loneliness she had not imagined she could feel, a throbbing void that was too much for her to bear, and she wanted rid of it any way she could. The ethereal touch of her mother in her affairs had reminded her how adrift she was, how much she had given up to oppose her father. But she could not afford to grieve here. There was too much at stake.
She was not foolish enough to think that she could bury the pain permanently amid the throes of orgasm, but she could at least push it aside for a time.
Afterwards, when the treacherous glow had faded that sometimes made her say unguarded things, she lay alongside the soldier and ran her tiny hand over his scarred chest, curling her fingertips in the coarse hair between his pectoral bulges. His arm was around her, dwarfing her, and though she was bony and angular and thin she still felt soft against him. The warmth of a man’s body was something she had almost forgotten that she missed.
‘You do not think Xejen can do this, do you?’ she said quietly. It was a statement.
‘Hmm?’ he murmured drowsily.
‘You do not think he is capable of running this revolt and winning.’
He sighed irritably, his eyes still closed. ‘I doubt it.’
‘So why—’
‘Are you going to keep asking questions all night?’
‘Until I get some answers, yes,’ she smiled.
He groaned and rolled over a little so that they were face to face. She gave him a little kiss on the lips.
‘Every man’s nightmare,’ he said. ‘A woman who won’t shut up after she’s been seen to.’
‘I am merely interested in my chances of surviving the situation you put me in,’ she said. ‘Why are you here at all?’
He picked up a handful of her unbound hair that had fallen between them and rubbed it idly with his calloused fingertips.
‘I come from the Newlands,’ he said tangentially. ‘There was a lot of conflict there when I was young. Land disputes, merchant wars. I was a boy, poor and hardworking and full and anger. Being a soldier was the best I could hope for, so I joined the Mark’s militia, a tiny little village army. It turned out I was good at it. I got recruited into the army of a minor noble, we won a few battles . . . Gods, I’m even boring myself now.’
Mishani laughed. ‘Do go on.’
‘Let me skip all that. So many years – many years – later, I ended up a general in Blood Amacha’s army, on the other side of the continent. I was something of a mercenary by then, not blood-bound to any master since my original Barak had managed to get himself killed and his family wiped out. I was there at the battle outside Axekami five years ago.’
Mishani stiffened fractionally.
‘Don’t worry,’ he chuckled. ‘I hardly blame you for what your father did. Especially after what Xejen told me about you and he.’ His mirth faded, and he became serious. ‘A lot of men I’d known died in that battle. I was lucky to get out alive.’ He was silent for a moment, and when he continued his tone was resigned. ‘But that’s the way of it as a soldier. Friends die. Battles are won and lost. I do the best for myself and my men, but in the end, I’m just one part in thousands. A muscle. It’s the brain that directs us all. It’s those higher up who take the responsibility for a massacre like that. Sonmaga was a fool, and your father was treacherous. And many people were killed for both of them.’
Mishani was not sure what to say to that. She was suddenly terribly conscious of how strong he was. He could snap her bones like twigs if he just tightened the arm that he had around her shoulders.
‘After that, I said I was done with soldiering,’ he went on. ‘But soldiering wasn’t done with me, I suppose. Thirty years and more I’ve spent fighting other men’s wars, sitting round fires with people and not knowing whether they’ll be alive in the morning, living in tents and marching all over Saramyr. It may not sound like much, but it’s hard to give up. There’s a feeling between fighting men, a bond like you can’t imagine that doesn’t exist anywhere else. I tried to settle, but it’s too late for me; I’m a soldier in the blood now.’
Mishani relaxed a little now that he had strayed off the more dangerous