The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [99]
Naiva dazo trivo Abrinasso. The daughter of Duke Salalfo of Abrinia and a courtesan from distant Khorsu. Naiva had had her mother’s black almond eyes. She had tasted like almonds, too, and honey, and oranges. Her mother had fallen out of favor with the duke’s court when he died, but he had provided a triva for her near Avella. Cazio had met Naiva in the vineyards, squishing fallen grapes with her bare feet. She was sophisticated and jaded. She believed she had been exiled to the farthest reaches of the earth, and he’d always believed that with him she was settling for something less than she imagined. He remembered her thighs in the sunlight, hot to the touch, the sigh that was nearly a giggle. She had simply vanished one day without a word. There was a rumor that she had returned to Abrinia and become a courtesan like her mother.
Larche Peicassa dachi Sallatotti. The first man who suggested in as many words that Naiva had been little more than a well-bred whore. Cazio had bound his blade and struck him through his left lung with such force that Caspator broke through his back. Larche was the first man Cazio had fully intended to kill. He had failed, but the man had been forever crippled by the fight, left to hobble on a crutch.
Austra. Skin so pale that it was white even by firelight. Amber hair that tousled pleasingly, cheeks that flushed as pink as a dawn-lily. She was more fearful of twining fingers than of kissing, as if the touch of two hands was somehow an embrace much riskier to the heart.
She had been clumsy, enthusiastic, fearful, and guilty. Happy but, as always, with an eye toward the end of happiness.
Love was strange and terrible. Cazio had thought he could avoid it after Naiva. Courting was fun, sex a lot of fun indeed, and love—well, that was a pointless illusion.
Maybe he still believed that, or part of him did. But if so, why did he want to twine his fingers with Austra’s until she believed him, until she relinquished her fear, skepticism, and self-doubt and understood that he actually did care for her?
Acredo. Not really his name, of course; it just meant “sharp.” The first swordsman in so long, so very long, to really test his point.
The duchess and some others were playing cards on the other side of the room, but he found that their voices had become like the piping of birds, melodic but incomprehensible. Thus, it took him a moment to realize that someone stood very near him and that the musical noises that were the loudest were intended for speech.
He lifted his head and saw that it was Sir Neil. Cazio grinned and raised the bottle.
“How is your foot?” Neil asked.
“I can’t say it hurts at the moment,” Cazio replied happily.
“I suppose not.”
“The duchess told me not to, you see,” Cazio finished by way of explanation, then laughed for a few moments at his own joke.
Oddly, Neil did not seem amused.
“What is it?” Cazio asked.
“I have the greatest regard for your bravery and swordsmanship,” Neil started.
“As well you should,” Cazio informed him.
Neil paused, then nodded, more to himself than to Cazio, and continued. “My duty is to protect Anne,” he said. “Protect her from all things.”
“Well, then, it should have been you fighting Acredo, eh, and not me. Is that it?”
“It should have been me,” Neil agreed evenly, “but I had to confer with the duchess concerning what troops she has and what we can expect, and unfortunately I was not able to be in two places at once. Nor would it have been proper for me to have been in the room with her when she was attacked.”
“No one was in the room with her,” Cazio said. “That’s how she came to nearly be killed. Maybe someone should be in the room with her, ‘proper’ or not.”
“You weren’t with her?”
“Of course not. Why do you think I was naked?”
“My question exactly. You were lodged in a different part of the mansion.”
“I was,” Cazio said. “But I was with Aus—” He stopped. “That’s really not your business.”
“Austra?” Neil hissed, lowering his voice. “But she