She felt the electricity dance upon his skin, begging for his lips to utter the words that would release it. It was almost with a whimper that her hand was forced from his waist as he returned to shaving.
‘Today was going to be one such day. The fact that it is not means that I cannot miss it.’ He shaved off another line of lather. ‘Meetings at this hour are not often called in the Venarium.’ He shaved off another. ‘Meetings of the Librarians at this hour are never called.’ He slid the last slick of lather from his scalp and flicked it into the basin. ‘If the Librarians are not seen—’
‘Magic collapses, laws go unenforced, blood in the streets, hounds with two heads, babies spewing fire.’ She sighed dramatically, collapsing onto her cushion and waving a hand above her head. ‘And so on.’
Bralston spared her a glance as she sprawled out, robe opening to expose the expanse of naked brown beneath. The incline of his eyebrows did not go unnoticed, though not nearly to the extent of his complete disregard as he walked to his clothes draped over a chair. That, too, did not cause her to stir so much as the sigh that emerged from him as he ran a hand over his trousers.
‘Are you aware of my duty, Anacha?’
She blinked, not entirely sure how to answer. Few people were truly aware of what the Venarium’s ‘duties’ consisted. If their activities were any indication, however, the wizardly order’s tasks tended to involve the violent arrest of all palm-readers, fortune-tellers, sleight-of-hand tricksters, and the burning, electrocution, freezing or smashing of said charlatans and their gains.
Of the duties of the Librarians, the Venarium’s secret within a secret, no one could even begin to guess, least of all her.
‘Let me rephrase,’ Bralston replied after her silence dragged on for too long. ‘Are you aware of my gift?’
He turned to her, crimson light suddenly leaking out of his gaze, and she stiffened. She had long ago learned to tremble before that gaze, as the charlatans and false practitioners did. A wizard’s stink eye tended to be worse than anyone else’s, if only by virtue of the fact that it was shortly followed by an imminent and messy demise.
‘That’s all it is: a gift,’ he continued, the light flickering like a flame. ‘And gifts require recompense. This’ – he tapped a thick finger to the corner of his eye – ‘is only given to us so long as we respect it and follows its laws. Now, I ask you, Anacha, when was the last time Cier’Djaal was a city of law?’
She made no reply for him; she knew none was needed. And as soon as he knew that she knew, the light faded. The man that looked at her now was no longer the one that had come to her the night before. His brown face was elegantly lined by wrinkles, his pursed lips reserved for words and chants, not poems.
Anacha stared at him as he dressed swiftly and meticulously, tucking tunic into trousers and draping long, red coat over tunic. He did not check in a mirror, the rehearsed garbing as ingrained into him as his gift, as he walked to the door to depart without a sound.
There was no protest as he left the coins on her wardrobe. She had long ago told him there was no need to pay anymore. She had long ago tried to return the coins to him when he left. She had shrieked at him, cursed him, begged him to take the coins and try to pretend that they were two lovers who had met under the moonlight and not a client and visitor who knew each other only in the confines of silk and perfume.
He left the coins and slipped out the door.
And she knew she had to be content to watch him go, this time, as all other times. She had to watch the man she knew the night before reduced to his indentation on her bed, his identity nothing more than a faint outline of sweat on sheets and shape on a cushion. The sheets would be washed, the cushion would be smoothed; Bralston the lover would die in a whisper of sheets.
Bralston the Librarian would do his duty, regardless.
‘Do you have to do that?’ the clerk asked.
Bralston allowed his gaze to linger on the small statuette for a moment. He always spared enough time for