"Why are you doing this, Claudia?" I asked, watching her approach. "Why me?"
"Ah, gods!" Her hands glided over my skin, and I heard her breath catch in her throat. "Deccus Fulvius is a good man," she murmured, circling me once more. "A good statesman and a good husband. But he is old, Imriel. He was old when I married him." Behind me, she slid both hands the length of my back. "I want this," she whispered in my ear. "I want to feel firm skin, and hard muscle sliding beneath it." Her skirts rustled as she moved around me, tracing the line of my collarbone with her tongue. "I want to taste clean, young sweat."
I gritted my teeth. The muscles in my legs were quivering.
"Do you want to know about self-control?" Her mouth moved lower, her tongue laving my nipples. "It is restraining oneself, day after day. It is weighing risks, parceling out pleasure in small, dangerous doses." She lifted her head, eyes bright. "It is seeing you and forcing myself to wait."
Her nails raked the flat planes of my chest, skimming my belly. I did groan, then. My phallus twitched, a droplet forming on its crown. My testes ached.
"Poor boy!" Claudia gave a breathless laugh. "You begin to understand."
She kissed me as she had before, taking my face in both hands as though to drink me in through my mouth, plundering it shamelessly. No woman had ever kissed me like that before. I wasn't even sure I liked it, though it goaded my desire. This time, I forced my arms to remain at my sides, reciprocating only with lips and tongue.
"I want you." Claudia's fingers knotted in the hair at the nape of my neck. "I want to taste every inch of you," she whispered. "I want to suck you, bite you. I want to see the marks of my teeth and nails on your skin. And I don't want you to move."
"Do it," I grated.
She did.
It wasn't until the end that my control broke. When she knelt before me, doing what no proper Tiberian woman should, her mouth devouring my shaft, one hand milking it, the other squeezing the sac of my testes. I grabbed her head with both hands, holding it hard, shuddering the length of my spine as I spilled my seed in her mouth.
Spent, I stood panting.
Claudia laughed softly. "I'm not finished with you," she said, kissing me. I could taste myself on her lips. "Let me see how you return the favor." She nodded toward the bed. "Lie down."
I obeyed, and watched her disrobe. Her bare shoulders emerged as she lowered her gown, and then her full breasts, tipped with wide, dark nipples. The swell of her hips, the shadowy juncture of her loins. I knew what she meant. I wanted to taste her everywhere. She removed the gold fillet from her disheveled hair, shaking it loose. It fell in a cascade, vivid against her pale skin.
Her breasts swayed as she crawled onto the bed, and I reached for her.
"No." She laid one hand on my chest, pressing downward. "My turn."
It was easier. I lay back as she straddled my shoulders, then cupped her buttocks, pulling her toward my mouth. I parted her with my thumbs. Her hidden lips were swollen, slick and gleaming with desire. Naamah's Pearl throbbed beneath my darting tongue, and she tasted of salt and honey.
I let myself get lost in her, the world reduced to this primeval darkness, flesh as fluid and surging as the sea. Claudia's pleasure broke in waves, over and over, and I, thoughtless and blind, urged them to greater crests, higher and higher. I didn't stop until she pulled away to collapse on the bed beside me.
"Gods above," she whispered. "You are something."
I propped myself on one arm, gazing at her. Her dark red hair spilled in tangled coils over the pillows, and her eyes were heavy-lidded with satiety. My own desire, temporarily abated, had risen again. It was a deeper urgency, less acute, but as powerful as the tides.
"What will you now, lady?" I asked.
Claudia traced a line down the center of my bare chest, smiling as it caught once more on Canis' clay medallion. She cocked one knee, and candelight gleamed on the soft skin of her inner thigh, damp with moisture. "You," she said. "All of you."
It began with languor; slower kisses, tongues entwining. I paid homage to her glorious breasts, filling my hands with them, suckling her dark nipples until she sighed with pleasure, hands sunk deep in my hair.
And it ended in hard, driving need, her voice urging at my ear, her ankles locked behind my buttocks, my body shuddering into hers.
"Blessed Elua!" I rolled onto my back and lay gasping. My heart was thudding, my blood roaring in my ears. The melancholy that befell me after love was nowhere to be found; held at bay, mayhap by the sheer force of our passion. I laughed. "Are you sure you'll not lay claim to divinity? I was warned today to beware the goddess of love."
"Quite sure." Beside me, Claudia sat up, curling her legs beneath her. "Would you be my consort if I was?"
I smiled at her. "Gladly."
"You look the part." She smiled back at me. "Or no, perhaps a young Bacchus." She ran her forefinger over my lower lip. "You've a mouth made for wine and love. I can see why he drove women mad. I could tear you apart and devour you."
"I nearly think you have," I said.
Claudia raised her brows. "Oh, are you finished, then?"
I eyed her. "What will you, my lady?"
"One more thing." She smiled again. "Sit up and close your eyes."
I heaved myself upright with a groan, kicking away a tangle of bedclothes to sit cross-legged. The candles had burned halfway down, and the room was filled with the scent of lovemaking. My body was as weary as though I'd spent a day laboring in the fields of Montrève.
"As you will," I said, closing my eyes.
I heard Claudia get up and move about the room, and then the bed dipped under her weight as she returned. She knelt behind me, her groin pressed against my lower back, the tips of her breasts brushing my shoulder blades. I felt the fingers of her left hand twining in the locks of my hair.
And at my throat, the keen edge of a dagger.
"What do you want with the Unseen Guild?" Claudia whispered in my ear.
My eyes flew open. A jolt of pure terror went through me, and I reacted unthinking, whipping my head backward with as much force as I could muster. There was a smothered cry as the back of my skull cracked hard against her face, and I felt a stinging pain at my throat. I caught her right arm, forcing it outward, and drove her backward with my own weight.
There was a scramble as I whirled to confront her. Claudia was strong, but I was stronger; and I had been taught to wrestle. I pinned her to the bed, grabbing her right wrist and digging my thumb into its underside until her hand opened involuntarily.
The dagger dropped, harmless.
"Damn it!" she swore irritably.
I lay naked atop her, panting, blood dripping from the graze at my throat, and stared at her in shock and disbelief. "What in hell is the Unseen Guild?"
"Let me up." Claudia struggled futilely, the scowled at me. Her lower lip was swelling where my head had struck it. "Oh, please! It's just a test. I wasn't going to harm you. I didn't expect you to be that fast."
I shook my head. Shifting, I braced one forearm over her throat. "Talk," I said. "And no shouting for help. I can crush your throat before the first servant arrives."
She rolled her eyes. "You won't."
"I will," I said grimly.
Claudia merely laughed, wriggling her fulsome body beneath me. Impossible as it seemed, I felt the stir of desire returning. A gleam of triumph lit her eyes. I cursed and sprang off her, scrambling for the fallen dagger.
"Feel better?" she asked wryly, sitting up and twisting her hair into a loose cable.
I felt like an idiot, actually, crouched naked and wielding a dagger in the private chamber of a woman I had just bedded. I could smell her juices on my skin. But the damp trickle working its way down my throat was blood, my blood. I stared at her. She sat, naked and unperturbed beneath my gaze. Slowly, my desire-besotted, terror-frozen mind began to work.
"This is about covertcy," I said. "Isn't it?"
Claudia Fulvia blew me a kiss. "Congratulations, Prince Imriel."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
We talked long into the night.
Once I let her off the bed, Claudia tended to my graze. With my wary permission, she rang for the servants, who brought clean water and supplies. Dipping a kerchief, she wiped away the blood and cleaned the wound, then dabbed it with alum to halt the bleeding.
It stung like fury. "Ouch!"
"Poor boy." She sounded amused. "Wasn't it worth it?"
I regarded her dubiously. "Was it?"
"Oh, gods, yes!" Her wicked smile left no doubt. She folded another moist kerchief into a cool compress, holding it to her swelling lower lip. "Though I'm not sure how I'll explain this."
"Deccus doesn't know," I said slowly. "Lady, who are you?"
"Claudia Tadia Fulvia," she said. Her gaze was frank. "Sister of Lucius Tadius, wife of Deccus Fulvius. And no, neither of them know. But I'm not pretending to be anyone I'm not, Prince Imriel de la Courcel."
Clad in a borrowed robe, I paced the bedroom, while Claudia sat on the bed and watched me, volunteering nothing. At length, I fetched up before her, helpless and ignorant. "All right," I said. "So. What is this Unseen Guild?"
"A coterie of people with skills and interests in common," she said. "One that extends beyond the borders of any single nation or city-state."
"Spies," I said.
Claudia shrugged. "Some of them, yes. The Guild exists to discern and trade information, but it has influence, too. There are members with hands on a great many strings, and they can cause events to fall out in a certain way."
"And Anafiel Delaunay de Montrève was one such," I said.
"No." She shook her head. "He was approached, yes, while he was a student here at the University. And he was intrigued enough to consent to be taught, but I'm told he balked at swearing allegiance. 'Tis a pity," she added. "He would have been valuable. And things might have gone differently for Terre d'Ange. The Skaldic invasion might have been averted."
I shuddered. "How can you know such a thing?"
"I don't, not for certain," she said patiently. "I was only a child at the time. But surely the Guild knew in advance, and there were steps that might have been taken. Your Anafiel de Montrève would have been alerted. He would have had the right to ask the Guild's assistance. They could have diverted Waldemar Selig's interest. Offers of trade too sweet to ignore, perhaps a marital alliance. As I recall, Selig sought that route, once. Even if it failed, they could have rallied the Caerdicci city-states to come to the defense of Terre d'Ange."
"I don't believe you," I said. "Any of it."
"What would you have me do?" Claudia asked.
"Prove it." I resumed pacing, thinking. There was no way to prove the course of history might have been different, and Anafiel Delaunay was dead, unable to refute her claims. At this point, the only thing Claudia had done that remotely confirmed the existence of a vast web of covertcy was identify me, and that was no great trick. Master Piero had known me, too. Anyone with a passing interest in the doings of Terre d'Ange might have done the same. "Tell me something," I said. "Something I know to be true, and most of the world does not. Something you could not possibly have known if not for the Guild's existence."
Claudia made a face. "It's not that easy, Imriel. There are gaping holes in your history that not even the Guild can fathom."
"Oh, suddenly they're not all-knowing and all-powerful?" I asked sardonically.
"I never said they were." She sighed. "And I had a short time to memorize what is known about you. I'm only a journeyman, you know. Give me a moment."
I waited, watching her face. Thoughts flitted behind her eyes, sifted and discarded; her lips moved as though reading an invisible scroll. If she was dissembling, she did a good job of it.
"Tizrav," she said at length. "Tizrav, son of Tizmaht. That was the name of the Persian guide who led the Comtesse de Montrève and her consort into Drujan."
My knees gave way. I caught the bedpost with one hand and sat down hard on the bed beside her. "How do you know that?" I whispered.
"It's in the Guild's archive," Claudia said.
I sat, dazed, and listened while she told me more. What the Unseen Guild had known; what they had not known. Little of my vanishing, nothing of my whereabouts. No, their interest had been in the Drujani bone-priests, a mysterious, spreading presence that had even the Guild powerless and anxious. They had picked up Phèdre and Joscelin's trail in Menekhet, when they began asking questions about Drujan, and followed it as far as Khebbel-im-Akkad.
"After that…" Claudia spread her hands. "What did happen there, anyway? All the Guild knows is that a D'Angeline courtesan and a lone swordsman crossed a border the entire Akkadian army feared and emerged with a handful of freed slaves and the kingdom in utter chaos. How did they manage to stage a coup?"
"You don't want to know," I said, thinking about the Mahrkagir's festal hall drenched in blood. "Claudia, why are you telling me this?"
"The Guild is interested in you," she said simply.
"As a spy," I said with contempt.
"As a member willing to exchange knowledge, yes. As a prince of the royal house of Terre d'Ange, you would be uniquely valuable and well-situated. More so even than Anafiel de Montrève would have been." She rinsed her kerchief in the basin and dabbed her lip, then examined it for blood. "I wish you hadn't done that, Imriel."