“The Cradle?” Aiul gaped. “Truly?”
Ariano nodded. “House Talus will be honored to speak for you.”
Aiul shook his head in wonder. “What have I done to deserve such honor from you? You treat me better than my own mother. You always have.”
“You are wrong, Aiul. Your mother has always taken care of you. But there are things you don’t understand. Someday, perhaps you will.”
Aiul shook his head and sighed. “Is it part of the process, I wonder, of becoming a House Elder, that one master the art of speaking in riddles?”
Ariano patted him on the cheek. “There is a test you have to pass on that very subject. I’ll see to the recommendation first thing in the morning. But now, I need my rest. And as for you, I think you have other things to do, things that involve a considerably younger woman, eh?” She gave him a slight wink.
Aiul blushed and nodded. “Good night, Ariano. And thank you again.”
Does he love me? Lara suppressed a frown as she studied Aiul’s face, searching, probing. There must be a way to see. The intention of forever ought to be clear in his eyes, if only she knew how and what to look for. The lust there was plain, and that pleased her well enough. Green, like his eyes. She ran a hand across his clean-shaven, square jaw, now grown a bit prickly in the evening, and sighed with pleasure. But does he love me?
She had had her share of men, of course. It would be shameful to come to a marriage bed without being skilled in lovemaking, but of love itself, she knew little. The sum of her experience was the bitter sting of not having her own returned. It may be too much to hope for. She tried to feel subtle differences in his touch, to hear some distinction in the sounds he made as they ground against one another, but if they existed, they were beyond her. This is well enough, though.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as they lay together, sweat still glistening on their bodies. “I’m not worth such trouble. Make peace with your mother, Aiul.”
Aiul lifted his head from her breast and looked at her, aghast, his high cheekbones and furrowed brow making him look both fierce and noble. “Do not speak such!”
“It’s true.”
Aiul looked at her with a mixture of humor and disbelief. “You would have peace between me and my mother by driving a wedge between me and my child, between me and my wife to be? That sounds like sense to you?”
“I suppose not.” She sighed and turned her head away. “But I’ll embarrass you. I don’t know the rules. I don’t even know how to dance!”
“Then we shall forbid dancing in our presence!” Aiul declared, striking a lordly pose. “You think I jest? I am heir to House Amrath!” He flexed his arm to bulge the muscles and grinned. “I have that kind of power here.”
Lara giggled but gave no answer, and Aiul threw the bed covers aside and rose, naked. “Garas!” he called.
Lara rolled across the bed and punched him lightly in his thigh. “What are you up to?”
“You doubt me,” he answered, dancing out of her reach. “I must earn your trust.”
Garas, Aiul’s slave since birth, entered with Aiul’s robe and a carafe of water. He was beginning to show a bit of gray in his hair but seemed young at heart, a fat, jolly, red-faced fellow. “It seems you two are well,” he said with a wry smile as he offered the robe to Aiul.
Aiul slipped into the robe, then fixed Garas with a serious gaze. “We are. But there is something important we must discuss before small talk.”
“Of course, my lord. What is your will?”
“There will be no more dancing in this house,” Aiul declared as he pointed a finger at his slave. “None. Do you understand?”
Lara giggled and hid her face beneath the sheets. “You’re mad!”
Garas regarded him quizzically. “Dancing, you say?”
“Dancing. We’ll have none of it here.”
Garas bowed. “We’ll dispense with dancing immediately, my lord. I’ll have anyone caught dancing whipped.”
“Oh, no!” Lara cried. “You will not!”
“Aye, I shall, and within an inch of their life,” Garas told her. “Perhaps even unto death, if it seems prudent.”
Lara waved a hand in dismissal. “Mei, I will not be the cause of anyone’s beatings! Take it back, Aiul! It’s cruel!”
Aiul put his hands on his hips in feigned shock. “Such language, from a lady!”
Lara clapped a hand over her mouth, embarrassed, then lowered it. “You see? I’ll mortify you!”
“Oh, she’s taking us far too seriously, Garas.”
“Indeed she is,” Garas replied. “I know the answer, master.”
“Do you ever not know the answer?”
“Never,” Garas said, and, with a mischievous grin, broke into a silly dance.
“Stop that at once!” Aiul said, trying to suppress a grin. “Garas, do something about it!”
Lara fell backward in the bed, laughing loudly. “You’re both mad!”
Garas danced his way toward where Lara lay beneath the bedclothes, still naked, and therefore quite trapped. “Only a madman would dance when the master ordered there be none! I’ll beat the ruffian into submission and tie him up at once!” He began pounding his fists against his own chest in rhythm, and Aiul followed by drumming on the footboard with his hands.
“Are you sure you’re beating him hard enough?” Aiul asked as Lara, tears streaming from her eyes, pulled the sheet entirely over her head.
“Oh, aye, he’ll be surrendering any minute now!”
“Get away from me, you madmen, or I’ll scream!” Lara cried through peals of laughter. She ducked from beneath the bedclothes and hurled a pillow at Garas before retreating into hiding once again.
“Perhaps you should take the miscreant out of the lady’s sight,” Aiul said. “She has very delicate sensibilities, you know.”
“Mei!” Lara cursed, her voice muffled by the bedclothes over her head.
“Obviously. One can tell by her words alone that she has delicate sensibilities,” Garas said still doing his odd chest thumping jig as he sidled toward the door. Aiul laughed long and hard as Garas made his exit.
Lara waited until she heard the latch click before peeking out. “You’re simply dreadful, you are! The both of you!”
“It lifted your mood, didn’t it?” he asked, gazing gently at her. “We’ve played that game many times, and it always did for me.”
Lara wiped tears from her eyes and nodded. “It did.”
“Then listen. I told you I have a wonderful surprise. Are you ready to hear?” He sat on the bed beside her, waiting for her to answer.
“Stop taunting me with it! Tell me!”
Aiul kissed her quickly, then held her face and gazed deeply into her eyes. “You are to be nothing less than my wife, Lara. You will have slaves and jewels and safety. And you will live in a home that befits our station. The penthouse in the Cradle!”
Lara’s jaw dropped in shock. “How can that be? Your mother relented?”
Aiul cackled and shook his head. “The heartless statue wouldn’t budge. But Ariano will speak for me! Isn’t it amazing?”
Lara nodded in excitement, momentarily speechless.
Aiul raised an eyebrow at her silence. “Well, woman, does it please you or not?”
“Yes!” she gasped at last. “Yes, it pleases me!” She pushed her lips forward against his and took her own kiss, a longer, deeper one. She pulled back suddenly, a look of horror on her face.
“Mei, I really will embarrass you!”
“You will if you use that kind of language in polite places,” he said with a smile.
“I’m serious, Aiul! I truly know nothing! I don’t even know your father’s name!”
“Neither do I,” Aiul said. “He was a commoner that mother dismissed. You don’t need to know the names, anyway, as long as you know a generation or two of houses.” He gestured to himself with a grin. “Amrath being the most important. Me, you, our child, my Mother, and my Grandfather
are all of House Amrath, so that’s simple enough.” Aiul rubbed a hand against his furrowed brow. “Mother’s mother was House Freth, as I recall. I never knew her, to be honest. She died giving birth to Mother. By the time I came along, Grandfather Lothrian had taken up with Ariano.”
“He’s the great villain, yes?”
Aiul nodded, a sour look on his face. “A sorcerer. Tasinalt put him to death for it.”
Lara tried to process this, but it made no sense. She squirmed, not wanting to contradict him, but she needed to understand. “She seems so young to have done so.”
Aiul raised an eyebrow and stammered a moment. “Ah,” he said, nodding and smiling now. “I see. You’re confusing father and daughter. Not Tasinalta, just Tasinalt. They like to use the house name as a kind of title for the position, but they add letters on the end as it suits them.”
“Why?”
Aiul’s face was perfectly blank for a moment. “I don’t really know.” He thought on it a moment, then shrugged again. “Arrogance, I suppose.”
“Tasinalt,” Lara repeated. “Tasinalta’s father. And he was the lich emperor?”
Aiul’s eyes grew wide in shock. “Mei, no! You really don’t know anything, do you?” He shook his head in wonder. “Fine, fine, that’s what we’re fixing, isn’t it? Tasinal was the lich emperor.” He fixed her with a grave stare. “He was the founder of house Tasinal, as Amrath was the founder of my own house. Make sure, if nothing else, you get both of those names correct.”
Lara giggled at his serious tone and poked him in the chest. “Then why are you not Amrathal or Amrathor instead of Aiul, I wonder?”
Aiul held his serious face a moment longer, then cracked a broad grin. “Because house Tasinal has the greater claim on arrogance, I suppose,” he said with a laugh.
Lara, still naked, felt a sudden chill. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “It’s horrid, all of it, you know? Lich emperors and wicked sorcerers. You all must have nightmares most every night.”
Aiul snickered at this. “Three or four times a week is about average for a noble, I suppose.”
Lara could barely conceive of such madness. “How could anyone follow a lich emperor? It’s insane!” The very thought made her feel as if spiders were crawling over her skin. “He’d have sat on the throne, all rotting, and not a single person would be allowed to scream or run away.”
“Well, he wasn’t rotten to start with, you know,” Aiul said, looking a bit wounded. I’ve insulted him! I am such a fool! “He started out just fine.” Aiul lay back on his pillows and sighed, smiling again now. “I don’t even know that he was rotten by the end, but it was six hundred years, so I suspect he was indeed worse for wear. I wouldn’t know. He disappeared four hundred years ago.”
Lara gasped. “He rotted away to dust?”
Aiul rose up on his elbow and turned toward her, shaking his head back and forth. “You and this rotting! No, he simply couldn’t be found.”
“He finally collapsed into a heap of bones like he should have,” Lara announced triumphantly. “And Elgar take him!”
Aiul rolled his eyes and lay back on the pillow. “Well, I’m sure Elgar will take all the souls he can lay hands on.”
She knew she should leave it here. If she kept going, she would surely anger him, but it was all so alien, so much to think about. If I don’t talk it out, I’ll never get it down. “Sorcery! It’s horrid, like the things you all eat! And your own grandfather! You knew him, right?”
Aiul nodded again but said nothing, just stared back at her. Green. He’ll have more soon.
She stared at him a moment, grinning, feeling green herself. “Horrid!” she repeated, almost squeaking in distaste. “Was he very wicked, then? I suspect he must have done horrible things. Did any slaves go missing?”
Aiul laughed out loud at this. “I am surprised you commoners aren’t in charge, with such active imaginations as that! No, no slaves went missing.” His gaze moved to her breasts, and he ran a hand over her thigh. Definitely green, the both of us. “And as for wicked, he never seemed so to me. Well, except for when he took a strap to me for insolence.” He paused and smiled briefly. “Which happened more often than I should care to admit.”
Lara laughed. “You’re bad enough. But I would have expected you to have a whipping boy or some such.”
Aiul sneered at the notion. “Maybe House Veril has such idiocy, but in House Amrath, insolent children are whipped, noble or not.” He ran his hand up her back, then paused. “That’s not a problem, I assume?”
Lara shook her head and was about to reply when she felt her humor suddenly vanish, and her eyes swell as she made a connection. “Mei, the woman speaking for us, Ariano? She fucked a sorcerer!” Lara feigned convulsions, then scratched at her arms as if they were covered with bugs. “Horrid!”
Aiul grinned wickedly at her. “You’d better stop making fun of my people, or I’ll have them serve something particularly disgusting at the wedding. Snails, perhaps?”
“Mei, don’t you dare! I could never eat a snail!”
“Ah, but you’d have to, at least on that day. You’d have to show yourself worthy of being a nobleman’s wife.”
Lara shuddered and stuck out her tongue. “Fine, I’ll say no more. It’s all perfectly normal, the sorcery, the lich emperors, but snails, I simply cannot tolerate.”
“Then we shall ban snails,” Aiul said with a grin. He pressed her back into the pillow. “I’ll quiz you on all of this tomorrow, you know.”
“I think I can remember.”
“Good. Because right now I have other things on my mind.”
As they entwined once again, Lara felt something different, something softer, deeper, and multifaceted. She could see it, hear it, feel it, something more beautiful than she could ever have imagined, but she could find no words to describe it.
It’s red.
Chapter 3
Ilaweh's Chosen
Ahmed knew one thing very well: he hated the sea. He contemplated his new enemy as he leaned against the ship’s rail, marveling at how blue the water became in the noonday sun. Oh, it was all good and well to look at it from the shore, even to bathe in it, but to ride upon it was another thing entirely.
Yazid and the Prince’s men called their vessel a ship, but to Ahmed it was a cage, a prison without walls that was like as not to sink like a stone into the ever-shifting water, leaving him to drown. They promised him it was a good ship, that it would float even through a hurricane, but Ahmed had doubts and no way of knowing the truth. This was the first ship he had ever been aboard. It was made of wood. It had sails. What else was there to know about ships?
Then there was the sickness. It had begun the first day he boarded the floating prison, and he had been a laughingstock for a week before it had eased. Even now, months into their voyage, the feelings of queasiness still rose in him when the sea was rough, and it was all he could do to keep whatever meal he had last eaten. At least he had grown better at hiding it. Of all the torturous aspects of sea travel he had encountered, being mocked was the worst by far.
“Ahmed!” Yazid called in a stern voice. “Come!”
Ahmed was inclined to refuse, but he did not relish a beating, and that was just what insolence would buy him. If he were well, he would try Yazid, beating or no, and surely do some beating himself in return, but this sickness crippled him. A beating well-earned was honorable enough, but he was certain to vomit the moment he took a punch to the gut, and that would be humiliating.
He followed Yazid into the skin of the ship, silent, to the wardroom. The place was dark, lit only by a single oil lantern, and smelled of hemp, oil, and tobacco. Brutus Samir, a tribune of Prince Philip’s legions, sat at a heavy, wooden table with Centurion Sandilianus al Rashid, and the ship’s navigator, Tahir. Brutus was dark-skinned, bald, and powerfully built, while Sandilianus was pale, thin and wiry, with sharp features, smoldering eyes, and long, raven hair. Tahir was stranger still, his features simi
lar to Brutus’s, but lighter, and his hair was almost red. By Ahmed’s reckoning, Tahir was a half-breed, a mongrel cross of true men and barbarians. Ahmed disliked him intensely, not merely for his barbarian heritage, but for his frequent blasphemies. Were it not for the seasickness, Ahmed would have offered Tahir a beating on more than one occasion.
Brutus nodded to Yazid and cast a wary eye at Ahmed. “Why bring the boy? What good is he besides fucking?”
Yazid’s laughter was honest and deep. “Perhaps not even that. But he has his uses.”
“You say it like you don’t know,” Brutus said with a leer. “I find that hard to believe. Surely you have sampled the goods from time to time?”
Yazid laughed again. “Oh, no, it is not that way with us. Ahmed is like a son to me. But even so, we are not so fortunate as you. Our tastes are for women.”
Ahmed cocked his head and grinned. “If he wants to challenge me, I would let him fuck me anyway, if he could take it by force.” He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, the muscles in his arms like iron bands. “And if he couldn’t, then I would fuck him, eh, just because it was my due!”
Sandilianus doubled over in his seat and grunted, feigning a reaction to a gut punch as Yazid burst into howls of laughter. Tahir smiled wryly but said nothing.
Brutus raised his eyebrows and grinned, surprised. “There is more to this one than meets the eye!” he said. “I would take your challenge, boy, and show you a thing or two about fists and fucking, but you are tainted with woman’s weakness. I cannot insult my body with such, not even second hand.”
Ahmed raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I have yet to lie with a woman.”
Sandilianus snorted and leaned back in his chair against the smooth, polished wood of the bulkhead. “Then it would be a moot point. With your looks, if women have not set upon you in a pack and carried you off to have their way with you, you have no dick.”
Even quiet Tahir chuckled at this one. Brutus slapped his hand hard on his own knee as the others howled in laughter once again. “You hear that, boy? If you want to fight me, you must show us you are dickless! It will be all the same to me, as long as you have no pussy.”
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