Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

in the middle of the frowsy blowsy scene. Among the farms or slums of Europe this would not seem amiss, but here it was a dissolute image, augmented soon, for the girl – she was about fourteen – took from the table a bottle of some dark alcohol, and put it first to her mouth, next tipped it over her nipple. It would keep the child quiet.

Anna felt a disturbed flash of pity. But it wasn’t wise to pity these people. She must only respect them, and be wary.

“Whussat?” a voice shouted.

Anna knew this alarm heralded her entry.

She saw the cook called Ox propped in a gargantuan chair. Her stockinged feet, misshaped by bunions, were on a footstool. Her hair too was half unpinned, and her face incredibly like red cabbage. There was a tankard in her hand, which a boy now hurried to fill up, aslosh, with beer.

“Here’s our Unny,” said the cook.

What world had she come to? Downwards – it must be the Inferno.

Anna confronted the cook, and all the faces turning now to her, even the fur-sketched face of the cat with its beard of gravy.

And Anna bowed, as she had seen them do, to the ones who were, just, their superiors.

“Cummer,” said the cook. “You sittun by me, Unny.”

Was this a welcome?

Anna walked through the room, through its dense veils of staring and heat, the flicker of fire and rain on windows.

The cook patted her hand. “God gul.”

A maid, her buttons undone, grinning, brought Anna a bun, and buttered it before her. Poured chocolate-coloured tea from the big black pot.

Anna was hungry. She ate with care. The cook said to her, soft as a bee, “You’ll likun bedder here.”

And the maid, her breasts white-bulging in her undone bodice, leaning over Anna with the cup of tea, remarked, “Yoon ourn now.”

When he had led her in, and closed the door, Árpád put Anna into a chair she did not recall. He had taken the cloak from her, or it had fallen. He brought her a glass of something which she thought was wine, but it was water.

The storm vented a burst of light, and this apparently happened inside the glass, and Anna dropped it, thinking the glass had shattered.

“It’s all right. Be calm, dearest. You stole this dress? I’ll buy it for you. You can say it was a mistake.”

“Would you? Would you?”

“Why did you take it?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. To come to you.”

He shook his head.

The storm howled and exploded; it was like the end of the world, and so made all things permissible.

Anna left the chair. She fell at his feet and clasped his knees. She laid her cheek against his thigh. “Don’t send me away.”

“Oh Anna.”

But he was utterly still, and then she got up and put her bare arms round his neck, and pressed her mouth against his fine-made lips. He let her kiss him, and then, as if remembering, began to kiss in turn. But he was very gentle, as though at any moment she would realise she had lost her mind and what she was doing, and leap away, spitting and cursing him. In his kiss there was all of that, and a terrible unspeakable forgiveness for when she did.

Anna drew back. “I love you.”

“Dear Anna.”

“I love you, Árpád.”

He too drew away from her, quietly. At first he half turned, hiding the right side of his face which, anyway, in the gusting night and conflagration of the storm, she could barely see. Then he turned back, and his eyes met hers. He looked deeply into her brain. After all, she had never seen a gaze more steady. Or less kind.

“You see, darling Anna, there are only two races among humanity. Those that have power, and those that haven’t any power. It may come from anything, the power. From money, from good looks, or cleverness – from normalcy, even. But to be powerless is to lack these things, or most, or even some of these things.”

His eyes were black, yet when the lightning came, chrome-blue like the sea.

“Anna, the race that has the power – these people are gods. Like you, Anna – did you know you were a pale goddess? Like you. But those who lack this power are only dogs. The dogs, Anna, who must worship and serve the gods. Anna, I don’t want to be your dog.”

She edged the glittering diamanté straps from her shoulders, and pushed down the dress to her waist. A primitive gesture, like the making of fire. He stared at her breasts. Perhaps he had never seen…

Inside her, all of her spun, fragmented between terror and joy, grief and desire.

She raised her arms again and caressed his face, stroking with her fingers both sides of it, the tanned and the carnelian side. Had she been blind, she could have told no difference. But lightning dazzled, and his face was like the face of a god, two images in one, blood and golden, ice and fire, silence and red music.

He kissed now as other men had. His hands slid warm on the bare skin of her back.

She knew there would never be another, knew they had grown together. Now the bark of a tree would enclose them, arched into each other’s bodies, their souls burnt through flesh and bone, adhering in one eternal molten gasp.

He had never made love to a woman before. She knew this now, knew he must learn her. He was so gradual. He felt his way across her, through her. Yet he made so sure of her that she broke around him in a whirlpool as soon as he entered her. And as he lost control himself, they were tumbled out down the tumult of the dark.

In the seconds after, she was afraid he would thank her. She would do almost anything to prevent it. She blazed with preparatory shame. But he didn’t thank her. He lay beside her unspeaking for a long while, as the storm melted, its