he threw open the door, she saw that it was not so dark, but the gray of early dawn. Diverus stopped abruptly in the doorway. She caught up and saw why.
Soter, wearing a green shawl, stood outside, blocking his way.
Diverus retreated inside, his head down, as if sure it had been a trap they’d planned for him. Soter, at his heels, looked at the two of them and asked, “What are you playing at, hey?”
Glum Diverus didn’t answer. Leodora said, “What are you doing awake this early? I thought after all the celebrating you did last night, you’d be sleeping forever.”
Soter didn’t want to change the subject but felt compelled to defend himself. “In the first place, for all the celebrating, I in fact did very little. The governor talked incessantly and on every imaginable topic, and damned if he didn’t repeatedly ensnare Orinda with his prattle. It was all I could do to keep him from running his hands under her clothes right in front of us. Other than that, you wouldn’t notice, but I sleep very little these nights. Very little. Seems to be my nature, unlike some drunken louts.” He stared accusingly at Diverus. “And now before you elude me altogether, I will ask once more. What are you two about?”
“We’re off to look at something with two heads,” she told him, and Diverus glanced at her from under his brows, an uncertain look that she attended with her own. The silent exchange did not go unnoticed by Soter.
“Listen to me, Leodora. You won’t like what I’m going to say, but then you never do. Do not tangle yourself up with this boy, do you understand? No good ever comes of these affairs.”
“Like Leandra and Bardsham?” she said.
“Exactly like—” He clamped his lips so tightly that the color drained from them. “That’s not at all what I meant.”
“Of course not, seeing as I’m the no good that came of that particular affair.”
“I’m trying to warn you about something.”
“Then you’ve done your job. I’m warned. Just as I have been by everything you’ve taught me. And one day, you are going to stop giving me warnings and tell me the truth about what lies behind them. Clearly that’s not today.” She pushed herself around both of them. “We’ll be back later. Come on, Diverus.” At least the boy had the decency to avert his eyes from Soter as he made his more tentative exit behind her.
Soter didn’t watch them go. He didn’t have to. He already knew what was developing between them, even if they still didn’t admit to it. From the moment the gods had deposited her in that Dragon Bowl, Diverus all but mooned over her, and her quick defense now only proved to Soter that there was partiality on her side of it as well. It was their secret that wasn’t a secret to anyone with eyes. He suspected that even Orinda had worked out why Diverus had been brought home drunk.
Fine, then, let them have their secret for the moment. Let them gambol about Colemaigne, collecting stories and kissing in alleys while he worried for their safety. He hadn’t told them the truth, either, about why he wasn’t besotted, why he hardly slept; but to explain his fear to them he would have had to tell them everything, including more about that no good union of Bardsham and her mother. There was no piece of it he could tell and not be forced into revealing all. That was Leodora, cut from the same cloth as her mother—not about to let anything go without an answer.
What they were up to could keep for now. He would find a way to address the problem of Diverus later—hire someone to get rid of him if no other methods worked. More pressing now was the very real need to come up with an excuse for leaving Colemaigne before history repeated itself, which it would surely do if, as Orinda and the governor claimed, they were drawing an audience now from four spans in either direction. Word was spreading here faster than it had on the other spans, faster even than it had in Bardsham’s time. Soon her name would stretch the length of this spiral, and only the gods knew how far that was, how many spans. Sooner or later, word would reach the one person who mustn’t hear of her. He feared that had already happened, and that death was on its way even now. You’ll be