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“Certainly. Do you want yet more sons off her? Is that why you allow her to be so damnably wicked?”
He sighed, smoothed his hands over the soft linen of his purple robe, and said, “You are still young—”
“I am eighteen. Most girls are married and have babes by my age.”
“Nonetheless, you are innocent in the ways of men and women. Sira gives me much, Chessa, much that you can’t begin to understand.”
“She gives you her body whenever you ask? You needn’t deny it, I know that’s important to men. But I’ve seen her naked, Father. She’s borne four children. Her breasts are lined and so is her belly. All right, so she doesn’t have extra flesh, but still—”
“The childbirthing lines make no difference. It’s the way of life. It doesn’t lessen a woman’s beauty. No, it’s other things, things you can’t understand as yet.”
“Things Ragnor wanted to teach me but I wouldn’t let him.”
“He touched you?”
Chessa had to smile at the sudden grimness in her father’s voice. Debauching his wife was one thing. A man touching his daughter was quite another.
“Yes, but I put a stop to it. That’s when he began spouting all his lies about loving me beyond the time of doom. I swear to you, he actually said beyond the time of doom. I could but stare at him. He was a fool.”
“I will make you a bargain, Chessa. You keep away from Sira and I will endeavor to teach her a bit of humility, a bit of kindness toward others.”
“I wish you good luck,” Chessa said, and left her father’s chamber.
What Sira would probably do, he thought, knowing himself quite well, was to seduce him. He’d forget his own name in the process.
Cleve knew the man was after his blood. He waved the stranger toward him, taunting him. “Come, little man, come to me. We will see who can kill. Come, you sniveling little coward.”
Little was hardly the word for the man. He towered over Cleve, broad as a strapping bull, his fists huge. He was filthy, his stench nearly over
powering.
He lunged, his hands outstretched. He would try to crush Cleve against his chest, squeezing the life from him.
Cleve let him think he would get his way easily. He took a step back, as if suddenly afraid.
The man in his filthy bearskin laughed. “No more smart words for me, lying scum? Now, I’m coming to you just as you asked me to, and I’m going to make you feel more pain than you imagined a man could feel.”
“Tell me, who sent you?”
“Ah, I’ll tell you that just as your tongue is bulging from your lying mouth.”
“Will you, or are you too stupid to even realize the man’s name?”
The man yelled.
Cleve judged the distance, calmed himself in the very deepest part of himself, the way Merrik, Oleg, and others had taught him to. He raised his hand in a fluttering gesture, then dropped his arm. The movement made the man laugh. He strode toward Cleve, blocking his escape, moving him ever backward, toward the dark fetid alley.
“Are you afraid I’ll still escape you? Who wants me dead? Who paid you to kill me?”
Cleve saw the shadow against the moonlit side of the building.
“Don’t you dare hurt him!”
“Damnation,” Cleve said, recognizing that voice. He called out, “Get out of here, Chessa. Go away.”
“Nay, I’ll take care of this miserable bastard. Coward, leave him alone.”
Cleve sighed, positioned the hidden blade between his fingers and raised his arm. “You want me dead?” he shouted at the man who had half turned at the sound of a female voice.
