The Dragon Mistress: Book 1 (The Eburosi Chronicles 8)

by R. A. Steffan

In fact, that sounded heavenly. My rented room the previous night had only offered a small hand basin in which to wash, and I swore I could still feel sand and grit lodged in unfortunate places.

  “I’d love that,” I told her. “Can I help haul the water? I’d hate to put anyone out.”

  I knew that a place like this would be teeming with all sorts of servants, many of them strong men rather than tiny waifs like Beshaam. But still, the idea of simply assuming that someone would do the dirty work so I could laze in a tub rankled.

  Beshaam’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Haul… the water?”

  “Carry buckets,” I clarified.

  Her face cleared, and she laughed—a nervous sound. “Oh, no need for anything like that. The bathing room is through here…”

  It suddenly occurred to me that all of my belongings were sitting in a rented room some distance from the palace. I’d paid for several days lodging up front, but even so, the idea of leaving everything there was a bit discomfiting. I opened my mouth to ask if there was anyway I could retrieve it, or perhaps send someone else to retrieve it, but the words stuck in my throat as I took in the chamber we’d just entered.

  The entire back wall was a jumble of cracked stone, and I realized I was looking at the bones of the mountain against which the palace had been built. Water trickled from some of the cracks, pouring into a carved depression that, in turn, emptied into a huge stone basin. The basin overflowed from a spout on one edge, filling a second, smaller basin nestled against its side.

  “You bathe in there,” Beshaam said with a hint of condescension, pointing at the smaller tub. “The dirty water flows out and runs down the drainage system to a cistern. The kitchen servants use it to water the vegetable gardens during the dry season.”

  “Oh,” I said, blinking.

  In reality, it wasn’t really all that much more impressive than the bathhouses in Rhyth, built over the city’s hot springs. But in some ways, it was cleverer. Utrea was a dry land. The idea that they could divert part of a river indoors and use the wastewater to grow food was intriguing.

  I frowned, a new thought hitting me. “Is it warm, or cold?”

  Beshaam snorted, and I got the impression she was starting to relax around me a bit. “It’s very, very cold,” she said. “You use cold water for bathing during the spring, summer, and autumn. In winter, we’ll sometimes bring in heated stones and put them in the bathing basin to warm it.”

  Ah, well. It was hot today. Funny… I’d grown up washing in a river more often than I’d washed in a tub. It had only taken a few months spent in Rhyth to spoil me for hot water, though.

  “Got it,” I said, reminding myself that the cold water would most likely be good for the red skin on my chest, which was already starting to itch and peel after my adventure in the desert.

  The servant girl bustled around, gathering bathing supplies from niches hidden behind the bulk of the large basin. Figuring that I wasn’t supposed to stand around like a lump of clay, I shrugged to myself and started disrobing. An instant later, Beshaam was there, silently helping undo the clasps and ties holding the draped fabric of my dress in place. As it fell away, she gave my reddened skin a frown.

  “Your pale skin is not made for the sun,” she observed, and then flushed as though she feared she’d offended me.

  “The sun back home was never an issue,” I told her dryly, “but, yeah, I think Utrea is closer to the sky or something. At midday, it’s like standing too close to a cooking fire.”

  She made a tutting noise. “I have a mixture of beeswax and tallow here that might help with the peeling. The cool water should soothe the burns somewhat.”

  I smiled. “That’s sweet of you,” I said. “Honestly, though, it’ll be fine in a couple of days.”

  I toed off my cloth slippers while Beshaam set the clothing neatly aside, and then dipped my fingers in the small pool. It was chilly, but not frigid. To be fair, I doubted anything in this land was frigid, at least during the summer.

  “Go ahead,” Beshaam urged, gesturing to the bath.

  I sat on the edge, sliding my legs over. Bracing myself, I slipped into the water quickly, sitting down so I sank to my collarbones. My body erupted in gooseflesh, nipples hardening—but, on the positive side, at least I wasn’t hot anymore. After a moment, the reaction faded, and I stood, the water coming just over my knees.

  Before I could reach for the washrag and the lump of hard soap, Beshaam picked up and the two items and dampened the cloth, working up a lather with the soap.

  “Let me,” she said. “It’s part of my job.”

  Which… was… a bit weird. But, hey, different cultures, right?

  “Uh… if you insist,” I agreed. “Back home, we generally bathe ourselves, though.”

  “You are a under Prince Oblisii’s roof, now,” she said, as if that was an explanation.

  Beshaam was detached as she washed me, but thorough. Like… really thorough, and I’ll admit I blushed a bit as the cloth scrubbed over my breasts and sex.

  “Rinse,” she ordered, exposing a bossy streak now that she was in her element. I rinsed, and when I began to straighten, she shook her head. “No, stay down. I’ll do your hair next.”

  Uneasiness hit me. Something still seemed decidedly off about this whole situation, and I wasn’t ready to let Beshaam or anyone else here find the remaining gemstones hidden under my hair.

  I lifted a hand, stopping her as she reached for a small pot containing a different kind of soap. “No, wait, Beshaam. Look, I don’t mean to offend you, but, uh, you know how I said we didn’t have other people bathe us back home? Well… there’s… a custom among my people that… only a woman’s parents or her bondmate can touch her hair.”

  There. That sounded totally reasonable. Didn’t it?

  Judging by the look Beshaam was giving me, it didn’t, but I straightened my shoulders, ready to dig in on the issue.

  “Oh,” she said after an awkward pause. “Well. That’s… odd. But I certainly don’t mean to offend you either. Do you… want to wash your own hair? Or not wash it at all?”

  Given how much dust and sand was in my hair, I was honestly pretty desperate to wash it. I decided that as long as I was careful not to put my back to her, she’d be unlikely to see any telltale glints of colored stone peeking through the strands.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, extending my hand for the bowl of soft soap. “Again… sorry. I’d feel really, really uncomfortable letting you wash it, though. It’s just… you know… the way I was raised.”

  She tried on a smile that mostly just made her look more confused, but she did pass me the soap. I hid my relieved sigh. The soap was interesting. It smelled exotic, and felt like whoever had made it had mixed some sort of light oil into it. I scrubbed at the heavy mass of my hair and rubbed the soap into my scalp before leaning back to swish the long strands through the water.

  When I was done, my hair felt so smooth I didn’t even think it would require additional hair oil to prevent tangles. Surreptitiously, I let my fingers dig into the wet length at the back of my skull, counting the tiny braids hidden underneath and feeling for the chains holding my last remaining currency. Reassured, I lifted my head and shook the water out of my ears.

  “There we are,” I told Beshaam a bit too brightly. “All done, no assistance needed.”

  She pasted on a polite smile and met me with a large towel as I stepped out, drying me with particular care in the sunburned areas. As promised, she retrieved a pot of ointment and smeared it across the worst of the red areas while I took the towel and patted the excess water from my hair.

  In Beshaam’s defense, the ointment really was kind of soothing.

  She truly did seem to be a nice girl; it was just the situation that was putting me off. And aside from the rather ominous clunk of the doors being barred behind us, I couldn’t have said precisely what about it was bothering me. I was a guest in the royal palace while the prince investigated an attack on me in the deser
t, for the gods’ sakes. Lots of people would give their right eyetooth for that kind of honor.

  Beshaam helped me get back in my dress with the same efficiency she’d used to help me get out of it. I ran my fingers through my damp tresses a few more times to untangle them, before pulling the hair at my temples and the top of my head into a messy braid that would keep it out of my face while it dried. If it also provided another layer of hair to shield against any possible glint of a gemstone, well… so much the better.

  Once I was more-or-less put together again, Beshaam led me back through the hallway full of sleeping rooms, stopping before one of the ones I’d noticed earlier with the cloth hanging pulled back out of the way.

  “This is your private chamber,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure that a room with no real door on it counted as private, but I thanked her and wandered inside, looking around. There was a bed that looked larger than one might have expected for a single person. Also, a sort of long, low table with a polished metal mirror on it, set against the wall. A chair sat in front of the mirror, and on either side of it were shelves, cunningly integrated into the table’s legs. Those shelves were covered in vials, bottles, and tiny stone pots with cork stoppers. Another little table sat next to the bed, with an oil lamp on top.

  “Erm, it’s very nice,” I said, aware that with my silence, I was in danger of looking crass. “What are all the little bottles and things?”

  “Oils and creams for your skin, mostly,” Beshaam said, as though surprised I had to ask. “There’s also perfume, kohl, and other pigments for your lips and cheeks.”

  I also noticed a comb and a pig-bristle hairbrush sitting by the mirror, along with a selection of hair ornaments and ties. Wow. Apparently, the women in Safaad were really serious about personal care.

  “That’s… very impressive,” I hazarded. “Sometimes the priests back home use kohl around their eyes for important ceremonies. The rest of us… don’t really tend to paint our faces.” Unless it’s warriors going into battle, I didn’t add, since that seemed impolitic.

  Beshaam only shrugged. “Women in the palace like to make themselves look pretty before being seen by the prince, or the king.”

  I felt my forehead wrinkle in a frown. And painting their faces makes them look pretty?

  I flopped down to sit on the edge of the bed and let it go. “All right. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  She smiled the same I’m-confused-but-trying-not-to-offend-you smile from earlier. “Do you require anything else? The servants should be here with the evening meal in an hour or so.”

  Any response I might have made was interrupted by a shadow crossing the doorway. I looked up to see a tall, strikingly beautiful woman step inside, looking around the chamber as if she owned the place. Her raven-black hair was piled atop her head in intricately woven braids that coiled like snakes.

  Her chiseled features were haughty, from her kohl-lined mahogany eyes to her cruel, painted lips. I could swear that I saw a hint of gold dust glittering on her high cheekbones, as well. Her body had the spare grace of a dancer, but the slim lines of her arms and legs spoke of someone who had never done an honest day’s labor in her life. She raked her gaze over me from head to toe with what could only be described as disdain.

  Politeness dictated that I rise and introduce myself, but something about that superior stare rankled me. Instead, I stayed where I was, perched on the edge of the bed with my weight resting on my hands as I held her gaze, not backing down. It was obvious she expected me to speak first, and I won’t deny my small flash of satisfaction at her growing irritation as I let the silence stretch, my eyebrows raised in a silent question.

  Beshaam cleared her throat nervously. “Lady Lesimba, this is Frella of Drae—”

  “Quiet, girl,” the woman said. Her voice was low and throaty. “Did anyone give you leave to speak?”

  I straightened from my careless slouch, feeling my temper rise. “Excuse me. She has my leave to speak, and it’s not polite to interrupt.”

  The woman—Lesimba—sneered openly. “Perhaps in your land, they allow servants to speak out of turn. What was your name, again? Fretta?”

  “Frella,” I ground out. “Now, what, pray tell, can I do for you, Lady Lesimba?”

  This was not shaping up to be my finest moment of diplomacy, I was aware. But few things were quicker to rouse me than the privileged shitting all over the less privileged. I hadn’t liked her on first sight, but by treating Beshaam like dirt, this woman had just ensured that any respect I might have shown her was tipped straight out the window.

  Not that there was, you know, a window in here.

  Lesimba looked at me as though I were an insect that had just crawled into her soup bowl. “You are new here. I wished to meet my husband’s latest plaything. I am Prince Oblisii’s First Wife.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I growled, with all the sincerity that you might expect by that point. “Though you’ll be relieved to know, I’m only here long enough to have a second meeting with your husband, and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Lesimba’s eyes raked over me from head to foot, and I wondered if she’d learned that way of staring through a person’s clothing from Oblisii.

  “Foolish girl,” she said. “I will wait until my prince decides whether to keep you or not before ensuring that you learn your place. In the mean time, stay out of my way and your life will go much easier.”

  With that, she pivoted on one neatly slippered foot and left the room, the door hanging swishing in the breeze of her exit as I blinked after her in consternation.

  “Wow,” I mused. “What a vicious cow.” I caught Beshaam’s flinch out of the corner of my eye and turned to her, frowning. “Sorry. I get that she’s your boss, but… just… wow.”

  The young servant had gone a bit pale beneath her golden skin. “Please do not speak so. You would do well not to antagonize her.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I realize that little exchange wasn’t one of my finest moments, Beshaam, but like I told her, I’ll be out of here soon. Probably tomorrow.”

  Beshaam cringed in on herself, and her voice was very audible when she said, “No. You won’t be.”

  I stared at her. “Excuse me?”

  She swallowed audibly. “The prince had you brought to the women’s’ quarters.” She gave me a significant look, as though willing me to understand what she was really saying.

  “Er… yes?” I allowed, knowing that I was missing some vitally important subtext here. An unpleasant sinking feeling began to take up residence in my stomach.

  Beshaam stared at me, clearly hoping I would somehow soak up the information like a dishrag, so she wouldn’t have to say it aloud. Eventually, she broke.

  “This is where Prince Oblisii keeps his wives and concubines,” she finally blurted.

  Chapter 6: Chosen

  “UM…” I SAID, PLAYING for time while I ran Beshaam’s words over in my mind a couple more times to make sure I’d heard right.

  “He chose you,” she said, staring at me with wide eyes.

  I stared back.

  And then I brushed past her without a word, shoving the door hanging out of my way so I could stride out of the room, back down the hallway, through the communal area to the big double doors. Once there, I pounded on them with my fist. Beshaam hadn’t followed me—or if she had, she was hanging back while I pummeled the thick wood. I could sense other eyes on me, though. Apparently I was putting on a show for all the other wives.

  Concubines.

  Whatever.

  There was the sound of a heavy bar being lifted, and one of the doors creaked open to reveal the broad body of a stony-faced guard. He stared down at me from his considerable advantage of height, clearly unimpressed.

  “I’m leaving now,” I said, and took one step into the open doorway.

  At which point my chest mashed against the two crossed staves that had appeared in front of me as if by magic. The corners of the first guard�
��s mouth turned down in a distinctly displeased way. I took a single step back.

  Soft hands closed around my upper arm and tugged me away from the door. “You mustn’t,” Beshaam whispered, before turning to look up at the towering guards. “She didn’t know,” she added in a louder voice.

  The doors closed, and I heard the bar being dropped in place once more.

  I met Beshaam’s worried brown eyes. “Tell me,” I began in a terribly serious voice, “exactly what the fuck is going on here. Are all of these women prisoners?”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  “Then what was that about?” I asked, gesturing at the door with an out-flung arm.

  “Not here,” she muttered, and dragged me away from the watching eyes of the other women. She didn’t lead me back to the questionable privacy of the bedchamber, but instead, brought me to a little storage area beyond the bathing chamber.

  It was dark and deserted, and I rounded on her. “Talk, Beshaam. The other women aren’t prisoners, but I am? I’m not staying here. I didn’t sign up to be some creepy nobleman’s plaything. I only came here to report a crime!”

  “You can’t leave,” Beshaam said, her expression still frightened. “The other women are already established as the prince’s wives or concubines. But the guards know you are new, and still await the prince’s pleasure. They will not allow you to leave before he makes his final decision to accept you or not.”

  “His final decision?” I nearly squeaked. “What about my final decision? What about my initial decision, for that matter?”

  Beshaam shrank back from my anger. She seemed to do a lot of that sort of thing, I noticed. The rosy picture of Safaad I’d been assembling in my head was growing ever more tarnished.

  “It is considered a great honor even to be considered for a place in the prince’s harem,” she said.

  “Not by me.” I bit off each word sharply. “I’m getting out of here.”

  I thought longingly of the Purple Cloak… of the two men who would be waiting there if I could get out of this madhouse somehow and return to them. I barely knew them, yet where the mere thought of Prince Oblisii made my skin crawl, thoughts of Eldris’ gleaming white smile and Aristede’s sly humor made longing rise in my chest. Hell, at this point I’d even put up with Rayth’s look of haughty disapproval if it meant getting away from here.