Tales of the Thasali Harem Box Set

by Danielle Summers

  Rouden couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You lie!” He still couldn’t accept that a man who had selflessly served the Tanshar independence movement had been so selfish.

  Totven laughed. It was a grating, guttural sound, as if laughter was foreign to him and he wasn’t sure how to do it. “I don’t lie. And if I know the rebels, you have no standing with them anymore. You are what they always thought you were. A traitor.”

  Rouden lunged at Totven. He almost succeeded in landing a punch, but soldiers held him back. He kicked one of them hard in the shin, violently yanked his arm from the grasp of another, and brought that arm swiftly behind him, jabbing his elbow into the groin area of the soldier standing there. Ignoring the moans and curses of the soldiers, he jumped at Totven.

  Totven, held by Thasali soldiers, tried to look fearless as he continued to struggle to get away. Rouden punched the man with his left fist. He grabbed a fistful of the front of Totven’s uniform and bared his teeth.

  “Steady there,” Oshone said as he grasped one of Rouden’s arms.

  “Are you going to let this rebel scum attack me?” yelled Totven.

  “Not for the moment,” said Oshone. “Please, Rouden, continue your story.”

  Rouden took a deep breath and rubbed the knuckles of his left hand. “The general escaped, but we found him again with a group of rebels who had captured him in one of the tunnels south of the compound. They were holding him for ransom. They believed he’d fetch a high price. I told them of his treachery to Thasali. I told them that I didn’t think the Matriarch would pay anything for a traitor.” He paused and let that information sink in. He said nothing more, but everyone knew that General Eppon was most likely dead.

  Totven started thrashing and screaming. “Tanshar will still be ours! You can’t stop us. We will take all the water!”

  Rouden broke free of Oshone and lunged at Totven again. He landed a punch squarely on Totven’s jaw. A line of blood trickled down his chin.

  “Enough!” Malu shouted as other soldiers pulled Rouden away from Totven. He stepped close to Rouden, who struggled against the soldiers holding him. “You will stand down, rebel.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” Rouden said. He couldn’t help wincing. The knuckles of his left hand were really hurting after two punches to Totven. Thasali soldiers were strong. Suddenly, he felt another hand on his shoulder. This one had a gentler touch. Amyar. The soldiers let go. Amyar reached down to Rouden’s sleeve. He knew what the prince was about to do. He knew it would save his life, but he wished he wouldn’t.

  Amyar pulled back Rouden’s sleeve, revealing his harem tattoo. The tattoo felt like it was burning as it was exposed to air. Then Amyar said the words that Rouden dreaded.

  “He is my harem boy on a special mission.”

  Oshone glanced from Amyar to Rouden and back to Amyar again. “I don’t remember you bringing a harem boy on this trip.”

  “I don’t have time to explain, but trust me. He’s with me. And he’s not just my harem boy. I want to make him my consort.”

  Amyar grabbed Rouden’s hand and held it firmly. Rouden was so uncomfortable, but he went along with the ruse. They hadn’t discussed this, but, for the moment, saying Rouden would be his consort kept him alive. They would figure things out later.

  Captain Malu drew his weapon. “The Matriarch will sort this out. We’re going to the compound.”

  “I’m going to the compound, too?” Rouden wanted nothing more than to be back up in the mountains with Amyar.

  “Of course,” the captain snapped. “You’ll lead the way through those tunnels you mentioned.”

  Rouden’s heart sank. He didn’t want to give away a tunnel network that it was clear Thasali didn’t know existed. He’d be just as bad as Wyke if he led them through the tunnels. He shook his head.

  “I can’t do that. Sir.”

  “You will do it.” Malu’s hand was steady on the sword he still had pointed on Rouden.

  Rouden saw Amyar bite his lip. This was a gamble, but he had to hold onto this bit of knowledge. He had to prove, if only to himself, that he was still a Tansharian loyal to the independence movement. “Or you’ll kill me? I don’t think so.”

  A few moments passed. The noises of the night—nocturnal birds and other creatures—sounded unnaturally loud. For a moment, Rouden thought he saw indecision on Malu’s face.

  Steady. Stay steady.

  Amyar broke the charged atmosphere.

  “We’re wasting time, captain. Traveling above ground will get us there just as quickly as a tunnel. We encountered no problems and no rebels on our way here,” he said.

  Finally, Malu spat on the ground before taking his gaze from Rouden. “Move out. Everyone who’s going with us, move out.”

  They moved quietly and as quickly as they could. Amyar walked next to Rouden. He grabbed Rouden’s hand. He shared his warmth, and it felt good. They fell in step with each other and slowed down until they were at the back of the pack. Then they were far enough back that they would not be heard by the others. They maintained that distance for a while. Amyar was the first to break their silence.

  “I love you, Rouden.”

  Rouden took a few moments to reply. “I won’t be your consort. I won’t be your harem boy, but I want to be with you. I love you, too.”

  He wanted to have sex right now with Amyar, but they couldn’t. They kept walking. Amyar kept hold of Rouden’s hand.

  Amyar said, “We’ll figure something else out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Meeting with the Matriarch

  After Rouden had arrived at the compound, he along with Malu, Oshone, Amyar, and Totven were ushered into a large conference room.

  Rouden wasn’t sure if he should be ready to fight or flee, but it was the large, oval-shaped table in the middle of the room that gave him pause. It had clearly been carved from wood taken from trees found only in Tanshar’s mountain lake region where he had grown up. He recognized the smell. He recognized the grain. The high-backed chairs around the table were made from the same material.

  The dark brown wood had many properties that made it ideal for furniture. It was sturdy and strong. Wood carvers raved about what a joy it was to carve. But one property that made it valuable was that it retained its aromatic, fresh wood scent long after the tree had been cut down. When Rouden walked into the room, he was overwhelmed by the force of the wood’s aroma. A rush of vivid memories of a childhood spent playing games in the mountain forest with his brother and sisters and working alongside his father cutting down trees for fuel or other uses came at him almost too fast to distinguish one memory from another. He barely noticed the Matriarch, sitting at the end of the table farthest from the door, until she spoke.

  “You may sit, gentlemen.” The Matriarch put up her right hand. “Totven will stand. Sergeant Helwy, is it? Yes. Sergeant, you and your men will keep your eyes on him, won’t you?”

  “Yes, your royal highness,” Helwy said.

  The Matriarch’s humble Tansharian garb was gone. Her hair was perfectly coiffed. Her brightly colored shirt was crisp. She was the ruler she always had been.

  The sergeant’s face was stoic, but Rouden thought he seemed awestruck at being in the Matriarch’s presence. Rouden took a seat next to Amyar, who sat to his mother’s right. Malu and Oshone sat on the other side of the table. Malu had insisted that two soldiers be positioned behind Rouden’s chair, despite Amyar’s objections. Rouden wasn’t pleased either, but this was Thasali territory. If he’d forgotten that, a quick glance around the room at the flag that hung on the wall reminded him.

  A man Lieutenant Oshone introduced as Captain Golub read a report of the coup attempt and the plot to steal Tanshar’s water. At the Matriarch’s urging, Rouden and Amyar filled in any gaps. The Matriarch dismissed Golub so he could revise the report.

  Rouden watched Malu who sat ramrod straight with both his hands on the table, palms flat. His face looked stormy. He suddenly
pushed back from the table, stood up, and strode rapidly over to Totven. He slapped him across the face several times before the Matriarch ordered him to stop. Totven’s lip was split with an angry-looking gash.

  “Helwy, take Totven down to the cells. His usefulness has expired,” said the Matriarch. “Make sure he is as far from Timendum as possible. Schedule an execution for the morning.”

  Helwy bowed and led four soldiers and Totven out of the room. Malu sat down again. Oshone patted him briefly, tentatively, on the back.

  “That was the easy bit.” She turned her attention to Rouden. “Now, we must figure out what to do about you. We’ve never taken a harem boy back before. Once you leave, you’re gone. I will make an exception for you and my son. He seems quite taken with you.”

  “No!” yelled Rouden. He tried to stand up, but was pushed back down by the soldiers and kept firmly seated by their strong hands.

  “Stop,” yelled Amyar. He tried to get up from his chair. Soldiers pushed him down as well.

  Rouden was flooded with anger and fear. His tattoo ached. He didn’t want it any more. He loved Amyar, but being a harem boy or even Amyar’s consort was too high a price to pay. He struggled against the soldiers. He didn’t know what else to do. Amyar had told him he would figure something out, but hadn’t elaborated. He hated the feeling of being in Thasali bondage. He’d been fighting it his entire life.

  “Son, harem boy, are you ready to behave?”

  “I’m not a harem boy!”

  Rouden felt the soldiers’ grip on him tighten.

  “Mother! Stop this!” Amyar struggled against the soldiers holding him down.

  The Matriarch gave a hand signal, and the soldiers backed away from her son. Amyar looked stronger than Rouden had ever seen him. He stayed seated, but his back was straight. He held his head high. He spoke, his voice full of purpose.

  “Mother. Before you make any decisions about Rouden, hear me out.”

  The Matriarch nodded. “All right. Proceed.”

  The prince said, “Rouden, please stop. Calm down. It will all be all right.” He pulled Rouden’s sleeve to cover the harem tattoo and whispered, “I know that isn’t who you are anymore.”

  Amyar stood and walked around the table. He thanked Oshone, Malu, and others in the room for their role in defeating the coup. Then, he stood opposite his mother and spoke directly to her.

  “I know, Mother, that you were not in favor of me coming to Tanshar at first. You called Tanshar a festering backwater. There have been moments since I’ve been here when I thought that perhaps you were right. But I’ve learned some very important things about myself.”

  The prince continued, “I’ve learned that I’m not simply a pretty hot house plant. There’s still a lot for me to learn, but I can take care of myself outside the boundaries of the palace. I know that now. I also know I love this wonderful man here.”

  “You’ve known him for so short a time, my son. How can you be sure?”

  Amyar motioned toward Rouden. “Yes, he’s a member of the rebellion here in Tanshar, the rebellion I came here to help end, but he chose to help me when he didn’t have to. His choice saved my life, and for that I will be forever grateful. Before we ever met, he chose to join our family’s harem. After a time, he chose to leave it. Then he chose to become part of the Tansharian rebellion. You, Mother, may think that Rouden, as a Tansharian, is undeserving of the freedom that he and his fellows seek.”

  The Matriach nodded. “You would be right, yes.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Amyar saw Rouden flinch. He willed him not to jump up and attack the Matriarch. If nothing else, Amyar thought that such behavior would prove his mother’s rather low opinion of Tansharians generally and Rouden specifically.

  “I would have thought the same before meeting him, had I thought about Tanshar and its people at all. I have been given everything. There is nothing I wanted that I didn’t get. But I’ve never had choices like Rouden has had. My desire to come to Tanshar was a choice, but even that could have been thwarted by you, Mother. I want a life where I can make choices. I envy Rouden because he’s had the opportunity to make choices about his life. I want to choose my life. I choose to be with him.”

  “You can be with him. You can take him as your consort,” said the Matriarch. She tried to move the conversation to other topics, but then Rouden realized what Amayar had done. The Matriarch had given him permission he hadn’t asked for. The princes had significant power, but they still frequently turned to their mother for counsel and permission, especially for family matters.

  “No.” Amayar moved to stand beside Rouden. He motioned the guards to move, and his mother allowed it. “He won’t be my consort. He will be my partner. We will be together, and he will be my equal.”

  The people gathered in the room gasped. The Matriarch looked aghast. The royals married other royals for political or economic reasons, but they always married those who were their equals or close to it. They had sex with harem members, with a small number achieving consort status. They were together, but they were never equals. It just wasn’t possible.

  Rouden could feel the warmth from Amyar’s hand on his shoulder. He wanted to stand up and kiss him, embrace him, but the room was too quiet. Everyone was holding their breath.

  The Matriarch stood. Her heavy wooden chair screeched loudly across the floor, and the air seemed to return to the room. “My son, I’ll leave you and the Tansharian to discuss things. Captain Malu, Lieutenant Wera, please follow me. We have to clean up Eppon’s and my cousin’s mess.”

  Rouden watched the Matriarch walk out. She was followed by the officers and the soldiers. It occurred to him then that the Matriarch had never called him by his name. Amyar may consider them equals, but she certainly didn’t and probably never would.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Left alone

  Amyar took a seat next to Rouden. He’d sat at this table when he had first arrived and hadn’t thought much of it. Now it was where he would make a decision.

  For the first time in his life, he felt useful. He took pride in helping thwart a coup. This saved Tanshar’s water and kept his mother and his family in power. He’d met and fallen in love with the unlikeliest of men. Had he really betrayed his own people or had he saved them from a fate potentially worse than Thasali rule?

  Amyar didn’t have an answer to that question, but he knew he couldn’t imagine living without Rouden. He just didn’t know where they would be able to live. He put his hand on top of Rouden’s. He noticed the softness, but also felt the roughness. There was a faint scar on one knuckle, and a patch of tough skin on his middle finger. He wanted to hear the stories behind these marks and more.

  “Your mother will want an answer,” Rouden said. He entwined his fingers with Amyar’s.

  Amyar sighed. “None of this has played out how I thought it would. I only wanted to see something outside the palace walls.” He turned to Rouden. There was sadness and joy in his eyes. “I thought that was lacking in my family. We have ruled for generations yet it seems like we never really know our subjects.”

  Rouden raised one of his eyebrows at the word subjects. “Am I a subject?”

  It was at that moment that it really hit Amyar. He could not go back to Resedna if he wanted to be with Rouden. Going back alone to his old life was unthinkable. He’d seen too much. If Rouden went back with him, he would be Amyar’s consort, nothing more. Amyar would eventually marry someone economically or politically advantageous to Thasali. They would have a life neither one of them wanted. They couldn’t stay in Tanshar. He suspected there was a price on both their heads.

  What was it exactly that he wanted? Where would they have to go to get it?

  He answered Rouden’s question with one of his own.

  “Am I a royal?”

  Rouden stood and began to pace. “No matter the decision you make, I know that I can’t stay here. I can’t stay anywhere in the Thasali empire. My brother can be persuasive
, but I doubt even he can convince Alban that I’m trustworthy, let alone that I shouldn’t just be killed outright.”

  Amyar turned in his chair to keep Rouden, who walked around the room, in his sight. “Alban?”

  “Mikero Alban,” Rouden said as he stopped pacing to face Amyar. “He was second in command of our movement. By now, he probably knows what happened to Wyke, so he’s taken the reins. He never liked me.”

  The prince waited for Rouden to continue, but the silence stretched on. Amyar recognized the faraway look in his eyes. “What is it? Tell me.”

  A brief, apologetic smile animated Rouden’s face. “All I’ve done is prove them right. I can’t be trusted.”

  “Sit down, my love.” Amyar beckoned Rouden back to the table. Rouden sat down heavily in the chair. “You’ve done good things. You—”

  “I would have done anything for Wyke.” He spoke quickly as if the words were poisoning him. “He said he had faith in me, told me how important I was to the cause. Lies. I thought we were doing the right thing, but it’s all such a mess. I wonder when he was corrupted? When did they get to him? I would have done anything for that man. Who was he really in his heart?”

  “Anything? Like tip Wyke off about me during negotiations?”

  Rouden released a heavy sigh. “They knew you were there. They had planned to kidnap you all along. I didn’t know about that part of the plan. I did tip them off during negotiations. I’m sorry I did, but you would have been kidnapped anyway. Besides, I didn’t know you then, not really. I thought I did. I thought you were just like all the other royals, like your cousin.”

  Amyar winced at being likened to his cousin Timendum. He just had a hunch that Rouden may have led to him being kidnapped. He’d seen him whisper in Wyke’s ear before the chaos began. He needed to know the truth. Now, he didn’t care. They were almost different people during negotiations.