Naamah's Kiss (53 page)

"Such a sweet bottom begging to be plumbed." Jehanne's voice, cooing. Already, I hovered on the precipice. Her hands, cupping my buttocks. "You're still a virgin there?"

"Aye," I gasped.

She smiled. "Not for long."

"I don't think" My back arched and I grabbed at the bedsheets. " Oh !"

Jehanne de la Courcel was very, very skilled in Naamah's arts.

In that first month, I saw Raphael only once. I'd resumed my lessons with Master Lo Feng and I encountered Raphael in the halls of the Academy. He was walking and talking with Claire Fourcay.

I had to own, my heart quickened at the sight of him.

He stopped dead, his jaw clenching.

"Raphael," I pleaded. "Can we not be civil with one another?"

He swept past me without a word, Claire hurrying in his wake. None of the members of the Circle were speaking to me save Lianne Tremaine. I didn't care about the others, but Raphael's anger troubled me.

"You feel guilty," Jehanne said later. "That's why you don't want to talk about Raphael de Mereliot and his occult schemes."

I wrapped my arms around my knees. "I promised I wouldn't. It would feel like betraying him twice over."

"He was intent on using you toward his own ends," she observed. "You don't think that's a betrayal of sorts?"

I shrugged. "I consented. And he meant well."

She studied my face. "Do you miss him?"

"Do you?" I countered.

"Some days." Jehanne pulled me against her, sinking her hands into my hair and kissing me until the image of Raphael's face blurred in my memory. "Not today." Her grey-blue eyes gazed intently into mine. "Tell me one thing. Are they likely to succeed in whatever they're attempting?"

"No," I murmured. "Not without me."

She kissed me some more. "Good."

Winter deepened. Snow fell, churned to slush in the streets of the City by horses' hooves and carriage wheels. Preparations began for the Midwinter Masque to take place on the Longest Night. My father had promised to return by then, but there was no word of him.

"You're sure?" I asked Noemie d'Etoile at the Temple of Naamah.

"I'm sure." She patted my hand. "Don't fret, Moirin. It's not unusual for Phanuel to be gone for months at a time. Like as not, he's solving some other lovers' dilemma. Problems needing to be solved have a way of finding him."

"I wish he were here, that's all."

The priestess smiled. "Of course you do. Is everything all right with you otherwise? Does being in the Queen's service suit you?"

"Oddly enough, it does."

Noemie laughed. "Not so odd. It's in your blood, after all. By all accounts, it seems to suit her majesty. They say you're a calming influence."

That I hadn't heard. "They do?"

She nodded. "It's been over a month since she made a chambermaid cry. Thirty-two days and counting. That's a new record. They're taking wagers on how long it will last at Bryony House."

I had to smile. "Folk in this City really need to find new pastimes."

At the Academy, Master Lo Feng praised my progress in the Five Styles of Breathing and began teaching me the rudiments of herbal medicine. To the disappointment of both of us, I didn't have a knack for it. Despite my affinity for the plants themselves, I didn't have a head for the complex formulas he taught menor any talent in diagnosing ailments. Thanks to the breathing exercises, I did better at sensing the flow of energy and its blockages, but I didn't have Raphael's gift for manipulating it.

Whatever I was, it wasn't a healer.

At least not of humans.

Plants were another matter. Master Lo Feng was particularly intrigued by the Camaeline snowdrop, a rare white flower that grew in the mountains of Camlach province and blossomed in the snowdrifts there once a year. The flowers were pressed and their essence distilled to make joie , a liqueur that was traditionally served on the Longest Night.

" Very tonic," Lo Feng said in approval. "And you foolish people have not even begun to explore the properties of the bulb!"

To that end, the King had arranged to have a shipment of living snowdrops collected in the high mountains and delivered to Master Lo Feng. I was there in the courtyard the day they arrived, delicate flowers already drooping in the burlap sack that held them.

I touched one. It sang a frail, fading song to itself.

Master Lo Feng watched me. "His majesty says no one has ever kept one alive. They only grow wild in the mountains."

"They're pining for deep snow and thin air," I told him. Bao

Bao was already in motion. He thrust his omnipresent staff over his shoulder through a loop of leather and began scooping up snow that had gathered in the corners of the courtyard. I helped. Together, we packed the sack full of snow.

"Better?" Bao asked me.

"Better," I agreed. My diadh-anam pulsed in my breast. I knelt gingerly on the cold flagstones and listened to the snowdrops' frail song. I closed my eyes and breathed the Breath of Trees Growing, feeling the energy spread throughout my body and thinking about the cycles of giving and taking that linked all living things. And then I breathed the Breath of Wind's Sigh, drawing air up and up behind my eyes, thinking about the cold, high places where the snowdrops grew.

I summoned the twilight, touched the flowers, and blew on them.

Their song grew stronger and clearer.

And I felt less drained than I ever had exercising my gift. I felt the rightness of it. Master Lo Feng had been right about teaching me to breathe and right in his analogy of the waterwheel. What I had given would be returned to me. I could feel the surety of it in the marrow of my bones. When I opened my eyes, my mentor was smiling his subtle smile.

"Magic," he said serenely. "You could keep them alive all the way to Ch'in."

"Oh." I laughed. "That's a very long way."

"Indeed it is," Master Lo Feng agreed, folding his hands in his sleeves.

I wondered if he were jesting.

I didn't think so.

I knew the very day that Jehanne took Raphael back. It was early evening when she breezed into my quarters, planning to give me a careless kiss and a promise of more time on the morrow. I was reading a treatise on the propagation of apple trees by a long-dead due named Percy de Somerville. She plucked it out of my hands and tossed it aside, sitting on my lap and kissing me.

I'd smelled her on Raphael dozens of times. But I knew his scent, too.

Now I smelled him on her.

"What?" Her eyes widened when I flinched away from her. "What . is it?"

"Jehanne." I sighed. "Raphael?"

At first she denied it; and then she got angry and hurled various items about the chamber. A hairbrush, a jewelry box, the copy of the Trots Milles Joies that she'd given me, all the pillows on the bed. Her anger broke over the room in waves. I folded my arms and let her rampage.

Then she wept.

And I saw her memories surface behind my eyes. Letters from Raphael, furious letters, pleading letters. She had finally answered one. They'd arranged to meet in secret.

Passion and tumult.

I pushed the images away.

I didn't ask why. I knew. He loved her; she loved him. Both of them had admitted it freely. I let Jehanne cry, her head in my lap, her shoulders shaking. I stroked her hair. When she'd cried herself out, she pulled herself upright and wound her arms around my neck, kissing my face.

I tried to pull away. "Jehanne"

Her arms tightened. "Please?" Her eyes were as bright as stars, lashes wet and spiky with tears. I thought she must be the only woman in the world who could manage to look utterly breathtaking after a crying fit. "I need you. I need you to forgive me."

"Not me," I said gently. "I'm not the one bade you choose between us. It's the King's forgiveness you want."

Jehanne shook her head. "I can't. Not like this. Please?" She kissed my throat. "You have to forgive me."

"Why?"

She looked up. "Because you're going to leave me one day, and I hate knowing it. If you want me to forgive you for it, you have to forgive me this."

It didn't make sense, but it didn't have to. It was a truth of the heart and it owed nothing to reason. Jehanne was Naamah's child twice over, and she wasn't lying. No matter how much passion and tumult the day had held, there was a powerful and complicated desire rising in her and I couldn't help but respond to it.

"I need you ," she said again, impatient.

"I'm here," I murmured.

For once, there was no artistry in the act of love between us. It was fierce, urgent, and raw. There was no smile on the bright lady's face, only a look of deep understanding. Jehanne expended passion like fury, taking violent pleasure in taking me. I gave myself over to it, holding her when she shuddered hard and cried out against me. It wasn't until afterward, when she lay quiet in my arms, that I felt the worst of her terrible need drain away.

"Thank you," she whispered into the crook of my neck, breath warm on my skin. "May I stay with you tonight?"

"Is that wise?" I asked.

"I can't face Daniel yet." She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Will you tell him I'm here?"

I stared at her. "You want me to get out of bed and go tell his majesty that you're spending the night in my chambers?"

"He'll understand." Jehanne gave me a pleading look. "He likes you."

I shook my head. "I must have lost my wits."

And yet I went.

I found his majesty reviewing papers in the royal study. The guard on duty admitted me without delay. It was a warm, masculine room with friezes of polished wood on the walls and a roaring fire in a great fireplace. I began sweating the moment I entered.

King Daniel, seated at a desk, lifted his head. "Moirin, well met. What is it you wish?"

"Ah" I shifted. "Her majesty asked me to tell you that she'll be passing the night in my quarters."

"I see." He pushed his chair back and rose. "She was with Raphael de Mereliot today, wasn't she?"

I didn't answer.

The King smiled ruefully. "It's all right; you needn't lie for her. Jehanne's not as clever at subterfuge as she thinks. I know full well she was with him." He sighed. "When she chose you over him, I thought mayhap it meant she was ready."