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“All books are valuable. Some are dangerous.” “Books of spells, you mean?” Seregil grinned. “Those, too, but I was thinking more of ideas. Those can be far more dangerous than any magic.”
“I was watching Seregil’s face tonight,” Kari said as they lay together in the darkness that night. “He’s in love with Alec, you know. He wasn’t last time they were here, or even at the Festival, but he is now.”
Little more than the length of a tailor’s yard separated them, but it might just as well have been the breadth of the Osiat Sea.
Rose meant women for men, he knew, and white was women for women; amber meant a house for women, too, but the prostitutes there were male. Most enigmatic of all, however, was the green lantern, signifying male companions for male patrons. Worse yet, some houses showed several colors at once.
Fascinated and confused, Alec felt the first hesitant stirring of feelings he was not prepared to associate with his friend and teacher.
Seregil looked up from a pick he’d been repairing and smiled. The slanting sunlight bathed Alec’s profile as he leaned against the window frame, striking fiery glints in his hair and casting his cheekbones and the folds of his clothing into fine relief. A painter should capture him like that, all light and eagerness.
“It might sound hard-hearted, but once you have survived a generation or two, it becomes easier to detach yourself from such feelings,” added Magyana. “It isn’t that you love them any less, you just learn to respect the cycles of life.
“And I never told you—” Alec’s pale face flushed crimson. “I don’t understand it, but I—” He faltered and Seregil pulled him closer. “I know, talí. I know.” It was Alec who brought their lips together.
Seregil gripped Alec’s arm. “Shoot true, talí.” Alec pressed a white-fletched arrow to his lips. “I will, talí,” he whispered back, blue eyes glinting fiercely under the black paint. Holding that image in his heart, Seregil hurried away after the others.
