Blade nodded. «He must do fairly well. I heard a woman screaming when I was in his garden the other night.»

Footsteps sounded on the stairs outside. Then came a soft voice. «Brigeda, it is I, Clarda.»

«Come in, my Sister.»

The door opened and the young woman with the veiled face slipped in. She stood silently for a moment, and Blade found himself oddly uncomfortable under her stare. Then Brigeda nodded and said quietly, «Remove your veil, Clarda.»

The veil dropped to the floor. Blade kept his face straight with an effort as he saw what lay underneath it. Clarda had been beautiful-once. Then someone had slashed her face deeply from scalp to chin, using a sawtoothed edge, leaving a dreadful gouge and taking out her left eye. She wore a green silk patch over what must have been a mutilated and empty socket, for which Blade was grateful.

«This was Durkas's work,» said Brigeda. «Do you need to look at it any longer?»

«No,» said Blade.

«You may go, Clarda.» The younger Sister pulled her veil back on with desperate haste and fumbling lingers, then vanished out the door.

Blade turned to Sister Brigeda. «I begin to think that I can indeed trust you. If Durkas did this. . You want vengeance on him?»

«For this and much else. If you will help bring him into our hands, he will suffer as have all his girls before we leave his head before Tymgur's gate.» She paused. «And now-you promised to tell me, why the Sea Cities had a quarrel with Durkas.»

Blade had his answer ready. «He is conspiring with our Autocrat for War, Stipors, to sow dissension and civil war in Talgar. He has dreams of using the war between us and the Fishmen to give himself influence in the Sea Cities.»

«Durkas has these dreams?» said Brigeda. «Not Duke Tymgur, his master?»

«Not that I know of,» said Blade. He hoped he was still able to lie with a straight face well enough to deceive Brigeda.

Apparently he was. She sighed with obvious relief and stood up. «Then it is settled, Blade. If you will give your men proper instructions, I will give the same to mine. We can easily lay a trap for Durkas, and when that trap springs shut, he will be in our hands. And then he will suffer. Oh, how he will suffer!»

Once more Blade kept his face straight. Durkas was not going to be thrown to the Sisters of the Night for their vengeance, although he certainly deserved to be. He was too important to the future of the Sea Cities-and the Sea Masters. Some complicated planning would be needed to get Durkas safely away without unnecessary bloodshed. But Brigeda had told him to give his men proper instructions. He would certainly do that. Some of those instructions, though, might come as a surprise to the Sister.

Then he looked at Brigeda. She was still standing, looking down at him. Her eyes were no longer tear-filled, but they were wide and glittering with a strange intensity. She licked her lips and spoke.

«Blade.» Silence. «I–I am a Sister who receives two thousand gold crowns for one night. One night. Yet-somehow I feel that tonight-I want to be only a woman. No, not even that. A girl-an ordinary girl, perhaps with her first man. You-you have answered so many of my dreams and prayers, Blade. Answer one more for me, for you are-beautiful.»

Blade didn't need much time to interpret that sort of invitation or to respond to it. If he ever did, he would probably be getting unfit for his job.

He crossed the room in two quick steps. Brigeda's arms rose to meet him and go around him. They were surprisingly strong arms, as slender as they were. What was not surprising was the skill of those swift-moving hands of hers.

They stroked his eyes and up over his forehead, then down his cheeks, across his ears, plucked at his earlobes, then went on and on and on. After a while Blade realized they were gliding down off his face and down inside the heavy chamber robe he wore. He bent his head and tipped up Brigeda's, until their lips met. Her lips were as experienced and expert as her hands. So was her tongue, sleek, warm and wet, crawling out and curling under and over his. Blade began to feel a warmth that wasn't in the air of the chamber, and his breathing quickened. His hands drifted down along Brigeda's back, pressing into the elegant curve of her spine and on her small perfectly formed buttocks. He heard her gasp.

Her hands now plunged down farther under the robe, pressing against the flat muscles of his rib cage and stroking the fiat stomach. But they did not stop there. They plunged farther down and grasped Blade's swollen maleness. It had already risen to meet them as they came down to close around it, so that it hardly needed their gentle warmth on it. But incredibly it stiffened still further as Brigeda's hands touched it. Blade began to feel as though he had a rod of steel jutting from his groin.

Before they did anything permanent, though, Brigeda's hands left Blade's groin. They rose to undo the belt of the chamber robe, so that Blade could shrug it off and stand naked, and Brigeda could press herself hard against that nakedness. Blade wasted no more time, but went to work reducing the Sister to the same nakedness. Perhaps it should have been a long, slow, luxurious job. But Blade was too impatient and too aroused not to be clumsy. Nor did Sister Brigeda mind the sound of tearing cloth. In fact, as her last garment dropped away, she bent to nuzzle her face into Blade's groin. Then those full lips closed eloquently around his swollen phallus.

Blade could almost wish she had not done that. Not only was it a horrible strain on his self-control, it distracted him from admiring her naked beauty. And there was too much of it to admire. Blade forced his attention off those skillful lips and looked down.

Everything about Sister Brigeda's body suggested the girl she felt like, rather than the woman she was. The line of her neck was perfect, with just the smallest hint of the cords. That line flowed smoothly into slim, slightly freckled shoulders, with little hollows below the shoulder blades. Those hollows rose and flowed with exquisite grace into the breasts-small, perfectly rounded, with enormous long nipples now thrusting far, far out in their red-black splendor.

Below those breasts a board-flat stomach, curving gracefully down to a patch of fine blue-black hair between the freckled thighs. Long lovely legs, small arched feet-the catalogue could go on for hours.

Perhaps the catalogue could, but Blade knew that he certainly could not. If he stood and submitted to those lips much longer, something irreparable was going to happen. He bent slightly, locked his fingers in Brigeda's hair, and gently pulled her head back from his groin. Her lips slipped once warmly along his maleness, then they were gone.

Before his erection could complain or falter, Blade had lifted Brigeda and laid her down on the bed. But she wriggled to one side as he descended. Half dazed with his arousal as he was, he found himself being turned around and turned over on his back. His erection jutted upwards as Brigeda came down onto it. She was a snug, maddening fit.

The madness rose in both of them more rapidly than before, as Brigeda twisted and turned and gyrated, up, down, and around. Sometimes she would pull back until she was almost free, then shove herself downward until Blade wondered how much room she had inside.

A lot, obviously.

But no matter how much room Brigeda had within, what she was doing was driving her steadily higher and higher. Her eyes were glazed when they weren't entirely closed, her breath came in gasps, her nipples were impossibly stiff and jutting, her skin was flushed and running with sweat. As for Blade, he found himself having to grit his teeth as glorious agony filled him. It rose higher and higher within him, and within Brigeda. It was going to overflow.