Daughter of Smoke and Bone(80)
“I’m not—” Madrigal started to protest, but Chiro wasn’t hearing it.
“Get up.” She kicked Madrigal’s hooves. “Up up up. I’ve come to take you to the baths.”
“Baths? Are you trying to tell me something?” Madrigal sniffed herself. “I’m almost sure I don’t smell.”
“Maybe not, but between shining cleanliness and not smelling, there is a vast gray area.”
Like Madrigal, Chiro had bat wings; unlike her, she was of creature aspect, with the head of a jackal. They were not blood sisters. When Madrigal was orphaned by the slave raid that claimed her tribe, the survivors had come to Loramendi—a handful of elders with the few babes they’d managed to hide in the caves, and Madrigal. She was seven, and had not been taken only because she wasn’t there. She’d been up the peak gathering the shed skins of air elementals from their abandoned nests, and had returned to ruin, corpses, loss. Her parents were among the taken, not the dead, and for a long time she had dreamed she would find them and set them free, but the Empire was vast, and swallowed its slaves whole, and it got harder to hold on to that dream as she grew up.
In Loramendi, Chiro’s family, of the desert Sab race, had been chosen to foster her chiefly because, being winged, they could keep up with her. She and Chiro had grown up side by side, as good as sisters in all but blood.
Chiro’s haunches were cat, caracal to be precise, and when she melted to a crouch beside Madrigal, her pose was sphinxlike. “For the ball,” she said, “I would hope that you would aspire to shining cleanliness.”
Madrigal sighed. “The ball.”
“You did not forget,” said Chiro. “Don’t pretend you did.”
She was right, of course. Madrigal had not forgotten. How could she?
“Up.” Chiro kicked her feet again. “Up up up.”
“Stop it,” muttered Madrigal, staying where she was and halfheartedly kicking back.
Chiro said, “Tell me you’ve at least got a dress and a mask.”
“When would I have gotten a dress and a mask? I’ve only been back from Ezeret for—”
“For a week, which is plenty of time. Honestly, Mad, it’s not like this is just another ball.”
Exactly, Madrigal thought. If it were, she wouldn’t be hiding on the roof, trying to block out the thing that loomed over her, that sent her heartbeat skittering like scorpion-mice whenever she thought of it. She would be getting ready, excited for the biggest festival of the year: the Warlord’s birthday.
“Thiago will be looking at you,” Chiro said, as if it could possibly have slipped her mind.
“Leering, you mean.” Leering, peering, licking his teeth, and waiting for a gesture.
“As you deserve to be leered at. Come on, it’s Thiago. Don’t tell me it doesn’t excite you.”
Did it? The general Thiago—“the White Wolf”—was a force of nature, brilliant and deadly, bane of angels and architect of impossible victories. He was also beautiful, and Madrigal’s flesh was ever unquiet around him, though she couldn’t exactly tell if it was arousal or fear. He had let it be known he was ready to marry again, and who it was he favored: her. His attention made her feel warm and skittish, pliant and inconsequential and at the same time rebellious, as if his overwhelming presence was something that needed to be worked against, lest she lose herself in the grand, consuming shadow of him.
It was left to her to encourage his suit or not. It wasn’t romantic, but she couldn’t say that it wasn’t exhilarating.
Thiago was powerful and as perfectly muscled as a statue, of high-human aspect, with legs that changed at the knees not to antelope legs as her own did, but to the huge padded paws of a wolf, covered in silken white fur. His hair was silken white too, though his face was young, and Madrigal had once glimpsed his chest, through a gap in the curtain of his campaign tent, and knew it, also, was furred white.
She’d been striding past as a steward rushed out, and she’d seen the general being suited in his armor. Flanked by attendants, his arms outstretched in the moment before his leather chestplate was fitted into place, his torso was a stunning V of masculine power, narrowing to slim hips, breeches clinging low beneath the ridges of perfect abdominal muscles. It was only a glimpse, but the image of him half-clad had stayed in Madrigal’s mind ever since. A whisper of a thrill came over her at the thought of him.
“Well, maybe a little excited,” she admitted, and Chiro giggled. The girlish sound struck a false note, and Madrigal thought with a pang that her sister was jealous. It made her more sensible of the honor of being Thiago’s choice. He could have anyone he wanted, and he wanted her.
But did she want him? If she did, truly, wouldn’t it be easy? Wouldn’t she be at the baths already, getting perfumed and oiled and daydreaming of his touch? A small shudder went through her. She told herself it was nerves.
“What do you think he would do if… if I rejected him?” she ventured.
Chiro was scandalized. “Reject him? You must be feverish.” She touched Madrigal’s brow. “Have you eaten today? Are you drunk?”
“Oh, stop,” said Madrigal, pushing Chiro’s hand away. “It’s just… I mean, can you picture, you know… being with him?” When Madrigal pictured it, she imagined Thiago heavy and breathing and… biting; it made her want to back into a corner. But then, she didn’t have much to go on by way of experience; maybe she was simply nervous, and altogether wrong about him.