Out of the Darkness

“You wouldn’t do such a thing to me.” She sounded very sure of herself. As if by accident, she scratched her hipbone. Hajjaj didn’t believe in accidents- certainly not in this one. The motion, he was sure, was aimed at guiding his gaze toward her patch of pubic hair. She’d noticed him noticing it; it stood out against her paleness much more than a darker-skinned Zuwayzi woman’s did. Aye, she knew what her weapons were, and used them.

But those weapons wouldn’t save her here. Hajjaj had to convince her of that. “Wearily, he said, “You had better listen to me. I enjoy you. I am not infatuated with you. That I did not want Iskakis to punish you does not mean I am. You may not do whatever you like in my house. I do not have to keep you here, and I will not if I decide you abuse my hospitality. Have you got that?”

Tassi studied him. At last, she dipped her head-and then, a moment later, nodded. “You mean this, I think.”

“You had best believe I mean it.” Hajjaj nodded, too.

“How can you be so cold?” the Yaninan woman exclaimed.

“I ran my kingdom’s affairs the whole of my adult life,” Hajjaj said. “Did you think I would not be able to run my own?”

“But you ran your kingdom’s affairs here.” Tassi touched a painted fingernail to her forehead. “Your own affairs-those belong here.” Her finger came to rest near her left nipple.

“I find less difference between the two than you seem to,” Hajjaj said. “If my wits tell me my heart is making me act like a fool, why should I go on doing it?”

“Because your heart drives you! Because you are passionate!”

She meant it. Hajjaj was sure of that. He shook his head even so. “I would rather be right.”

“Right?” Tassi scornfully tossed her head. “Wouldn’t you rather be happy?”

Hajjaj thought about that. “I am happy-or as happy as I can be with Unkerlant too strong in this land. If you mean, do I want to be head over heels in love. . well, no. I have too many years and the wrong temperament for that.” His chuckle was rueful. A good many of his own countrymen thought him cold-blooded, too.

Tassi snorted, but she also nodded again, this time without using a Yaninan gesture first. “I will remember,” she said, and turned again. Walked wasn’t quite the word; the twists her bare backside made did their best to refute everything Hajjaj had told her.

He chuckled. Enjoying someone in bed wasn’t the same as falling in love with her-or with him, Hajjaj supposed. He’d needed more than a few years to reach that conclusion, but he was convinced of it now.

And besides,

he thought, any woman who wants to make me fall head over heels in love with her isn‘t going to have much chance to do it, because I’m already head over heels in love with someone else.

How Kolthoum would laugh if he told her that! And why shouldn’t she laugh? Her temperament was much the same as his own. That was one reason why he loved her, why the two of them fit like foot and sandal, why he wondered how he might go on living if anything happened to her. Arranged marriages didn’t usually work out so. Then again, from what he’d seen, marriages springing from first fruits of passion didn’t usually work out so, either. Every once in a while, you get lucky.

He rose to his feet and left the library. He wasn’t much surprised when Tewfik came up to him a few minutes later and said, “You put a flea in her ear, did you, young fellow?”

No one could have overheard his conversation with Tassi. But Tewfik might have been as much prophet as majordomo. Hajjaj was convinced the old man knew what went on well before it happened. “I hope I did,” Hajjaj said now. “Maybe she’ll listen. Maybe she’ll go on thinking she can do just as she pleases, the way Lalla did.”

“She’s smarter than Lalla,” Tewfik said.

“I think so, too,” Hajjaj said. “I hope she is, for her sake. I don’t want to give her back to Iskakis, but if she makes me not want to have her around, either. . ”

“Pity Marquis Balastro didn’t want to keep her,” Tewfik said. “Pity Balastro got himself hauled down to Unkerlant, too. You could have sent her to him if he hadn’t.”

“For one thing, he didn’t want her any more. That was part of the reason she came here, if you’ll recall,” Hajjaj said. The majordomo nodded. Hajjaj also thought it a pity the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza had been sent down to Unkerlant. Had that not happened, he wouldn’t have been a retired diplomat himself. But… “A great pity Balastro got taken away. Swemmel’s men blazed him, you know.”

“I had heard that, aye, sir. Most unfortunate.”

“I’m sure the marquis would be the first to agree with you,” Hajjaj said.

Tewfik coughed. “If I may say so, sir, it is perhaps not the worst of things that the Unkerlanters’ passion for vengeance should be aimed mostly at our late allies and not at us.”