Game of Queens (10 page)

He twice over hoped and prayed there would be no more need for him to intervene to save any more lives. Sometimes he dreamed that the two elders had concocted all the details of their accusation beforehand, that Susannah had been doomed, and he had to watch as she died.…

Samamat and Arioch helped him past those nights, all of them staying awake together until the sun rose and shadows flew west into the dark.

Yes, we survived, we three.
By then Daniel could not remember what life had been like before he met Arioch and Samamat. They were part of him; he could not give either up. He had learned that when the king decreed that all captive peoples might return freely to their homelands.

Daniel spent long troubled hours trying to persuade himself to return to Jerusalem, a city he hadn't seen in twenty years. Could he give up Arioch and Samamat? Was Jerusalem a fair exchange for abandoning his heart?

The answer, for Daniel, was no.

How could I have left Arioch and Samamat? Not been there to watch them marry, to see their son born?
A boy whose parents named him Dariel, to honor King Darius and to honor Daniel …

“… because he wouldn't have been born without the king, and you, bringing us together.” Samamat held the baby to her breast; she glowed with happiness.

“By that reasoning, we should have named the boy Nebuchadnezzar,” Arioch had said.

How could I not have been with them to watch Dariel grow up? And if I had returned to Jerusalem—

If he had returned to Jerusalem, he would not have been there when Arioch died.

If he had returned to Jerusalem, he would not have been there when Samamat needed him. He would not have been there to ask her to marry him. To his eternal wonder and delight, Samamat had said yes.…

Now we are old together, and should be at peace. Instead, I see another den being built, and lions gathering to fill it.

Daniel tried to convince himself that the contest for queen, the struggle for power in the palace, would pass by him.
Perhaps Samamat and I will be left in peace.

But it didn't take a Dream-Master to see the future they faced: a long-sleeping dragon waking.

Or to see that this time Daniel would not escape the dragon's coils.

 

BOOK TWO

The Court of Miracles

HEGAI

I was seven when my father killed my mother, and fourteen when he gelded me. Seven years passed between my mother's death and my death as a man—seven years during which I struggled to elude my fate; to run away, escape to the faraway mountains guarding the eastern horizon, or to the ever-changing sea far to the west. Yes, I tried, desperately, but my father kept me well guarded, and each time I thought myself free, his guards caught me before I reached the end of our street.

And even if I had succeeded in gaining any of the city's seven gates, my father had paid all the guardians of all the gates well. None of the guards would have permitted me to pass; my father's money had ensured that.

Why? Why had my father slain his beautiful highborn wife? Cut off his lineage by gelding his son?

Questions simply answered: his wife proved unfaithful, and her beautiful clever son was sired not by her husband, but by an Abyssinian slave. But that I did not learn until the day the man I called my father slit my mother's slender throat.

The day I turned seven, my father called for my mother and me to come to him in the harem garden. My mother closed her eyes when she heard the summons, but said nothing. She took my hand and led me in silence until we stood before him. When I saw my father, I bowed to him as I had been taught. He thrust me away so hard I staggered and fell on the cool tiles.

“Father? What is wrong? What have I done?” I could think of no mischief I had done, no sin I had committed. I stood up and stared at him, puzzled. But not fearful. Not yet.

He looked past me, to where my mother stood rigid and silent. “Tell him,” he said. “Tell him the great wrong you have done. Tell him who and what he is. Speak the truth and earn a quick death.”

His words seemed to echo in my ears. I ran over and threw my arms around my mother. “What does he mean? Mother, tell me!”

“Yes, tell him.” My father smiled, and for a moment I saw, not my father, but a demon, one who served Ahriman the Dark. “Take as long as you wish. I can wait.”

My mother looked down at me; bent and kissed my forehead. “I will tell you the truth—the truth, so neither I nor your true father will be forgotten. Remember us, my son. Promise me that you will always remember.”

“Yes,” I said, even though I did not understand, and my voice trembled as I gave her the vow she wanted from me, “I promise.”

“Listen then.” Her voice took on the cadence of song; slow and mournful. “I was married very young—far too young. I was not even a woman when I wed, and I was afraid. But my mother swore to me that my husband would wait to claim his right to use my body. She told me I must be married at once, for my husband was an ambitious man, and I brought to him as dowry both my pure Persian blood—”

Here my father laughed; a harsh, cruel sound. My mother flinched, but she continued to speak, her voice soft and her words clear.

“—and my father's influence in the king's court. So my new husband thought the gold he paid for me money well spent.” She stared past me, as if her eyes sought to see that frightened young bride.

She fell silent; my father stalked up and stood close. There was a knife in his hand now, and he pressed the blade against the blue vein throbbing beneath her skin. “Go on,” he said. “The boy must hear the whole story, and from your lips. Tell him all the lies, all the false promises—tell him.
Tell him!
”

Trapped between them, I felt the man I had always called my father shake with the force of his long-banked anger; felt my mother tremble with cold fear. But while he gave his hatred free rein, she struggled to remain calm, to control her terror—and I knew she did so for my sake.

“It is a long story,” my mother said. “May I sit, while I speak?”

For long moments, he stared at her, slowly pressed the knife harder against her soft neck. I held my breath, dared neither speak nor move. At last he laughed—it was not a joyous sound—and lifted the knife away from her throat.

“Why not?” he said, and wound a handful of her dark hair around his fist. He used her hair as a leash, dragged her to her favorite spot in the garden: the bench beneath the lemon tree. There he released her hair and shoved her down onto the smooth marble bench. She suffered all this silently; once seated, she held her arms out to me, and I fled into her embrace. She settled me beside her on the bench, her arm tightly around me. She stroked my hair, and began.

“First you must understand, my son, that the world goes as the Good God Ahura Mazda desires, and not as mortals wish. If I had understood that, I would have saved myself, and you, and my husband much suffering. But I did not, for when I was given in marriage, I was still only a girl …

 … a girl too young to realize that her new husband was also young. Too young to understand her husband was ambitious—and he had a cruel heart. Then the only things he had wed her for melted away like snow in summer. Her father died before he could gain a royal appointment for his son-by-marriage, and her mother returned to her own people, who refused to acknowledge her husband. For their blood could be traced back into the mists of time, while his—

“Was good enough to mingle with yours when your lying father needed money.”

My mother ignored him, and spoke on, as softly as if telling me a bedtime tale. She told of her loneliness and sadness, and how she did not even have a child to console her, and so her husband accused her of being barren as well as useless.

Then came the day her husband purchased a new slave, a young man from far-off Abyssinia. Tall and dark and handsome—

“And I? Do you dare say I am ugly?” He looked ugly, as I stared at him, and I had always before this thought him as fine-looking as a king.

—but it would not have mattered had the Abyssinian been short and ugly. For he was kind. And the girl and the slave took comfort from each other, and the fruit of their love was a beautiful boy. But one day her husband learned of her betrayal. And he killed the slave …

“—and sentenced his unfaithful wife to death.” My mother bent and kissed my forehead as I stared, barely comprehending her words. And then she said, “Remember that I am guilty. My husband could have slain me the moment he found me with your father. But he let me live to bear you, and to nurse you, and to see you grow. Seven years. He gave me seven years with you, my son. He let you live. He promised he would not kill you. For that, I will bless his name in—”

“In Hell,” my father said. “Now set the boy aside and come to me.”

My mother bent to kiss me once more, then gently pried my hands from her skirts. “Good-bye, my son. Live well. Be happy.” Then, to my horror, she walked over to him, her head high and her steps steady.

He grasped her arm and made her turn so that she faced me, pulled her close so that her back pressed against him. She stood there quietly, made no move to escape, or to resist. He pulled his knife from the sash around his waist and lifted it slowly to her throat. He laid the long blade against her slender neck, the keen edge just touching her smooth skin.

And just before he slit her throat, the man I had called my father displayed the cruel heart my mother had spoken of. “Yes, he will live, and he may even be happy as a eunuch.” He pressed the knife's blade harder against her skin. “Your son will be a eunuch and a slave. Think of that, as you beg Daena the Lady Guardian for mercy in the afterlife.”

My mother did not answer him, either to beg mercy or to curse him. She looked straight at me. “Close your eyes,” she said.

Those were the last words she spoke to me. I did not even have time to obey her command before the man I had always called “father” yanked the blade across her throat. He let her body fall into the blood pooling scarlet at their feet and dropped the knife upon her body. Then he looked at me and I no longer saw my father. I saw a man who hated, who hated so greatly that even slaying his unfaithful wife did not ease that hatred. Now he would try to slake his anger by tormenting me.

And there was no one and nothing to stand between me and Lord Haman's thirst for vengeance.

*   *   *

But Haman did not make a eunuch of me then. No, with true cruelty, he waited another seven years to fulfill his last vow to my mother. Seven years during which I was treated in all ways as if I were Haman's true son.

Seven years in which I was in fact a prisoner in the most opulent and gilded of cages.

I thought of nothing but escape. I tried, and I failed, and with each failure Haman's grasp upon me tightened. By the time I turned fourteen, I had been confined to my rooms—rooms with barred windows and barred doors—for two years. Even the gardens had been forbidden to me.

The day I turned fourteen, Haman hired the most expensive, most sought-after prostitute in the city. “She will be yours—for one night. One night, so that you will know what you have lost,” my father said. Mad hatred glittered in his eyes. “Your life will be my revenge on that whore, your mother.”

He took me to the room he had prepared for this occasion. A feast had been spread over a low mirrored table, and the smell of honeyed wine lay heavy upon the air. Beyond the table I saw a bed covered in extravagantly embroidered coverings. A woman sat upon the bed. She smiled when she saw me and rose to her feet, graceful as a willow in the wind. Slowly, she walked across the room until she stood before me. Her skin gleamed like old ivory and a perfume of cinnamon and roses hung upon the air around her.

“This is the boy? But he is lovely, my lord Haman. You led me to expect a monster.” She put her fingertips under my chin, turned my head from side to side as if judging my value.

Haman ignored her jest. “You have one last night as a man,” he told me. “What you do with this night is up to you. But one last bit of fatherly advice, Jasper—if I were you, I would not waste these hours. Remember, dawn follows night.”

And you have another room prepared, one in which a man and a knife wait for me …
Strangely cold, I did not move as Haman laughed and strode out. I heard the bar drop into place, imprisoning me in this lush chamber.

—and then the gleaming, perfumed woman set her hand upon my arm. Her skin burned against mine; suddenly my whole body trembled. Then she gently made me turn until I faced her. After one swift glance, I stared at the floor as my face burned with shame and my stomach seemed to rise into my throat. I thought I would vomit.

“I—I am sorry,” I managed to say.

“Look at me.” Her voice was soft; I found myself obeying her command. When I did, she touched her fingers to my lips.

“Hush. There is nothing to fear, and I tell you now that you are not acting foolishly, my young lord.” She stroked my hair; my body trembled at her touch. “My name is Zebbani.”

I managed to say, “Yes, I know.” For Zebbani was the most famed, most desired, most expensive courtesan in all Shushan. I had seen her once, as her palanquin was being carried past the courtyard gate of Haman's house.

She smiled, and somehow gave me the impression that it pleased her that I knew of her—when I considered that night later, I realized how fine an actress a courtesan must be. “Now, tell me your name.”

“Jasper,” I said. “My name is Jasper.”

“Jasper.” She made my name into a caress. “You are well-named, a treasure indeed.” She slid her hands down my arms, entwined her fingers with mine. She pretended not to notice how my hands trembled. “Now come, for the night is long, but not endless.”