On the last evening of her fourth month as an imperial bride, Tazri Solun, thirty-four, Duchess of Merevale, stopped three paving stones short of the place where she was required to turn.
The forbidden Gilded Garden of Karevic Palace had been built for obedience disguised as pleasure. Pear trees trained against warm brick made identical fans, and finches sang in gilt cages hung at even intervals along the wall. Sunset reached the path through pierced screens, cut into lozenges of approved gold.
Her veil approved less of her. It was pearl gauze, nearly transparent, fixed at one shoulder and gathered by a jeweled clasp at her left hip. The court called it bridal modesty. Four months of guards had watched the shape of her breasts through it while two witnesses recorded that no unauthorized person had approached.
At the far gate, Jaseth Varo waited with his hands behind his back. He was thirty-nine, born in Merevale and sworn as the treaty's neutral notary. The order forbidding the two of them to touch had not forbidden him to attend the sunset witness walk. Belisar liked him there, visible and useless, a lesson in the duchy's limits.
Tazri glanced at the shadow of the western cypress. Jaseth moved one finger against the cuff of his dark coat: the little deviation they had allowed themselves since the ninth sunset. One meant the witness register had been signed correctly. Two meant the guards had changed. An open hand meant nothing was safe.
Tonight he showed her an open hand.
“Turn, Your Grace,” said the nearer guard.
Behind Tazri, Mireth coughed. At fifty-one, her chief attendant had perfected a cough that could mean weak lungs, contempt for men with spears, or urgent news. This one meant the last.
Tazri turned as required. The jeweled clasp tapped her thigh. She walked back beneath the pear branches, neither faster nor slower, until Mireth came close enough to arrange a fold that did not need arranging.
“The bridal household transfers to the north rooms at dawn,” Mireth said under her breath. “No garden. No outgoing paper. His safe-conduct ends at moonset, and they have moved the guard round forward.”
“By how much?”
“I don't know yet.” Mireth pinched the gauze straight.
Tazri kept walking. At dawn, Emperor Belisar would call the transfer a domestic courtesy. At fifty-eight, he had learned to perform theft with the weary air of a judge correcting a filing error.
The marriage articles gave Tazri a joint seat and dower protection after consummation. Belisar had never entered her bed. Until he did, he claimed, Merevale's duchess remained a foreign dependent whose letters, revenues, and household could be managed for her safety. He had married its port and left its ruler untouched.
Tomorrow his treasury would collect Merevale's winter levy.
Jaseth stood beyond the last fan of pear leaves, seventeen paces off.
Tazri turned again, walked back up the path, and went past the turning stone.
The nearer guard lowered his spear across the path. “Your Grace.”
“The buckle has caught.” Tazri put both hands to the jeweled clasp at her hip. She did not look at Mireth. “I require more light.”
“The warming room has lamps,” Mireth said promptly. “And a mirror. Unless His Majesty's concern for modesty now requires Her Grace to undress in the path.”
The guard's eyes went to the gauze, then away too late. He lifted the spear and stayed where he was, at the turning stone, studying the pear branches.
Tazri crossed the boundary. Jaseth did not come toward her. When she reached him, the guards were a dozen paces behind her.
She loosened the clasp herself. The gauze slipped from her hip and opened along her left leg, cool air passing where court hands had arranged concealment. Jaseth's gaze dropped for an instant, then returned to her face.
“The palace walls are thick enough to hide one unforgivable night,” she said.
“Which walls?” he asked.
“The warming room.”
He looked past her at the guards and lowered his voice. “For what? Say it plainly. If I guess, I'll guess wrong.”
“There is a petition to the tribunal. It must be sealed tonight, before the transfer, in the presence of a witness whose standing the palace cannot—” She stopped. “I know what touching you would cost.”
He was quiet a long moment. “My safe-conduct runs until moonset.”
His slowness could feel like cruelty when she had made herself plain. Tazri gathered the loose veil at her hip. “Then use it. Ride away clean while he takes my levy.”
Jaseth looked toward the diplomatic court beyond the warming room, where his gate was. “My escort would take you too.”
“If I wanted to run, I would have worn shoes for it.” She lifted the gauze enough to show the pearl slippers the court selected for garden gravel. Anger steadied her better than dignity. “I want the tribunal petition carried. I want the witness register beyond his gate. I want one thing tonight that he did not arrange.”
“Petition first,” Jaseth said.
“Yes.”
“No touch.”
“No touch.”
He stepped aside and let her enter the warming room before him.
It was a small brick chamber with a tiled stove, a couch too short for sleep, and three doors. The garden door had an inner bolt either person could lift. The servants' door opened only from the corridor. Jaseth's safe-conduct included the key to the diplomatic court.
Mireth came in on their heels. The household rule let the notary stand in a room where the bride's witness stood, and the guard at the turning stone did not come to argue it. She set a lamp on the writing table and shut the garden door without bolting it.
“The nearer one told his partner the round comes at second bell,” she said. “By my count that's thirty-six minutes. Less if the captain is eager.”
From beneath the linen covering the couch, she pulled Tazri's petition, the witness register that should have been on its stand in the bridal rooms, sealing wax, a flint, and the narrow cedar case that held the ducal seal. Then she produced a small packet tied in red thread and put it beside the papers.
Jaseth looked at the packet.
“Lambskin,” Mireth said. “Two. If it comes to him inside you, use one. The papers first.”
Tazri sat at the table. “Witness us.”
They worked.
The petition named two breaches: Belisar's order to collect the levy without Tazri's assent, and his order severing her from Merevale's council. Either allowed a six-month suspension while a neutral tribunal heard the dispute. The register answered his excuse for both: four months of entries, signed nightly by two witnesses, showing that no one had approached her and that her husband had never once come to the bridal rooms.
Jaseth's presence had given the filing the treaty's acknowledgment. If he touched Tazri, his accreditation ended. If he carried the sealed petition, the palace would call him partisan whether he touched her or not.
Tazri pressed her seal into green wax. Mireth signed the witness margin. Jaseth checked the pages once, then again from the last line backward.
“The west gate is still open,” he said. “My escort has two horses. You could be outside the palace before the petition reaches the inner court.”
“And Belisar would say the levy required protection because Merevale's duchess abandoned her seat.”
“He might say it. You would be free to answer.”
“From whose guest room? Under whose guard?” She slid the petition toward him. “No. I invoke the tribunal here. I remain available to it. He confines me, and every locked door proves the second breach.”
Mireth's pen stopped. “He may separate the household.”
Tazri looked at her. “You may refuse to sign.”
“I've signed.” Mireth bent back to the register and did not look up. “I'd like somewhere to sleep afterward. That's all.”
Tazri had no answer to that. “Will you retain the duplicate?”
“Yes.”
Jaseth turned the final page. “If you stay, they may keep you past the hearing.”
“I know.” Her hand was not steady. She laid it flat on the table. “I know. Don't say it again.”
Jaseth placed both palms on the table, not on her paper.
“The register goes too,” he said.
Tazri looked up. “A certified extract is enough.”
“Not if he destroys the source.”
“Taking it ends your neutrality.”
“Yes.”
“You would never be sworn again. Not here, not in any court that—” She put the seal down. “Jaseth.”
He closed the register, tied its cords, and set it atop the petition. “This is my decision. You don't owe me for it.”
Mireth coughed once and held out the sealing wax.
Jaseth sealed the bundle with his notarial stamp and tucked it inside the oilskin document wallet under his coat. He checked the wallet, the diplomatic key, the angle of the declining light through the screen. Then he opened the diplomatic door. Beyond it waited a strip of empty court and, farther off, the gate that still answered to his safe-conduct.
Tazri could let him go. The petition would travel. The levy would pause if she filed her duplicate before Belisar isolated her. Jaseth would lose one accreditation but not his freedom.
“Wait,” she said.
He did, one hand on the open door. Behind Tazri, Mireth turned to the stove and busied herself with its damper.
“I still want you,” she said. “Not the notary. Not because you took the papers. I want you to come back and touch me.”
Jaseth's hand remained on the door. “If I come back, I may still stop.”
“Yes.”
“So may you.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the red-thread packet. “No penetration?”
“Nothing that could make me pregnant. He has never come to my bed. A child would convict us both.” The plainness of it made her cheeks hot, but not her voice. “The sheaths remain there in case we both choose differently. I do not intend to.”
“Hands and mouths?”
“Yes.”
He considered, painfully literal now. “Everywhere?”
“No. Ask when you get there.”
He nearly smiled. He shut the diplomatic door, but he did not lock it.
Mireth gathered the duplicate petition and cedar seal case. “I'll go round to the path and keep the guard company. The garden bolt lifts from inside. The diplomatic door stays unlocked. If you need me, knock the stove pipe twice.” She looked first at Tazri and then at Jaseth. “Twenty-eight minutes.”
She went out through the servants' door. Its latch caught behind her.
For the first time in four months, no witness stood between Tazri and the man at the end of the path.
Jaseth did not approach until she nodded. Even then he stopped within reach and waited.
Tazri put the jeweled clasp on the table. She unwound the gauze from her shoulder, slowly at first because she could feel him watching, then impatiently when it snagged on a hairpin. The veil fell in a pale heap over the petition's empty linen cover.
“I want to take out the pins,” he said.
“You may take out three. The rest are structural.”
His fingers found the first pin without touching her scalp. The second caught a strand and pulled.
“Ow.”
He stopped at once, hand open beside her head. “I'm sorry.”
“You may continue. Less like you're disarming a trap.”
“I have more experience with traps.”
She laughed, and held her head still for the third. It came free. Her hair loosened over one shoulder, still half bound and nothing like the court's smooth arrangement. Jaseth set the pins beside the clasp. Tazri turned her face up.
“May I kiss you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Their first kiss struck the edge of her upper teeth. Jaseth drew back, startled. Tazri caught his collar before he could retreat into apology.
“Again,” she said.
The second was softer and no less uncertain. He tasted of bitter clove and tea, not wine. She had refused hers at supper. His composure yielded by degrees: the pressure of his mouth, his breath changing when she opened to him, his palm hovering near her waist until she placed it on bare skin.
His palm was warm. She leaned into it.
Tazri kissed him harder. His thumb moved once along her side and stopped below her breast. She took his wrist and moved his hand up.
He cupped her through the fine under-robe, then slipped his hand inside its loosened front when she pulled the fabric aside. Her nipple tightened under his palm. She moved his thumb where she wanted it. When he understood, his mouth left hers and found the place below her ear that the pins had made tender.
She pushed his coat from his shoulders. The document wallet knocked against her wrist.
They both stopped.
“Take it off,” she said.
“The coat or the papers?”
“The coat. The papers stay with you.”
He laid it over the table chair, wallet on the inside where they could see it. Tazri opened his shirt. Her fingers, so exact with seals, fumbled two of the plain horn buttons and skipped the third. Dark hair narrowed down his chest. She put her mouth against the hollow beneath his collarbone, and his hand closed in the back of her under-robe.
“Still?” she asked.
“Yes.” The word came slowly. “Very much yes.”
He untied her under-robe, then paused with both hands at its edges. She shrugged it down. Cool air touched her breasts, her belly, the marks at her waist where the jeweled clasp had pressed through gauze. This was not inspection; she could watch want take shape in his face and decide whether to permit it.
“Touch me,” she said.
His hands followed her breasts, her ribs, her hips, careful and then curious, firmer when she leaned into him. She unfastened his trousers and felt the hard length of his cock through his linen. He made a small sound against her shoulder, took her hand, and brought it inside.
He was hot and heavier than the fantasies she had resented having. Her first stroke was clumsy because the angle was wrong. Jaseth shifted her grip lower.
“Like that,” he said. “Not so dry.”
Tazri glanced at the washstand. “Oil?”
“In my left pocket.”
“Of course a notary arrives indexed.”
This time he did smile. “Mireth put it there while I was sealing the second page.”
The oil made her palm glide. His forehead came down against hers, and the sound he made on the next stroke was too rough to belong to the man at the far gate. She wanted more of it. She tightened her fingers.
“Slower,” he said.
She slowed. He kissed her, missed, kissed the corner of her mouth, then sank to his knees.
“May I use my mouth on you?”
The blunt question startled a laugh out of her. “Yes. If I can sit before my knees disgrace the duchy.”
He helped her onto the short couch. Tazri lifted her skirts herself and opened her legs. Jaseth touched the inside of one thigh, waited for her nod, and drew her closer to the edge.
His first lick was too broad and too tentative. Pleasure stirred but wandered.
“Higher,” she said.
He moved.
“No, that is lower.”
Jaseth raised his head. “Your higher or mine?”
“Mine. Give me your hand.”
She guided two of his fingers between the wet folds of her cunt and set his thumb where she needed it. “There. Stay there.”
He stayed. His mouth moved lower while his thumb worked in a steady circle. Tazri's back pressed into the couch arm. The room smelled of lamp oil, warm brick, and the clove on his breath. Each time tension began to break apart, some thought of dawn caught it: levy, lock, accusation, Mireth dismissed. Jaseth felt her lose the rhythm and stopped.
“Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” She took a breath. “I want you to keep doing exactly that and not ask me another question for a little while.”
He nodded against her thigh.
The pleasure rebuilt, no longer delicate. She held his shoulder, then his hair, careful of force until he pressed closer. His thumb maintained the small, maddening circle. Her body tightened around his fingers. Tazri tried to remain quiet and failed into a broken gasp as the release took her, sharp enough to lift her hips from the couch. Jaseth followed the movement instead of restraining it. The second pulse left her shaking.
He withdrew his hand and waited beside her knee, watching her face.
She covered her face for one breath, then looked at him. “Come here.”
Jaseth stood. Tazri pulled him between her knees and kissed the taste of herself from his mouth. She reached for his cock again. He was still hard, slick now with oil and her palm. His hips moved once into her hand, checked themselves, then moved again when she said, “Yes.”
She slid down from the couch and knelt on the carpet. “May I use my mouth?”
His breath stopped. “Yes. But you don't owe—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
He left it unfinished.
Tazri licked the oil from the head of his cock and took him into her mouth. The angle was awkward; she had to shift her knees around the hem of her own skirt. Jaseth braced one hand against the couch rather than on her head. When she took him deeper, he swore softly and asked her to slow. She did. His free hand opened and closed at his side.
Two hard knocks struck the garden door.
They froze.
Outside, a man's voice said, “Witness round.”
Jaseth stepped back at once. Tazri coughed, wiped her mouth with the heel of her hand, and reached for her robe.
Mireth answered from the path before the guard could knock again. “Then witness that Her Grace's clasp has torn the veil. Keep back from that door. She isn't decent.”
“The register requires—”
“The register is being corrected. She can't mend by one lamp. Bring another.”
That would buy perhaps three minutes.
Jaseth pulled his linen and trousers into place. His hands shook on the buttons. Tazri, bare from the waist up, saw him glance at her and then at the couch.
“No,” she said. “Not with the papers waiting.”
He closed his eyes once. “All right.”
His cock remained hard beneath the linen. Her legs were unsteady, her hair half fallen, and one drop of sealing wax had adhered to the jeweled clasp. They dressed.
Tazri tied her under-robe while Jaseth shrugged into his coat. She checked the oilskin wallet with her own hands: petition, full register, notarial seal. He checked the diplomatic key. The unopened red-thread packet went back beneath the couch linen.
“My veil,” she said.
He lifted it from the table and held it out without trying to arrange it on her body. Tazri fastened the shoulder and gathered the torn-open hip herself. The clasp would not close over the wax.
“Leave it loose,” she said.
Jaseth opened the diplomatic door. The empty court beyond had gone blue with evening.
“The west passage is clear,” he said. “You can still come.”
“No. The petition fails if I run.”
He nodded. He did not ask whether the night had been worth his career, whether she loved him, or when they would meet again.
Tazri touched his hand once, brief and forbidden.
“Keep the wallet under your coat,” she said. “The ford road floods after midnight.”
“I know the road.”
“You always say that before checking a map.”
“I'll check the map.”
Then he went through his own door.
Tazri watched until the diplomatic court swallowed him. At the garden door, Mireth was telling the returning guard that his lamp smoked and would ruin the gauze. Tazri gathered the loose veil over her hip and knocked the stove pipe twice.
Mireth entered, took one look at her, and handed her a damp cloth. “Mouth first. There is a looking glass behind you.”
Tazri wiped away the last shine of oil. “He has the register.”
“I saw.”
“Did the gate open?”
“Yes. From the path you can hear the bar. It went up and came down again.” Mireth started on the remaining hairpins, then stopped with one in her fingers and met Tazri's eyes in the glass. “Was it what you wanted?”
“Some of it.”
“Hold still.” Mireth pushed the wax-spotted clasp through a different fold and made the looseness look ceremonial.
They returned to the bridal rooms under guard.
At dawn, Tazri was waiting in the outer chamber with the duplicate petition on her lap. The jeweled clasp lay beside it. She had refused the replacement veil.
Belisar entered without announcement. He was broad-bodied, silver at the temples, and perfectly rested. Four officials followed with boxes for her correspondence. Two guards took position at the inner door.
“You are moving,” he said.
Tazri stood. “I have invoked the twelfth article.”
He looked at the green seal and not at her face. “A wife has no standing against her husband's management of her house.”
“Then I speak as Duchess of Merevale. You took the duchy's levy without my assent.”
Belisar said to the nearest official, “She holds no joint seat.”
“The article predates the marriage,” Tazri said. “The suspension began when my petition crossed your diplomatic gate.”
For the first time, Belisar's gaze moved to the empty space where the witness register should have stood.
“Varo's safe-conduct ended at moonset.”
“He crossed before it ended.”
“His accreditation will not survive partisan service.”
“No.”
Belisar let the agreement hang between them. “And if his service was not only partisan?”
Tazri's pulse struck beneath her jaw.
“Then you may bring evidence before the tribunal,” she said.
Belisar's mouth altered by less than a smile. He turned to the officials. “Seal the bridal correspondence. Transfer her attendants separately. The duchess remains confined pending the hearing.”
Mireth stepped to Tazri's side.
“That one is dismissed from household service,” Belisar added.
Mireth did not cough. “Do I pack before or after you invent the cause?”
One official looked down. Belisar did not answer her.
The levy would remain in Merevale for six months. After that, the tribunal might fail. Tazri would remain married. Jaseth would ride into exile from the imperial courts with a stolen register against his ribs.
The guards opened the north passage.
Tazri picked up the petition. Mireth took the cedar seal case before anyone could stop her. A guard moved toward her, and the official who had looked down said, without raising his eyes, “She may pack for Her Grace. She does not go north.”
The guard stepped back.
“Blue ledger?” Mireth asked.
“Under the bed.”
“Winter stockings?”
“Second chest.”
“The good ink?”
Tazri looked once at the sealed correspondence boxes, then toward the guarded rooms where she would spend the first day of the suspension she had bought.
“Pack it,” she said.
Mireth wrapped the ink in a winter stocking and laid it in the chest she would not be allowed to follow.