Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [49]
With outstretched hands, she blundered into me, and gasped.
"Katherine." I grinned beneath my blindfold. "It's me."
"Imriel!" She pounded my chest with one soft fist, then laid it flat against me. "How did you get here?"
"Through the kitchen." The pressure of her touch was unbearably sweet. All around us, the heady mingled scents of a dozen species of flowers perfumed the air. I inhaled, my chest rising under her hand. "I guessed you'd come here."
"I can feel your heart beating." Like her mother's—and yet not like, not at all—Katherine's voice held a smile. "It beats fast."
"It does for you." The words seemed impossibly daring, but there they were, emerging from my mouth, sounding far more confident than I felt. Somehow, with both of us locked into our own private darknesses, it was easier.
Katherine's outspread fingers curved, the tips digging into my linen shirt, bunching the fabric. "You're a sweet boy," she whispered, and I would have taken offense at the words, except her tone said somewhat altogether different. I sensed her rise onto her toes. There, blindfolded and shrouded in darkness in the sun-shot beauty of the garden, I felt her soft lips touch mine in a brief, fleeting kiss.
I drew a sharp breath.
A world of wanting opened like an abyss beneath my feet.
Katherine laughed, dancing away from me. And in that moment, I understood better how swiftly games may change, how quickly power shifts from one to another in the games that men and women play with one another.
"So," she said, her voice lilting. "We are here, you and I. Where is Charles?"
I breathed deeply, willing my pulse to subside. "The laundry," I said, sounding harsh to my own ears. "That's where he will have gone."
"Then let's follow him," Katherine said.
We did, and found him there, crouching in a hallway, listening to the maidservants stirring the vats with their paddles, laughing and jesting, the air moist and warm, fragrant with the scent of soap. What he imagined in his private darkness, I can only guess.
Afterward, there seemed no point in continuing, so we peeled off our blindfolds and trouped back to Phèdre's study to make our reports. She listened to them with a bemused look; especially to Charles, who was red-faced and stammering. I made a better job of it—I was at least able to hazard a guess regarding our dinner menu—but I still felt the unexpected thrill of Katherine's lips touching mine, and Phèdre was not easily misled.
"Well," she said when we had finished. "Next time, perhaps, I'll seek a less… distracting… game."
I felt myself flush to the roots of my hair.
Phèdre glanced at me. "After all," she said, "the Shahrizai will be here in a week's time, Imriel. And if you think this a distraction…" She shook her head, and the expression on her lovely face hovered between mirth and rue. "Blessed Elua have mercy on us."
* * *
Chapter Eleven
It was raining the day the Shahrizai arrived. Not a hard rain, but a gentle one; scarce more than a dense mist. The Montrèvan border patrol spotted them on the road and gave them an escort, sending a single rider to the manor to report. We turned out to meet them in the courtyard.
Three were coming: Mavros, who was two years my elder; Roshana, a year older than me; and Baptiste, who was a year younger. I was not yet entirely clear on the exact nature of their kinship to me, save that they were cousins. House Shahrizai was clannish, and the ties that bound it were intricate and complex.
As if to fulfill Joscelin's anxieties, they came with an entourage—armed retainers clad in the black-and-gold livery of the House, surrounded by Denis Friote and the Montrèvan guard, who looked uneasy at it.
My young cousins showed no evidence of discomfort. They rode bare-headed astride their richly caparisoned horses, comfortable in the saddle, chatting with one