5. Clash of Stone and Steel #2
The guard Cyra had been sparring with earlier had executed a skillful dodge of Cyra’s attack, and he’d brought his sword around before Cyra could recover from her miss.
Even Talyn had cringed when Cyra cried out from the hit and fell to the ground, but the guard had been at her side instantly, on his knees apologizing.
Cyra had shaken him off, picked herself up, and readied to face him again.
Cyra winced now as she sat back against the tub. “I forgot about that one,” she said. “I can never reach the ones on my back. I’ll have to call-”
She cut herself off, and Talyn swallowed. Cyra had been about to say she needed to call Aramis, and guilt gripped Talyn all over again.
Gods above, she wasn’t used to feeling guilty.
“I’ll have to call a healer to take care of it,” Cyra finished.
“Is your training going well?” Talyn asked, hoping to steer the conversation toward Samhail, or at least away from Cyra’s father. She put some jasmine-scented soap on a sponge and began to wash the lady.
“Well enough, I suppose,” Cyra said. “My magic is coming along, but as far as my combat training, I’m not exactly warrior material. I need a lot more muscle and at least another six inches of height.”
Talyn couldn’t stop her next words.
“Nonsense,” she said. “It may help to be big and strong like that man …Samhail, is it? But speed, agility, and quick thinking can be equalizers in a fight.”
Cyra turned to look at her curiously, and Talyn shrugged.
“I’ve seen a lot of fights,” she said.
It wasn’t a lie. She’d also been in a lot of fights, but Cyra didn’t need to know that. She urged the lady to sit forward so she could wash her back gently, taking care around the bruise.
“Samhail has speed, agility, and quick thinking as well,” Cyra said.
Talyn had seen enough to know that was true.
“If you’re trying to become like him, it’s not going to happen,” Talyn said as she filled a pitcher with water and poured it over Cyra’s back.
“Don’t compare yourself to a warrior like that.
Find your own strengths and hone those. Then pay attention so you can find your opponents’ weaknesses and exploit them.
As great a warrior as Samhail is, he must have some weaknesses, right? ”
Cyra shook her head. “If he does, I have yet to see them.”
It had been worth a try.
“You seem to know a lot about fighting,” Cyra observed.
Talyn tensed. “I had to fend for myself early on,” she said after a pause. “Learning to fight was a necessary evil.”
That was true as well, although her more lethal skills had been developed out of desire rather than need.
“Do you have any family?” Cyra asked.
Fuck. Somehow she’d let Cyra lead her right into a personal conversation. She needed to get out of it quickly before she had to either lie or reveal something she didn’t want to reveal.
“I never knew my father,” Talyn said as she massaged almond-scented soap into Cyra’s long, dark hair. “My mother still lives in Rowe as far as I know, but I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“My parents were taken by the Great Flu,” Cyra said, and Talyn frowned before she realized the lady was talking about the parents she’d grown up with in Fernweh.
“You don’t have any siblings?” Cyra asked, and Talyn’s hands stilled.
She didn’t want to talk about this with Cyra. She considered lying, but Cyra had turned to look at her by then.
“Not anymore,” Talyn said softly as she worked on Cyra’s hair. It occurred to her a second later that simply saying ‘no’ would have sufficed.
“Can I ask what happened?” Cyra ventured.
“No.” See? Easy enough to say.
The word was sharper than she’d intended, though, and Cyra flinched, obviously taken aback at Talyn’s tone.
Talyn didn’t care. This wasn’t information the lady needed to know, and she had a right to keep it to herself.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry,” Cyra said, recovering.
“No, I’m sorry, my lady,” Talyn said quickly. “Please forgive me for snapping at you.”
“It’s fine,” Cyra said. “I should know better.”
“Close your eyes, my lady,” Talyn said as she poured a pitcher of water over Cyra’s head to rinse away the soap in her hair.
She had the sudden impulse to push Cyra’s head under the water and hold her there as her assassin’s instincts acted up, but she recalled Cyra could breathe underwater.
She’d gone down to a shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean with the merman to retrieve the collar and rings Sandrian had wanted not too long ago.
Talyn shuddered to think of the prodigious power Cyra must have to accomplish that journey as a full human. There were also rumors among the servants that the lady had killed a sea monster of some kind.
“I just know so little about you,” Cyra went on, and Talyn sighed inwardly. For one wonderful moment she’d thought Cyra might be done questioning her.
“There’s not much to tell, my lady,” Talyn said.
She moved to the side of the tub and re-soaped the sponge to wash Cyra’s front.
Cyra’s nipple peaked as she ran over it, and Talyn paused a moment, then ran over the second breast. That nipple stiffened as well, and it suddenly occurred to Talyn how she might be able to cut this visit short.
There was at least one person the lady would prefer to spend her time with rather than Talyn.
“Does Lord Bressen please you, my lady?” Talyn asked.
Cyra lifted her head off the rim of the tub. “What? Why do you ask?”
Talyn dipped the sponge lower under the pretense of washing Cyra’s stomach, but her hand dipped close to the apex of the lady’s thighs, and Cyra relaxed back against the tub again as her legs fell open a little more.
Cyra’s baths were usually routine affairs, Talyn’s touch purely functional, but today the lady seemed a bit more…stimulated than normal, and Talyn was sure she could use this to her advantage.
“I…I don’t mean to overstep,” Talyn said. “It’s just that I don’t have any female friends to talk about this with, and I hoped you might be willing to share with me.”
It was exactly the right thing to say. Cyra opened her eyes, and her face lit up with a smile.
“Raina and I used to talk about everything,” Cyra said. “I’m happy to talk to you as well if you need advice or-”
“I’m really more curious about you and Lord Bressen,” Talyn cut in before the lady could start asking questions. “You seem very happy together, and I was just wondering what he does that pleases you?”
If she could get the woman thinking and talking about Lord Bressen, perhaps Cyra would dismiss Talyn and call him instead.
Cyra smiled. “Bressen does a lot of things that please me.”
Talyn moved the sponge over Cyra’s breasts again, increasing the pressure, and Cyra cocked her head.
“Leeda?”
Talyn froze. She’d been trained in seduction and had hoped to subtly arouse Cyra, but maybe she was more out of practice than she thought.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” Talyn said. “I didn’t mean to be so forward. I’m just trying to understand. I was confused when I found you and the lord that day…”
Cyra nodded absently as if remembering the day Talyn had burst in on her when Bressen’s head was between her legs.
“It seemed like you were in pain,” Talyn prompted.
Cyra gave a soft laugh. “I was for a while,” she said. “Bressen kept bringing me to the brink of my release then stopping. I thought I was going to go mad. He’d finally just let me climax when you arrived.”
Talyn scowled. The practice was known as edging in the pleasure houses, and some courtesans specialized in it for those patrons who liked to prolong their pleasure by being brought to the ‘edge’ of their release without going over.
Talyn herself didn’t see the appeal, but then, delayed gratification wasn’t exactly in her nature.
“And you enjoyed that?” Talyn asked.
Cyra huffed another laugh. “No, not really. He was trying to make a point, and all I wanted to do was climax.”
Talyn ran the sponge down one of Cyra’s arms. “Have you thought about getting your revenge on him?”
“Revenge?” Cyra asked, a little alarmed. “How would I do that?”
“Nothing bad,” Talyn assured her quickly. “Maybe just give him a taste of his own medicine. Let him feel what it’s like to be frustrated and unable to do anything about it.”
Cyra was quiet a moment. “I’m listening,” she said finally.
“Lord Bressen is usually in meetings around now, isn’t he?”
“I think he’s meeting with Axenus and Samhail,” Cyra said.
“And you can make him feel what you’re feeling, can you not?”
Talyn couldn’t see Cyra’s face from where she crouched behind her, but she sensed the lady’s brow rise.
“I can,” Cyra said slowly.
“Then make him feel what he can’t have right now.”
“I…I’m not sure I should do that,” Cyra said, but Talyn caught the tone in her voice, the tone of one willing to be talked into something.
“They discuss you in those meetings, don’t they?” Talyn asked, and Cyra nodded.
“Maybe it’s time you reminded your lord you’re right here.”
Cyra paused, then smiled. “You’re right. I should remind Bressen it’s not polite to have conversations about me when I’m not there.”
“I could help you if you want,” Talyn offered.
Cyra was quiet for another long moment, and Talyn could almost hear the arguments running through the woman’s head, but she was optimistic.
Her offer bound them together as conspirators, and Talyn knew from experience this made people more likely to do things they wouldn’t normally do.
They felt less culpable when they could share the blame with someone else, and Talyn was the demon on the lady’s shoulder, pushing her toward temptation.
“My mother was a courtesan,” Talyn said. “I learned a little about pleasure from her. About what drives a man wild. I don’t want to press you into anything. I only offer what service you might find helpful.”
She left out that some of her own training had been hands-on – literally – in the same pleasure house where her mother worked.
That seemed like another lifetime ago.
“What…do I need to do?” Cyra asked softly.