The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 8: Lord Marhollow's Pursuit, Part 5

 "Done it?" Denisius's drink froze halfway to his mouth. "Done what?"

"Won a tiger-Namarri's heart like that -- well, her interest. He either would have paid her the money and bragged about wasting a season's earnings on one night of passion with a woman who thought he was a stupid joke, or else he would have made some idiot remark about her people and found himself nursing worse scars than mine. Never insult one of them. You'd be lucky to survive."

Denisius said nothing, feeling almost foolishly proud: apparently Vos thought him a charmer of werewolves and Namarri both. His manservant watched him closely as he sipped his drink. This trick Denisius had learned somewhat better than that of smoking rieldo, and in any event he enjoyed the stuff a good deal better, despite his sordid history with it. A question occurred to him. "How did she know I, erm, that is, that my body wanted her?" This was something he would dearly like to know about women, especially Carala. He sometimes couldn't tell whether she liked or merely tolerated him. Until the night she'd disappeared, to be fair, he had felt much the same way about her. But since he'd pledged the Emperor his service, that initial fondness had intensified.

Vos smirked, swirling the spirits and savoring their spiced aroma. "Well, milord, I could spin some tale about Namarri senses, how their eyes can read every inch of the human body, how their ears can hear your every heartbeat, how they can scent every mood you feel and even those your under-mind would hide from you." Denisius nodded. Vos stuck his chin out, indicating the lower half of his master's body. "But the fact is, you're hard as a lump of pig iron."

Denisius looked down. The telltale shape of his arousal, which had only barely diminished since Demelza had left, jutted through his breeches like the hilt of a comical dagger he had tried to smuggle into the Four Winds in his crotch. Shamefacedly he hunched over to cover himself . . . then his eyes met Vos's and they both burst out laughing, clinking their glasses together in a toast.

"To Namarri tigresses," Vos said.

"To pig iron," Denisius replied smartly, and they both collapsed in laughter again.

"You cool yourself off, milord. I'm going up to the balconies. Meet me up there when you're a little more, ah, flexible." Shaking his head, Vos downed the liquor and sauntered off, still laughing to himself as he made his way through the revelers.

Cooling off, Denisius decided, sounded like an excellent idea. After taking a few minutes to compose himself, he rose from his seat and gingerly made his way to one of the several bars where one could belly up and enjoy a drink and a chat with the barman, calling for cold water. His encounter with the tiger-dancer already seemed to have sunk into the riotous background of the Four Winds, forgotten or completely unobserved by everyone present, except of course for Deinisius himself. 

That was simply the way the Four Winds was, from dusk to dawn, and all day and night on any festival day. It had begun life -- from what Denisius could tell, and that wasn't much, for the place seemed designed to bewilder the mind and eye and ear alike -- as a simple two story tavern, and over the years had accumulated more and more stories and wings, some of which were nothing more than pavilions stretched over what had once been city streets. The little stage where the tiger-dancer had enchanted Denisius was built into one of the older wings, not too far from the original tavern.

That old tavern was where he now took a deep draught of water, relishing its icy sting on his throat. The walls here were covered with a ramshackle collection of handbills new and antique, paintings and sketches from the amateurish to obscure masterpieces Denisius could hardly believe were languishing in a festhall on the Straits of Twilight. The ceiling was even more dazzling: painted black, fine lines of wire were strung from wall to wall in an overlapping series of arcs whose design appeared random at first, almost mad, but which upon closer examination proved to be an intricately designed network drawing in glittering metals the shape of the constellations that danced among the moons. From these nearly invisible strands dangled thousands of charms of copper and silver and gold, tiny curlicues and bewitching shapes of designs both unremarkable and surpassing strange.