Page 113 of The Sun King's Noon

Flint snorted. “Submission? There’s no greater power, my friend, than to have a cock in your mouth. In a single move, you grant either the sweetest pleasure or the most agonising pain.”

“Must you escalate all conversations into carnality?” Richard gave him a withering look. “You have quite dulled my excitement.”

“That’s because youarebloody dull. Now, can I fucking go to sleep?”

“Wait.” Richard scrambled forward on his hands and knees until he loomed over Flint. “Please. I need your help.”

Flint’s brows climbed. “You’re giving my large cock mixed messages.”

“You have two lovers,” Richard said. “You know of these matters. You must come to the market with me and help me findsomething. Something that says that I—I see him. As he sees me.”

Flint’s expression was a mix of amused exasperation. “Fine. I will drag myself to the market and help you pick out some bauble, and you will allow me to sleep for what remains of this night, do you understand me?”

“Yes.” Richard rolled off with a smile and retreated to his own bed. “Thank you, Flint.”

“Mm.”

“Truly. I am most?—”

“Another word, and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out.”

Richard grinned and settled on his back, hands folded across his stomach.

He shut his eyes.

“I thought they must have closed their workshops and put aside the rivers and the mountains and the stars, and worked only upon him, for an entire age, with the very finest of their tools.”

His heart gave another kick against his ribcage, and he resigned himself to a restless night.

CHAPTER 41

By the time they reached the market, the sun was high in the sky, and the heat had begun to settle upon the city. It was later than Richard would have liked, but Flint had not been in his bed when he awoke, and only strolled in near lunchtime with a satisfied smile.

“Bedded three sailors, handsome. All at once. Lovely lads. Two from a fishing crew and one off a merchant skiff. Spent half the time in all manner of positions, and the other half learning of every vessel in the Eastern Harbour. We have our target, now. I’m going to have fun stealing from him.”

“You bedded three men for the sake of a ship?”

“I bedded three men because I wished to. The ship was a happy result. Come now, don’t look at me so, I’ve done more useful work than you shall do all day.”

The streets shimmered, pale stone reflecting sunlight. Richard clutched the purse in his breast pocket and drew down the hood of his cloak.

“Stop fondling your coin pouch,” Flint said as they passed through an archway. “You may as well be shouting that you have something worth stealing.”

“Advice from a thief?” Richard muttered.

“Aye, and precious as gold, that is. So you’d best listen.”

The market sprawled east of Antlershield Square, and it was a thing of some splendour. Stalls crammed against one another under striped white-and-blue awnings. A mix of smells bombarded Richard—fresh fish, roasted pork, salted anchovies. Vendors bellowed over one another in the rolling Estaran cadence, half-singing their prices. The customers yelled back just as loud, and the resulting clamour set Richard’s teeth on edge.

A jeweller’s stall caught his eye. Elara would have pounced on it. She’d have snatched that necklace of orange gems and held it to her throat. She’d have batted her lashes—“Brother, see how it brings out my eyes, I simply must have it!”

Richard looked away with a hard swallow. But the stall after it was selling carved figurines of horses—a destrier rearing, a dappled grey bucking, a foal sleeping. Corwin kept a shelf of these in his chamber, arranged them by colour, and how he’d delight in that bay mare with a white blaze on her brow?—

Forget them.

But again, the next stall was auctioning off illustrated storybooks. And there was ‘The Lady of the Lantern’—Briony’s favourite. Its yellow border painted with intricate detail?—

Richard pinched the bridge of his nose and kept walking. No, he would not buy them gifts. The wound they had left ached still, and he suspected the wound he had bestowed on them ached no less. Simply thinking of them draped a great weight over his shoulders.