The Wizard and the Floating City (The Bazil Broketail Series Book 5) by Rowley Christopher

Author:Rowley, Christopher [Rowley, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

THEIR ROOM WAS snug and their bed uncannily comfortable. The exhausted pair slept deeply for a dozen hours and awoke greatly refreshed.

Only then did they realize what had happened. Before they had been too tired, too used to a desperate intimacy since they had arrived on Orthond to even take note of what they were doing. They had huddled together for warmth and psychological comfort, instinctively, naturally and without a second thought.

Now they had slept together, naked, albeit without ever making love. Still it brought a blush to Serena’s cheeks. She had never slept with a man before.

Then she giggled at a sudden thought. “By common law in the old days we would now be man and wife.”

He grinned. “Then I wish common law still prevailed.” They laughed together and he leaned over and kissed her. For a precious moment their predicament, even the hideous skin covering his chest and shoulders, was forgotten.

“Wait a moment,” she said suddenly, pushing him back. “I still don’t know who you really are, Evander the Enigma. I surely don’t believe that you are a trader from Molutna Ganga.”

“You don’t?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Oh.” He’d been quite sure she’d accepted his hurriedly patched–together tale. It was curiously discomforting to learn that he’d been completely wrong about this. Now he confronted the need to actually confess the truth.

“I am not sleeping with a man who won’t even tell me his real name,” she said, scrambling back a little.

“Yes, of course, I can understand that. Look, I know it must seem strange, that I should hide my origins, even my true name.”

He paused, not to be dramatic, but to try to marshal his words carefully. “I can only say that I have reason to hide. There are those who would like to kill me if they could find me.”

“Who would want to kill you - other than the wizard. And my father, of course.”

“There are powerful men who usurped the throne in my homeland. If they ever find me, they will kill me.”

“Okay, but why do they want to kill you?” she asked, half-believing him, but clutching the blanket to her chin.

“My real name is Danais Evander of Sedimo Kassim.” This did not have quite the effect he had expected.

She smiled. “That’s a nice name, I like it. Where is Sedimo Kassim?”

“On the northeastern edge of the empire of Kassim. Almost as far as Czardha.”

“That is very far, indeed. Go on.”

“My father was King Danais the Sixth. I would have been Danais the Seventh.”

Her face had grown pale. “I knew it had to be something like this. I knew you were not a trader. But what happened? Why were you in Monjon?”

“My father died too soon. I was too young to win support in the outer fiefs of the kingdom. My powerful cousins combined to usurp the throne. Madees sits on it, but is childless, Domijia’s son will inherit. They had the support of the east, the west and the north, I had only the southland behind me.

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