Free The Two of Swords: Part 5 by K. J. Parker Page B

that she was as tall as him and almost as strong. She’d distanced herself from him so she could think. “So it’s that bad,” she said.
    “I think so,” he said. “It’s true, they’ve taken a major city. Grabbed hold of all the people and marched them off into the desert. Some clown of a politician went after them but never got anywhere near. If they want Blemya, as far as I can see, all they’ve got to do is take it.”
    She shivered. He was almost hot enough to sweat, but her idea of comfortably warm was somewhere just below the melting point of copper. “So it’s the Belot brothers to the rescue,” she said. “What does
he
think about that?”
    Forza shrugged. “He’s all right with it, presumably. I’d have heard if he wasn’t.”
    “Don’t you think you ought to make sure?”
    Well, he’d been in two minds. “All right,” he said. “I’ll write to him in the morning. Is there any food?”
    She frowned. “Probably,” she said. “I’ve already had dinner. When do you go?”
    “Day after tomorrow.” He hesitated. “Can you come?”
    She made him wait. “Oh, I think so,” she said. “It might be warm there. I’m sick of being cold.”
    He tried not to grin, but failed miserably. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “It’s a pretty godforsaken place, mind.”
    “Worse than Choris Seautou?”
    He thought about that. “No.”
    “Then that’s all right.” She poured tea into two tiny bowls, handed him one. Jasmine and black pepper; delicious. “I’ll pack a few things tonight.”
    And that was that; she was coming with him, and the horrible job facing him suddenly wasn’t so bad after all. He wondered if she’d write and tell her parents, or let them find out from the official bulletins. They’d be furious; they always were. Ladies from fine old Imperial families shouldn’t sleep in tents and shit in ditches. Exactly what they were supposed to do all day nobody had quite figured out yet; be put away in cupboards when not in use seemed to be the prevailing opinion. Raico wasn’t like that; she loathed spinning and weaving, couldn’t do embroidery to save her life, couldn’t sit still and quiet for two minutes together.
Whatever possessed her to go and marry that soldier
— Something her mother would could never hope to understand, that was for sure.
    “You’re doing it again,” she said.
    He laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “I haven’t seen you for – what, three months? I’m allowed.”
    “Husbands shouldn’t ogle their wives,” she said firmly. “It’s not polite.”
    “I’m not ogling, I’m admiring.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Admiring is what you do to old buildings,” she said. “Go on. I’ll be up as soon as I’ve seen to everything.”
    He stood up. “And anyway,” he said, “I can’t ogle worth a damn if you insist on wearing that tent thing. It’s absolutely guaranteed ogle-proof.”
    “Forza, don’t be annoying. Go and get cook to cut you some bread and cheese.”
    Much later, when she was asleep and he was lying on his back with his eyes open – when he was at home sleeping was such a waste – he thought about the day he’d first seen her, coming out of the fire temple; taller than her father and brothers, wearing one of those ridiculous golden mushroom hats that were in fashion back then; extraordinary rather than beautiful, but he’d known there and then what the purpose of his life had to be. Even now, after ten years of marriage, she fascinated him; his secret ambition was to spend a day just observing her, trying to predict what she was going to do or say – a good general is never taken by surprise, he anticipates every possibility, but she ambushed him all the time without even trying. He remembered the first time he managed to scrape an invitation to the family’s town house; a whole afternoon of making small talk with her obnoxious mother and father; then, when the whole enterprise seemed lost, he’d launched his