Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [270]
Blood, war, smoke, and thunder.
Over and over, I swallowed it.
If it hadn't been for Snow Tiger, I'm not sure I could have endured it. She never left my side, reminding me to rest when I forgot, badgering me to eat when I didn't want to.
"Like it or not, I have become your necessary inconvenience," she said calmly when I protested that I was too tired. "At least for a time."
"Do you still think of me thusly?" I asked wearily.
"No, Moirin. Not for a long while. I told you so before." The princess regarded me. "Do you know what rumor says? It says that you dazzle their wits with your strange, foreign beauty and jade-green eyes, dazzling them until they forget."
"Oh?" Even in the depths of exhaustion, I had to own it cheered me a bit. I was not wholly immune to D'Angeline vanity. "Would that it were so easy."
She smiled. "I know. Now eat."
So it went, day after day, until the endless stream slowed to a trickle, then ran dry. There would be others, countless others, but not from the poor soldiers of Lord Jiang's army.
That was when Bao came.
I felt him drawing nearer, felt the twinned flame of my diadh-anam approaching. I always knew in what direction to find him. But my wits were clouded with memories of blood, smoke, and thunder, and I was tired enough that I didn't realize how close he was until he was there in the garden. The Imperial guards escorting him didn't realize he was anything more than one last straggler, having seen so many men in the past days.
My heart leapt.
My diadh-anam blazed.
"Moirin." Bao's voice was husky. A faint shimmer of darkness yet clung to him, and he held the broken halves of his staff in one hand.
"Bao." I blinked away tears.
Snow Tiger gave me an inquiring look. I tilted my head, and she understood. We had come to understand one another very well, she and I. Without a word spoke between us, she quietly ordered the dismissal of the guards and attendants in the garden, withdrawing after them to leave us alone.
I sat cross-legged on the grass.
Bao sat opposite me.
"Master Lo—" I began.
"Don't." He held up one hand. "Moirin… I know it was his doing, and not yours. I needed time to understand it. But this…" He laid his hand over his heart. "I don't know how to live with it. And I have yet to find an answer."
I rubbed my stinging eyes. "What are you saying?"
"I'm not sure myself." He looked away. "Everything I have done in my life, good and bad, I have chosen." His upper lip curled. "Ever since I said yes to Brother Thunder and agreed to be his peach-bottom boy. Even that, I chose, because I wanted so badly to learn. But this I did not choose."
"Neither did I!"
He looked back at me. "I know. Master Lo Feng chose it for us. And if… if I had been given the choice, I would have chosen it. Not his death, never that, but you. I would have chosen you."
I couldn't seem to halt my tears. "So why—?"
"What would you have chosen?" Bao asked softly. "Do you even know?"
"No," I admitted, sniffling. "Bao, I don't even know what choice you would have offered me!"
His gaze was steady. "I know you would not wish to stay in Ch'in, even though I think you have come to love it a little bit. It is not your home. Me, I have no home. No mother, no father. If you had wished it, I would have asked Master Lo for his blessing to leave his service and go with you." He smiled sadly. "You may be a sorceress capable of breathing night into day, swallowing men's memories, and coaxing plants to grow, but you are also a girl quick to give her heart away, and sometimes it may be to a noble dragon, but sometimes it is to an ambitious bully eager to use you. I would have protected you, Moirin."
"And I would have said yes!" I cried. "Bao, I do love you. I don't know if it's enough to last through eternity, but I wanted to find out! Why does what happened change everything?"
He