Songweaver's Awakening

Chapter 11 - Lladwen

The fires from the bronze lamps in the corners of the room lit Helen’s hair with a coppery glint.  Lladwen ran his hand over the unbound waves, the stray and frizzed bits tickling his palm as it passed over them.  It was an unusual shade, her hair, vibrant and free from dye, but marked with errant strands of silver.  The closest any true-blooded Talian could claim to such a hue was a pale reddish blond, a dilute and faded version of rich color.

Helen shifted in his arms, her bare breast pressing into his side.  “Hmmm,” she murmured.  The hand she had on his chest contracted slowly into a fist, the nails scratching lightly against his skin.  A shiver run down Lladwen’s spine, his body responding to her touch.

“Hmmm,” she said again.  She turned her head toward him and opened one eye.  The other eye soon followed.  She unclenched her hand, drawing her fingernails out across his chest until the warm flat of her palm lay on his skin.  Her eyes fixed on his, she began to run her hand down the firm muscles of his chest and over his stomach, moving in a slow and deliberate path.  She smiled when Lladwen’s arm darted out and caught her wrist just as her fingers began to slip beneath the blue silk covers of the bed.

“What?” she purred.  “Done already?”

Lladwen frowned and cast her hand away from him.  She'd used him enough this night.  He liked her better when she was sleeping, when she didn't say a word.  Helen had always had a barbed tongue, and she did not spare him from it, despite their long association.  He turned away from her onto his side and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, Helen’s mocking laughter following him.  With one arm, he dug through the embroidered pillows that had fallen onto the floor, found his trousers, rose, and began to pull them on.

Helen propped herself onto an elbow to watch, the blue bed sheets falling to her waist and revealing a wealth of pale, smooth skin, unmarked by age.  There was no modesty about her.  Despite the cold night air drifting in through one unshuttered window, she did not make any move to pull the covers up about her nakedness.  She ran her eyes over Lladwen appreciatively, blinking with the lazy contentment of a cat in the sunlight.

“I should tell my minstrel to play for you.  Ask him to play that Fair Folk song, but tell him to take it slow, and see what happens.”  She stretched her arms out in front of her and let her head sink into her pillow.  “Its effect on me was interesting, as you’ll recall.  He has the most unique voice.”

Lladwen fastened the laces of his pants.  “It doesn’t bother you then?”

“What bother me?”

Lladwen grunted and dropped into a crouch.  He felt around on the thick, plush rug beneath the bed, grasping about for his tunic.  The light from the bronze lamps was dim and did not assist him much in his search.  “That your friend, that Fair Folk Queen, chose an outskirter and a minstrel to be her consort.  She was at the masque.  She could have had her pick of any of the jheranun there.  You would think,” his hand closed around the soft cloth of his tunic, “that if she was only one of two Fair Folk Queens left, she would choose her consort carefully.  With one of the jheranun under her wing, she could exert some influence in the city.  But an outskirter?  A musician?”  Lladwen rose to his feet and pulled the tunic on over his head.  “What benefit does that gain her?”

Helen shrugged her shoulders.  “The Fair Folk are fickle creatures.  Probably one of the reasons they’re dying off.  I’m in no mood to worry about it just now.  I’ll enjoy my minstrel as I can.”

Lladwen found his belt on the table at the bedside, the curved blade of his dagger strapped to the leather.  For most of his life, he had been trained with a straight-edged blade, but he was beginning to acquire a taste for the curved weapons of the Hajinni.  Or perhaps it was just that he’d lived here for so long that their tastes were beginning to sink into his body, much as the spices they used sank into the oils of his skin.  The whole city reeked of exotic spices, but he no longer noticed or cared.  He pulled the belt about his waist and started to buckle it at the front.