Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [237]
The day before Thierry’s coronation, Bao had scheduled an appointment with Lianne Tremaine to tell the King’s Poet the whole truth of what had transpired in the Temple of the Ancestors in Qusqu.
Since he wished to go alone, I spent the day with my father, walking the streets of the City of Elua with him, marveling once more at the simple, easy grace he dispensed with his mere presence, offering his benediction to any who asked for it.
Bao was late returning to our house, and silent and introspective when he did. The shadows were thick around him that evening.
“Do you wish to speak of it?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “No.”
Trusting to my instincts, I let him be. We slept side by side in the great bed in the master chamber without touching, beneath the high rafters where an iron hook had once dangled from a great chain.
I awoke to wind and rain.
Sleep-addled, for a moment I thought myself back in the Temple of the Ancestors with Focalor’s storm raging through the doorway I had opened. But no; it was a warm wind, and a benign spring tempest that spilled through the unlatched tall doors opening onto a courtyard outside the master bedchamber. Feeling at the sheets beside me, I found them cool. I wrapped a silk dressing-robe around myself and went to peer through the doors.
Beneath the restless flickers of lightning in the sky above me, I could make out the figure of Bao, sitting cross-legged and still on the terrace, clad only in a pair of loose drawstring breeches, his hands resting on his knees palm-upward in the downpour.
I went to him.
Pelting rain soaked my thin robe, plastering it to my body. I pushed the wet hair out of my eyes. Bao tilted his head and peered up at me as I sank to sit opposite him, raindrops clinging to his lashes. “Forgive me, I didn’t mean to wake you. You don’t need to be here, Moirin.”
I breathed the first of the Five Styles, settling my hands on my knees. “Aye, I do.”
Overhead, blue-white lightning crackled, illuminating the looming rain-clouds, thunderous and dark and towering.
I breathed and waited.
“It was warm,” Bao whispered at length, lifting his hands to the cleansing rain, letting it run down his arms. “Cusi’s blood. Hot and thick. Alive. I didn’t expect it to be so… warm.” He shuddered. “I can’t help remembering. And the knife was so very, very dull. I did my best. I tried to make it swift, as swift as I possibly could. I tried… I tried to make it right for her. Does that sound terrible?”
“No,” I said. “And you did.”
Bao turned his hands this way and that, examining them. “Did I?”
“Aye.” I caught his hands in mine, capturing them firmly. Naamah’s gift stirred in me, lending me a sense of surety. I slid my hands up his lean-muscled forearms, marked with the stark zig-zag tattoos that showed the path to Kurugiri; and higher, sliding my hands up his wiry biceps, his skin slick with rain, his muscles shifting and twitching beneath my touch. “You did, Bao.”
Lowering my head, I kissed him.
After a few heartbeats, he returned my kiss like a man drowning, desperate and fervent, and I felt Naamah’s blessing wash over us, desire rising in a fierce spiral.
I wound my arms around his neck and pressed myself against him, aching nipples taut beneath my soaked robe. It was a blessed relief when his hands found my breasts, caressing and kneading them.
We tumbled over onto the rain-washed terrace, my soaked hair curtaining both our faces. Even the rain felt like a blessing.
“Moirin…” Whatever Bao wanted to say, he couldn’t find the words. It didn’t matter. The look in his eyes was eloquent enough.
“I know,” I said, reaching for him. “I do. And it’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.”
Everything was.
EIGHTY-FOUR
The day of Thierry de la Courcel’s coronation dawned clear and sunny, the world made bright and new by the cleansing rain. Bao and I awoke entangled in damp, disheveled linens, having made love both outdoors and in bed.
Bao rolled onto his back, folded his arms behind his head, and smiled sleepily at me. Although his hair was sticking