“She will change her allegiance if you scratch her behind her ears.”
We traded kisses, kisses on necks and ears and hands. He held my left breast in his right hand and with his tongue and teeth, suckled my nipple until it was taut. I petitioned him again after this. He said my breasts were far too responsive and thus enticing and he pushed me onto my stomach, rolling on top of me, parting my knees with his own and filling me with his fingers, grumbling about how pliable I was when I lusted, how the back of my sex glistened in the faint light of morning. He stopped midway and pried my sex open with his right fore and middle fingers.
“Now that is beautiful,” he said, using his left hand to stay my hips so he could examine me. “When I think of every sight I have beheld at the end of my life, these lips and their perfections will haunt me even after I am dead.”
I shuddered as he continued, bringing his left hand around my hip and under my stomach to the front of my sex. It was with effort that I put that raw exposure of myself out of my mind. I was grateful he had not done that in the middle of the day and I made myself think only on the dedicated work of his hands.
“I thought you didn’t like the word ‘beautiful,’” I said as he lay atop me afterward, his pelvis lower than my rear, so that his weight was not all on me.
He kissed my spine, his arms going under me, wrapping around my waist. “I have learned to like it. For you, because I think you like the word. But it is the word I will use only for your sex. I will use your name when I am beguiled by you.”
“You use my name all the time,” I said.
“Exactly,Edith.”
86. Ruskar
When one is not happy, three days can feel like three moons. If one is happy, three moons feel like three blinks. It was how I spent my last in this life. My work for the temple was not the quality it had been. I barely slept at night. Most mornings, the two of us visited Gareth Pope’s bath, doing altogether more than bathing. Alric had yet to ask about my discovery of the bath and it may have been that he did not care.
He spent his days in meetings in the king’s chambers with the four archpriests, the three heads of the three armies and the two monarchs. The Shark King’s dismissal of the threat of any country, his surety that none had the might of Tintar was replaced by wrath when my husband and Thatcher had returned from their five days in Ruskar. They had camped in the saltwater oak forests Ruskar was known for, second only to their vintages. Arriving in the dead of night by a sloop, they hid in a cave. They then traveled from town to town this way, under the cover of trees until they reached Ruskar’s capital city and their true spying began. Thatcher had climbed inside their queen’s hold via a window and walked around it soundlessly in the dark, listening at doors. My husband’s stealth was used watching the homes of aldermen and standing in taverns, wraith-like hoping to overhear information. Thatcher had heard a conversation between a royal guard and another soldier about how Tintar would finally fall. The other soldier was clearly not Ruskarian, but spoke using the terminology of a soldier. My husband had observed a group of oak merchants, fat of purse and full of wine, following them to a second tavern to finally hear one man say he was happy to have his lands with only young saplings be used to some purpose, doubling his coin. And he said that that coin was gold coin. Alric and Thatcher regrouped and paid a transport wagon to take them across the large island to this merchant’s lands. Under the cover of oaks, they spied an entire legion of Perpatanian troops, explaining the presence of the foreign soldier in the queen’s hold. They had concluded that the Perpatanian king had flooded Ruskar with coin so as to not only host his army, but to close its docks to Tintar, undoing hundreds of winters of peace and commerce.
“I believe,” said Alric, laying alongside me in the dark, between kisses on my brow, “Pikestully has a rat.” He pulled me close as if to begin to make love again.
“You cannot say that and begin what you begin,” I protested. “Tell me Tintar does not have a traitor in its midst. That is troubling.”
“Yes, but the workday is done and now I go to work on—”
“Alric, this is my home now. Tell me.”
He sighed but kissed the tip of my nose. “Thatcher and I think that the raid on Sealmouth was not in retaliation to our invasion of Eccleston. Perpatane was not acting on your former city’s behalf. Firstly, Perpatane assuredly encouraged Eccleston to break our trade agreements, so as to incite this. I am sure gold was extended as an encouragement. Some Tintarian knew the time of our invasion, knew our armies would be engaged and as we advanced on Eccleston, Perpatane moved its legion on the dust road that borders the marshlands up towards Sealmouth. They did not sink the missing ships, Edith. They razed that town, used those ships to reach Ruskar and buy the island for their cause.”
“And what is their cause?”
He ran his right hand along my left arm. “Their king has always been power mad. Perpatane wants this entire continent for itself and it can afford to buy the cooperation and colonization of islands and cities and settlements, but not Tintar. We are the only country large enough to fight back. They have their gold, but we have the coast and the armies.”
I nestled into him. “Tell me we are not to war. I cannot bear to know that when I am—”
“When you are what?”
I had been about to say I could not bear to know that when I was dead and gone, he would be then thrust into a continental war that could last a lifetime, that he would perhaps die too young.
“I cannot bear,” I began slowly, “to know that when I am just now becoming your wife.”
He linked our fingers together, bringing my left hand to his mouth and kissing my wedding band. “Perpatane only has the one legion on Ruskar. Ruskar has no navy. Their presence is troubling, but I believe it to be more a shaking fist than a punch. We have several thousand men in the army and navy and we can send troops quickly up and down the coast with our cavalry. We prepare for war, but from where the attack comes, I know not. Know this, Edith,” and here he stopped to press another kiss on my ring. “Know that I will keep you safe.”
“But from where could an attack come?”
“Not by sea. We have the only navy. Other forces would have to travel via Nyossa but the road only allows for three horses across and it would take twice the time of our journey here. The dust road in the marshlands is guarded by units of our cavalry and infantry. A shaking fist, remember? They may have us in this stalemate, without Eccleston metals and Ruskarian oak, but they cannot access the majority of the coast. Are you satisfied?”
“How soon could they attack?” I needed to know what his future would be without me.
“Wife, how do I know what tomorrow looks like,” he breathed on my neck. “I can tell you what tonight could look like. Indeed, I can show you.” He knew he could distract and did so.
87. Coupling
In those first weeks of true wifehood, I learned that my husband had the capacity for romance. He could be quite eloquent in the dark, telling me how alluring I had looked on our wedding day, that his frustration at his sentence had almost entirely dissolved at seeing me in white with my abalone blossom crown. He said the sun through the temple window had shone directly on me like a benediction from Father Fire and he had stumbled in his vows. He said he had known I was a desirable woman, but he had not let himself look until he was confronted with it in our goddess’s temple. He said he thought to himself ‘now she is undeniably comely.’ He was also lusty, telling me over and over that he was a man starved, his hunger for me never sated.
After our second coupling with my assurance that I wanted him and not some idea of him, an idea he had held, not I, he was bolder and bolder in bed. He would kiss my breasts with closed lips, waiting for me to cry out for his tongue and teeth. At times, he was methodically slow, nearly torturous in his pace to please. Other times, he would take me roughly and make me forget my own name. But with every joining of our bodies, he showed me so much care.
