Truss lifted a shoulder. “Pity, then, that her daughter will be taken from her so soon.”
“Give me the potion,” Ninian whispered blackly. “Else I will make mincemeat of you.”
Her threat was idle, a shout flung down an empty hall with no returning echo. But the leeches had no convictions and little strength of character. It was why they had joined this order of rote tasks and banal labors. They moved through the world like fish carried through a current, never so much as flicking their silver tails or turning their open-mouthed faces toward the sky. They mostly grumbled over their little game of luck being interrupted.
After several moments of sulky preparation, Mordaunt handed Ninian the tonic in a glass vial. She took it and left the leeches’ bay without another word.
Back in the princess’s chambers, Marozia was already undressed and tucked under the covers, but she was not sleeping. Her eyes were wide open and stiff in a manner that suggested she had not blinked in quite some time. When she heard Ninian enter, she lifted her head arduously from the pillow.
“Bring it here,” she whispered.
On the other side of the bed, Meriope was sleeping, limbs flung out to her sides, except for her left arm, which was laid over her chest so that her thumb could remain in her mouth. Dried spittle crusted the front of her nightgown. But her sleep looked consummate and dreamless. Ninian approached.
Marozia pushed herself up onto her elbows as Ninian lowered herself carefully onto the bed. The princess parted her lips. Ninian uncapped the vial and poured the potion in. She watched, with a tremulous heartbeat, her mistress’s throat pulsing and bobbing as she swallowed.
Ninian’s gaze lowered to the collar of Marozia’s sheer nightdress, and then lower still. She could see the way her mistress’s breasts swelled and stiffened, the tonic taking hold at once. Her own stomach clenched, desperate with desire.
“Go on, then,” Marozia said quietly.
Ninian tried to restrain her eagerness as she bore her mistress down on the mattress. She climbed upon her and straddled her hips. With shaking fingers, she pushed up Marozia’s nightgown, baring her round and aching breasts to the air. A strangled moan escaped Ninian’s lips.
She was mindful, however, not to drink too much, for there needed to remain enough to feed Meriope when she stirred from slumber and demanded her mother’s milk. Even as pleasure rolled headily through her, Ninian took care not to scrape Marozia’s nipples with her teeth, and to save some of her strength. It was not long before her mistress shoved her head beneath the covers and made her taste the sweet juice that ran between her thighs.
Marozia whimpered and keened, but never loud enough to wake her daughter, who, though mere inches away, slept obliviously through it every night.
Ninian was in love. Wretchedly, torridly—with her mistress, and with that small girl who shared their bed. And yet she hated the savage and unjust world that pained the princess so, and that would tear them apart, as vicious as a wolf feasting on its fresh kill, when these sixty-six days were through.
Time fell mercilessly past them. Ninian, for all her love and all her hate, could not arrest it.
III
Lavender and Wax
Pliny the leech was such a creature who did not mind overmuch the passage of time. As he walked, hand in hand with Tisander, to the small boy’s chambers, he allowed his thoughts to stretch back to the first moment he had stepped through the barbican of Castle Crudele, still raw from the death of his former master. All that blood. The stench had remained with him for days, for weeks, and grew tangier whenever he was near the lady Agnes. He saw her and tasted copper on his tongue.
Now such sentiments were embarrassing to contemplate. He was glad that time had made him a more stoic being, not so moved by the passions that did not befit a leech. It helped, of course, that everything around him had changed a great deal in these past six years, even the structure of Castle Crudele itself.
Pliny had the opportunity to glimpse some of these rather unfortunate changes as he led Tisander along the parapets and felt the whisking of the sea’s salt air. It ruffled Tisander’s golden curls, and the boy turned his face into the wind, closing his eyes and smiling in a serene way that did not at all befit a boy his age. In Pliny’s experience children were wriggling, impatient, impulsive things—more like the little princess Meriope, who, admittedly, Pliny rarely had the occasion to see.
They came to a corner, and here was one of the rather unfortunate changes to the castle: a bit of the stone floor was beginning to crumble, the lashing of wind and rain and the slow spread of rot making this length of the parapet treacherous. Pliny had to press himself and Tisander close to the castle wall and inch along it carefully to avoidstepping on this undependable stone. Luckily, Tisander was such a patient and self-possessed child that he never gave Pliny any reason to fear a sudden movement, a reckless lurch. They crossed safely.
If Nicephorus was aware of this new deficiency, he kept his feelings secret. There was not much that could rouse the king to action these days. Pliny might have said that the years had not been kind to Nicephorus, but in truth, it was not time that was to blame.
When they at last reached the princeling’s chambers, Waltrude was waiting for them. Tisander let go of Pliny’s hand and ran into his wet nurse’s embrace.
Waltrude swung him up into her arms, though not without difficulty, her thin limbs trembling like saplings in the wind. Who could blame her? By Pliny’s estimation, she was entering the ninety-first year of her life. It would have been stranger to see her lift the boy without trouble.
“Here for your lessons, my little lord?” she asked, as though every day were not the same.
Eagerly, Tisander nodded. “I have learned all my letters.”
“And soon you shall be wiser than a great horned owl.”
Tisander laughed, a high and tinkly sound. He slid from Waltrude’s grasp and went to the table where all of Pliny’s books and papers were arranged, ink still drying on his quill-tips. As Tisander pulled himself up into the chair, Pliny was, against his will, assaulted by an arrow-volley of memories. Each one struck him, and the accompanying pain left him momentarily breathless.
He saw, in the gaze of his mind, his old lord Fredegar sitting before him in place of Tisander. Fredegar’s hair had been dark and his eyes a nondescript hazel, but he had had the same serious face as the young prince, showing a queer wisdom beyond his years.
The memory rippled and shifted, and Unruoching sat there instead, indolent and distracted, picking at his nose. It had taken Pliny the better part of a year to teach him his letters. He had protested their meetings; he had raged at his mother’s bedside—poor, dying Eupraxia. Andhalf the time he had snuck off to play cruel tricks on the stable boys or bait the cats in the kitchen.
