Demon King by Chris Bunch Read Free Book Online Page B

offense.
    It took me a long time to calm down. I now guess it was because I was secretly angry at many things, from the incompetent prince I had been ordered to support, to nest-featherers like Amboina, to being assigned these murky diplomatic duties when I longed for the simplicity of the barracks or, better, the harsh realities of the constant border fights in the Disputed Lands.
    Eventually I calmed down. It was late. One thing that Marán and I had been proudest of was that our fights were not only few, but they were always settled at the time. We’d never let anger work at us.
    I went back to our apartments, to our bedroom door, and tapped. There was no answer. I tried the door. It was locked. I knocked more loudly. Again, no response came. I could feel anger build once more. But there was nothing sensible to do.
    So I went to my office and worked until nearly dawn, then lay on the field cot I kept there. I had sense enough to put this night’s paperwork in a separate place, knowing I’d best review it when calm. I managed to doze for perhaps an hour, then bugles woke me up. I went out on a balcony and watched guard mount in the courtyard below. The measured, never-changing routine of the army calmed me, knowing the same ceremony was being done at every barracks and post in Numantia. There was something larger than myself, than my petty problems, something I’d dedicated my life to.
    I decided I’d spend the day with the troops, and hang paperwork and diplomacy. But not in the unshaven, rather disheveled state I was in. I had a spare field uniform in my campaign roll that always sat beside the door of whatever quarters I occupied, and I went to get it. I’d use the troop baths and have one of the men shave me. I didn’t worry about what the soldiers knew or thought — what had happened between my wife and myself would have gone through the regiment the instant the sentries I’d snapped at were relieved.
    As I passed the door to our bedroom, I tried it and shook my head at my foolishness. But to my surprise the handle turned. I opened the door and went in. Marán sat at a window, her back to me. She wore a black silk wrap.
    “May I enter?” I said formally.
    “Please do.”
    I closed the door behind me and stood in silence, not sure what I should say or do.
    “Damastes,” she said. “I love you.”
    “I love you as well.”
    “We shouldn’t fight.”
    “No.”
    “Not over a stupid painting that probably’d get broken going back to Nicias.”
    I didn’t answer for an instant. Marán knew that wasn’t at all why we’d snarled. I considered correcting her, but thought better.
    “No. That’s not something to fight over,” I agreed. “I’m sorry.”
    “And I’m sorry, too. I didn’t sleep at all.”
    “I didn’t, either,” I said, lying but little.
    She stood, and let the wrap fall.
    “Damastes, would you make love to me? Maybe that’d make me feel better about … about things.”
    Without waiting for an answer, she came to me, and slowly began undressing me. When I was naked, I picked her up in my arms, and carried her to the bed.
    Her passion was far greater than mine. Even when I was in her, part of my mind wondered if I should have said something else, if I should have insisted we talk about the real cause of our fight. A thought came and went that there was this wall called the Agramóntes between us, and sometimes I felt it was growing larger and thicker year by year. But I put the thought aside as foolishness and let the lovemaking take me.
    • • •
    Two days later, Kutulu and his staff arrived. They were surrounded by the soldiery of the Tenth Hussars, hard-bitten brawn from the frontiers. It was curious, and amusing, to see how carefully they guarded their charges.
    Kutulu was as I’d last seen him: a small man, whose hair was now no more than a fringe around his polished pate, even though he was younger than I. But he still had the penetrating eyes of a police warden who