“My wife understands that I have many things to clear up when I finish a voyage,” he said coldly.

She laughed, water rippling in a silver ewer, and reached out a slender hand. “Oh, don’t be so stiff and proper, Richard. Come here to me. You look like a mahogany statue.”

He joined her on the bed.

“It is Julius and your crew, I know. I have tried, Richard. There is nothing anyone can do, perhaps not even Abeleyn himself. He is not happy about it either.”

“He discusses policy with you, then, as you lie together.”

She flushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Only that you should be more careful, Jem. I’ve been back three days, but already I know who the King’s new bedfellow is.”

One eyebrow soared up her forehead disdainfully. “Rumour and truth have a large gap between them.”

“The King does not like his lovers to bruit his affairs in public. He has made a policy of bachelorhood. If you are not careful you may wake up one morning aboard a Merduk slave transport.”

“Do you presume to tell me how to regulate my affairs, Captain? I suppose your voyaging from one louse-ridden port to another makes you qualified to discuss the doings at court.”

He turned away. She loved throwing his humble birth in his face. Perhaps it gave their lovemaking an added spice for her. And yet they were as close as lovers ever got. Sometimes they argued as though they were married.

He finished his wine and stood up. “I must go. You are right. I should visit Estrella.”

“No!” She pulled him back down on the bed, eyes blazing. He had to smile. For all her bedhopping, she was still jealous if he went to someone else.

“Stay, Richard. We have things to talk about.”

“Such as?”

“Well . . . news. Don’t you wish to catch up on what has happened since you left?”

“I know what has been happening, and so does my crew.”

“Oh, that silly edict. Everyone knows that the Prelate put Abeleyn up to it. The King is not the sort to think up a thing like that, though his father was. No, Abeleyn is more one of your sort. A soldier’s man, the sailor’s darling. He and the Prelate have had a contretemps, and all Abrusio is on the side of the King, except those whose wits are addled by religion, may God forgive me.” She made the Sign of the Saint against her bare breasts. For some reason Hawkwood found the gesture arousing.

“The Prelate is on his way to the Synod in Charibon, and do you know, the moment he was out of the city gates the burnings lessened? Two days ago they were consuming forty unfortunates every afternoon. Today six were sent to the pyre. Abeleyn has his officers accompanying the Inceptines on their rounds and the lists go straight to him. Just as well. My maid was becoming hysterical. She’s from Nalbeni.”

Hawkwood stroked her smooth thigh. “I know.”

“And Golophin. Some say he has organized a kind of underground escape route for the Dweomer-folk of the city. He’s never at court any more. The King went in person to the old bird’s tower to seek him out, but the door was barred! To the King! Abeleyn’s father would have had the place razed to the ground, but not our young monarch. He’s biding his time.”

Hawkwood’s fingers were caressing the curly hair at the crux of her legs, but she appeared not to notice.

“And the streets are a terror at night. There are shifters abroad, seeking revenge for the execution of their kinfolk. Only last night one of them slaughtered a dozen of the city patrol and then slipped away . . .” She moaned as Hawkwood’s fingers worked on her.

“Murad has been stalking around the palace with a smug grin on his face. I don’t like him . . . Oh, Richard!”

She lay back on the bed with her legs asprawl and began to touch herself where he had been touching her. Hawkwood watched her with the fascination of the mouse eyeing the cat.

“Is this not better than the rump of some cabin boy?” she asked.

Hawkwood became very still, and she smiled teasingly. “Oh come on, Richard. I know what pressures are on you seamen on a long voyage, with never a woman aboard to relieve your . . . stress. Everyone knows what you get up to. In the hold, perhaps, in a dark corner with the rats skipping round you? Does the boy squeal, Richard, as you take him? My fine Captain, were you even taken yourself by some hairy master’s mate when you first began your voyaging?”

As she saw his face flood with anger she laughed her tinkling laugh and worked ever more busily on herself.

“Will you deny it to my face? Will you say it’s not true? I can read it in your eyes, Richard. Is that why you have been unable to please me on this return? Are you pining after some smooth-chinned boy with lice in his hair?”

He set his hand about her white throat. His skin looked as dark as leather against hers. As his fingers tightened, hers became busier. Her back arched slightly.

“Am I not enough for you?” she moaned. “Or am I too much for you?”

With one swift movement he spun her on her stomach. The blood of fury and shame and arousal was beating a rigid tattoo in his every vein. He set his weight atop her, crushing her into the bed. She cried out, flailing behind her with her arms. He caught the thin wrists and imprisoned them.

She screamed into the pillow and bit the linen fiercely as he forced inside her. It did not take long. He withdrew, feeling sickened and exultant at the same time.

She rolled on to her back. Her body was mottled with the rush of blood. Her wrists were red. She bruised so easily, he thought. He could not meet her eyes.

“Poor Richard. So easily goaded, so easily outraged.” She extended a hand and pulled him down beside her.

He was baffled, confused. “Why do you say such things?”

She stroked his face. “You are an odd mix, my love. Sometimes as unapproachable as a closed oak door, sometimes all your nerves in the open, to be played on like the strings of a lute.”

“I’m sorry, Jem.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd, Richard. Don’t you know that you never do anything unless I want you to?”

E LSEWHERE in Abrusio, the day passed and the soldiers did not come. The girl Griella, who had been a beast, dressed herself in some of Bardolin’s cast-off robes and sat at his table looking absurdly young and vulnerable.

They sipped cellar-cool water and ate bread with olives and a bowl of pistachios, which she loved. The imp stirred restlessly and watched them from its jar; it was almost recovered from its ordeal of the night before.

Why had they not come? Bardolin did not know; but instead of relieving him, their non-appearance made him more uneasy and this was compounded by the face of the slim young girl sitting across the table from him, swinging her bare feet as she ate.

She had a peasant face, which was to say it was browned and freckled by hours and days out in the sun. Her hair was cut short and it gave back a bronze tint to the sunlight, as though some smith had hammered it out on his anvil that morning. Her eyes were as brown as the neck of a thrush and her skin where the ingrained dust had been washed off had a tawny bloom. She was not more than fifteen years old.

Bardolin had helped her wash the clotted blood from her hands and mouth.

After lunch they sat by the great window in the wall of Bardolin’s tower that looked out to the west, down over the city to the sea and the crowded harbour with its tangle of masts. Out on the horizon ships were becalmed by the fallen trade. Their boats were hauling them in, oarstroke by agonizing oarstroke under the torrid examination of the sun.

“Can you see them?” Griella asked him. “I’ve heard that wizards can look further than any other men, can even watch the flames that flicker in the bosoms of the stars.”

“I could cast a farseeing cantrip. With my own eyes I would not be much good to you, I am afraid.”

She digested this. “When I am a beast, I can see the light of men’s hearts in their breasts. I can see the heat of their eyes and bowels in the dark, and I can smell the fear that comes out of them. But I cannot see their faces, whether they are afraid or brave, surprised or astonished. They are no longer men then. That is the way the beast thinks when I am inside it instead of it being inside me.” She looked at her fingers, clean now, the nails bitten down to the quick.