"Lady?" he asked.
"Second thinks you are a threat," the Slave Queen said. "He tried to convince Third last night while you were at supper."
"I am not surprised," the Ambassador replied. "I have given Second cause for worry—finally. Maybe now he will speak to me when I request a meeting."
"He will try everything in his power to displace you," the Slave Queen said.
"I wouldn't expect otherwise."
She eyed him. "You are in good humor for where you stand."
The Ambassador walked past her to the window; turned from it and rolled his shoulders in a strange, fluid motion that no creature with wings could have managed. "So many nights," he said, shaking his head. "And at last, I begin to reap what I have shed blood to sow."
She canted her head.
"I drank from his cup," he said quietly. "He offered it to me and I drank. I sat on Second's pillow. And at night, he finally spoke to me as I'd hoped he would. I am in good humor, yes. Also troubled."
"Troubled?" she asked, wide-eyed. "You sought the penultimate place at his side and you have reached it. Surely you should rejoice?"
"I would be more comfortable if I knew how I had earned it," the Ambassador said. "I feel as if I've reached it by accident. By fumbling my way through your customs, your culture. And he does not lend himself to understanding, the Emperor. He beats me, uses me and humiliates me. Then he pours my wine, laughs and talks to me. Am I a male of sufficient respect to be a rival? Or am I a courtesan he's particularly enamored of?"
"We have no courtesans anymore," the Slave Queen said. "Still, it is more than you could have hoped to achieve. Is it not enough?"
He stared at the ceiling, then closed his dusk-blue eyes and folded his arms over his chest. Leaning against the wall so, dressed in white, he looked like a part of the wall, a statue carved against it.
"No," he said at last. "It is not enough, because I don't understand and I must. He claims the Alliance is not worth conquering... yet I am, or so he seems to say by continually inviting me to his chamber. What we do together there on the floor, on the sheets... that is war, lady. So why the dichotomy? Why me and not the Alliance? I need to know what's stopping him... so I can learn at last what will set him loose."
"And this you will teach to your superiors," the Slave Queen said.
"Yes," he said.
"And all our weaknesses," the Slave Queen said slowly. "You will teach them those as well."
He hesitated—not to spare her, she sensed, but out of regret. "Yes."
"Good," she said. The word felt right and she said it again. "Good."
"You approve?" he asked, surprised.
She sat on the stool she had not put away since Second's session and hugged herself, bending over her knees. "You have brought change here simply by existing, by not breaking," she said, sorting through her thoughts as they surfaced from wells she'd thought clogged. "It has not been evil change. Perhaps what you have done here so far, the Alliance could do for the Empire. Perhaps if the Empire finds itself fighting a war it cannot easily win, it will remember its heart and become something greater than it is."
"You a proponent of war? I cannot imagine it, lady."
She smiled a little, afraid of herself. This was what the Ambassador had won her, along with the pleasure of learning his tongue and the unexpected camaraderie of the harem. The memories she did her best to forget, the thoughts she did her best to curtail. "Why not? We were not always as you find us. We have histories, just as you do, and we were a prouder people once. The Emperor did not dictate, he guarded. The military did not rape its charges, but carekept their safety. The petty kings did not extort labor; we did not keep slaves. And the Slave Queen was once the Queen Ransomed, a person to whom great dignity was accorded. I have never been a person." She stared at her knees in silence for a time. "We have grown easy with ourselves. The court is famous for its challenges, but once those challenges served a greater purpose. They honed the edge of a keen blade. But it has been long and long again since any nation honed the edge of the Empire."
His astonishment shone through his voice. "I had no idea."
"Of course you didn't," the Slave Queen said. "Few Chatcaava bother with those stories, so how would a foreigner know? And yet it is there for those who want to know. We once worshipped gods outside ourselves, but now that we have traded our idols for self-worship, we cannot change."
He walked to her, went to one knee before her. It should have made him seem meek, but somehow he made it what it was: convenience, so he could see her face, so he could tip up her head with his thumb. "And yet to long for battle seems cruel," he said with a gentle voice. " I do not do this merely for the Alliance... but also to spare you and those like you. Surely war is not kind to the downtrodden of the Empire."
"Less kind than our lives already?" the Queen asked, lifting her eyes to his.
"That I cannot answer," he said.
She trained her eyes on his and realized suddenly how little she wanted to lose him to Second's fear or Third's callousness or the Emperor's careless hand. "For now, you are his favorite... but soon he will bore of your trysting and the violence will escalate. Is this knowledge worth your body and your soul, Ambassador?"
"One man is nothing beside the welfare of millions," he answered.
"Truly, you are no Chatcaavan," she said. "Yet."
Second saw him that afternoon, and Lisinthir found their progress acceptable, if not impressive. Supper on the second pillow was once again satisfying, and the night that followed had been bearable. He'd stumbled back to his chambers, needing the rest, but he'd barely fallen into a light doze when the faint scrape of footsteps snapped him awake. He pushed at his heavy damask covers, lifting his head and straining for more sound. As promised in the beginning, Second had seen to his feeding, and Lisinthir had come to expect the sounds on the balcony that indicated the arrival of his first meal. He usually slept through it. He didn't know why he was awake now, but he trusted his instincts and slid from the bed, nightshirt gathered at his ribs to silence it. He crept to the edge of the bedchamber and peered past the arch leading to the study.
A male Chatcaavan he didn't recognize had uncapped a vial over the goblet of tea-wine that had probably been brought with his breakfast. The male wore no emblems to identify which noble he served, nor the brands that marked the Empire's property. Lisinthir bared his teeth and crept up behind the stranger, bare feet silent on the cold stone. He waited until the male was engrossed in pouring a few new drops over his food, then seized the male by the wing joints. The Emperor's displeasure had taught him all the tender places, particularly those near their peak of the vane, where the stunted thumb claw attached to the fragile wing-finger.
The male sucked in a breath, eyes rolling back, as Lisinthir twisted the two halves of the wing arm against one another. "Move and I'll break it," he said.
The Chatcaavan stilled instantly. When Lisinthir held out his hand, he dropped the vial into it. Poisoning rivals had to be a non-event at the court given the food tasters so common at supper. Lisinthir had guessed that no one would judge the possibility of a deformed or scarred wing worth keeping any duplicity secret, and luckily he'd guessed well.
"Who sent you?" Lisinthir asked politely, still gripping the joint. He pressed his thumb into the concavity where the two bones met, and the Chatcaavan jerked. "Your patron or partner. Tell me who he is."
"Second. Until you made him Third."
"Ah. How very predictable. Your patron bores me." Lisinthir shoved the Chatcaavan away. "Leave and tell him I am unimpressed by his attempt."
The young noble snarled at him and shook back his mane before taking his haughty leave off the balcony ledge.
Lisinthir watched him go, then dropped onto the stool facing the table and his breakfast. He had no guarantee that Second's tool had not already sprinkled the lightly glazed fowl rolls with his vial. He pushed the plate away with a hand he suddenly realized was shaking.
Of all the people in the court, Second was the last Lisinthir would have presumed guilty of poisoning him. He had no idea where he'd formed the notion of Second as less of a schemer than, say, Third... but there it was. He had underestimated Second's willingness to resort to other, less savory methods of eliminating rivals.
He was barely sleeping now. He began to wonder if he would ever sleep again.
When the Ambassador arrived in tense silence, the Slave Queen expected evil news and received it in the form of a proffered vial. She sniffed at the vial's lip, then handed it back to him. "It is what you think it is."
"Poison," he said.
"One of the most versatile for your bodies. No danger to us, however."
He capped the vial and slipped it into his coat; she wondered where he would go after their meeting to be so formally dressed. "It didn't occur to me that your poisons would not affect me. Nor that you would have already found a way to work around this defect of your pharmacopoeia."
"Most of our poisons are not effective on you," the Queen said. "Some wreak harm, but never with the finesse or power that they do on us. Thus the hekkret, which can be processed in many ways to produce poisons for the majority of Alliance folk. The one you hold would have killed you shortly after you'd partaken."
He froze—just the slightest of hesitations in his movements as he reached for his glass, and that enough was proof that he was shaken. As well he should be. At last he understood the danger she'd been anticipating. "So little of it? Had I not caught the culprit in the act... "
"We would not be here, speaking of it," the Slave Queen said. "You are now a rival worth eliminating. Many people will be interested in your demise."
He cupped his glass. "It was Second."
"Second?" the Slave Queen asked, eyes widening. She hadn't expected him to know his enemy's identity. "Are you certain?"
"As certain as the threat of a broken wing could make me," he said dryly. "There is no question, lady. An unmarked minion, but doing Second's bidding nonetheless."
She shivered. "Then it is as I feared. Second and Third will not rest until you have fallen out of favor. No matter how that is accomplished."
"Are they likely to try again?" he asked. "This poison... is it common for courtiers to have access to a poison that affects only foreigners? Is Second the only one with the resources to obtain it?"
"Anyone can get it, if they need it," the Slave Queen said. "It is not expensive, and in its many forms it is a recreational drug for us."
"Then is there no antidote I might procure and carry with me?"
She thought of the Alliance victims she'd known and the Ambassadors who'd come and left, some encouraged by a faint but lingering illness of mysterious origin. Poisons of all kinds she'd seen used on her own kind, enough to understand them. But poisons on the aliens... she knew very little of them, even having listened in silence to conversations about them that took place in her presence. "The hekkret is processed many different ways, and doing so causes different effects and requires different antidotes," she said. "Nor are the antidotes gentle things themselves. You would have to know exactly what you were taking an antidote against to dose yourself safely."
He put his glass down, slowly, very slowly, and then folded his hands in his lap. Did he sway? The color in his face seemed to withdraw, leaving him cold and faded. He was silent so long she feared he had become ill.
"Then at some point, I will die."
She could not entertain the possibility. Some part of her rejected it entirely. In that moment, a memory came back to her of the Surgeon's dry voice and a ridiculous conversation, one she barely recalled from the things being done to her during it. "There is another way. You could smoke the hekkret."
He looked up with difficulty, as if his head was too heavy for his neck. "Lady? You would have me smoke the plant that would kill me?"
"I have heard that in light doses over time, Alliance people can build a resistance to the hekkret," the Slave Queen said. "It was a caution against using the incense around the slaves, lest they grow immune to its effects. The rolls that the males use as a barbiturate are very thin and there is not much of the plant in them. You could use those."
"Another vice to add to my existing ones," the Ambassador said with a wry smile. "But it would work?"
"It may be the only thing that does," the Slave Queen said.
"Then I suppose I shall take it up," he said. "I wouldn't be considered weak for this, would I? It is not a thing of harems and females?"
"Smoking the hekkret is a curious thing," the Slave Queen said. "I have observed that a male uses it only in two ways... to sedate his females, if he is too lazy to discipline them himself, or as a sign to others that he feels himself so powerful he is beyond danger. It is a bit of a reckless thing."
"Ah... no more reckless than playing bed-toy to the Emperor," the Ambassador said. Something about his voice made her shiver. "Let the others watch me and wonder why it is I feel so beyond their ability to harm me."
"A Chatcaavan thought, Ambassador," the Slave Queen said, "if from the brain of a particularly insane male." She stood. "I may be able to find you a few rolls, if you are willing to wait."
"I can wait," he said. "Though forgive me, lady, there is something I must do as soon as you return. I cannot tarry."
If his voice hadn't been warning enough, the simmering anger barely guarded by his lowered lashes was enough. The Slave Queen rose and headed for the closet, glad that she was not going to be on the other end of that wrath. Let the court try to poison him, thinking him fragile and easily frightened. She was beginning to think that such threats only goaded him to greater resolve... and more Chatcaavan-like behavior.
He had entered the Empire an Alliance Ambassador. She wondered if he would exit a dragon.
With a vial of poison in one coat pocket and a package of cigarettes in the other, Lisinthir made the long journey to Second's office without noticing the time it took. The guard at the door stepped in front of it when he reached for the handle and said, "Second is engaged, currently."
"I'm sure he is," Lisinthir said and reached past the male. When the expected hand leapt for his wrist, he punched the male in the chest with his elbow, knocking the wind from him.
"I am now Second's engagement," Lisinthir said. "Stay out of my way."
The guard took one moment too long to stare. Lisinthir let himself in through the door and strode into Second's study, startling that male's nose out of his documents, scattered all over a less-than-tidy desk.
"You were not scheduled," Second said.
Lisinthir reached into a coat pocket, retrieved the poison and rested it on Second's desk. On top of the stacks of tablets and papers and maps. Then he folded his arms and waited.
"And this is?"
"You are so practiced at being coy I wonder if you were born female," Lisinthir said. "Stop playing games with me, Second. I know what you hoped to hear this morning... that I had mysteriously died in my suite. What a pity. And yet, here I am."
"I had nothing to do with this," Second said.
"Don't insult me," Lisinthir said with disgust. "Bad enough that you gained entrance into my apartment in a way you set up to win my trust—by supplying my meals. But to lie about it? Be a male, Second. At least admit that you attempted to kill me."
Second said nothing, only regarded him with wary eyes. Lisinthir leaned forward, a few inches at a time, until Second began to tuck his head back.
"I am warming your pillow," Lisinthir said softly. "I saved his child. I drink his cup for him. Don't think you can be rid of me with an attempt at my life so clumsy a female could evade it. And don't—DON'T—dare stand in my way. Not with him. And not with my requests."
"You will not be his favorite forever," Second said at last.
Lisinthir withdrew one of the hekkret rolls from the other pocket. The pack came with its own lighter, a peculiar contraption more mechanical than convenient. The Slave Queen had shown him how to operate it
, but he still needed time to do so successfully. He took the time. As Second watched with widened eyes, Lisinthir clipped the edge of the roll, lit it and dragged from its end. He blew smoke at the male and said, "The Eldritch live three times longer than your kind. And you are already old."
Second's hands curled into fists, but he did not raise them.
"I expect to see you tomorrow," Lisinthir said. "And you'll have a great deal to tell me about those military vessels that seem to keep appearing in our colonies' space. Won't you?"
Second's fingers worked against his palms, and his knuckles strained at his skin. Then, "I will be delighted to help you."
"I'm sure," Lisinthir said.
Worry made a poor companion, but the Slave Queen did her best to live alongside it as she sent away the breakfast table and the food and arranged the flowers in the tower. As the world's long spring advanced more of them would sent to the various levels of the harem until summer's heat wilted the buds before they could open. She had never wondered who arranged for their arrival and why; the flowers had been a fixture of her life since she'd come to the capital. She had taken them for granted. They seemed a strange custom, now that she examined them from outside herself.
But the Queen was glad of the distraction. All she could have done to help the Ambassador she had done. Now she must hope that the hekkret rolls would help him in time. There were other poisons Second could resort to, more exotic things, but they would take time to synthesize. Perhaps by then the situation would change.
When the Slave Queen turned from the vase she'd been filling she found the Emperor sitting on the opposite side of the room, watching her. She dropped the remaining lilies.
He made no move, said no word. She could do neither, so astonished was she to find him there in the morning light, so soon after the Ambassador's retreat.
"He comes here," the Emperor said. "So I'm told. Every morning, he comes. Is it so?"
Hearing his voice freed her knees and she fell on them, and then forward onto her elbows, scattering the flowers, trembling. Her pulse rushed, filling her head with noise. "Yes, Master."
Even the Wingless Page 25
