His mouth closed in a hard, thin line, the answer not so easy to make. Tou suspected the difficulty unnerved them both.
THE prince returned to the harem wing unescorted, feeling like a sandstorm had swept through his soul. Despite the turmoil of his emotions, for the first time in his life, his body was at peace. Always he had fought it, either denying it what it wanted or holding back for fear of hurting his partner. The queen had ended that—at least for now.
She can humble you any time she wants, he told himself. Denial would be twice as hard now that he’d known its opposite.
Except…humbling him didn’t seem to be what Tou wanted. What she did want he didn’t feel ready to draw conclusions about. She might be playing a deeper game than he thought.
When Memnon reached his rooms, dawn was breaking outside his single window’s jali screen. His servant, Zahi, sat on his broad low bed, his torso decorated by the lacework of pale gold light. Catlike as ever, his weight was propped on his elbows, his long legs sprawled. He followed Memnon’s entrance as intently as if his master were a long-awaited mouse.
The sight caused Memnon to regret that, with the exception of the master of the harem’s chambers, none of the consorts’ doors could be locked.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “I didn’t tell you to wait up for me.”
Zahi stretched his toes, then sat up straighter. “The other men say the queen never keeps a partner throughout the night. In all the years of her reign, you are the first.”
Memnon kicked off his sandals, turning to the washstand to splash his face. Among other things, he didn’t think he liked Zahi’s tone. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“Not at all, master. Merely congratulating you on your coup. I trust you both enjoyed yourselves.”
“I wore her out,” Memnon said flatly. “We fell asleep.”
He dried his face on the towel and watched Zahi over it. Paneb’s protégé was definitely fishing for something, though the servant was working to keep his expression uninformative.
“Your father hoped you’d call to the queen’s affections.”
Memnon snorted. “But not call to them too much, I wager.”
“Do you think she’s falling in love with you?”
A flash of heat ran through him. Could she be? Was that why she’d shared the damning story about his father? To win Memnon to her side? That the tale was true, he had little doubt. It fit too well with what he already knew of King Ravna.
Fearing his thoughts might show, Memnon turned away to toss the towel onto a light, carved chair. Its feet were fashioned in the shape of gazelles. “I spent one night with her, Zahi. Your apprenticeship with a eunuch no doubt prevented you from learning this, but no man is that good in bed.”
Zahi’s awareness of the implied insult betrayed itself in a darkening of his cheeks. “What I’m wondering,” he said, his gaze narrow, “is if any woman is.”
Memnon feigned a weary sigh. “If you were a bit more seasoned, you’d know a man of my experience is as unlikely of succumbing as the queen.”
“Many men have fallen to her charms.”
“Many men aren’t me.”
“You dislike her then.”
“Zahi, I am true to my people and to my king—as I have always been. When you send your report to Paneb, be sure to include that.”
“What report?” Zahi said sourly. “The queen’s spies read every message that leaves this place.”
“If you’ve managed to ascertain that, you’ve made good use of all that running back and forth to the kitchens on my behalf.”
A twitch beside Zahi’s left eye confirmed his guess.
“Look,” Memnon said. “I can imagine why my father assigned you to me and, frankly, I don’t care. I simply advise you to keep an important truth in mind. I am here, and Paneb is not. In fact, I am the only person even vaguely resembling an ally that you have in this place. You’re in the lion’s den now. Keep me happy, and you’re liable to remain safe. Cross me…” He spread his hands. “Let’s just say anything could happen to you, anything at all, and no one would shed a tear.”
“Least of all you?” Zahi asked softly.
Memnon didn’t bother to deny his conjecture. “I am a fair man. If you haven’t learned that, you are no judge of character at all. And now I think you should return to your room. Your master has sleep to catch up on.”
Zahi bowed to him respectfully enough, despite which Memnon did not turn his back on him until he was gone.
If he believed even half of what Tou had told him, his father—and, by association, his father’s tools—had far less conscience and far less loyalty to Memnon than he had presumed.
“And what might you be?” he murmured, spotting something on his covers where Zahi’s weight had rumpled them.
He picked up what turned out to be a feather. His curiosity piqued, he squinted at the screened window. The wind could not have blown this through the tiny holes in the stone. It must have been stuck to Zahi and fallen off.
Memnon turned the feather musingly in his hand. It was the same rich brown color as his father’s homing hawks. Maybe Paneb’s slinking cat had found a way to get a message out, after all.
FOR the next five days running, Memnon received an invitation to spend the night with Tou alone, each delivered personally by Deir. Given Memnon’s last exchange with the queen, he hadn’t expected to be shown this partiality. He accepted the invitations gravely for the eyes that watched. Inside, however, where none could see, he could not deny his jubilance.
Being with Tou was such a pleasure. His desires would rise whenever she was near, but they were never as difficult to satisfy as that initial time. When the first fierce rush of need was over, they were free to enjoy each other more leisurely. Tou taught him bed tricks that stole his breath, while he offered her a strength she seemed to have been longing for all her life.
Sometimes, as they waited for their well-used bodies to recover, they simply held each other and talked. They were shy with each other then, but that was sweet as well. When they laughed together, Memnon thought it felt like the sun rising.
“Tell me,” she said one night as they lay together in her restored bed, her finger lightly circling his rosy glans. “What do you suppose that extra part of your manhood was?”
He grabbed her teasing finger and nipped it. “You liked that, did you?”
“I did,” she said without a blush. “But I am wondering what it is for, and why it has not emerged again since that night.”
He slid his knee between her silken thighs, not to rouse her—though of course it did—but simply to tangle them more intimately. “I suspect it will not emerge again until my cycle peaks. It has never done so for other women. Because it searched inside you until it found your womb, I think, perhaps, it is supposed to help make babies.”
“Babies.”
“I am the only child my father has, and neither you nor I have any. Perhaps this extra part provides some needed advantage.”
“Does your father—” She stopped, but he understood what she meant as clearly as he understood her aversion to continuing.
“I haven’t heard that his organ is different from other men’s, and, no, I don’t know why we wouldn’t be the same. Maybe the gods are as capricious as our priests like to claim.”
She grimaced, obviously ready to let this line of questioning drop. Her eyes shifted to the loll of his penis against his thigh. The length of him was relaxed but slowly thickening. She licked the pad of her thumb, cradled him in her palm, then used the wetness to rub the spot where the little whip of flesh had come out. Tonight it was no more than a faint red seam, but Memnon jerked at the sharpness of the sensation.
Tou’s lips curved slightly. “I wouldn’t mind having babies.”
“Would you mind having them with me?”
She was a queen, and this was more than a romantic question, but it came out as hoarsely as if his heart were all it concerned. Her eyes fir
ed gold as they rose to his. “I would love having them with you, would love making them with you.”
Moved, he leaned to kiss her, but the hand she pressed to his breastbone caused him to pause.
“Memnon,” she whispered. “A child is the only thing your father has that I do not, the only blessing the gods have given him and not me.”
Something in him chilled at her words, even as his shaft jerked and began to rise. It knew how to respond to talk of children. He cupped one of her breasts and gently squeezed its curve. Her nipples were dusky, tightening with arousal. What would it be like to see his son or daughter suckling here?
“Is having a child the only use you have for me?”
She stroked his chest, the brush of her fingers enough to make his groin vibrate. When her answer came, it was throaty. “Never. I have too many uses for you to count.”
She rolled herself beneath him, and his mind went blank, the submissive posture as unexpected as it was enticing. She was hot and ready—thighs spread, torso writhing—and all he could focus on was sliding into her tight, wet sheath. She met him with full strength, which drove him wilder yet. They coupled as ferociously as they had their first night, groaning out their peaks and clutching each other as if their lives depended on holding on.
The breathless aftermath was broken by Deir’s arrival with the nightly wine. The master of the harem brought two cups now, his extreme politeness the only thing that suggested this change in tradition was hard for him.
“He doesn’t taste your wine,” Memnon commented as he sipped his own. “Don’t you take precautions against poison?”
Tou’s honey-brown gaze slanted at him from beneath her lashes. Like him, she seemed to be struggling with awkwardness. “No one handles those supplies but him. He keeps them locked in his room. I don’t ask him to taste it first, because I wish to keep that sign of trust between us.”
“He loves you,” Memnon said softly. “Enough that seeing you with me is breaking his heart.”
Tears sparkled without warning in her lovely eyes. “I cannot help that,” she whispered. “I love him, too, but I can’t help that.”
He felt his own heart threaten to crack, or maybe it was just opening at long last. The possibility frightened him more than physical danger could. If Tou loved him, if none of this was about revenge…
Overcome, he said her name because he had to and touched her cheek because he could.
“Hold me,” she said, her face hidden in his shoulder. “I want to sleep in your arms tonight.”
CHAPTER SIX
The flurry of preparations reached a crescendo the night Mohinder’s farewell banquet arrived.
The event was being held in the palace gardens, beneath a white silk tent to shield the royal consorts from curious eyes. Extra soldiers were ranged around it, because the queen would be attending, too. The guards stood outside the ring of torches, so as not to compromise their night vision. Out of habit, Memnon studied them. They appeared competent: alert, calm, communicating among each other with near-silent efficiency.
One caught him watching and nodded. Memnon assumed he’d been recognized from his trips to the queen’s chambers. With an odd start, he realized that wasn’t it at all. He’d faced this man on a battlefield. He was a captain, just like Memnon was.
Impulse had him leaving the other consorts to speak to him, which—obviously—was more of a response than the man had meant his nod to invite.
“Your highness,” he said, drawing himself up stiffly. “You should go into the tent. You are not veiled.”
He wasn’t, and by all rights he should have been. Memnon’s face wasn’t his to flaunt the way this soldier’s was.
“I will,” he said, though for now some indefinable wrongness in the atmosphere held him where he was. He was taller than the captain by an inch or two. Thicker as well. Tou trained her soldiers lean. Memnon squinted at the black, starry sky. “It’s a quiet night, and after a bloody sunset.”
In spite of his discomfort at having to caution a prince, the captain grinned. “I haven’t heard that old soldier’s superstition since my father died.”
“It is an old one.” Memnon rubbed the tightened back of his neck. “Never hurts to keep a sharp eye out, though.”
“Yes, sir,” said the soldier, snapping out a bow he might not have meant to make. “Enjoy your evening.”
Memnon took pity on his position and rejoined his fellow harem slaves.
Inside, the tent was decorated with hanging blankets and elaborate camel regalia, doubtless meant to resemble those of Mohinder’s home. Memnon had learned, much to his surprise, that the departing consort hailed from Kemet and was the son of a chief. A dozen Kemish cooks had been brought in to prepare the feast, which was going to be odd from the smell of it.
Sour goat milk, Memnon thought, shuddering privately in disgust. No wonder the back of his neck was tight.
He found a seat among the heaps of cushions on the carpeted floor. Dinner would be served on the colorful drumlike tables that stood between. Abram, whose nose was plastered and healing, handed him a cup of wine.
“Better drink up,” he said, lifting his own cup in salute. His single feathery earring twinkled merrily with the motion. “I know this is Mohinder’s night, but I’m not sure any of us are going to choke down that meal unless we’re skunked.”
Memnon laughed, pleased to be welcomed in this simple male fashion. Before he could respond in kind, the sight of a number of the consorts bowing near the entrance drew his eyes away. He couldn’t see her yet, but Tou must have arrived.
“And there she is,” Abram murmured. “Our one and only sweet goddess.” He raised his hands, palms out, when Memnon glanced at him. “Don’t mind me, prince. I’m not bitter. Best man wins and so on. We all knew she might find the other half of her heart someday. We each just hoped it would be us.”
Memnon felt a flush sweep up his face, one he could not force back for all the tea in Yskut. “The queen hasn’t—She and I aren’t—”
Abram cut off his stammering. “Yes, she has, and, yes, you are. We see the way you look at each other. We can tell how happy she is.”
As if a chain were connected to his eyes, Memnon had to look at her. She was laughing with the other consorts, kissing some on the cheeks. Tou wasn’t just their queen, she was their friend—a bond he suspected few among the harem had experienced with other females. He struggled to sigh silently. She was so lovely, so brave and clever and passionate. The rest of his life would fade to paleness if he couldn’t spend it with her.
Watching him, Abram chuckled into his wine. “See.”
Tou turned then and spotted him. Pierced brass lamps hung from the tent poles, and her smile flashed in their golden light. Memnon’s heart jolted in his chest like a lovesick boy’s.
Yes, he thought. Yes, I am.
TO judge by the men’s delighted reactions, Tou’s decision to hire a nearly naked female dancing troupe to entertain them had been brilliant.
The soon-to-be-bridegroom had drunk too much to pretend not to be happy. Mohinder was on the little platform with the dancers, doing his best to imitate the snakelike undulations of their bare bodies. Tou could only smile at his antics. Lady Orissa was a good woman, a widow and head of her house. Mohinder was a softer man than Tou would have chosen to stand beside herself, but she thought the pair would suit.
And, really, if she wasn’t going to take full advantage of her men, someone had to.
She wouldn’t miss Mohinder, she realized. She had no feelings of possessiveness toward the boy. Nor had she missed the others while with Memnon. She was fond of her harem and enjoyed their company, but she didn’t feel the need to own them anymore.
Her eyes slid to Memnon’s profile. He sat beside her, tall and still, his folded leg touching hers. He smiled at Mohinder’s performance, but didn’t shout encouragement like the others. He was quieter in company than when he was alone with her. Tou liked what that said about his ease with her.
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As if he felt her watching, his fingers closed warmly over her hand. His attention did not follow. He was too busy scanning the shadows of the room.
“You watch the dark like one of my guards.”
He started at her observation and turned to her. “Sorry. Old habit.”
Now that he faced her, she stroked a finger down the crease beside his mouth. Only she knew how appealing it looked when he smiled. He was serious now, his gaze holding hers as if he never meant to look away. Tou found herself wishing he never would.
“I didn’t know,” he said, “until tonight.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That Mohinder was from Kemet. You knock me over, Tou, as surely as a catapult.”
“It’s only a banquet. And everyone who harmed me as a girl is dead by now.”
Memnon took her face between his hands, his dark eyes glittering as if filled with stars. “Love, if what had happened to you had been done to my father, he would have burned Kemet to the ground and salted the earth.”
“I wanted to,” Tou admitted, her shoulders hunched in embarrassment. “For many years, I could have done just that.” Then a crooked smile broke from her. “Kemet was lucky I hadn’t amassed the power to do evil deeds back then.”
Memnon kissed the tip of her nose. “They are lucky, but not for that reason.”
What she saw deep in his eyes had both emotion and desire pooling in her body. She was ready for him in an instant, throbbing and growing wet. He must have smelled her reaction, because his nostrils flared.
“Would you mind if we left?” she asked a little breathlessly. “I’d like to be alone with you.”
His hands slid to her shoulders, tightening as if they wished to hold other things.
“Yes,” he said, rough as gravel. “I think that’s a fine idea.”
RESIGNATION knotted in Deir’s chest as he watched them leave. They looked like lovers, their eyes as hungry for each other as the rest of them. He slipped from the tent himself, in no mood for celebration now that she was gone.
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