“I’m sure there is a better way to do this, but time is short and I’ve been awake for something like twenty-six hours. I have only eight left to arrange a five-course dinner for an Emperor’s grand-twat and then another four to get what I need from him. Unless the two of you can cut that time in half.”
Ciamon quickened his step to keep up with Archmage Journey as he cut through the temple halls at a quick pace. He studied the older man’s shoulders and hands, trying to guess what drug he’d taken to keep himself moving with so little rest. The bob of his shoulders was loose as if he’d drunk Ammarish whiskey, but the fingers quivered with the nervous effects of jumar powder, which mages crushed up to smoke from three-chambered pipes. The Great Dome’s prohibition on alcohol did not extend to recreational poisons.
“What do you need, Eldest Brother?” Noemi asked. She loosed her hair from the knot behind her neck and pulled it over one shoulder to braid in a formal style.
Ciamon took his cue and adopted a soldier’s stride to match her footsteps. We’re not following. We’re marching.
“Tonight you will serve at dinner with the Grand Duke’s entourage in the High Court’s chamber. Speak only when called on, and speak only in Ammarish. Kojan, you’re a Weaver, yes? Get down to the workshop and find yourself one of their veils. Kaltevuus, we’ll get that beard in order. You’re a young, married couple who fled Mahaut the night of the Massacre. You’ve been here three years and forty-two days and you do not wish to return. I fear for my safety. I fear for myself -- say this and only this if he asks why.”
“Are we allowed to ask why?” Ciamon responded in Ammarish.
Archmage Journey rewarded him with a glance over his shoulder. “Already on the job? Where was this diligence three years ago… You only need to know that the High Court would see King Anryniel off the throne.”
Ciamon’s obedient step faltered. His very first thought was for Beatrice. What would happen to her if Anryniel were no longer king…?
The Great Dome’s bells tolled, signaling the noonday prayer. The heat had already driven most mages indoors to seek out cool alcoves or quiet corners to read. Archmage Journey led them quickly across the nearly-empty grounds to the Bathing Theater. Water hadn’t flowed into the public baths in almost sixty years -- not since the crack had snatched the water from the air within the Great Dome. Instead, Ciamon and Noemi found buckets of wash water waiting for them by the lip of an empty pool.
Even sun-warmed water felt good on Ciamon’s skin during the hot hours. He unlaced his sandals and poured a few streams across his feet to rinse sand from between his toes before shimmying out of his trousers. Noemi stripped down beside him without pause. Like him, she’d understood the archmage’s assignment: Be Ammarish. Be married. Be afraid.
They sat side by side, scrubbing their naked limbs while they practiced. They chose names that were close-sounding to their own. They used stories they’d told before to ingratiate themselves in Ammarish households.
“I’m Emi. I was born in Eastwatch-by-the-Cliffs. Me mah was a maid to Lady Moiraine Teqwyn…”
“Sheena Gruffydd,” Ciamon corrected. “Ladies maid to the late Lady Sheena Gruffydd.” That would be the only story anyone who could read a map would believe. The Ammarish married young and rarely went ten miles from where they were born.
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The plague that had killed Lady Sheena complicated their story somewhat. Noemi seemed to have no knowledge at all of the wave of sickness that had nearly wiped out Gruffydd’s household.
“I was placed with Teqwyn only for the wedding,” she whispered in Nymauti. Her eyes traveled to where Archmage Journey stood at a marble table, furiously whisking a shaving cream in a hammered tin bowl. “My orders were to find his daughter.”
“Teqwyn only has sons,” Ciamon glanced at Noemi sidelong. She had the dark hair and pearly undertone in her skin that would make her look at home in Ammar, but Ciamon thought she looked too plain to pass as a ladies maid.
At his answer, Noemi switched back into Ammarish. She shrugged one broad shoulder. “Maybe that’s why I failed.”
He chuckled, pleased to hear Ammarish sarcasm again. Something about their double meanings appealed to Ciamon’s natural sense of mischief. He dumped the bucket of water over his head for a final rinse and stood to towel off with his palla. He caught Noemi studying his cock. Ciamon couldn’t work out the flush in her cheeks. Among the mages, nudity was of no moral alignment.
She noticed him noticing. Noemi brushed back a wet strand of her hair and fluttered her eyelids at him with a practiced art. “Just practicing… Yes, I can pretend to be married to you.”
“Enough flirting. More fear,” Archmage Journey called. He snapped his fingers twice in the air and then pointed at a sling chair beside the marble basin. “Kojan, veil. Kaltevus, beard.”
Ciamon knotted his palla around his hips and slowly lowered himself into the sun-warmed leather. He sighed as the heat soothed the ache in his back. Archmage Journey’s twitchy hands massaged the tightness from his jaw and the muscles beneath his eyebrows. It almost felt pleasant but for the knot of anxiety in his stomach.
Archmage Journey chatted him amiably as his fingers Ciamon’s skin. He rubbed a bit of oil into Ciamon’s stubble, then coated his chin with the fresh-mixed lather. He pinched Ciamon’s ragged ear as he rubbed a bit on the sideburns.
“Clawed your way out of the pit, did you? I remember the year you came up the steps. Not many in your year… Don’t scare easily, do you?”
“No, atelier.” Ciamon stopped himself there and kept his head still when Archmage Journey produced a pair of thin, silver scissors. He shut his eyes so he would not have to see them quiver between the man’s shaky fingers.
“Sharp, sharp,” the archmage commented. The crisp snip-snip of the scissors somewhere below Ciamon’s chin was soothing in comparison to Journey’s quick, pointed words. “Sister Leigh believes you’re not quite ready to be back out in the world. Thinks you lost your wits. I rather think you’re too smart to waste on punishment for principle’s sake. So what if you failed to fuck a teenager, so what if your spells fail and your intentions caused suffering? The road to hell isn’t paved with teeth.”
Ciamon opened his eyes, suddenly concerned the Archmage wasn’t sober enough to handle sharp objects. He caught the archmage standing over him with a straight razor in his hand, waving it in the air above Ciamon’s head as if he signed a blessing.
“Teeth, atelier?”
“Hm? What did I say? I meant coin. The road to Hell is paved with coin - yes, that sounds right.”
Journey set the scissors down and scooped a daub of solid oil from a screw-top tin. He worked it between his hands and stroked it down the stubble of Ciamon’s chin, coaxing length from the neatly trimmed stubble. Whatever spell the archmage used on his beard pulled almost a year’s growth from beneath his skin all at once. His loosened skin burned from his lip halfway down his throat as the enchantment took hold.
“Mark my words, Kaltevuus, the queen of Ammar is going to scream your name out any day now. Her marriage is brittle and her king is weak. Give it time.”