Hounds of God (39 page)

The wine left him in a flood. She held him, helpless to do
more than wipe his streaming face with the end of her veil. When the storm had
passed, he crouched on hand and knees and shook; but his mind-voice was
uncannily clear and steady, with an edge of ice.
I am an utter disgrace as a drunkard
.

“You’d be a disgrace if you were one.”

What do you call me
now?

“Nikephoros.” She took his hand and kissed it. “Come
to the house with me. You need to fill your stomach with something more
trustworthy than wine.”

His fist clenched. But he let her pull him up and lead him
toward the stair. At the foot of it he stopped.
No, Stefania. I can’t face—

“I’ll get rid of Bianca.”

He laughed, choking on it.
And persuade her to leave you alone with a man?

“I don’t call myself a philosopher for nothing.”

She got rid of Bianca. Masterfully. The old woman was even
pleased to scour the market for Messer Nikephoros’ favorite sweets.

He shook his head in wonder.
Stefania Makaria, you are a deceitful woman
.

“I’m a dialectician.” He was sitting in
Uncle Gregorios’ chair, nibbling a bit of cheese. She knelt in front of
him and touched his splinted arm. “Does this hurt still?”

His good shoulder lifted. Not much, unless he thought about
it. He abandoned the cheese for an olive.

Stefania’s eyes widened. “How do you do that?”

What?

“You don’t even need to—”

Resort to words. She had never known that one could make so
many bites out of an olive. Or that one could say so much with a supple body
and a mobile face and a splendid pair of black eyes.

Looking at them as they darkened, she knew. It was the Pope’s
command. It was the battle won yet lost, the Kindred saved but ordered into
exile. It was the beggar, poor ill-made creature, who but for the grace of God
and the power of a white enchanter, was Nikephoros.

She shook her head fiercely. “Your back is straight
and your mind is clear and you are beautiful.”

So was he!
Words
again at last, all the stronger for that he did not need them.
He was born as I was born. Beatings and
starvation twisted him. The rest—the rest twisted and clouded because he
never learned what words were. He never can now. He’s too old. Even Alf
can’t work that great a miracle.

“He did with you. For which I thank God.”

He was not listening.
He
showed me—the madman I helped to kill. He showed me what I truly am.

“No, Nikephoros. He showed you a nightmare, and
tricked you into believing it was true.”

He laughed, cold and clear in her mind.
Oh no, I’m no cripple, I’m a great wizard, I’m
utterly to be envied. Can’t you see, Stefania? I’m not the mute
beast I should have been, but neither am I human. Alf’s miracle made sure
of both.

“You were born human. You have a man’s eyes. You
won’t live forever.”

It doesn’t
matter. I’m an enchanter. The Pope’s decree binds me, too.

“It does not!” she burst out. “Nikephoros,
that command was framed for the Fair Folk. You are none of their kind. You have
no need to leave the world; no one can call you alien.”

No?

“No! Your beauty is a human beauty. It’s warm;
it’s familiar; it makes people smile. Not so the one you call your
brother. He looks like a marble god. He makes people stare and gasp and cross
themselves in awe. That’s what the Holy Father is sending out of the
world.”

That and the power. I
have the power, Stefania. I am an enchanter. Just as easily as the Church can burn
Alf, it can burn me.

“It won’t. We’ll find a way. I’m
much too clever for anyone’s good but my own; I’ll convince the
world that you’re no more and no less than a mortal man.”

For a whole lifetime,
Stefania? We would have to live a lie
.

“Not a lie. A careful skirting round the truth.”

He shook his head.
I
can’t—
His eyes widened; he paled.
God in Heaven
.

“What? What, Nikephoros?”

It’s preposterous.
But what if…what if my power needs Alf and his people to sustain it? What
if, once the Folk go away and the walls close about them, all my magics vanish?
I’ll be like the beggar.

“Preposterous.”

He lowered his face into his hand.
I don’t know what to do. They’re my people. They’re
like me. They know me as no human being ever can. But I’m not of their
blood. And I love you, and I can’t ask you to go with me into such an
exile as that, and I can’t endure a world without them. I want to stay in
Rome and browbeat you into marrying me; I want to go with my soul’s kin
into Broceliande.

“I would go,” she said very low. “I would
go with you.”

You’re stiff
with terror at the thought of it. They’re all so beautiful; they’re
all so strange. After a very little while you’d come to hate them for
being what they are, and me for binding you to an exile beyond the world’s
end.

She was silent. She wanted to protest; she could not. He was
telling the truth. She was of the mortal world, utterly and irrevocably; she
could not leave it.

She could give him up. She had lived a respectable while
before he came to trouble her peace. She had never intended to bind herself to
any man, let alone a pretty lad without the least aptitude for philosophy, four
years younger than she.

Three.

“Three and a half.” She frowned. “Did I
give you leave to trespass in my mind?”

His eyes dropped. She fancied that she felt his power’s
withdrawal. Looking at him, unable to turn away, she realized that he had
changed. These two days and nights had aged him years. His desperate stroke had
begun the dance that ended in an enchanter’s death; and he had paid for
it in more than a broken wrist. His prettiness was gone. He was handsome still
but rather stern, with a deep line graven between his brows, the signature of
power and pain.

She buried her face in his lap. “I love you,”
she said. She was crying. She did not want to; she could not help it. “I
love you so much.”

Very gently he touched her hair, stroking it, loosening the
tightly woven braid. He was crying, too; she felt it.

Somewhere at the bottom of self-pity she found the remains
of her good sense. She raised her head. He wept like a stone image,
stiff-faced, with the tears running down unheeded. She levered herself to her
feet, sniffing loudly, but dignified for all of that. “I don’t
suppose you have a handkerchief,” she said.

He held up a napkin. She dried his face with it, and then
her own. Tears pricked again; she willed them back. “I’m doing you
no good at all. Why don’t you curse me for a foolish female and leave me
to my fate?”

Because he loved her.

“Foolish boy.” The last binding gave; her braid
uncoiled, tumbling over her shoulder. “Now look what you’ve done.”

Yes; and he would finish it. His sorrow had shifted in a
dismaying direction. He reached for her. Before she could stop to think, she
was in his lap and he was freeing her hair, one-handedly awkward but very
persistent. Her hands found themselves behind his neck. Her body had begun to
sing its deep irresistible song.

Only once. Only once, before she lost him.

They never knew who led whom. She mounted the steps in
front, but he was as close as her shadow. They kept stopping. When they came to
her bed, her veil was long gone, her gown unlaced.

She had to do most of the rest of it, for both of them. Even
with the sling tossed aside, his splinted arm got in the way. He did what he
could with all his aristocratic lacings, thinking curses at them; of course his
luck would bring him to this when he was dressed for an audience with the Pope.

She laughed breathlessly. “Oh, to be sure, a pilgrim
is much better attired for an afternoon’s seduction.”

Sacrilegious
, he
chided her, tugging at her gown.

She blushed furiously. Which was utterly absurd. He was as
bare as the day he was born, as calm as if he were swathed in silks. Cobbling
up all her courage, and helping by turning half away, she slid out of gown and
camise and stood shivering on the cold floor.

His smile gleamed in the corner of her eye. She was all a
prickle of gooseflesh, but her face was afire. She made herself face him. “What
odd animals we are,” she said. “So ugly. So ridiculous.”

But so beautiful.

oOo

Stefania raised herself on one elbow. He was almost asleep,
his eyes dark with it, but he smiled and brushed his finger across her lips.
She was shaky, excited, happy, sad, languid and tender, all at once, in a
hopeless tangle. She wanted to tease him awake again. She wanted to lie down
and rest in the drowsy warmth of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He roused a little, puzzled.

She bit her lip. “I know I didn’t—I know
you weren’t—you did everything to please me, and I didn’t
even know what to—”

He was awake, but not the way she had wanted.
You pleased me very much
. He drew her
head down and kissed her slowly, savoring it.
That’s one of the great wonders of being a sorcerer. What
delights a lover is double delight
.

“You know all about it, don’t you?”

Woman
, he said
sternly,
are you asking me to count over
old lovers? Shall I give you a ranking for each, as if we were allotting places
in a tournament?

“I don’t know what I’m asking!” She
laid her head on his good shoulder, muttering into it, “I’m sorry
again. I’m trying to start a fight. To make it easier to let you go. Now—now
I know what all the singing is about.”

He laughed gently, caressing her back and her tumbled hair.
Do you really? I was afraid I hurt you.

“Only at first.” She lifted her head. “Now
who’s wallowing in apologies? Nikephoros, we both talk too much. But
before I take a vow of silence—what did you do to Bianca?”

His eyes were wide and innocent.
I? Do anything to Bianca? Is it my fault that she’s met a friend
in the market and is gossiping the day away? And I’ll remind you,
ladylove, that it wasn’t I who sent her there
.

“We’re well matched, aren’t we?” She
tried something she had thought of a little while since, something deliciously
wanton. His gasp of surprise gave way to one of piercing pleasure. “First
payment,” she said. And second, and third, and fourth. It kept her from
remembering what he had omitted to say. He had not denied that he would go.

Too soon; but it was she who named the moment. He was asleep
at last; she hated to wake him. But the day was racing toward evening. Bianca
must come back before night, and Uncle Gregorios would be wanting his supper,
and they would rage if they knew what she had done while they were gone.

She dressed slowly, combed and braided her hair. Her
reflection in the old bronze mirror was no different than it had been the last
time she saw it, ages ago; she was still Stefania. And he was still Nikephoros,
but now that bare name meant more than worlds.

She was going to cry again, and she must not. When she had
mastered her face, she bent over him and kissed him awake. His eyes opened; he
peered without recognition. She kissed him again. Awareness grew; he smiled.
She played a little with the tousle of his hair. “Wake up, love; it’s
getting on for evening.”

He stretched and sighed. He would be happy to stay just
where he was. “You won’t be when Bianca finds you. Up now, and tell
me how all this goes on.”

Termagant
. He
smiled ruefully and sorted out the tangle of his clothes, directing while she
tugged and laced and—inevitably—tarried to play. Had she been even
a shade less sensible, they would have ended as they began, with garments
scattered and bodies twined.

She tore herself away, smoothing her gown and her ruffled
hair. He was all lordly splendid, and growing lordly stern as passion faded and
knowledge woke.
Come to San Girolamo with
me
, he said.
Come that far at least
.

She hesitated. After a moment she nodded.

The lower room was bright with sunlight. Arlecchina blinked
in it, purring loudly, enthroned in Anna’s lap. Anna’s face was
stiff and pale, as if she had emptied herself of everything but patience.

Stefania felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Anna!”
she cried too brightly. “How long have you been here?”

“Not very long.” Anna glanced from her to Nikki,
seeing much too much, and understanding all of it. Her mouth took on an ironic
twist. “They’ve been waiting for you, little brother.”

Something in her tone brought him across the room.
Anna, what’s happened
?

“Nothing.” She smiled to prove it. “Alf is
desperate to be gone. Poor Brother Oddone; he’s too devastated even to
cry, but the Prior at least is glad to see the last of us. His theology hasn’t
been very comfortable lately.”

No good; he of all people could see through a cloud of
words.
You aren’t going
.

“I’ve decided not to,” she said. “Stefania,
do you still want to be a philosopher? I do, very much. And I have the means.
Prior Giacomo knows of a house or two that might suit us, and that’s a
miracle in its own right; after what he’s seen, he says, he finds a pack
of female scholars frankly reassuring. Alf has given me gifts, not just my
share of the family treasure, but books. You wouldn’t believe—he
has an Albumazar he insists he doesn’t need, a half-dozen volumes of
Aristotle, a Macrobius with his own commentary...”

“Do I want all that?” Stefania cried. “I
dream about it.” She stilled. “You’re not joking, are you?”

Anna crossed herself Greek fashion. “By the bones of
Chrysostomos, every bit of it is true. I came to ask you if you’d share
it with me. Unless...” She glanced at Nikki. “Unless there’ve
been changes.”