Cariad sat for a while in quiet, wondering what to pray for, what else the Gods might be willing to grant, what was too much to ask for. There was always the feeling that if you were to ask the gods for a small favour, they might grant it; ask for too much and everything would be lost.

She did not give up, she told herself firmly. She did not give in to despair.

Lately she barely even showed her emotions. Since her husband died. Since Sir Cadryn…

These were bad times, and she was supposed to be a model for her family, supposed to show them how they could get through this. She was stoic, determined, she kept her thoughts hidden. That was what they all needed to do.

…It had cost her, of course; her daughters wanted nothing to do with her, her eldest son was too busy to be with her, and her younger sons… well, what must they think of her?

Jolting out of her reverie with a start, she realised the room was dimmer. She could no longer hear the knights outside. Unthinkable that they had left her, of course. But if they were silent - had she been there so long that her guard had tired enough to doze off against the walls of the Chapel?

She shivered. Her thoughts had become her own world, and to be lost that way was dangerous. To come back to herself so suddenly was unusual, too; unless something had changed, just as suddenly, without her notice dwelling on it.

The door to the Chapel opened.

She drew herself up to her full height as she turned. “Sirs,” she began, “did I not give express instruction that I was not to be-“

The word disturbed died in her throat. It was not Sir Wain, nor Sir Sion. The man who had stepped into the Chapel was a stranger, his skin the olive tone of one from the Free Cities, his clothes fine quality, not those of a man of action. Comfort and decoration mattered more to one who would wear those clothes than quickness or range of motion.

“I would ask you to leave,” Cariad said, bringing as much hauteur as she could to her voice and her bearing. “I am in audience with the Gods, and I would have it be private.”

The well-tended beard, its central stripe dyed green below the lip, betrayed a smirk spreading across his face. “In Calos, we have a saying,” he answered. “At any given time, in any group, only one truly gets what they want.”

He bowed slightly. “However, I believe I can improve upon that and bring us both satisfaction. Permit me, first, to introduce myself. My lands are in Calos; my family line is perhaps not one you will recognise, but that is no matter here. My name, such as it is, is Marcus.”

Cariad scowled. “And do you expect me to surrender the Chapel to you and place your prayers above mine?”

“Oh, I am not here to pray but to play.” The fingers of one hand tapped against something; she caught the flicker of motion, down by his waist, and on a glance made out a flute held loosely in that hand, not something she’d noticed before. He chuckled, more amused by his joke than she; then he went on while Cariad tried to find the words to dismiss his rudeness from her presence.

“In truth I am here, in the prime of my life and the fullness of my wealth and power, to take a wife suitable for the standing I intend to achieve. This meeting, my lady, is not by chance, as you may have understood when I did not need to ask your name after I introduced myself.”

Cariad tilted her head. “You surely cannot mean what you imply.”

“I had thought,” he said, quite casually, “to wed Lady Morgan Tybor.” Cariad snorted; the very idea that Morgan would consent to be steered by this… this unimpressive fop… was laughable; even her stone face cracked at the suggestion, enough that her disdainful amusement showed.

“However,” Marcus continued, “then my little network of eyes brought word to me of a much greater, a much…” His eyes ran up and down her body appreciatively, and Cariad frowned, “…juicier prize. Lady Cariad Wyles, of the Tynant line, here within my reach - and available to wed.”

He inclined his head in what was almost a respectful nod. Almost, but not quite. “I regret that you have lost a husband, my lady, but as I said earlier, in Calos we know only one person can truly get what they want.”

“And you think to marry me, after you yourself speak of a husband whose very cloak you would not be fit to brush clean?” The cracks in her mask were still open; she could not hide her contempt. “I think not. This audience is at an end.” She raised her voice. “Sir Sion! Sir Wain!”

Marcus chuckled again, confident despite the fact he was so evidently no fighter. It would not take two knights to be sure of him; however, as a pair they could certainly make an example of him.

If it had come to the point where an impertinent Calosi was speaking of her as property to trade for, an example was certainly necessary.

The Calosi didn’t seem to think he had anything to worry about, though; he kept his stance, looking relaxed, and shook his head. “We will not be disturbed, my lady,” he said. “And so I claim the chance to change your mind.”

So saying, he raised his flute to his lips and began to play. The effrontery…

Cariad uncrossed her arms and stepped forward. Her knights were not helping, her sons were not there, her husband was gone. So be it; against one like this, she would take matters into her own hands if she had to.

At that moment, the Calosi started to play. It was not a complex melody, nor even a sophisticated one; Cariad thought she recognised the tune from a nursery rhyme.

Yet as he played, her movement began to slow, the drawing back of her arm ready to strike or slap him faltered… then quickened again, except that instead of drawing back her hand, her hand led her body in a graceful pirouette.

There was something in the music, something that hummed and throbbed under each note, and it was this that her body was responding to. She was dancing to the tune, following the melody around the room, her body moving with a carefree grace and elegance she hadn’t felt since when Sir Cadryn was alive.

The more Marcus played, the more different instruments she heard, and the more emotional the dance - the song - became. Cariad’s head was overwhelmed with the melody as she span and danced; it brought out the emotion her masks kept hidden.

The walls she’d built to hold it back were cracking and crumbling; the loss, the fear, everything seemed to flow through her movements, slipping from her head through her shoulders until they spilled out of her open hands, discarded.

Still he played, and still she danced. Cariad Wyles felt almost like a young Tynant heiress again, the cares and fears of her adult life distant, spectral, unheeded.

One foot lifted from the air and she spun again, and as she moved through the air she seemed to feel rich Calosi satin against her skin, yards and yards of it on great spools which wrapped around her senses as she danced until her senses were deaf to everything but the music.

There was a dreamy smile on her lips, the kind she had worn only at the very first grand balls she had attended after coming of age.

Back when she was young enough that she didn’t understand that the privileges of noble marriage and of motherhood came with their fears and their drawbacks if the balance of power shifted, she had gone looking for a husband, hopefully believing that whoever eventually brokered the deal for her hand, he would be, in addition to a powerful man, a good man.

Back when marriage just meant the next phase of her life.

Back when any dashing young man would stir her loins.

It was, she thought fleetingly, the flute. But at the moment that thought completed, the satin shroud surrounded her began to draw ever tighter, and it cut through the chain of logic that might explain the thought, leaving her knowing and understanding only that there was something special in the flute.

Tighter and tighter she was bound in the satin of the melody until it didn’t affect her limbs or her body at all, and instead it was her mind which was firmly bound.

In time, Marcus turned - or, rather, he walked a slow near-circle around her swaying, upright form. The music remained as it had been, a song for Cariad Wyles, and she answered it as soon as he stepped past her, turning slowly to follow him, half-stumbling, half-staggering after him on legs that would rather have danced on, had everything not become bound in its turn.

Cariad heard and followed the music, but she did not see, did not smell, barely touched anything but the ground she shambled over. She was just following a sound; helplessly, compulsively following the sound that made her so happy.

She left Wain and Sion slumbering by the open door to the Chapel, all unnoticed.

*

It had been midafternoon when she awoke on the ship. She was down below, in a cabin lit by a hanging lamp that seemed to gently sway - but was in fact the one even, level thing in the room - was in a bed soft enough and wide enough not to be at risk of rolling out.

Cariad was well aware a bed like this was a luxury on a ship. Amid the silk sheets, as she’d slumbered, the satin around her mind had begun to feel less omnipresent, and she felt she was thinking fairly clearly; she’d been put in a guest cabin, not a brig, but all the same she felt the strange sensation of captivity - something that, against her will, she’d learned to recognise since the downfall of her husband and, with it, the threat that had emerged to her family and to herself.

She tried the door and was not surprised to find it locked. Mulling over her few options, she made her way back to bed and climbed back under the sheets, deciding she could at least feign sleep when someone arrived. It might give her an advantage she’d be otherwise unable to find.

Cariad envied the heroines in tales who, in a situation like hers, would have known they’d lain in wait for a full thirty minutes, or for no less than two hours, or whatever it might be. Not only did they have some affinity for time that completely escaped Cariad, it also suggested a focus that she could only maintain under pressure.

She had no idea how long she was awake before the door opened and the Calosi noble she’d encountered in the Chapel stepped through, a youngish woman following him. She had a worried, almost haunted look to her.

Cariad formed a rough plan; wait for them both to be close, then find an opportunity to bolt and get out of the cabin. Even if she couldn’t escape the ship, perhaps she could find a space and an opportunity to negotiate. Some way to improve her situation.

It wasn’t a detailed or in-depth plan, and it was still derailed almost immediately when Marcus stepped up to the bottom of her bed, grasped the bedsheets, and pulled them off. The woman with him, if anything, looked more nervous; Cariad gasped, then rolled off the bed and upright.

She moved to cover herself before remembering that she was still fully clothed; it was the situation that made her feel so exposed.

“I trust you slept well, Lady Cariad?” Marcus asked. “Our voyage will be about a week, so I felt the need to get my seamstress started on your new clothing as soon as possible.”

There was a dim echo of this in her memory as he spoke. As if it were something they had discussed, something to which she had agreed. But then Marcus also seemed confident that they were betrothed, and she had the same strange not-quite-there memory about that, too, even though that made no sense.

“I fear you will be disappointed, sir,” she said, her voice as level as she could make it. She lifted her head, thrusting the point of her chin forward, making herself into a challenge. “I do not intend to participate.”

Marcus looked at her for a long moment, then he smirked, and he shrugged, and he stepped back just a pace. His hand lifted and the flute that was never, apparently, far from his lips came up.

He began to play. Cariad frowned, wanting an answer to her challenge, a concession or at least something that would tell her where she stood.

He’d done this before, hadn’t he? Played rather than spoken. She had a sense that she’d lost the argument all the same, but couldn’t think why - or how. She opened her mouth to say something, but the words seemed to vanish in her throat and she felt quiet and small and meek as the music continued to play.

There was something happening to Marcus’ seamstress. Her eyes had crossed slightly, though Cariad didn’t think the woman was seeing anything in any case. Her arms floated lazily up from her sides, her head tilting, the body language of a serving woman who did not want to be the focus of attention gone; in its place a strange, dreamy smile filled her face and she began to dance.

One of her hands slowly reached out toward Cariad, who went to shrink away but found she would not, no matter what might be wisest.

A giggle escaped Cariad’s lips to her own surprise before a fingertip touched the sleeve of her gown and something like a spark seemed to jump across. Cariad’s arms went from tense and defensive to loose and graceful; she felt herself smiling, her vision not so much swimming but drowning as the world around her ceased to matter, the music of the flute more important than thought or identity itself.

She felt its satin sensation flow over her again as she began to dance, and if she could have seen herself she would have known she was dancing in partnership with Marcus’ seamstress, the two of them moving as a unit, dancing around each other in spite of the fact they could not see, could not think, could hear only the music.

Like all gowns, hers was secured by a dozen or more knots placed strategically around the garment. As the two women touched, wheeled, and touched again, knot after knot was undone by deft if unaware fingers, until Cariad found herself spinning backward while her arms, extended out in front of her, shivered and shimmied as her dress fell away.

The two dancers halted when she stood there, almost bare, in just her undergarments - flimsier things than she liked to consider - and Cariad stilled, her vision clearing.

The music died away and Marcus cleared his throat politely. “My dear Cariad,” he said, “you must have dresses in the Calosi style. You do understand, don’t you?”

Cariad had smiled, then giggled, then nodded. “Of course I understand, my love,” she said, and she struck a pose, feeling greatly daring just to have her body out for his display, but wanting his admiration all the same. “You want this to happen, and you shall have it. You shall have anything I can give you.”

Marcus smiled and he tucked his flute back into a pocket, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. Oh, how she wanted to turn her head into his lips, to kiss back, to give him everything he wanted.

Being around Marcus was a delight to Cariad. It made her feel better than she had done in years; she couldn’t remember being so happy ever, even in Sir Cadryn’s household, where she had felt, she now realised, just like a decoration, a necessary item. She had only even borne five of the six children Sir Cadryn had asked her to raise herself - it had hardly been a partnership, a true meeting of the minds.

Not like the connection she and Marcus shared. That was a bond nobody could question - but they weren’t yet husband and wife.

Soon, though. She promised herself she’d do everything she could to hasten the wedding.

She nodded to the seamstress. “You heard your Master,” Cariad told her. “Come along. Take your measurements. What’s keeping you?” Her tone might be sharp, she told herself, but at some time soon Marcus would have to be comfortable putting the running of his estate in her hands while he attended to a greater and more important business.

It wasn’t just the seamstress she was asserting herself for. Marcus should feel comfortable that she would make sure his goals were achieved by his staff, even when he wasn’t there to ensure it, just so long as his wife could help.

“Yes, my lady,” the seamstress answered, hurrying forward with a blush.

Marcus stood and watched, smiling benignly, and Cariad was sure she’d done exactly the right thing.

*

Cariad rose from the seat she’d occupied on the deck of Marcus’ ship and moved across to the railing where Marcus was standing, looking forward.

She came level with him, standing beside him, enjoying the feel of the warm sun on a nearly bare body. Marcus had required she spent her time in the sun, so her skin tone would be closer to a typical Calosi. She’d caught him watching her often; mostly, she had preened and felt proud that he enjoyed the shape of her hips around her underwear, the soft, inviting weight of her breasts.

Sometimes it had felt wrong, deeply wrong, and she had gone to Marcus with her questions, and he would smile, and he would play his flute, and a little while later Cariad would find herself resting on the seat on the deck, eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of a warm sun so rarely found in the North across her whole body.

Marcus’ sailors and servants gave her a wide, respectful berth at all times. It was clear that her betrothed held power over his servants, could ensure they did as they were told.

As she stood next to him now, though, his hand reached out, fingertips trailing over her wide hips, and came to rest on the swell of one of her buttocks.

“Is that your home, my lord?” she asked softly, and Marcus chuckled and nodded.

“That is the city of Calos,” he confirmed. “We’ll make landfall by evening. You should be dressed appropriately by then, but not yet.”

“Of course, my lord.” Standing beside him, looking out at the city in the distance, she wriggled against his hand to let him know she was aware of his touch and enjoyed it, and tried to remember what she knew of the city. “Is there anyone I should make care to befriend?”

Marcus was quiet for a little before he answered. “I haven’t decided yet quite who I’ll make aware of you,” he said. “Everyone in attendance at our wedding, though, will be someone you will take a liking to.”

It didn’t occur to Cariad how odd that phrasing was, nor to wonder if she was supposed to hear it as an instruction or a prediction.

“I want to make sure I’m fulfilling the whole role of your wife, my lord,” she said. “That’s all.”

Marcus laughed. “Of course,” he said. “You wouldn’t try anything unpleasant around me.”

“No, my lord.”

“All the same, there are a great many things you could do for me before you worry about the politics of Calos,” he told her. “Your body is at least as important as your mind, lady Cariad. At least.”

She blushed slightly and bowed her head. “My lord requires heirs?”

He pulled her closer to him with the hand on her buttock. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said, his voice a low growl in her ear that set her squirming eagerly in his grip, “you’ll be bred soon enough.”

“My lord will be more than satisfied,” she promised, purring in her turn.

She turned and mutely made her way back to her seat, but the buttock where his hand had rested tingled slightly.

It was very difficult to behave like a proper noblewoman and not simply offer herself to him.

Even with all the proper forms already met - she had a memory of sending a raven to the North to seek permission for marriage, and the difficulty involved in fitting that into a timescale didn’t change the fact she had the memory and had to believe it - it was tempting to skip the rest of the proprieties, but she wouldn’t embarrass the house of Tynant, nor the house of Wyles.

She settled back into the seat and closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of sunlight on bare skin.

*

She wore a blue dress cut in the Calosi style as she and Marcus made their way off the ship.

It was simple, decorated only sparsely, in correct recognition that Marcus was much more important than his prospective wife. She was so glad that he’d found her before he settled for Morgan.

Marcus’ clothes had the same blue but were much more striking, much more beautiful. Anyone working at the docks would know he’d found someone, she thought; they might wonder if she was a betrothed woman or a mistress of little importance. For all her once-famous pride, Cariad didn’t care which way people read her; the only thing that mattered was the man whose arm she was on.

So long as Marcus knew what he wanted of her, that alone would be everything they needed.

Clearly Marcus had been busy on the way into Calos; she knew he’d had several signals flown from the flagpole, and the result of one of them was a carriage waiting there for the two of them, pulled by two beautiful horses, and with a driver standing by.

Like Marcus and Cariad, the driver wore that rich blue; his outfit was even more basic than her own, with almost no decoration, and Cariad realised that, actually, anyone who knew Marcus well in Calos would see exactly how everyone ranked from the cut and design of their clothes.

Marcus paused at the door and the driver swung it open with practised ease and a broad smile, bowing his head slightly to his employer. Marcus passed him the flute to have both hands free, taking the side of the open door in one and planting his other hand firmly on Cariad’s rear end.

He squeezed as he lifted her into the seat and Cariad laughed, giggling coquettishly. She smiled back down on him, eyelids fluttering invitingly.

It wasn’t for her to push their connection beyond what was acceptable before marriage - this was not her land, these were not her people, and in the game of politics, Cariad recognised that her hand in marriage was an asset her house wielded.

Strange for it to be her son’s choice this time, she thought fleetingly. Rhodri barely seemed old enough. But this was the role of an unmarried woman; Cariad knew it well, and she would not dishonour her house by failing to live up to her role.

She didn’t expect fulfilling her role for Marcus to be any hardship. Sometimes desire aligned with politics.

As he took the flute back from his driver and climbed into the carriage after her, Cariad blinked thoughtfully. Somehow, something about her thoughts felt strange, confined and constricted.

She smiled at Marcus all the same, and glanced back at his flute. It was odd that he carried something so ordinary everywhere.

It was true that she’d heard him play it several times. It was true that whenever she heard him play she found herself wanting to dance. But it was also true that the first time he’d played it, he seemed hardly to know what he was doing - though he had been and still was improving at a startling rate. It wasn’t an heirloom. It wasn’t a treasured childhood possession. Yet it barely left his side for a moment.

The door to the carriage closed behind them, and they were off, headed into the city, and then through it, and out to where Marcus’ landholdings were.

Cariad was oddly conscious, as they travelled, that she was entering a place where her betrothed was the only authority, the only arbiter. If there should be trouble for anyone, he would be the one to decide who really had trouble.

There was a fleeting shiver at the thought that this applied to her, too, and then she blinked, suddenly confused at her own concern. She felt again that lovely strange satin that caressed and bound not her body but her mind.

That was something she’d become used to since travelling with Marcus, since that chance encounter in the Chapel. It was hard to put into words just how much she loved the sensation; in a very real way it didn’t seem to make sense to her. And yet it was as true as anything she’d ever known.

Her betrothed thought of everything and wrapped her mind in satin so she could not harm herself. Was there any higher praise? Cariad thought not.

*

She would never criticise her darling betrothed, especially not after another week of resting in the home that was to be hers to run for him, especially when he played his flute every day and soothed her worries.

But if Cariad were to be willing to concede any kind of criticism could be possible, she would say that it almost seemed as if he was dragging his heels on the wedding - and oh, how she wanted to be married; how she wanted to have the right for him to take her to bed.

She had been so lucky; when her son had decided she should be married off and had set out looking for suitors, Cariad had the impression that she had felt a real and a deep concern.

She had worried - imagine it - that the match her family needed her to make would be a poor one, on a personal level; that she would effectively be sacrificing herself for the greater good of House Wyles. Rhodri had found this potential match, had arranged for a betrothal, had arranged a cover story with Sirs Wain and Sion to get her close enough.

And Cariad could not be more grateful to her son. True, there were occasional moments where she would stop and wonder why she half-remembered her cover story as being real, why she had been so surprised to encounter Marcus in the Chapel.

Her life did not make clear and coherent sense; but then, whose ever did? This was hardly the first time she had been hard put to wring logic and direction from her life; she had become an expert at rationalising the strangeness of the world around her.

She decided that there was one thing she could do, and that was to see if she could tempt him; to that end, she picked up her bell and rang it, calling her maid to her.

Bellenora wore the same simple blue as the entire household, and when they had first met, Cariad had seen hauteur in the maid’s eyes, contempt for a Erethnian woman, she assumed.

However, Marcus had told Bellenora that Cariad was to he his wife, and that she would therefore have authority over the maid, and the maid should get used to this. He had gone on to add that, in point of fact, his wife would be overseeing his household whenever he was away or busy, and as such a smart serving girl would want to befriend her and be in a position to advance her career in that way.

Well…

That wasn’t exactly what had happened. In point of fact, he had smiled that dazzling smile of his and he had raised his flute to his lips and he had begun to play.

Within moments, rather than disputing or disliking each other, Cariad and Bellenora had been dancing, close together, their unseeing eyes locked on one another, their hands roaming over one another in a fiery dance of passion.

The satin in her head had felt different during that dance; it was rougher, somehow, and it sent shivers up and down her spine so that she twitched and moaned and purred as she danced, and by the sound of Bellenora’s own breathy, lust-filled whimpering, it had the same effect on her as on her new mistress.

Perhaps Marcus had not actually said a word. Perhaps he had simply played on his flute. But, Cariad would argue, the message was received by them both all the same, and so the result was much the same; and if, therefore, she remembered Marcus lecturing his hired maid rather than her own needy, lust-filled lesbian dance before her betrothed, this was just as valid and just as true a reality.