His hands were shifting from her buttocks to her hips now, tightening their grip, lifting her straight up into the air. She rose until his eyes could look straight into hers for a moment. A brief moment. His head dipped, and she felt his lips moving on her shoulders and down over her breasts. The nipples had long since stiffened into almost painfully tight little buds. Now his lips were around them, and once more it felt as though he were drawing sparks out of her body. These lips were warm and wet, and they were absolutely maddening. She wanted to scream. And this, all of it, while he held her in his hands in midair, as though she were a child. For a moment fear of such strength in a man almost chilled her desire.

That lasted only seconds. He lifted her higher and higher for a moment, then slowly lowered her down on the piled weed. It crackled under her weight, and she felt it prickle against her bare skin.

Then all other sensation vanished as he lowered himself down upon and into her. Deep-deep-incredibly deep! In a second her whole existence came to be focused around what was in her, sliding in and out of her, driving her slowly higher and higher in her passion. She whimpered again, sobbed, bit her lips until they bled, to keep from screaming or shouting or bursting out into hysterical laughter.

Then she was not rising slowly any more, but hurtling up toward her peak. She felt that peak growing and swelling within her, farther, faster-then it exploded within her. She clawed at Blade's back. She ground her hips and buttocks into the weeds, trying to twist and turn herself around his maleness, to get more and more of it. She wanted more of it, even while the furious pulsing spasms ripped through her muscles. She raised her legs and pounded her feet on Blade's buttocks, trying to hold him, trying to drive him deeper into herself.

And he was still moving, still solid, still driving into her-and now she was driving up toward a second peak, and this time she could feel that he was coming along with her. His eyes were glazed, his breath rasped, his whole body seemed wound up like the cord of a crossbow. Then all the tension went out of his body, and it was heaving and twisting and writhing along with hers. All the breath went out of his lungs in a single long rasping wssssssh, and it seemed that all the fluid went out of his body in a series of powerful, hot pulses.

Eventually the erotic fog cleared out of Alanyra's head so that her senses began working normally again. Her mind remembered where she was, who she was-and who she was with. She raised herself on one elbow and looked cautiously at Blade.

His eyes met hers. His face crinkled into a smile, and he said quietly, «Lady Alanyra. I would like some food, if you can manage it. And without any drugs in it this time.»

It was a long time before Alanyra could stop laughing enough to say yes.

Blade realized that there was no easy way to influence a woman as intelligent, able, and strong-willed as Alanyra. Certainly just making love to her wasn't going to be enough. Of course she would be far more ready to listen to him on almost anything than she might have been otherwise. But he was still going to have to be able to talk to her seriously if he wanted to get her help.

He wanted and needed her help more badly than he dared tell her. She seemed to have some vague glimmering of an idea similar to his own-finding some way to peace between the Sea Cities and the Fishmen-the Sea Masters. Some way to peace, and an end to the preposterous and futile bloodshed of their three-centuries' old war. It was more than Blade had expected, to find someone like that among the Sea Masters. If Autocrat Krodrus felt the same way, as Blade suspected he did well, something might be arranged.

Blade would have done his best to enlist Alanyra in his cause even if she hadn't already been more than half in sympathy with it. She was intelligent, strong-minded, and a leader among the High Clans of the Sea Masters-an invaluable ally. If he couldn't make peace in the crystal seas with her aid, he could at least try to get out of the Sea Masters' Reefs and back to the Sea Cities with a whole skin. Blade had been prepared to risk that skin any number of times in good causes, but he generally preferred to keep it as intact as possible, if he had a reasonable chance to do so. The suicidally inclined do not make very good secret agents, or very long-lived ones.

All this meant that Blade's work was only just nicely begun after he finished making love to Alanyra for the first time. He knew that if he could get proof of his guess that someone in Nurn was playing games with the two sea peoples, he would have Alanyra firmly on his side. More important, he would be able to convince others in both Talgar and the Reefs, and so create a faction among each people working for peace. Neither of Nurn's customers had much love for the Empire; that was obvious. If the Empire stood revealed as an open enemy in all but name-well, things might happen. Blade didn't know how many of them might happen before he was snatched away from the crystal seas, back to Home Dimension. But he was determined to get as much done as possible.

Unfortunately he couldn't do nearly as much as he had hoped to do among the Sea Masters. He could not move freely, for one thing. Alanyra said this was for his own safety, and Blade believed her. After three hundred years of war, the Fishmen didn't look on the Talgarans any more kindly than the Talgarans looked on them. Nor could he even talk freely with the warriors and scribes of Clan Gnyr.

«Most of them would not talk to you at all,» Alanyra told him. «Those few who talked to you would most likely not be able to answer most of your questions, even were they willing. You might find one who could understand your questions and answer them. And it would be even odds that he would simply be laying a trap for you, to discover your plans and betray you.»

«It would be worth the risk,» said Blade wearily. «Otherwise there doesn't seem to be anything for me to do except sit here like a barnacle on a ship's hull.»

«Why throw your life away?» said Alanyra. «And why risk mine and perhaps Oknyr's as well? It would mean that, I know.»

«Why?» asked Blade. He suspected he knew most of the answer already. But he wanted to hear from Alanyra's own lips confirmation of his educated guesswork. It was always better to avoid acting on your own guesses, if there was any alternative.

«You think I am strong among the Sea Masters, because I am Lady of a High Clan and my warriors are loyal to me? Well, perhaps I am. But I am not strong enough to survive being suspected of this-of spying for the Sea Cities.

«Oknyr would believe me, probably. And others would believe Okynr and follow him. But the greater part of the men and women of Clan Gnyr would recoil in horror, and cast me down from my place. I would go to join my brother, and without even the chance of knowing I had died well. He died in a battle against the Sea Cities. I would be tortured with sea-snake venom and then staked out for rock eels to tear the flesh from my bones, piece by piece. And your own fate would be even harder. We would die, the Clan would be disgraced and divided, and nothing would be done.»

«If that is so,» said Blade, «then there is only one thing for me to do. There is no answer to be found here in the Reefs of the Sea Masters. There is none to be found in the Sea Cities. But there may be one in Nurn itself.»

Alanyra's eyes widened. «How-how will you find it, if you must pluck it out of the heart of the Empire itself?»

«I won't find it easily, in any case,» replied Blade coolly. «But I will have a better chance of finding it with your help.»

«What-what can I do for you?» said Alanyra. Her tone left no doubt in Blade's mind that she would do her best to help him-if she thought his plan made any sense.