Sung in Shadow by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2021-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

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In Lord Chenti’s bedchamber, still draped and shuttered and closed altogether like a coffin-lid against a night two-hours departed, the name and the nature of Iuletta had been mislaid. If one of the carved creatures which crowded the screens and chests had leaned over and bawled Iulet! Iulet! the room’s two occupants might have raised their heads in bitter shock, startled, but uninterested.

“Where are you going?” Electra said.

She lay on the crushed and tumbled pillows. She was now an extraordinary compendium of opposites. Her mouth, reddened and bruised, her eyes hollowed, her hair tangled and randomly curled, her skin printed over, the peaks of her breasts darkened and swollen—and yet her look, her movements, her stance, even her recumbent posture, and certainly her stealthy little voice—apparently unflawed; still cold.

“Will you not answer me?” this voice said at length.

Leopardo, dressing himself at the foot of his uncle’s bed, his shoulder turned to her, his head bowed over the fastenings of his doublet and concealed in his cat’s mane of hair, replied sluggishly,

“I told you once. To find a priest.”

“You fool.”

“Fool with trull. Well-matched.” He lifted his face and shot a glance at her. He, too, bore evidence of their violent lovemaking, but on Leopardo such garb was not quite unfamiliar. Only a sullen almost sodden quality lurking behind the appearance told this night had been unlike all others. Untidily but effectively dressed, he now moved around to her, and said, “And you can lie a-bed, lady, and picture to yourself how I’ll regale the holy father. Some monk’s pot will bubble this morning.”

“Am I to suppose you serious?”

“Follow me down the street in your bedgown and you’ll see I am.”

“You are a fool indeed, then. Do you think so much of your stupid petty conscience you must spill it out like vomit?”

“Vomit? Aptly put. Vomit you forth, delightful aunt Spew you from me, sorceress.”

“You are so much consumed by guilt. Shall I number the times you had me? Go to your priest. Go tell him all you did. And then come back to me and repeat the exercise.”

“By Christ! You can smolder in your own syrup from now till Doomsday, you’ll get nothing more from me.”

“Will I not.”

She uncoiled herself from the bed as she spoke, and he stepped away from her. A horrible grin now made his face very ugly.

“Burn, witch,” he said. He swung round and half ran across the room to the door into the antechamber, where he turned again, and bowed to her. “Listen for a crash like cannon. That will be God striking me dead in the nave of the Basilica.” He awarded her a sign of the Bhorga gutters, before darting through the door.

Electra’s countenance closed, as if to retain her thoughts. Her eyes were motionless as those of a lizard, and she made no further move to call him back. She knew he would return.

But Leopardo, walking along the corridors and down the stairways of the Chenti Tower, no longer knew anything for certain.

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