The Harem Master (42 page)

All the councilors looked up at her then, shock rippling across their faces. "You cannot—"

"I am thoroughly sick of people talking before I grant them permissions," Euren cut in. "I
can
and I
will
, Lord Jareth. Challenge me again and you will not enjoy what comes before you're permitted to die."

He bowed his head but said nothing.

Hands rested on her thighs, heavy, steadying, just barely keeping back the trembling and tears that threatened to rise up and overwhelm her. "Councilors, I am not going to waste any more of the day on this matter. On you. My time is better spent cleaning up your messes. Your bloodlines are stripped of rank, fortune, and all holdings. Your families are not permitted to enter the bounds of the Salla Province for this and the next two generations, and those permitted once more to touch royal grounds will visit the throne to be certain of their permission before they do anything else. Should anyone violate this law, they will be summarily banished from Tavamara for life. As for you four…" She took a sip of wine, then finally said, "Death by hanging, public execution in the city. You have betrayed the kingdom that trusted you, betrayed the people you promised to protect. Therefore you will die before them, grant them the peace of knowing you have suffered and died for your crimes."

"Your Majesty…" Yuma swallowed, tears falling down her cheeks. "We have committed great wrongs, but give us a chance to right them. What does death accomplish?"

"Peace," Euren said flatly. "What could you possibly do to make amends for trying to turn the people of Tavamara into slaves? And that is only the greatest of your crimes. Do you want me to read the whole list? You believe that people can be treated like goods, there is nothing you can do to make amends for that. No, you do not deserve mercy. You have five days to make your peace with the Divine; perhaps you will earn their mercy. Guards, remove them from my sight."

The councilors screamed protests and pleas as they were hauled away, high and desperate and broken by tears, but Euren stared stonily at them until the doors closed with an echoing thud. Euren dropped her trembling hands to her lap. "I need to be alone, Steward, Lady Seth, forgive me, please."

"There is nothing to forgive, Your Majesty," Cenk said quietly. She heard the rustle of papers, the soft swish of fabric, then their footsteps, and the opening and closing of the door.

"Gone," Canan said quietly, sounding close to tears herself. "Even your father, though he was reluctant."

Euren buried her face in her hands and cried. She had killed men before, several of them. Death was not a stranger. But having to be so cold, so indifferent, so damned callous as she told people they were going to die, to order a person to pull the lever that would drop them—order a spectacle be made of it… She cried harder, went immediately when Gulden dragged her into a hug, buried her head in the hollow of Gulden's throat.

"I'm sorry," Asli said quietly, as she and Canan stroked Euren's back.

"Majesty." The soft, hesitantly spoken word drew Euren's attention.

Slowly drawing back, wiping at her eyes, Euren turned to look at Meltem, who had knelt just out of reach of them, close but carefully not intruding. As though she could. Meltem smiled, gentle and full of understanding. "I am third in line to take command of Cobra should anything ever happen to my brother or father, may the Lady of the Sands prevent such tragedies. It means many hard decisions are left to me in the field. Ordering someone's death never grows easier, never grows more comfortable… but it is a weapon of power. Like any weapon, you should know it well, keep it close, but you control it. You do not need to let it control you."

Euren sniffled, nodded, and wiped away a last few tears. She managed a shaky smile. "Thank you, Meltem. It has helped me a great deal to have you here with me." Discarding propriety, she closed the distance between them and hugged Meltem tightly, pretended not to notice the whisper-soft kiss pressed to the side of her head.

It was too soon, and the wrong time, to ask… But one day soon she
could
ask. That was enough.

Drawing back, Euren accepted the handkerchief that Canan held out and cleaned her face. "What is next on my agenda?"

"I vote we use the secret passages to return to your room," Asli said. "Meltem can tell your father and the others that you've gone. Once you've rested, I suggest you have dinner in the public banquet hall. Let people see you, let them wonder what is going on. Hopefully Ihsan and the others will return soon. I do not like that it is already midafternoon and they still are not returned."

"I'm sure they'll be back soon," Euren said. She hugged Meltem again, then rose and handed back the handkerchief. "Let's go, then. Tell Cenk and Seth that I would appreciate their company at dinner, but they are under no obligation."

Meltem bowed, offering a last, fleeting smile before she headed toward the doors while Asli and the others led Euren toward the secret passage hidden behind an enormous painting of an early queen of Tavamara.

Demir was more exhausted than he could ever remember being. Hours after they'd been taken from the palace, the drug used to knock them out still had him fuzzy at the edges. It didn't help that every hour—it felt like every hour, anyway—the mercenaries moved them to a new location. When he'd first woken up, he and Sabah had been in a stable. They'd been stuffed in barrels, in crates, shoved under piles of hay on a rickety, squeaky cart and told that if they made a sound they wouldn't like the consequences. They'd been locked in storerooms, tied up and left in old, dusty offices, crammed into a wine cellar, and their most recent stop was another stable. An old stable, long fallen out of use and reeking of the critters that had made it a home.

He'd lost track of how long ago they'd been taken, though it had obviously been several hours. Possibly the better part of a day. To judge by the cool air and the lack of light, it was early evening.

Sabah shifted slightly where he lay with his head in Demir's lap, recovering from the motion sickness induced by their last stint in the squeaky cart. Outside the stable, Demir could hear at least six different voices, the rattle of swords, the creak of leather armor, and the stomp of boots. Mercenaries, according to Sabah, and not the cheap kind.

He hadn't said anything else about them, but Demir wasn't a fool: if Sabah had been alone, he could have escaped. Mercenaries, even good ones, would not be an impossible obstacle for Ihsan or any of his men.

But Demir had never been trained to fight. He was trained to be the finest concubine in the country; that left little room for even the most basic martial training. Sabah couldn't fight his way out and protect Demir at the same time, and the mercenaries would go straight for the weak point.

Demir had always been proud of what he was, but right then he wished he were at least moderately useful in other ways. But all his skills were in pleasure. Worse, it was those very skills that had gotten them into this predicament to start.

He still didn't understand
why.
Anyone could do what he did. He wasn't born with any special talent; it had all been trained into him. Concubines could come from literally any life, and it took only months to train them to adequate levels. Years of practice would bring them to his level. If they wanted the skills of Tavamara's concubines so badly, why not pay for them? If they could sell him for a fortune, could they not sell his skills? Why must it all be done illegally? Why had so many people been killed or hurt for something so trivial? He would never understand foreigners. He understood even less those Tavamarans who sided against their own to profit from them. Demir sighed.

"We'll find a way out of this mess."

"I have no doubt of that," Demir replied quietly. "I simply do not understand why we are in it at all. Nothing about me is valuable enough to warrant so much trouble—so much death."

"Oh, I think kings would surrender a great deal for you," Sabah replied. "But it's not the sexual aspect of the concubines that Havarin ultimately seeks, I think. Make no mistake, the slave trading itself would be lucrative enough to warrant a multitude of murders in the minds of many. Havarin, though… Havarin's greatest skill is patience. Nobody plays a long game better than the Holy Empire of Havarin. There is something about you, and concubines in general, that is infinitely more valuable to Havarin than your skills as concubines."

Demir frowned, puzzled over it, but finally shook his head.

Sabah gave a soft laugh. "Secrets, darling Harem Master. You know a great many valuable secrets. How many people trust you with information they'll share with no one else? How much information is fed to you, on purpose or unwittingly, by your concubines? What do you overhear from people who never really notice the concubines? What would it be worth to Havarin to have such valuable ears doing their bidding? The sex trade is valuable, but it becomes priceless when used as a road to undermining the only country in the world that can one hundred percent hold its own with Havarin."

Closing his eyes, Demir murmured, "I'm an idiot. How did I never realize that?"

"You're Harem Master, not a politician. People trust you absolutely, and you hold that precious, have never regarded it as a tool. Whereas Havarin has probably seen the harems as little else since first learning of them and the role they play."

Demir grimaced. "If I were better at the political games we may have avoided this mess." He gently combed fingers through Sabah's hair. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," Sabah replied, and his voice did sound stronger, steadier. "I confess I am taking shameless advantage at this point." He turned so he could look up at Demir. "You're a fine pillow."

Demir chuckled softly, rested his manacled hands on Sabah's bare chest. Their clothes had not weathered all the movement well, and they'd not been all that dressed to begin with. Hopefully when night settled in and it grew cold, their captors would bring them proper clothes, or at least blankets. Surely if they'd gone to the trouble to pad the manacles around his wrists and ankles to avoid damaging his skin, they would bring warm clothes? "I'm glad I can be of some use since I am the reason we cannot save ourselves. You could get out of here on your own, come back for me. It's me they really want, after all."

"I'm not leaving you," Sabah said. "And you vastly overestimate my skill, dear Harem Master. I've no doubt Kitt or Ihsan could get out of this mess, especially with their fondness for poisons, but I'm not quite the warrior the rest of them are. I was the camp healer, with an occasional fight. Like you, I'm better in the palace than the field."

"You can still hold your own," Demi replied.

Sabah made a soft noise, then levered himself up and shifted to
sit
on Demir's lap, just the perfect height to rest his head easily against Demir's shoulder if he wanted. "None of this is your fault, and you shouldn't blame yourself for not being a killer. Please, don't do that. We, all of us, would give anything not to know what it's like to kill a man. Except maybe Kitt, but the reasons there are more complicated than I could possibly untangle or even understand."

"If you want the training to run bone deep, you begin it young," Demir said softly. "Kitt was trained to his profession as carefully and thoroughly as I was to mine. For better and for worse, as we focused so hard on our skillsets there wasn't room to learn much else. I've spent my whole life being exceptional at one thing, and outside of that one thing I am useless. At least Kitt's skills are fluid enough to adapt to almost any situation. Certainly he would be more useful to you right now."

"You could never be useless, you vastly underestimate yourself," Sabah said, fingers resting on Demir's chest, warm and more comforting than Demir wanted to admit. "I'm simply glad neither of us is alone; we'll figure the rest out. And I can say with certainty that there is a rescue party tearing the city apart looking for us. They'd better do it soon, though, because I think we are only biding time until we can be put on a ship."

Demir made a face. "I'm surprised we're not already on one. Why all the moving about? Surely it would be easier to keep us in one place?" This was the first time they'd even really been able to talk, the first time they'd been left alone. The guards were getting as tired of it as he and Sabah, though Demir did not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

"If not even the people responsible for kidnapping us can say for certain where we are at any given time, how can they lead Ihsan and the others to us? People can't tell what they don't know. But I think we'll be stabilizing soon. They've been muttering more and more about 'the boss'. I wonder if we'll be introduced properly, get to learn which of those bastards from the palace will be gloating over this victory."

"I'm sure we'll know whether we want to or not," Demir said, more concerned about what was going to happen to them when all the moving stopped. He wasn't stupid enough to think that two men bound for sexual slavery were going to be left in peace for very long. Given his size and Sabah's skills, they'd probably start with drugging them again.

Fingers landed on his cheek, and in the rapidly growing dark Demir could only just see Sabah's face, the concern cutting lines into it. "We'll be all right. I'm biding my time, not acquiescing. And the others will find us soon, of that I have no doubt. This will teach me to kiss pretty Harem Masters in the hallway instead of waiting until we're in private quarters. I should have just let Ihsan kiss you the way he's been wanting; then we could have stayed right where we were."

"I'm still not convinced that…" Ihsan wanted him so permanently. Wanted him, yes, but according to the new laws that would soon take effect, Ihsan could only have a harem of five. Did he really want one of those remaining spaces to go to a former Harem Master twelve years his senior? Who had never really known anything but palace life when the rest of his men had shared his hard life, knew and understood things that Demir never would.