"So, you stormed out," Taffiz summed things up for me, hooding his eyes. The dancing flames of the fireplace imparted a healthier color onto his cheeks. With his eyes hiding in the black pits of shadow—giving credence to his earlier confession of riding non-stop after me—he looked... I wouldn't go so far as calling him attractive. Different from what I was used to.

"Out of Ashanti for a while?" I asked, since the characteristic violet glow was gone.

"What? Oh, that..."

"Yes?"

"I hoped you'd want to test the levels of my endurance once I had confessed my manly feats. You'd open your eyes, inky from sleep, stretch languidly and exclaim,Taffiz, sweetheart!Then throw me on the bed and ravish me till I'm in the Knowable World, River Vash and Nirvana all at the same time."

His words sounded peculiarly alluring, despite their mocking undertone. "I'm not in the mood for levity. If you don't want to tell the truth—" I murmured.

"Ah, but it is the truth. Every moment in your bed would have been worth remembering, so I cleared my mind as best as I could."

If solitude and despair could draw me to him, tonight came close. A pleasant weight churned below my navel as my imagination followed along and beyond his words.

"Oh, stop scowling." The irritable remark broke the spell he had conjured. "A blind cricket by the roadside could guess you were riding for Palmyr. I didn't need to waste my stash on tracking you. So, I abandoned my every other commitment to catch up before you did anything passionately and monumentally stupid."

"It must rankle that you've arrived one day too late." I sighed. "A single day... so sad."

"I beg you to differ." Taffiz pulled a roll of paper from a fold of his cape and shook it open. That's why he didn't notice the effect he had on me earlier. He was stewing like a bone in broth, waiting to unveil his treasure.

It was a letter. No, the letter. I recognized the wildly flying words and a slash of a signature. My mind went back to when I'd scrawled my name on it, my pen splattering ink, digging into paper so hard, I tore through it at the end of the long strike finishing the 'r' in Ismar. I had slapped it on the Captain-Commander's desk, even though my soul yearned for her to rip it to shreds and toss it into my face. I prayed for her to yell at me to fix the mess I'd made instead of throwing a tantrum.

This was that letter. And it made no sense for Taffiz to hold it.

"How did you convince Captain-Commander Nashila to give you my resignation letter?" I asked dumbfounded.

"She didn't."

The irrepressible shoot of hope withered before it could take root in my heart.

"You stole it," I accused. "It makes no difference."

"The Comissara Nashila is dead," he said and tossed the letter into the fireplace.

The paper turned yellow, then browned. I vaulted out of bed and snatched it just as the flame seized it. It curled up, burning my fingers, blackened. A heartbeat later, what was left of it was a smudge.

I hurtled the ashes at Taffiz. "You've killed her. You've killed the woman who was almost a mother to me!"

The ashes floated harmlessly between us. My hands shook, reaching for his throat.

He leaned as far back from me as the armchair would allow. I nearly ended up in his lap in my attempt to strangle him.

"I didn't kill Nashila. She was over seventy and had a heavy blow dealt to her pride, losing her most prized contract. Followed by a highly emotional conversation with a Commander who doesn't accept rebukes demurely—"

My jaw slacked. "Are you saying I killed her?"

"By Indara's forked tongue! She died of an apoplectic fit, Ishmara. I found her body on the floor. The doors and windows were locked and the letter lay next to her. I rode through the rest of the night to your villa, and that's after two weeks of sleeping in the saddle. Rubbing my ass raw, I must add." He cringed and rubbed the purported saddle-sores. "So, go easy on the ravishing, if that's what you're planning?"

I was naked. Nashila was dead, my career was over and I jumped out of my bed naked in front of Taffiz. Almost climbed on top of him naked. No wonder he was getting wrong ideas. A few shuddering breaths later, I staggered across the room to find a house robe. Pulling the belt tighter than necessary, I presented my face to the cool rays of the rising sun streaming through the window.

The Captain-Commander's soul was floating away from Palmyr in the dawn wind, seeking the shores of the River Vash. The depictions of the departing souls as dandelion seeds or sparrows didn't fit the tough old soldier. I imagined her soul was a red cloud on the horizon, shaped like a blade.

Taffiz came to stand next to me, his hands hovering over my shoulders, then drawing back, without touching. "I'm sorry to be the bearer of the grim news. I'm even more sorry to break it to you should save the mourning for later. Now it is time to act."

The breeze picked a few strands of my hair and tossed them around. I shoved them back. "If Her Maxima is dead, all is lost. My only hope was that she'd reconsider and recall me."

Taffiz caught the fly-away strands between his fingers and brought them to his cheek. I could see it out of the corner of my eye, but he must have thought I was still watching the sunrise. If he wasn't an assassin, I might have leaned against him.

"I prepared a slew of arguments for Nashila," he said. Maybe he thought talking business was better for my soul than any condolences. "That no nation invests in an army equaling Burandok's and lets the soldiers dig irrigation canals. This is a conquest army, the way for Burandok and her sisters to carve out domains of their own while the Divine Empress still lives. And when there is conquest, the mercenaries are in demand... once she examined the politics dispassionately, she would have recalled you. She might have even burned the letter the way I did by now. But she is dead, so you must—"

No, it wasn't better for my soul at all. "I'll write another letter of resignation and you'll carry it back to Palmyr."

His fingers found my shoulders to massage them. "This is not you talking."

"The Captain-Commander's body will be found soon, for she always rises with dawn. A Council of Commanders will gather to elect the new Captain. I can go, but they'll strip me of rank. I lost the Empire, and I didn't make many friends. It's better if I retire in absentia."

"Fight!" Taffiz urged into my ear. "Fight back up through the ranks if you have to. You bought this villa for Parneres and Basilissa, not to decay in the countryside, raising sheep."

I gave the hills a longing look.

I bought this villa for Basilissa's sake five years ago. Cool air, peaceful setting, medicinal springs. The hill country was healthful, but it didn't cure her consumption, her weak heart, her impossible stomach. All it did was deepen Parneres' melancholy, despite what the High Scribes, and the priestesses and the medics advised. They made it sound like the countryside was Nirvana away from the bustle of the cities. It didn't feel like that to me. Taffiz was right. We were decaying in this beautiful place. It was a beautiful dead end.

On the other hand, I didn't know what I could fight for, if I left my hard-earned corner of the Palmyran Queendom.

Taffiz's kiss brushed my ear, his lips just nudging hair out of the way. I turned to upbraid him for his boldness. The rebuke died on my lips. Lines left by fatigue in his face caught the road dust, so a dark web shot out of the corners of his eyes, aging him ten years. He must have been plucking his hairline to avoid the pronounced widow's peak, so the thinning hair opened much of his forehead. Perhaps he disguised himself as a comic crone pretending to be young and overdoing the latest hair fashions. The indeterminate rust-and-gray color of his cloudy eyes made me think of the violet glow of Ashanti with fondness.

Despite being exhausted, Taffiz couldn't mask being besotted with me. I read fondness in his slacking features. And, somehow, somehow it flattered me that a man who flaunted the customs of the Knowable World, couldn't dodge something so simple as a man's attraction. He should have been immune... he wasn't.

So, instead of angry words, I sighed. "There is a water jug and a basin behind this screen. Wash up and get some sleep. I need to think."

"Thank you."

He tried to make a point over the splashing of water and rustling of clothes, something about the troops being paid. I tuned him out, watching the slim clouds turn white over the rolling green slopes. The white balls fluffier than clouds were sheep. They dotted the hills too steep for the lengthy lines of the vineyards. Did I want to stay here and learn about the sheep and the vineyards?

"Ishmara, you're not thinking... or at least not thinking about politics," Taffiz nagged. "Your expression is too dreamy for blood, steel and backstabbing."

I startled from the mesmerizing view.

Dressed down to the loose trousers, his skin still bedewed with water, Taffiz was drying the ends of his mousy hair. They hang in strings to his shoulders. On the upside, lifting his arms attracted attention to his tightly wound midriff. It was the prettiest thing about him. I followed it upward to the Scorpia brand, the reminder of how dangerous he was.

Leaving the cape and shirt draped over the armchair, Taffiz climbed into my bed without playing coy, confirming that I was good with it or some other mannish nonsense.

Once snuggled in, he smoothed out the blanket next to him. "Come here?"

I threw my arms up in the air. "Taffiz! Your ravish-me jokes are growing stale."

"Have no fear, there is nothing to ravish right away. I thought I could hold you. The past days were not the kindest, so what comfort I can give is yours."

"Stop making me sound like a hellion."

He shook his head slowly. "No, this wasn't it. I love you. Do you know that?"

I did. But he interpreted my silence differently and sat up in the blankets, rubbing his face. "Ishmara, give me a challenge. Ask your heart's deepest desire. Ask anything you can think of! I would do it to prove to you that my words aren't just courtship."

"I'll think about it too," I promised. "But this morning I'm going to saddle Breva and ride her through the hills. It's all the comfort I need."

"Have fun." He closed his eyes, and in a few heartbeats he didn't have to pretend to be sleeping. He was asleep.

As I tucked him in, I pondered a painful question. Taffiz loved me, yes. Did he love me deeply enough to have killed the Captain-Commander, either on accident or on purpose? Say, if the arguments he prepared didn't sway her? Nashila was over seventy, but as far as I knew, she had a heart of an ox.