“Yes,please. I accept that my circumstance and the need to acknowledge it brings you some kind of amusement. I concede. I ask for your help.”
He leaned in a little closer. “And I concede that I do not know what to do with your sudden concessions. I do not wish to quarrel with you. But nor do I wish—more so even—to play your fool.”
We stared at each other.
I would wait him out, I thought. I would not show any feeling, just as he never showed any. I would let him guide the rest of this encounter. I had done as he wanted. I had admitted I needed him.
“Yes,” he whispered in the near dark, almost to himself. The gleam of the moss shone through slits in the inner bark, lighting his sharp cheekbones. “Yes,” he went on, more so to me this time. “I do not wish to play the fool.”
“I am at your mercy,” I said, my tone even. “You know of my heredity. You know of my criminality. You know I am stuck in this tree. How could I play you for a fool?” I whispered the last of my statement.
His lean was even deeper now, only the span of one hand between our faces. “And you know of my heredity.”
“Yes. We know of each other’s parentage. But I commit crimestonight, and I am—as I have said, as I haveadmitted—in need of your intervention. It is I who am at your mercy entirely, whereas you are only halfway at mine.”
“Oh, I assure you, madam, I amentirelyat your mercy,” he replied, his nose now almost touching mine.
I did not know what game we played. Did we actually speak of us both being of Tintarian heritage? Or was another thing being said?
“I won’t speak of your seeing the god tree doorway,” I swore.
He stepped slightly to one side, backing me up against the inner bark. Lifting his right hand from his neckline, he placed it against the bark at the left side of my head.
I pressed myself into the bark as much as I could, somewhat twisted in my body due to my right hand.
“Do you expect a promise from me in return?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. I could not concentrate with him so close. “Vyggian, I do not understand you. First you ask me to join this caravan as a midwife. Then you interfere with my seeking anything a midwife may use, not allowing me to leave the very caravan you asked me to serve. Then when you, also a Tintarian, catch me in a god tree, you act as if it is I and only I who am in danger of being found out. And now you tell me you are at my mercy. What is it that you want of me? I will give it to you if it means an end to this business.”
He lowered his head, and for a moment I was confused and thought he was going to kiss me, but he tilted it farther to my left and breezed his cheek past mine to smell the skin just below my ear. “What kind of magic?” he asked. He inhaled again, as if he could scent which element blessed me.
My right hand clutched at the knife, willing myself not to thrill at his proximity, at his lips’ graze of my neck as he spoke. Was I so weak? Plenty of men had been near me before me this, and a handful had been in my bed.
I reminded myself of this. Iwasa good-looking woman. Ididhave wiles. And I may have had my hand stuck in a godsdamned tree,with dangerous secrets on display for a likely adversary, but I had resources still.
Stretching my neck and chin just the least bit, I brought my lips right against his left ear and, allowing them to scrape across his lobe, I said, “You. First.”
Another impasse followed, two people breathing into each other’s necks, not speaking and not moving.
He canted his head upward by the smallest increment so his mouth was against my ear and said, his lips pressed into me, “Air.”
Ignoring the quiver in my gut, I replied, “Fire and earth.”
He pulled back somewhat, returning his nose to nearly brushing mine.
“Twogods bless you? You are an unfolding marvel, aren’t you?”
“So,” I said, grateful for the chewstick I had thought to have after my dinner, making my mouth clean, “I believe we could call this mutually guaranteed ruination.” My tone was almost flirtatious.
This time his lean was not subtle. This time he did not guide me to press into the inner bark. Hepushedme into it, bending the elbow of his right arm so that his forearm pinned me, his right hand still anchored next to my head. It was the most graceless action I had witnessed him take, his every prior movement a thing of stealth, his gait like a wildcat’s climb across a tree branch, lithe and apathetic. He did not bring his body up against mine, but his right knee separated my own two knees.
My breasts were just heavy enough that when I inhaled, we touched.
This seemed to have no effect on him. His nose was aligned with my own when he said, “Keep my secrets and I will keep yours. But please cease in using your charms on me. I have told you many times now. They are wasted.”
“Salt man, I do not know?—”
“I am not another man who will eat from the palm of your hand,” he said to cut me off, tone bored. He pushed himself away from me, turned, and slipped out of the god tree.
