seen lays him open to risk. Keep on, we’ll be treating an illness.’
‘I do know my limits,’ the victim protested, flat prostrate. Eyes shut, he remained wrung ghastly white. ‘We have come halfway. Your scout raiders won’t sleep. Or aren’t they bearing a hot packet of tidings purloined from an Atchaz guild’s dispatches? Among the batch news, your mettlesome High Earl will hear of my presence by sundown. Expect his quick response. Our history’s too rife with contention.’
The healer snorted and made her way out, while the scout at the entry said nothing. His suggestive pause stretched, the hushed calm before thunder-storm.
Then the invalid raised his black eyebrows. ‘You’re deaf to the gossip? His lordship’s irked with my matrilineal heritage. I dislike the concept of dynastic reign. But the bone in the craw gets picked all the same. My hackles rise with caithdeinen who try to impose their crown sovereignty over my choices.’
Through springing sweat, Arithon’s lips flexed. Almost, that smile of combative malice matched the warning the scout had been primed to expect.
‘For my part,’ finished the Prince of Rathain, ‘I’ll need the recovery to master your High Earl’s fractious audience by morning.’
‘Maybe Lord Erlien will eat you alive?’ The watch scout eased back the tent-flap, and chuckled. ‘Ath above, let’s see who stirs the pot first. I think we should bet. Odds on, you offer more sport than the vice of the town-born, who bait a chained bear with riled dogs in a pit.’
In fact, Arithon was on his feet sooner, arisen in the late afternoon with none of his keepers the wiser. His time in the desert had left him unkempt. Unnerved as he was by the fuss of the scouts, he enforced his preference as initiate master. A moment’s working masked him well enough to leave the stifling tent and slip through the wood to a stream-bank. There, he indulged in the solitary ease beyond his reach in the waste of Sanpashir.
The Prince of Rathain slipped off his soiled robe, washed his clothes, and himself, in a trout pool. The languid sun striped his damp skin as he basked. Firm earth and clean daylight cleared his rifted aura, and burned away the residual imprint of terror. Since wet cloth eased the heat, he donned his sopped robe, then settled beneath an ancient willow, whose thick, gnarled roots laced the river-side. Immersed in healing peace, he let the slow swirl of the current and the breeze through leafed fronds work their effortless tonic upon him.
Whether Arithon intended to fall back to sleep, the lesser warding to hide his presence had not been fashioned to last. Since his secluded hollow was sheltered from the campsite, he did not hear the stir as more horses arrived, hard-ridden as the relay mounts now loosed to graze in concealment. His being stayed wrapped in the calm of the willow; lulled by the eddy of free-flowing water. Vulnerable, he lay oblivious when the woman rounded the tree bole and happened upon him.
Her inquisitive step paused. Sultry eyes widened, surveying her find. ‘Fatemaster’s blessed weaving of chance!’
Poised as a vixen, she parted the greenery and dared a stalker’s step closer.
To her delight, and his provocation, those exquisite, fine limbs and musician’s fingers remained sprawled on the moss in abandon. Arithon’s repose stayed unbroken, though she did the unthinkable: invaded his haven and stood over him. The casual drape of the damp, tribal robe hid nothing from her avid stare. Not the bronzed skin of desert exposure, or the welted scars he always kept hidden by natural reticence. His seal-black hair had dried, ungroomed. Tangled strands nested his unshaven cheek, softening his angular profile.
‘Where is your vaunted dignity, prince?’ Her vibrant smile exposed even teeth. Bold as a weasel, she flicked back fiery hair, crouched at his side, and dared to extend a pared nail to trace the old burn, seared down his right forearm from elbow to wrist by the strike of his half-brother’s light-bolt.
Her touch never closed. Aroused and aware, no more dulled by exhaustion, Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn opened his eyes. ‘Glendien, for shame! The same tricks, again?’ With malicious speed, he recoiled, caught the robe closed before she could snatch, then folded his knees and sat up.
She had tiger’s eyes, hot for teasing mischief, or else the taste of fresh blood.
Telling which could be murderously difficult. Arithon stifled his first impulse to wound. No grace for surprise, or the awkward timing: he would be a match for her challenge; or not. If their last, memorable encounter had left him the advantage, too apparently his wit still intrigued enough to provoke her.
‘Should a wedding have tamed me?’ Glendien licked her teeth, her linen blouse halfway unlaced in the heat, and the sweet skin beneath lightly freckled. ‘This round, I’m not the one compromised.’
‘You say.’ Arithon smiled. With enviable quickness, he surged to his feet and offered an open, clean hand. ‘Where do I look for your husband?’
‘Kyrialt?’ She accepted his grasp. ‘Too bad he’s not here to divert you.’ Latched hold, she dealt Arithon’s knuckles a lingering kiss. Her busy mouth burned, while her loosened hair slithered over his wrist like spilled lava.
‘My dear!’ chided the Prince of Rathain, his trapped hand unresponsive to her steamy attention. ‘Is there no charity in Alland, that such beauty as yours should go hungry?’
‘Invalid! You’ve been laid so low?’ Her throaty laugh mocked as he tugged her erect. ‘Or is the excuse to gloss over the claim there’s no pith to Rathain’s royal lineage? You’re still bloodlessly cold as iced fish-bait.’
‘To a fish, that’s a banquet. You have a rank tongue. Here’s your husband to lick the sauce off you.’ And again, his evasion came fast enough. Her lightning pounce missed the robe that protected his modesty.
All insolence, he presented his back just in time to greet the mate who raced to catch up with her.
Glendien’s muscled match was distempered and flushed from hard riding. Dark brown hair laced into a traditional clan braid no longer acknowledged the pattern awarded by paternal birthright. Arithon had time to notice that much, as the young man just thrashed through the screening willow fronds slammed to a panting stop.
‘Shame hasn’t died. She’s been at you again,’ Kyrialt said, shedding all decorous royal courtesy. Hot, fully armed, he dropped to one knee. The fist at his heart nonetheless gave his liege the welcome his sworn service demanded. ‘Some wicked creatures don’t take the hint. You have to give more than a scalding.’
‘And some, like the salamander, find their piquant sport by taunting the temper of dragons. Which are you?’ Arithon reached out and raised Kyrialt. Then, his bright glance amused, he seized Glendien’s wrist. His sudden yank toppled her forward. Now wickedly smiling, he stepped clear and watched the salvage as the bride stumbled into her husband’s embrace.
‘Best leave us,’ quipped Kyrialt, ‘since this wench seems to want her clothes wrestled off for a dousing.’
Glendien nipped his ear, tossed back her flame hair, and ducked her shirt off one nubile shoulder. ‘Why struggle at all? I mean to bathe, anyhow.’
She had pearlescent skin, spangled with sun, and a ripe swell of breast, tipped a delicate, rose-petal pink. Yet if Glendien intended to gripe Rathain’s prince, or inflame him red with embarrassment, she failed.
Her sidelong glance met no stunned or admiring eyes. The cool canopy of the old willow was empty. Only her husband succumbed to the lure, which was as she had intended. The game had been about taking the Teir’s’Ffalenn down a peg. She would not bide content. Not until he acknowledged to her satisfaction that he was male, and no better than fallibly human.
Greenwood and running water had recharged the loss of vitality. Restored to the scouts’ camp, reclad in borrowed leathers trimmed down for his slighter frame, Arithon shared their plain meal. Trail fare consisted of hardened bread, spread with a salt paste made from raisins, split nuts, and smoked meat. Loose talk caught him up on the