Page 66 of The Second Marriage
Sejun collapsed on top of him, panting, after their latest roll in the sheets. “Well,” he said.
Taral smiled up at the ceiling. He clenched around Sejun’s cock, still softening inside him, and Sejun hissed air through his teeth. “Do you need to nap for a while? You seem exhausted by the demands of buying books and pleasing me.”
“I’m only a young man, with many years ahead of me.” Sejun kissed Taral’s neck. “Take pity on me and let me live.”
“I don’t expect you’ll perish yet.” Taral slid his hands down Sejun’s sweat-damp back. His fondness billowed out of him, too big to be contained. “Do you remember when we were first married? I felt that I had lost all control of my body. I wanted you all the time, in every waking hour, and in my dreams as well. You would touch one of my earrings and I wanted to go down on all fours and beg for you.”
“I didn’t know that. You did smell very enticing.” Sejun pulled out of Taral with another hiss and turned onto his side to study Taral’s face. “Is that how I won you over? With my overwhelming alpha charms?”
“I was very aggravated by it, actually. I couldn’t resist you and blamed you for being so tempting.” Taral smiled to remember his frustration, although he certainly hadn’t found it amusing at the time. “But no. You won me over with the laughter you’ve brought to my life, and your earnest attempts to single-handedly repair the fortress.”
“You were so mad at me about the murals.”
“Oh, intensely. But I managed to set my anger aside somehow.”
“How fortunate I am to have such a forgiving spouse,” Sejun said piously.
Taral did take one morning away from Sejun to visit Simra at her shop. She and Lavi had been held in the cantonment for their own protection, according to Aditya, until Simra’s traitorous customer had been arrested. That had now happened, and Simra was at home, although somewhat shaken by her ordeal, as Sejun had been.
“They didn’t separate us, at least,” Simra said, pouring tea into two cups. “That was a mercy. I would have been worried sick about Lavi otherwise. As you were about Sejun, I imagine.”
Taral inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Sejun said he was treated well enough, though, although he did complain about being made to sleep on the floor.”
Simra’s mouth tilted into a smile. “A hardship indeed. No, we weren’t harmed, and now we’re home. What a lot of trouble, though.”
“What can you tell me about your customer who was arrested?”
“Ah.” Simra sat back in her chair. “Not such a regular customer, so I was surprised when I saw his name on the letter. Then less surprised when the guards came not long after. He’s one of the crown prince’s inner circle.”
“But the prince isn’t under suspicion, I thought,” Taral said, hoping he wasn’t wrong about that, because then there truly would be war.
“Not that I’ve heard. He only chose the wrong friends, who wormed into his confidences to see what he might say in an unguarded moment.” She shrugged. “I imagine you’ll notice a few missing faces when your negotiations start up again.”
She was right about that, and as Taral scanned the delegates in the meeting room, he was grimly unsurprised to note that the two most tedious, long-winded speakers were absent, along with the most obnoxious, interrupting question-asker. The talks made more progress that day than they had since the initial burst of enthusiasm at the very beginning, and as Taral left the room at the end of the day, he saw signs of relief on many faces. Perhaps he would be home before the harvest after all.
The next day, Queen Mentun was late, an unprecedented state of affairs. A murmur started up among the gathered dignitaries. Had the Skopai decamped from the capital? Had someone assassinated her in her chambers? Aditya sat at the front of the room, hands on the carved arms of his chair, expression impassive. Taral couldn’t believe Mentun would abandon the negotiations so abruptly, but doubts crept in as the minutes dragged on. Then the door open and Mentun came gliding in at last.
She went to Aditya and spoke to him in a voice too quiet for Taral to overhear. Everyone in the room leaned forward as one, straining their ears to catch her words. Whatever she said, it was brief. Aditya made a gesture of acknowledgment or acceptance, and Mentun turned to face her rapt audience and said something in Chedai that set a fresh murmur going.
Taral waited in an agony of impatience for her to finish speaking. When she did, he turned his attention to the interpreter who repeated her words in Dirang. “I made the error of taking guidance from those who did not pursue peace, who gave me counsel I see now was unwise. For two weeks we’ve sat here listening to speeches and have achieved nothing, and meanwhile distant enemies gather armies on their shores. The time for speeches is over. Let us set aside our grievances and make peace for ourselves and our children.”
Mentun repeated her words in Skopai, then sat and folded her hands in her lap. At a glance from her, one of her advisors rose and said, “Skopa proposes the following terms…”
That day was long and tiring, but by the end of it they had hammered out the broad strokes of a treaty. Chedi would retain the Kasauli Hills, but would give Skopa rights to a small percentage of the minerals mined there, tin and gold alike. They further proposed to share intelligence about the movements of Etsukeo. Taral was amazed by how quickly it all came together after so many days of no progress whatsoever, and more amazed by the skill of the Chedai separatists that he hadn’t noticed how they stymied the talks at every turn.
He returned to their room, where Sejun was writing at the table, and was pleased to be greeted with a kiss and a plate of segmented orange.
“Your talks went well today, I gather,” Sejun said, smiling at Taral with the warm light in his eyes that had settled there of late.
“Very well. I expect that after a few more days like this one, we’ll have a full treaty drafted and ready to formalize.”
Sejun’s eyebrows shot up. “How?”
“It seems that some of Chedi’s delegates were deliberately slowing the negotiations. Now that they’ve been arrested, there was much less pointless blathering than usual.”
Sejun helped himself to one of the orange slices on Taral’s plate. “What do you think will happen to the separatists?”
“I don’t know. Aditya will execute some of them, I imagine, or strip them of their titles and wealth and send them into exile. Maybe he’ll ship some of them off to Skopa so Mentun can rule them as they wish, although that seems like more of a gamble than he would be willing to take. I suppose we won’t know how it ends up, unless Simra tells me in one of her letters.”