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.‘If Leosthenes the Athenian comes to my camp, I will always receive him, Despoina.And I will present myself for examination immediately afterwards.’‘Strange man,’ she said.She looked at him for some time, eating grapes.‘Am I a temptation?’‘Yes,’ Kineas said.She nodded, her face serious.‘Yet you do not avoid me.’Kineas rubbed his chin and chewed a grape.‘I concede your point.’She leaned forward, interested.‘Men do not usually allow women victories in conversation.You concede my point.But? There is a but?’‘You are observant, my lady.But you are my employer, and to avoid you would create misunderstanding.You are a queen, and any temptation you offer will come with enough barbs to hook a Euxine salmon.’She raised her chin and allowed a slight smile to indicate that his point had merit.‘I grew to womanhood at a Persian court.Both of my uncles were poisoned.My mother was murdered with a sword.My father now seeks to kill me.Do you understand?’Kineas nodded, hands calming gradually.‘You keep your slaves nude to know if they carry weapons.’She pulled her legs under her and leaned towards him.‘I disarm my enemies in any way I can,’ she said.‘I have few enough weapons.If I were a man, I would be strong.I am a woman.What would you have me do?’Kineas shook his head.‘I’m a canny fish.I can see the hook and the bait and even the boat.’She curled a lip.‘What a very safe answer.’ She motioned past him, and a man with a lyre sat on a stool and began to sing.He was excellent and his purity commanded silence.Kineas turned his head to find that the singer was fully clothed - not a slave.‘Persian?’ he asked after the first performance.‘Lycian,’ she answered.‘Or Carian.’Kineas stroked his chin.‘The words are strange, but the cadence is like Homer.’Her body faced the singer, but she turned her head to him, stretching her neck and back.Her smile was as beautiful as dawn in the mountains, and as fresh.‘Are all Athenians as well educated as you are?’ she asked.‘Yes,’ he said.He put a hand over his goblet so that the wine slave backed off.‘Where did you learn Greek?’ He looked away, towards the singer.Therapon glared at him steadily.His hate made an emotional counterpoint to Banugul’s magnetism, and Kineas steadied himself on it.‘Darius’s chief eunuch was a Greek.And my sister and I were prisoners of Alexander for two years.’ She smiled as if they were conspirators.‘While you still served him.’Kineas felt like a fool for missing the obvious connection that they had shared the whole campaign.‘Of course - you were taken with the women after Issus?’Banugul rolled over, and Kineas was conscious of her body, even across a gap of several feet.‘I remember them cheering your name when you won the prize,’ she said.‘We were waiting with the dowager, wondering if you barbarians would rape us.’ She managed to make the experience sound light-hearted.‘But you were all too busy slapping each other’s backs to mind us much.It was days before Alexander looked at us.’Kineas had been unconscious for days after Issus, but he somehow doubted that she had heard his name being cheered.He frowned at the attempts at flattery.‘It is odd, that we were in the same camp for so long.’‘Hmm,’ she said, conscious that she had stepped wrong, and waved for the singer to perform.‘Not so odd,’ she said.‘If the gods willed it so.’Warm for the first time in days, Kineas rode down the hill to the neat Greek military camp.A pair of sentries stood huddled in every tower and there were twenty men in the guardhouse by the gate.He inspected every one, chatting with the sentries, listening to the boredom of the Sauromatae and the complaints of the Greeks, until he was satisfied that they were alert.He was cold again, cold from a wind that seemed to blow warmth out of the top of his head.He swore that he would abandon Hellenism and get a Sakje cap before he wrapped himself in furs and blankets and shivered.He lay for a while, trying to imagine Srayanka beside him.He had a hard time seeing her face, and it tended to slide into a narrower face with blonde hair that made him shiver.‘I need to leave here,’ he said aloud.The transition from anxious wakefulness to sleep was so sudden that he.was taken unawares by the presence of the tree and the pair of young eagles screaming above him.They called and swung out over the endless combat of the dead, pecking at dead foes.Ajax and Graccus and Nicomedes seemed more outnumbered than ever, but he was not to be deterred.He had to find Srayanka.He reached out a hand for the branch above, swung to gather momentum and reached out a leg to hook and roll.In a moment, he was surrounded by brambles and bracken, thorny stuff that tore at his skin and pricked at his hands, his forearms, his eyes.He was climbing a thicket, or crawling through it, blind
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Tematy
IndexChristine Amsden [Cassie Scot Cassie Scot ParaNormal Detecti
Christie Craig [Divorced, Des Divorced, Desperate
Moore Christopher Ssij, mała, ssij (II)
Stasheff, Christopher Wizard in Rhyme 6 Haunted Wizard
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seri Mroczny Demon
Cidney Swanson [Saving Mars Saving Mars (epub)
Stasheff, Christopher Rogue Wizard 04 A Wizard in Peace
Feehan Christine Mroczna Seria 01 Mroczny Ksišże
Stasheff, Christopher Warlock 01 The Warlock in Spite of Himself
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seria 13 Mroczne Przeznaczenie