“The poison must have worn off by now. She's probably just sleeping, not unconscious.”
Ajalira heard the voices in the hallway, and they drew closer. She had no weapon—where was her dagger? She would have to bide her time until she could find a means of escape.
“My lady?” The guard at the door turned to face her as the door opened. “Do you require anything?”
Surprise sent Ajalira's eyes flying open, and she sat up. Why were they being polite? Why call her “lady”? Why care if she needed anything?
“Do you require some water? Wine, perhaps? Or food? Are you comfortable?” The Ausir who spoke looked at her with disdain belied by his courteous words. He despised her.
Ajalira tilted her chin. It no longer mattered what the Ausir thought of her. She belonged to Kamen, and if he were pleased with her, then the Ausir could go hang. The ferocity of her thoughts and the distaste for her own people were both strange to Ajalira, but she resolved to puzzle it out as she had the time. For now it would serve her best to keep her captors speaking.
“Wine, please.” She shifted on the divan. “Where am I? And why?”
The guard who had spoken before and whom Ajalira now took to be the chief of them poked his head out the door. “Fetch wine.”
He did not mention that the wine was to be for her, and Ajalira wondered how many people knew where she was.
“Is there anything else, my lady?” The guard's words were unexceptionable, but his tone conveyed infinite contempt.
“Yes. Where am I? And why have I been brought here?” Ajalira knew that any answer, even a lie, was more useful to her than silence, so she pushed the question.
“You are in the custody of … an Ausir lord.”
Ajalira could see in her mind's eye Kamen rolling his eyes. No political finesse, nor yet any openness. Still, a guard willing to abduct a lady to please his lord must be someone fairly close to the lord, someone trustworthy, someone who had been long with his lord. Probably someone from his home estate, likely a relative.
“Which one?”
“That is not something I may say.”
As the guard spoke, Ajalira concentrated on the sounds, on the cadence, on the accent. She was Tamari herself, and that accent, being stronger and more pronounced than any other, was easy to determine.
“So you will not even tell me where I am being held?”
“In his custody.”
“For what purpose?” Ajalira could afford to be irritating. Any slip in the guard's composure would benefit her, but she gave up any hope of determining aught from the accents. The Seranimesti and Kimereth were too geographically close for that to be of any use.
“He intends to claim you.” The guard actually shuddered.
Ajalira knew that the shudder was put on for her benefit. Despite their views on chastity for their women, Larenai men would fuck prostitutes whenever possible. They just would not marry them.
“Claim me?” Ajalira's confusion on that point was genuine. Was that not Kamen's prerogative? To bestow her on the Ausir whom he named King? Her heart shriveled at that thought. She belonged to Kamen only.
“Yes.” This time the guard's voice held only satisfaction. “And then there will be no place for you but with him.”
A knock at the door drew the door-guard's attention, but the chief of them still stood by Ajalira, pretending to attend to her wants. When the wine was handed in, Ajalira noted that the door-guard screened her from view. She assumed then that she was not known to be here at all. That could work to her advantage. When she was ready to make her move, she would scream. That should at least alert the servants.
But then she listened to the footsteps of the departing servant, and she knew that screaming was useless. The footsteps faded far too quickly. Even with her Ausir hearing and Lotus training, she could not follow the steps to the end of the hall. This room must be in some way muffled. There had been such rooms at the guildhouse, rooms insulated in such a way that sound would not carry in or out of them.
“Your wine.” With a flourish, the guard bowed insolently and presented her with the mug.
Unbidden, there sprang to her mind the deference of King Jahen's household toward her. The Sunjaa did not see her as worthless. They saw her as highly honored in belonging to Kamen.
Ajalira shook her head and focused her wandering thoughts. She did not fear poison. If they had wanted her dead, she would already be so. She sipped at the wine and continued to draw out her guard. Any information could help her, any hint or clue as to her captors' plans. “What do you mean that there will be no place for me but with your lord?”
The guard smiled, a slow, lecherous leer that told Ajalira everything.
This lord, whichever of the two contenders it was, intended to rape her. It was not an Ausir custom, though it sometimes happened among the men of Godswatch where they now were. Marriage by abduction and rape—Ajalira knew that it was her own sullied state that made the Ausir lords think they could deal thus with her.
But Kamen was nobler than they, and he did not see her as unworthy.
“He would force the concubine of the Regent?” said Ajalira, shaking her head. “That would be unwise.”
“The Regent has already dismissed you, my lady.” The guard's leer did not alter.
Ajalira's throat closed up, and for an instant blackness swam before her eyes. Kamen had given her up? Why? Of course, he had thought she would insist on such a course. It would be like him to act quickly and thoroughly. If she were to leave him, he would not hold her. His own nobility of nature would forbid it.
“Nothing to say, my lady?”
“What is your name?” Ajalira forced down her fear. Even if Kamen had intended to give her up, thinking that was her own desire, he would not do so if she asked him to keep her. He loved her; she clung to that thought.
“You need not concern yourself with that, my lady.”
Every time he said “my lady” it was like a slap in Ajalira's face. He so manifestly despised her. She drew herself up. Kamen found her worthy. Who was this honorless lackey willing to abduct a woman to gainsay Kamen? “I do concern myself. If I am to be the Ausir Queen, you shall have to deal with me hereafter.”
“I am forbidden to reveal my name—or my lord's name—until such time as he has already … taken possession of you.” The guard bowed and withdrew, leaving her with the door guard only.
“Are you equally forbidden to speak to me?” Ajalira rose, and as she walked toward the door guard, she tested the length of the chain on her shackles.
“Yes, my lady.” The guard did not turn his head to look at her, and Ajalira smiled. That would serve her turn.
“So you, too, court the ire of your Queen?”
“Mirsa's cunt!” The door guard made the sign against evil, two fingers facing out held before his mouth. “You shouldn't—”
Ajalira nodded, pretending that she had not noticed either his peculiar curse or his revulsion from the idea of her being Queen. “I see.” She stood, as if absently, not four paces from the guard.
He was Kimereth. She was sure of it. The ejaculation “Mirsa's cunt” was a curse no Seranimesti would make. They had, ever since Faloth Seranimesti had been made the first high priest of the goddess Abrexa, worshiped her and her alone. For the Seranimesti, Abrexa was the only goddess. No Seranimesti would swear by any other god.
It was, of course, not proof. Ajalira understood this. She could prove nothing from the idle exclamation of a guard, but she was sure within herself. Still, it would not hurt to draw out further such words, just to be more certain.
“I shall never marry your kinsman.” She spoke on the assumption that these trusted allies, those in the secret of their lord's intended rape of the soon-to-be Queen, were related to the Kimereth lord.
“You will.” The door guard shrugged. “You're Tamari. You would have to.”
“I shall not abandon my lord, Kamen Itenu,” said Ajalira clearly. “I already belong to him, and I
can belong to no other man.”
The door guard laughed. “We don't fear him.”
“You should.” Ajalira felt the chill of fear settle in her belly. Not for herself, for she feared neither death nor pain nor shame. Dishonor was her sole fear, and that could be brought on by her own actions only. But fear for Kamen turned her blood to ice. Would these vicious poisoners try again to kill Kamen as they had on the journey to Godswatch?
“No mere human is of any concern to the Larenai.”
Another word in favor of this being Kimereth's man. The Seranimesti did not exclude the Tamari from their considerations. A Seranimesti would have said “Ausir”, not “Larenai”.
“The Regent is more than a 'mere human'.” Ajalira paced the length and breadth of the room, as she spoke, and with each step she grew more familiar with the limitations of her shackles. “He is the leader of the Sunjaa, mightiest nation in the west, the oldest nation in the world!”
“He's an ugly, black ape.” The guard chuckled. “No wonder he was content with you.”
Ajalira swallowed the battle-cry that leapt to her lips. She would allow no such insult to Kamen to go unanswered by blood. She moved to stand near the door guard, but she allowed herself no more guile than keeping silence while she approached him. She stood in front of him, and she looked proudly into her enemy's eyes as she spat in his face.
Shock stole the guard's voice, and he raised his hand to strike her.
That was his mistake, and it was one Ajalira had almost ventured to expect. A Seranimesti would have known better, would have realized that a Tamari female was a genuine threat. A Kimereth would take her to deserve a slap on the face. She did not reach up to block the blow, nor did she turn away. Instead, Ajalira reached out and pulled the sword off his hip. As his hand struck her cheek, his sword in her hand sliced through his belly.
She did not pull the blade out as she reversed the blow, dragging the sword up through his sternum and up to his throat. Blood poured down over her hands, and when her foe fell dead, his death cries muffled by the insulating walls of the room, Ajalira laughed. She knelt over the corpse and dipped her hands in his blood, then wiped her hands on both her cheeks.
“I offer this blood to you, mighty Alaxton Battlebringer, in gratitude for victory over my foes and those of my lord, Kamen Itenu.”
The fallen guard had not had the keys to her shackles, so Ajalira took up a post by the door. Though she had never mastered the Lotus Forms, she had had, for that very cause, to practice the preparatory exercises more often than any Lotus. She had learned to stand, utterly motionless, for hours.
When the Kimereth lord opened this door to violate her, he would find that Kamen's concubine was truer than he could imagine.
Chapter Sixteen
Kamen's rage swept him along the corridors and carried him to his apartments. Like a bull, he shouldered his way past festhall servants and surprised guests. He stopped in front of the oak door and stared at the carvings on its face: bearded hunters chased a beautiful deer through the forest. Beyond the trees stood another hunting party. The deer could not escape its fate. Its grace would be consumed, and all that it ever was would pass thoughtlessly through the bellies of the hunters.
Kamen gritted his teeth and pushed the door open with a growl. Weak sunlight poured in through the open balcony doors. A breeze that smelled of the ocean blew the long, cream-colored curtains across the marble floor, hooking their ends on the end tables that stood near luxurious divans.
“Ajalira.” Kamen jogged from the front parlor to the back rooms. He passed through the breakfast room and into the bedroom. No sign of her. “Ajalira!”
He returned to the front parlor, but she was not there. Kamen heard movement out in the corridor. Throwing open the door, he accosted a serving maid who walked by with an arm full of linens. “Girl.” He spoke in the Fihdal tongue, a trade language of the north, and hoped she would understand.
“Sir?” she answered in the same tongue.
“Have you seen the Ausir lady who occupies these apartments?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She looked up and to the left, and she spoke as if she were remembering precise words. “Lady Zomalin has gone to the Temple of Melara to seek pardon of the goddess.”
“The Temple of Melara?” Kamen did not believe her for a second. Her lie was clear, but there was something about the way the girl spoke, as if she believed the lie herself. “Did anyone go with her?”
The girl's expression twisted in clear confusion, as though she wondered if she should say. She pouted her lips as she quickly puzzled out her answer. “Yes.”
“Do you know who?”
The girl shook her head.
Kamen believed her. He dropped a silver coin in the servant's hand for her troubles and shooed her off. He then returned to the parlor to seek any clues to the shenanigans he knew were afoot.
And it did not take him long to discover the truth of the matter. There, on the balcony, lay Ajalira's bloodied dagger, the very blade he had given her in Arinport. There was a smear of blood from the door sill to the edge of the balcony. Someone had dragged a body here.
Ajalira's corpse-face flashed through his imagination like some hovering death-mask. Did they kill her? Did those fucking horned devils murder her? Kamen stumbled back through the billowing curtain and jammed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to wipe away the red mist rising in his vision. His heart pounded as he grew light-headed. He tripped out the door and into the dark corridor. He needed to find Saerileth immediately.
“Regent?” Saerileth's voice found him.
“Always here when I need you,” Kamen said, distracted, “like some summoned apparition.”
Saerileth swam through the red mist toward him. “What's the matter? What's happened?”
“Ajalira. Blood on the balcony. They took her.”
Saerileth looked down at Kamen's hand, and Kamen followed her gaze. He held the dagger. He did not even remember picking it up.
Kamen read her unasked question in her eyes. “I don't know. But if they killed her, I'll burn this city down and every Ausir in it.”
Saerileth took his elbow and steadied him. “Regent.”
Kamen nodded. He willed the red mist away, and he buried his wrath for the moment. He would need to be calm when he went back downstairs. “Let's go.”
Saerileth and Kamen re-entered the main banquet hall and passed the antechamber that led to the garden. The Ausir were still milling about on the lawn, the game of quoits near completion. Kamen did not care who was winning. His unintelligible roar spun everyone around. Every sharp Ausir eye was on him, every mouth agape.
“If you don't return her immediately, you'll never have her as your Queen.” Saerileth simultaneously interpreted for Kamen.
Ansim Kimereth called out across the lawn. “Who?”
“Ajalira. My concubine.”
“She's missing?” Tivanel Seranimesti handed his quoit to a kinsman and closed the distance between him and Kamen. “I heard she'd gone to the Temple of Melara.”
Seranimesti knew? He knew the lie. Because it was his lie? Or because someone had whispered the lie in his ear, hoping to further confuse and deflect blame? Kamen could read neither truth nor falsehood in Tivanel's impassive green eyes. Damn Ausir! Veirakai-spawn trash!
“Melara,” Kamen repeated without reason. His gaze drifted to the grass, but when Kimereth, too, drew near, his eyes shot back up. “Yes, Melara. A Tamari swordswoman went to Melara to seek pardon. Anybody else find that strange?”
Ansim shrugged. “How can one predict the ways of a woman in love? She loves you dearly.”
The Kimereth kinsmen chuckled where they took their ease in the shade of the trees. Kamen could have cut all their laughing tongues out.
“A woman in love does not leave her lover's present behind.” Kamen produced the dagger still caked with tacky blood.
Tivanel took a step back, and Ansim went rigid all over.
“I
found this in my apartments,” Kamen said, his voice nothing more than a growl escaping clamped teeth. “Ajalira is my concubine, and if she's been harmed, the Sunjaa nation will respond. I alone have legal claim to her, but for the sake of peace, I was going to forgo that right and give her over to one of you.” He let his gaze wither Kimereth and then Seranimesti. “I don't know which one of you took her, and right now I don't care. You're obviously not worth the time of the Sunjaa Crown, so fuck you and fuck peace. You have one hour to return her. After that, it's war.”
The idle Ausir jumped to their feet, but Kamen cut off any protest by snarling like a feral dog. He slashed the upper side of his forearm in Tamari fashion, just the way Ajalira had the night she had given herself to him. Tivanel and Ansim watched in horror. Kamen wiped his bloody left forearm across his right cheek, leaving a smear of gore across his face. “Bear witness to my vow, Alaxton, Battlebringer of the Tamari, Keeper of the Word. I, Kamen Itenu, Regent of the Sunjaa Crown, swear by Chiel's bright eyes that if Ajalira is not returned to me safe and sound, I will scuttle every Ausir ship in Godswatch's harbor, hang every Ausir in the city, and sack Norivea, only after I have burned the Silbrios to the ground.”
“You do me notorious wrong, Regent,” Tivanel said, though his angry gaze rested on Ansim.
Ansim ignored his rival. “You would be a fool to attempt such knavery.”
“Indeed?” The blood flowed down Kamen's arm and dripped from his fingertips. He felt closer to Ajalira than he ever had before, and in his heart, he knew she lived. “I have a Sunjaa fleet waiting just outside Godswatch waters, captained by Lord Admiral Darien Kesandrahn. You know, the Water Serpent.”
Kimereth laughed. “Even if I had her, which I don't for one minute admit to, you wouldn't want her after I was through with her.”
At that moment, Kamen knew Ansim had her. He rushed up to his horned foe and got nose-to-nose with him. If Kamen attacked him, he would never get Ajalira back, so for her sake, he checked his hand. “Oh, yes, I would, and if you push me, then you'll see what the Sunjaa navy can really do.” He felt Banar's plump hands on his arm, pulling him away.
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