moustache twitched as he spoke.
“That’s quite a synopsis.”
“I’ve liked your wit ever since your arrival, King Howl. You have a particular economy of words that I admire.”
Caliph leaned back in the cushioned divan and folded his arms. The light wrinkled across the rich pillows that, like him, seemed to brood.
“I don’t enjoy being king.”
The seneschal looked worried. “Is something wrong?”
Caliph smiled. “Nothing I could blame you for. But I feel like I’m running with a blindfold on.”
“Nonsense,” said the old man. “You’ve already got the hang of it.”
Caliph made the southern hand sign for no.
“It’s bad luck that I took the crown during so much strife.”
“Forgive me, your majesty, but your coronation was the cause of the strife and therefore inevitable. It’s good that we have a king now. A Council may run economic affairs well enough, but for war, a king is best.”
Caliph frowned. His eyes went out of focus. “What is happening in Tentinil? I should be out there, touring the field.”
Gadriel took a small snuffbox from his pocket and rapped it lightly with a knuckle. “I’ve given word to let you sleep in.”
Caliph forced a smile.
“Shall I have anything sent up?”
“No thank you, Gadriel.” Then the careful, quiet exit, the seneschal barely allowing the door to click so as not to disturb—even Caliph’s thoughts.
Caliph lay back on the divan, staring at the molded ceiling. Most of his thoughts were stillborn, hardly worth Gadriel’s care.
Yrisl knows how to fight a war. If I give all military command over to the Blue General maybe it will be better for the Duchy. I’ve got all my life to learn how to be king. No sense trying to pretend I know what I’m doing during such a critical time.
Exhaustion crept over him. He gazed from the edge of consciousness at the ceiling, eyes drooping, in and out of a dream. In the dream he was tapping on his desk, trying to explain something to Clayton Redfield about not regulating the sale of religious artifacts along the Avenue of Charms. Temple Hill was screaming their approval. He was tapping with a silver pen to make his point, tapping, tapping on the polished desk. Tapping. Caliph woke up.
There were two doors to the High King’s study. One opened inward on the castle. The other opened out. The outward one was a thick oak and metal-studded thing that screened the room from the battlements.
He sat up.
After a moment the tapping came again, outside of the dream. Soft. Insistent. He stood slowly. A guard?
He waited.
It sounded again, barely audible through the thickness of the portal.
He walked, dumbfounded, to the door and slid away the bolt. An assassin? I could be so lucky. With well-oiled silence it opened and Caliph peered before him at the empty moonlit parapet.
To either side, the crenels looked down into deep courtyards. Naobi glowed fat and white, a reptilian eye wreathed in green. Stillness covered everything. The clear balmy night seemed devoid of sound. Not even cricket song. The gardens lay too far below.
Caliph took a half step out. He stopped. A heady sweetness lingered on the air. A whisper from behind the door. “Caliph?”
He turned slowly.
She stood in the shadow of the arch that sheltered the seldom-used portal, all but her face masked in darkness.
Caliph’s eyes burned her image into his brain. Hair, silvery-gold and short. Her eyes were worlds of blue.
Fear filled him instantly. Had she returned to finish what the witches in Tue had failed to accomplish? Was this a trick? But her eyes communicated a silent apology; a sincere vulnerability, real or imagined, that made him want to hold her and protect her.
His tongue lay ignorantly at the bottom of his mouth. His head might as well have been severed for the all the help it was in determining what to say.
Almost cautiously, as though afraid she might vanish, he reached for her face. As his fingers touched her, her lips twisted into that familiar smile that both mocked and tempted him at the same time.
Caliph couldn’t help himself. He attacked her. She gave way easily, kissing him back, letting his emotions come out.
“I guess you’re glad to see me,” she breathed into his ear.
They fell apart. A test fit after two years. But their bodies had remembered, had conformed to each other with aching familiarity.
“How—what are you doing here?” He felt inebriated. A tailless cat stepped out of the shadows and marched into the castle as though inspecting newly conquered territory.
“How am I doing here?” She