The Nightborn by Isabel Cooper (howl and other poems TXT) 📗

light grace with which she moved across the floor, though, nor had battle conveyed her ready, fluid response to him.

“Have you done this before?” he asked.

“Once or twice, somewhat,” said Branwyn, passing under his arm and coming back to settle her hands at bicep and shoulder. “There’s a form in Silane, but it’s slower and without as many of the flourishes.”

“Ah, you’ve spent time in Silane?”

“A little. My duties take me on the road often.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“For the most part,” she said. “There are always rainy evenings where I’m outdoors more than I’d like, or bad food, or”—silk rustled as she shrugged—“unpleasantness, but I suppose that happens in many lives, wandering or still.”

“I can’t argue with that,” he said. Even he’d encountered his share of wet feet and dubious dinners, and he had some idea of how those who came to his clinic lived.

“Do you enjoy this?”

“The festival, yes. Very much so.” The hint of a question in her eyes prompted him to go on—or perhaps he just made up an invitation to do so. “Irinyev was one of my heroes when I was young.”

“He is an inspiring figure, if…” Branwyn paused, clearly searching for the tactful word.

Zelen chuckled. “A bit mortification-of-the-flesh for my tastes, yes. That was part of the appeal, though: he wasn’t always. Before the plague, before he had the vision of the healing spring, he was a Mourner, but a young one who liked his comforts.” The Dark Lady’s more common priests, the ones who healed the sick and burned the dead, didn’t have nearly the strictures or the frighteningly single-minded purpose that her Blades did. “He gave all of that up to save his people, and when bandits took all his belongings at the foot of the mountain, he kept going.”

“And you always wondered if you could do the same?”

“Oh, I always knew I couldn’t,” Zelen said, letting more laughter flow around the old bitterness. “That made him even more admirable, you see. The unattainable always looks best from here on the ground.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Branwyn said, “but you underestimate yourself. I’ve seen many people do what they’d never prepared for when the time came.”

They turned a corner on the floor, and Zelen spun her around again, watching her shine. “Do you like it?” he asked when she was back in his arms. “The festival, I mean. Are you liking it, I suppose, since you haven’t experienced the whole yet?”

“Oh, yes. Like most of my stay here, it’s been considerably more luxurious than I’m used to, and I do like the new experience. More than I should, some would say,” she added, but without any hint of serious concern. “More than that, I’ve always enjoyed holidays, even the ones that are no more than a honey cake with dinner and a song in the evening, even when I wasn’t in a position to have either. They…they’re like points that the year can hold to, as though they’re different enough that everyday life can mold around them.”

“You make them sound like temple rites.”

“Rituals,” Branwyn agreed, mouth tilting in a contemplative half smile. “But distributed among everybody, without the stakes that they have in the temple and with more license.”

“I’m fond of license too,” said Zelen.

Branwyn’s laugh made the tops of her breasts tremble above her gown. Desire, held at arm’s length by the music and the need to remember steps, advanced in a rush. Zelen didn’t stumble, but dancing, or indeed walking, was going to present certain difficulties before long.

It was still early in the evening; nobody had likely snuck off to the garden or up to the private rooms yet, and it wouldn’t have been wise if Zelen and Branwyn had been the first pair to do so. Given that, it was technically fortunate that the music drew to an end, but it was no kind of good fortune that Zelen welcomed.

* * *

Duty called, and it was hardly arduous. Drinking wine and eating small savory pastries in a warm room, dry and well dressed, while making mostly interesting conversation with people who weren’t immediately trying to kill her, was physically an immense improvement on all of Branwyn’s previous tasks. True, at least one of them might want her dead, but they weren’t trying to accomplish the goal then.

She admired the clothing of other people, including Lady Galcian’s shimmering gown of sea-blue taffeta and the yellow-and-orange medley that Starovna’s eldest son wore. That admiration, expressed as slightly envious praise—“we have no such clothes where I’m from, particularly now”—was a seed. She planted it early and let it grow, allowing the others to ask about the war, then making a point or two and changing the subject. This was a night for nibbling around the edges, and charging ahead would do more harm than good.

With her dance partners, she took the same approach. General Mezannith, the leader of Heliodar’s mostly idle army, joined her on the floor, and so did Kolovat in time. Both admired her dancing, and Mezannith actually speculated on how akin the skill might be to fighting, which saved Branwyn the better part of a segue. Between them came a wide assortment of well-dressed men, from a couple barely out of their teens to one nearly Lord Rognozi’s age, and a few in between who were quite attractive.

None held Branwyn’s attention as Zelen did, though. What had already passed between them—not only pleasure, but fighting at each other’s side—made a foundation that raised him far above any other man in the room. While discussing wine with Lady Yansyak or dancing with one of the young guardsmen, even while she kept her attention politely on the subject and the partner, she was aware of Zelen as long as she could see him. When she could manage it without being rude, she scanned the room for dark hair and amber buttons.

It was later in the evening, after the Rognozis and many of the older guests had departed, that Branwyn had no pressing engagements