The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  “I don’t have a problem with Crasii being slaves, but I don’t agree with human slavery, you know.”

  Arkady looked at him in surprise, as much for his comment as for the fact that he delivered it without stammering. The alcohol had relieved him of his shyness, apparently.

  “Pity your father doesn’t agree with you.” She sat on the examination table opposite him and studied him for a moment in the flickering light of the shielded candle burning by the door.

  “I did broach the subject with him once,” Cydne said, dabbing at his mouth with the towel. “After I returned from studying in your country. He didn’t appreciate me pointing out that Glaeba got along just fine with only Crasii indentured servants.”

  “Given his entire fortune seems to be based on the trade in human flesh, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

  Cydne smiled sourly. “Yes, well you can probably imagine his reaction to my suggestion. After he stopped spluttering, he made me promise never to even think such a thing again. I suspect he was afraid the merger might be endangered if word got out about my radical views on slavery.”

  “He’s merging with another slaver? Oh, goody. Even more Senestran privateers preying on helpless people. You all must be beside yourselves.”

  Cydne was too drunk to notice her sarcasm. “You have no idea. My marriage to Olegra will make my father’s company the largest slave brokerage in Senestra, possibly the whole world.”

  The idea that this young man was the heir to the largest slaving empire on Amyrantha intrigued Arkady far less than the notion he was engaged. “You’re getting married?”

  He nodded unhappily. “Hence the reason I have been sent on this journey to purchase slaves from the markets of Elvere.”

  Arkady stared at him. She didn’t see the connection.

  “A few months ago,” the young man explained, “my father arranged a marriage for me with Olegra Pardura.”

  “And?” she said, when he stopped and waited expectantly for her reaction.

  “I forget, you know nothing of my country. The Pardura name means nothing to you.”

  “That’s hardly my fault.”

  He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You can’t imagine what a stir it caused, both in and out of the family. The Parduras have interests all over the eastern hemisphere, you see, right up into Tenacia, and . . .” He smiled as he realised how little of that meant anything to Arkady. “Well, suffice to say, our engagement had both families salivating over the opportunity to increase their wealth and power.”

  “Had you ever met this girl before?”

  Cydne shook his head. “No. But that never bothered me. I have always expected an arranged marriage, and Olegra Pardura comes from a fine family, is quite pretty, and of a reasonable age to bear healthy children.”

  “Which is all that really matters, I suppose.”

  “Trading dynasties can be more important than royalty in Senestra, Kady,” he said. “So, yes, it matters a great deal. Besides, for any number of reasons other than the commercial benefits, I was looking forward to getting married.”

  Arkady found that hard to believe, but she didn’t bother to say it aloud, preferring to hear the rest of his story while he was in the mood to talk. By tomorrow, when he’d sobered up, she doubted he’d be able to manage more than her name without blushing and stammering like a fool.

  “You see, once I’m married, I’ll be allowed to settle down and continue my work as a physician. My future bride has several brothers who are far more interested in trade than I am. The merger effectively gives me three brothers to carry the weight of my father’s expectations.”

  “You keep calling it a merger. Shouldn’t you think of it as a marriage?”

  “Yes, well . . . you see that’s where we ran into trouble. I’m not good around women . . .”

  “I had noticed that.”

  He threw his hands up helplessly. “It’s not that I don’t like them. Tides, I just don’t know what to say. Or do. And . . . and then parts of me start reacting on their own, as if I have another brain below my belt that doesn’t listen to a word the one above it is saying, and I get embarrassed, and I start to stammer . . .”

  “What happened?” Arkady asked, guessing they were getting to the crux of the story.

  He sighed heavily. “The first time they left me alone with Olegra, I was so nervous I threw up in her lap.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh, indeed.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “You have no idea the trouble my anxiety caused. The insult to the Padura family nearly brought about a trade war, the likes of which we haven’t seen in Senestra for centuries. It was only by my father refunding a sizable chunk of the dowry and promising that I would arrive at the wedding—which is scheduled a few days after our return from Torlenia, by the way—a ‘real man,’ that he was able to placate Olegra’s family.”

  Arkady nodded in understanding. “Hence the beatings by the crew and your willingness to play along with my subterfuge.”

  He nodded. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Kady. Your suggestion that I claim a woman for my own use—however selfishly motivated—has convinced everyone I’m now a real man. I find that vaguely disturbing, actually.”

  “I find it a great deal more than vaguely disturbing,” Arkady said. “Still, I shouldn’t complain, given how I’ve benefited from it. How long before we reach Senestra?”

  “The captain says less than a week.”

  “And then you’re getting married?”

  He nodded. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep the contents of my stomach down until after the ceremony.”

  She shook her head in wonder. “How does an educated, wealthy, well-mannered, good-looking young man get to be your age, in a society that has female human slaves catering to his every whim, and still be a virgin?”

  Cydne blushed crimson. “I never said . . .”

  “You didn’t have to. I was there for your first time, remember?”

  He glared at her, not so drunk that he had forgotten his place—or Arkady’s—in the general scheme of things. “It is bad enough that you pity me, slave. I will not tolerate you scorning me as well.”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Say not another word,” Cydne warned. “I fear I have said too much and you most certainly have said enough.” He lay down on the bunk, quite deliberately turning his back to her. “Please extinguish the lamps before you go to sleep.”

  He pulled the covers up, not bothering to take off his boots or his vomit-stained shirt, too embarrassed, or too shy, perhaps, to face her, now he knew she’d guessed his deepest and most humiliating secret.

  Arkady stared at his back for a time, wondering if he really did mean to go to sleep in that state, until his soft snores filled the cabin. With a sigh, and more sympathy than she ever thought she would feel for a man who called himself her master, she slipped off the table and blew out the candles by the door.

  In the darkness, she felt her way back to the hard, unrelenting surface of the examination table where she stretched out, wedged herself against the wall to prevent falling out of bed while she slept, and finally, after an interminable time, drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 9

  “I miss Declan Hawkes.”

  Queen Kylia of Glaeba looked up from the table where she was lying, scandalously naked, while the blind masseur she’d recently imported from Torlenia worked out the knots in the muscles of her back. If there were any knots in her muscles. Being immortal, her muscles probably didn’t knot up in the first place. Jaxyn couldn’t even remember the last time he’d suffered a stiff neck.

  She probably just liked being touched like that, he decided. Had he not been here, she might well have ordered the hapless young man to massage more than her muscles. Then again, this was Diala. Jaxyn’s presence in the room probably wouldn’t have made a difference one way or another, had she wanted more than the simple pleasure of a brisk rub-down.

  “Why would you be missing Haw
kes?” she asked. “Fancy him, did you?”

  Jaxyn leaned against the windowsill with his arms folded. “He was a little too . . . leader of the pack . . . for my liking. But he was an ambitious son of a whore. Literally. And he wasn’t overburdened with a conscience. Bridgeman’s a flanking loyalist.”

  “Then get rid of him. He’s only a stopgap spymaster until you find a new one anyway, isn’t he?”

  “That’s the problem,” Jaxyn said. “Good spymasters don’t grow on trees, you know. They take years to develop their contacts, their networks. If I dispose of Bridgeman, I lose the spy network that comes with him.”

  “Doesn’t he have a deputy?”

  “That was Declan Hawkes. When Bridgeman retired and he took over, seems he didn’t think he needed to start training his replacement just yet. Guess when you’re young, even if you’re mortal, you think you’re going to live forever.”

  “So we’re stuck with the old man,” Diala said with a shrug. “Deal with it.”

  “But I want to know what Tryan and Elyssa are up to in Caelum. I need Bridgeman’s cooperation for that.”

  “I thought you said you’d taken care of it?”

  “I’ve got a couple of canines in their service,” he said. “But they’re not much use to me if they have nobody to report to.”

  Diala murmured appreciatively as the masseur found a particularly sensitive spot and then said, “Tides, Jaxyn, how hard can it be? He’s the spymaster and you have the spies. Surely you can work something out.”

  “Bridgeman’s more concerned about the coronation, at the moment. My desire for intelligence from Caelum is a long way down his list. If it’s even on his list.”

  She smiled. “Well, I’m with Bridgeman there. I can’t wait ’til the coronation is done with and I’m irrevocably the Queen of Glaeba.”

  “I’m sure you can’t.”

  She turned her head to study him. “Is that a note of jealousy I hear in your voice, my dear?”

  “And what would I have to be jealous about?”

  “Well, I’m going to be queen, and you’re going to be . . . hmm . . . what are you going to be, Jaxyn, dearest? My minion?”

  Jaxyn smiled. “I haven’t been your minion for a very long time, Diala.”

  Damn, he’d called her Diala in front of the masseur. The man might be blind but he wasn’t deaf.

  Oh well . . . nobody except Diala will lament his passing in some tragic accident.

  Jaxyn was very good at arranging tragic accidents.

  “But I remember when you were my minion. We had fun together.”

  “Until you screwed me over.”

  She smiled even wider. “I screw everybody over, Jaxyn. Don’t take it personally.” She glanced over her shoulder at the masseur. “Lower,” she ordered. The man did as she asked and she sighed happily before turning her attention back to Jaxyn. “The point is, we’re in this together and for once, I have the upper hand. I’ll be queen and you’ll be my right-hand man. There isn’t a lot we can’t do with that arrangement in place.”

  Having decided the masseur would have to die, Jaxyn no longer worried about what the man might overhear. “Or we could get rid of that idiot child you’re married to, you and I could wed and—”

  “You would be king.” She turned her head away. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’d rather stay married to the idiot child?”

  “I find myself growing quite fond of the idiot child,” she said. “Mathu worships me, Jaxyn. It’s been quite a while since I was worshipped. I’d forgotten how nice it is.”

  “You’re prepared to risk him interfering with our plans, just so you can be worshipped? Tides, you haven’t changed much in the last few thousand years, have you?”

  His open admission of their immortality in front of her servant surprised Diala. She turned back to him with a warning look, and then she must have realised what his words meant and glared at him instead. “Tides, Jaxyn, it took me ages to find a decent masseur.”

  “Make sure the next one is blind, deaf and mute,” he suggested. “Or find a Crasii to do the job.”

  “Half the pleasure of a massage, Jaxyn, is the feeling of skin on skin. Not fur on skin. Besides, the canines can never keep their nails short enough, a feline is likely to shred you with her claws and an amphibian . . . well, they’re just too damned slimy.”

  “Maybe you should teach Mathu how to touch you properly, then. It would give him something useful to do.”

  “Or you could learn. You are my minion, after all.”

  Not for much longer, you controlling little bitch, Jaxyn thought, entirely fed up with Diala’s attitude. Her command of the Tide was moderate at best. He was a Tide Lord. She had no right to lord it over him like this. But for a lucky accident, she wouldn’t even be here.

  Tides, that day Arkady told me to bring her back a virgin, I should have come home and confessed to raping her. That would have put paid to Diala’s plans to marry the Crown Prince of Glaeba, quick smart.

  But he was stuck with her now, still regretting doing a deal with the Minion Maker instead of finding a way to remove her. Were it not for the politics of the situation, he would have declared himself long before now, and Diala be damned. But the Tide wasn’t back enough for that yet, and in truth, until he knew where the other Tide Lords were, he really didn’t want to announce his return.

  For a fleeting moment, he regretted Stellan Desean’s death too. Perhaps, if he’d removed Mathu sooner, things would be more to his liking. Diala would certainly have far less power than she wielded now, and be a few steps further removed from the throne, making Jaxyn’s life much easier.

  With Mathu gone, Stellan could have been king.

  Then again, Jaxyn realised, even with Stellan as king, that would have made Arkady queen, not him.

  Which reminds me . . . where is the magnificently disdainful Arkady?

  It was more than a month since he’d sent his people to Torlenia to bring Arkady home. According to their last message, they still hadn’t found her. He wasn’t surprised she’d gone into hiding on learning her husband had been arrested.

  He was astonished, however, that she remained at large.

  Arkady had no resources, didn’t speak the language and was altogether too inflexible to survive in a foreign country on her own, Jaxyn believed. Which meant either some ill had befallen her and she was dead, or she’d had help.

  But who would help her? She hadn’t been in Ramahn long enough to make the sort of friends who would court war with a neighbouring nation to aid her, and no Glaeban citizen living in Torlenia would risk a charge of treason by helping her, either.

  Were it not for the fact that Jaxyn was certain Declan Hawkes was dead, he might have confronted the spymaster about her, knowing that—even ambitious as he was—his long history with Arkady and his unrequited love for her, might be enough to tempt him into betraying the crown.

  Did Hawkes set up something before he died? An escape route, perhaps, in case something went awry while Arkady and her husband were in exile?

  Was the dead spymaster’s hand in this, even from beyond the grave?

  “Tides, Jaxyn, are you even listening to me?”

  Jaxyn blinked as he realised Diala had been talking to him all this time. “Pardon?”

  “You haven’t heard a word I said, have you?”

  He shrugged, hoping she considered his inattentiveness a sign of boredom rather than worry. “Perhaps if you said something worth listening to, I’d take the time to pay attention.”

  “I was telling you that if you want Mathu to declare war on Caelum, you’re going to have to produce something resembling solid evidence that they’re planning to attack us first.”

  “Well, I would,” Jaxyn said, “if I could get word from the spies I’ve planted in their palace.” Jaxyn pushed off the windowsill and began to pace the room. “Why does he care, anyway? Caelum has insulted us. They’ve accused us of kidnapping their wretched princess. We’ve
plenty of reason to go to war with them.”

  “I’ve told Mathu that. You’ve told him too. All he says is ‘Stellan would pursue a diplomatic solution first before he’d start banging the war drums.’ ”

  Jaxyn rolled his eyes impatiently. “How noble of our young king to worry about Stellan’s opinion now, when the last thing he did for his cousin was to trump up charges against him, disinherit him and put him on trial for treason.”

  Diala smiled nastily. “You’re the one who trumped up the charges against Stellan, Jaxyn. Now his poor, dear cousin is dead, Mathu’s feeling quite remorseful about the whole sorry episode.”

  Jaxyn didn’t doubt for a moment who had planted the notion of remorse in Mathu’s easily impressionable head.

  This has gone on long enough, Jaxyn decided. He needed to speak to Mathu. It was time Diala learned the influence he had over the young king was as powerful as her own.

  “Well, just be sure you don’t console him too well,” he said, heading for the door. “We’re going to have to do something about Syrolee and her wretched clan soon. War may be our only option.”

  “If Tryan and Elyssa decide to stop squabbling long enough to work in concert,” Diala called after him, “they’ll destroy this place and every mortal in it and you won’t be able to do a thing to stop them. What will happen to your sorry little kingdom then?”

  Jaxyn stopped, his hand on the latch. “That’ll only happen if we don’t get in first and declare war on them before the Tide peaks. Oh . . . but we can’t go to war now, can we, because you’ve decided to prove your power over the idiot child, by advising against it.”

  Diala pushed herself up on her elbows, glaring at Jaxyn. She hadn’t thought about the likelihood of a confrontation with the immortals scrabbling for power in Caelum in those terms, apparently.

  “Get out.”

  “Gladly,” he said, opening the door. Then he smiled as he drew on the rising Tide and added, “By the way, I don’t think your boy there is looking too healthy.”

  He closed the door on a stream of most un-queen-like profanity, as the blind masseur collapsed against Diala, bleeding from his eardrums as the unbearable pressure Jaxyn had induced made them explode up into his brain.