There was no romance in that kind of desperate hunger in a woman. But it took more than a little lack of romance to impair Blade's abilities in the presence of a woman so fiercely aroused. Much more. He was still solid and rigid as he stripped the gown over Mirasa's head. He ran his fingers over the graceful body now fully revealed, noting the firmness of the flesh, the incredibly few sags and wrinkles to suggest oncoming age, the enormous nipples, engorged almost to blackness and standing up an inch from the tips of her breasts. He raised a hand to one breast, lowered his lips to the other, heard Mirasa give a gasp that was almost a scream. She was going to reach another spasm soon if he kept up his work on her breasts much longer. But he alternated lips and fingers on her breasts until she was shaking like a sapling in a gale. Her hips were going through intricate motions of their own as he lifted her and laid her on the bed. And he was still as firm as ever as he plunged into her.
She began kicking and jerking under him almost from the moment of his first entrance. But her second spasm passed more quickly than her first, and did nothing to slow or stop Blade. He held back nothing, plunging deep into her dripping canal until her pubic hairs and his were tangled together. He withdrew until he was almost free and she was arching her pelvis frantically upward to recapture and retrap the marvelous phallus that had been driving into her. Then he would sink into her again. And as he did so, his lips roamed over her face, and one hand was roaming over her breasts, cupping them, tweaking and caressing the monstrously risen nipples, stroking their upper slopes. She was no longer gasping because she seemed to have no breath left in her body. Instead she made a low, continuous moan.
Blade felt and heard a third spasm building in her, but he also felt the pressures building up in him. He held on, held back, while Mirasa heaved and twisted frantically for a third time. And he held on and held back for a little longer than that. But in the end there was no more holding back. He plunged deeply into her one final time, and then his control broke and he jetted and poured himself hotly, savagely into her. The hot jetting went on and on until Blade could almost feel that all the fluids of his body were pouring into Mirasa, that she was draining him into a husk.
In time it stopped and he lay on top of her, for she did not seem to know or care that much of his weight was on her. It was a long time before she showed any signs of life. But then she did so with explosive fury, hands and lips roaming over his body. Blade said nothing to discourage her, for he sensed it would not be wise.
And in the end it was unnecessary, for these roaming hands and lips had him aroused again quickly. He was able to do all Mirasa wanted a second time. And then a third, and finally, after a very long interval, a fourth. Perhaps Mirasa did not get what she wanted very often, but she certainly knew how to make sure that she got it when she had the chance. Blade was not modest about his virility, but he would never have predicted that he could do all that he did that night. He was drained and limp in more than one part of his body when Mirasa finally kissed him and told him the soldiers were waiting outside to escort him back to the House of the Pardoned.
«Remember, Blade,» she cautioned him. «You must not let a word drop of this night.» Blade nodded, and Mirasa, seeing that he might misinterpret what she said, continued. «No, it is not that Kenas is jealous. He knows that I take what he cannot give where and when I can, and from whom. As long as I choose men worthy of respect-and of a place in a royal bed-he holds his peace. No, the problem is your mission. You were not supposed to know a thing about it before King Hurakun summoned you. He feared word getting to Prince Piralu. And so do I. What Piralu knows one day, the cult of Ayocan knows the next.»
Chapter 12
Blade went before King Hurakun two days later, and went down the Great River only two weeks after that. He spent those two weeks as securely locked up as if he had been the Crown Jewels of Chiribu. He passed the time pretending to learn Gonsaran, perfecting his disguise and cover story, and considering what he had heard and seen at the meeting with the King of Chiribu.
The night of that meeting warriors in black escorted him through the dark paths of the Garden of Kings to an underground chamber and left him there. The walls were bare, damp, and moldy, the smell of earth and decay overpowering, and Blade's nerves tight. They had left him his weapons, but here in this chamber the weapons could not keep off his fear of a trap. Suppose the ceiling were lowered on him, or water flooded in from the ponds in the garden-perhaps bearing the hungry little fish with it? Sword and axe could do little in that case. He was not ashamed to give a start when he heard a noise behind him. Nor did he mind sighing with relief when a section of the wall slid aside to admit King Hurakun, First Prince Kenas, and Princess Mirasa. She shot a quick glance at Blade, with nothing in it to show what had passed between them. Then she stepped back and left the floor to her husband and the king.
Hurakun spoke quickly, without either losing or standing on his dignity. After a few sentences Blade realized that he was going to learn nothing tonight that Mirasa had not already told him. So he concentrated on sizing up King Hurakun and his elder son.
They made a marked and rather depressing contrast. Hurakun must have been close to sixty, but there were only a few strands of gray in his black hair and even fewer wrinkles in his dark skin. He carried himself erect, as a man who had once been a warrior and could be one again if need be. The sword and the axe he carried on his belt were gilded and jeweled, but sharp-edged and well balanced.
The First Prince looked like a man who had never been a warrior, and never would or could be one. In fact, he looked more like a middle-aged and unsuccessful bank clerk than a prince of any land. If Blade had not known Princess Mirasa's character and determination, he would have despaired for Chiribu at the sight of the heir to its throne: Kenas sagged everywhere-belly, shoulders, jowls — in spite of being twenty-odd years younger than his father. His eyes were small, piggish, and perpetually inflamed-no doubt from too much sitting by night at his workbench. His efforts to project some sort of proper dignity would have been amusing if they hadn't been so pathetic. Blade didn't know whether he felt more sorry for the Kingdom of Chiribu, doomed to be ruled by Kenas, or for Kenas, doomed to have to rule when he would be far happier as a modest craftsman. And with a wife like Princess Mirasa.
But the politics of Chiribu were not Blade's main concern, nor were the domestic arrangements of its royal family. His job lay in the south, in Gonsara. And he remembered one particular thing that Hurakun said, near the end of his briefing.
«King Thambral's queen is his third wife, a woman less than half his age. She is said to have a great influence over him. To gain her ear would be a great victory for you, although I would not be able to suggest ways of doing this.» For a moment Hurakun's eyes rested on Princess Mirasa. Blade suspected that the king made no suggestions about ways of gaining the ear of a dissatisfied wife because he wanted to spare his son's feelings. Or perhaps he suspected Blade already knew more than well enough the solution to the problem.
In any case, the possibility of more bedroom politics was very much in Blade's mind as he boarded the ship Lugsa for the trip downriver to Gonsara. It was an ordinary cargo vessel, broad in the beam and bluff at both bow and stern, with two broad sails to help it downstream. It had ports for a dozen sweeps and benches for the slaves to man them, but sweep-slaves were expensive. They would be rented from a Chiribuan factor in a Gonsaran river port when the Lugsa started her return upriver. On the trip downriver their place could be filled by cargo, so that the ship could carry more, and smell vastly sweeter.