distract you again, later on?”
He smiled slightly, and I took that as confirmation that I hadn’t fucked up completely. “Perhaps.”
Once he’d left, I devoted myself to demolishing the pretzel, in all its salty, puffy goodness, with no thought but for the next mouthful. Taking stock of the remaining pile, I decided it would be better to eat them now while fresh, and so threw myself into consuming another, and another, until I felt quite sick. It almost distracted me from the unease in my gut.
A spider crawled across the table, hard to see now that so many of the candles had given up their fight. “I can’t help but feel,” I confessed, before it could dart out of sight, “that I’ve done something wrong. Though I cannot begin to imagine what.”
The spider, being a spider, failed to respond, leaving me to sit in a thickening silence until all the candles had extinguished.
CHAPTER 16
