—
He had waited for her, that first night, until daylight made its bloody birth, until crimson began to fade to pale pearl-blue, until the midnight-things crept away to their dens and the buzzards woke.
And when he returned at last to his rooms he was furious, his muscles tense with hot blood that had nowhere to go. If he had known of the fighting-pits, then, he may have worn out his frustration there. Instead he fell asleep with it, a black poison pooling around his heart, but even then it was better, far better, than thinking of Isra.
After that he didn’t return.
But he found an orphan boy with wings as sooty as a city dove and paid him a penny each night he kept watch. A week later, as he is scraping his horn along the windowsill of his room as though it is a whetstone, there comes a hesitant tap at the door. Behind it is the boy, and Martell knows that she has come.
Still he does not hurry down to the threshold of the desert like a young lover giddy with the promise of a kiss. He takes his time, watched only by the moon as he moves down the city streets. It sits like a fat drop of gold on the line of the horizon and is disappearing behind it when he joins her at last.
The unicorn finds that his rage is no less for having waited. Maybe that was her intent - for him to seethe and pace like a tiger on a chain. But he thinks that she is young, and foolish, and too used to having what she wants. Martell thinks that he will teach her that the sun will not always rise and set on her command.
“I thought, perhaps, you were afraid.” His voice is cold as the desert night, level as the surface of the sleeping oasis. The unicorn stops before her, near enough each of their heat brushes up against the other - but he does not yet touch. In this way only does he ask for permission. In this way only is he a gentleman.
“Instead I find that you are insolent, which is far worse. Is there anything that is not a game to you, Amaunet?” Her name is another kind of warning, for she had never given it to him.
But Martell thinks that he will take more than that from the desert-city and from her. He will take everything that he wants.
@Amaunet
And when he returned at last to his rooms he was furious, his muscles tense with hot blood that had nowhere to go. If he had known of the fighting-pits, then, he may have worn out his frustration there. Instead he fell asleep with it, a black poison pooling around his heart, but even then it was better, far better, than thinking of Isra.
After that he didn’t return.
But he found an orphan boy with wings as sooty as a city dove and paid him a penny each night he kept watch. A week later, as he is scraping his horn along the windowsill of his room as though it is a whetstone, there comes a hesitant tap at the door. Behind it is the boy, and Martell knows that she has come.
Still he does not hurry down to the threshold of the desert like a young lover giddy with the promise of a kiss. He takes his time, watched only by the moon as he moves down the city streets. It sits like a fat drop of gold on the line of the horizon and is disappearing behind it when he joins her at last.
The unicorn finds that his rage is no less for having waited. Maybe that was her intent - for him to seethe and pace like a tiger on a chain. But he thinks that she is young, and foolish, and too used to having what she wants. Martell thinks that he will teach her that the sun will not always rise and set on her command.
“I thought, perhaps, you were afraid.” His voice is cold as the desert night, level as the surface of the sleeping oasis. The unicorn stops before her, near enough each of their heat brushes up against the other - but he does not yet touch. In this way only does he ask for permission. In this way only is he a gentleman.
“Instead I find that you are insolent, which is far worse. Is there anything that is not a game to you, Amaunet?” Her name is another kind of warning, for she had never given it to him.
But Martell thinks that he will take more than that from the desert-city and from her. He will take everything that he wants.
@Amaunet
