Moreover, something about Azak’s stance suggested that he did not believe he was in much danger, and Inos decided that she was more concerned for Rap’s dog. True, it had overpowered Andor and then savaged the giant Darad. The djinn was not as massive as the jotunn had been, but he was almost as tall; he was younger and probably faster, and Darad had been hampered by entering the fight when he was already on the floor with the monster’s teeth in his arm . . . Shocked to discover that she was assessing the contest as she might weigh an upcoming skittles match at Kinvale, Inos looked to Kade, and Kade was very obviously not going to interfere, either.
Azak’s slim, curved blade slid into view. Inos glanced around at the drape in the hope that Rap might appear. If Rasha had allowed his dog through, surely she would not leave Rap himself to the unlikely mercy of the imps? The sword was out now. The wolf had begun to growl. Was that a good sign or a bad?
It gathered itself to leap; Azak drew back his elbow. The dog turned to stone. Kade recoiled, moaning, and Inos reached out to hug her, but more for her own comfort than her aunt’s, probably.
May the Good be with us! There was no doubt—stone it was. No mundane sculptor could ever have matched the detail of the coat so well, nor achieved the cunning fit of the grain of the rock to the gleam of light over muscle and bone, but otherwise what had a moment before been a living, breathing, and highly dangerous predator was now only a graceful ornament. Inexplicably, that felt wrong. Inexplicably, that sorcery impressed Inos more than all the miracles she had seen and experienced since the terrors began, so many hours before.
Azak, on the other hand, sheathed his scimitar quite matter-of-factly, as if petrification were no more remarkable in Arakkaran than shampooing, or ladies entering rooms through windows.
Before anyone spoke, the jewels tinkled again, signaling the arrival of Sultana Rasha. Light flared up behind her and there was no longer an impossible night beyond the drapery. She was wearing the face of a mature woman, an imperious matron in her thirties—not conventionally beautiful, but striking. In Inisso’s chamber her appearance had flicked back and forth from age to youth, from ugliness to beauty, and her flowing white raiments had varied similarly, from coarse white cotton to silks embroidered with pearls and gems. Now, like her face, her dress represented a compromise, rich but not ostentatious. Her fingers glittered with gems, though.
She stopped abruptly, frowning at Azak. “What’re you doing here, Beautiful?” She spoke to him as Inos would to a wayward horse.
Azak scowled. His teeth were large and regular and very white. “You summoned me.” Again the dislike was obviously mutual.
Rasha laughed. “Well, so I did! I’d forgotten. I was feeling bitchy and wanted some entertainment.” She turned to Inos. “You’ve met Prince Azak, dearie?”
“He’s not the sultan?”
“Oh, never! Don’t believe a thing he says. He’s a notorious liar.”
A jotunn would have struck her for that remark, even had the act meant suicide. Azak almost did. His lips paled, his neck bulged, but he managed to control his fury, just barely.
Rasha was enjoying herself. “All men are liars, my dear,” she said with affected sweetness. “Whatever they tell you, they only want one thing, and lots of it. Don’t call him `sultan’ inside the palace, either—I’m trying to stamp out that nonsense. Here’s all right; nowhere else. Now come, move your little buns.” She led the way, marching like a legionary, her vestments floating out behind her. As she went by Azak, she reached up and tweaked his beard. He recoiled with a choking noise.
“Wait!” Inos cried. But the sorceress kept going, weaving between the furniture. Inos ran after, dodging overstuffed divans and bronze urns and porcelain animals. “What about Rap? And Doctor Sagorn? And the goblin?”
She caught up with Rasha at a circular balustrade in the center of the room. Here a grand staircase spiraled down to a lower chamber. That was why there were no doors, of course.
“What about them?” the sorceress asked, not looking around.
“You just left them there? Left them for the imps to kill?” The sultana walked around to the top of the stair and paused at the first step, where the way was partly obstructed by a lifesize carving of a black panther, seemingly poised to spring at any intruder coming up toward it.
“This is Claws,” she muttered absently, but she was studying the great shimmering dome overhead. Or possibly she was listening to something. A small smile played around her mouth, registering satisfaction. Then she set off down the stairs, stroking the basalt neck in passing. “Isn’t he gorgeous? I think I’ll put him on one side and the wolf on the other.”
Chasing down after her, Inos said, “It’s real?”
“When I want it to be. Lucky I remembered to warn it that the Meat Man was coming.”
Inos was becoming more bewildered by the minute. “Who?”
“Azak,” said the sorceress. “I’ve got lots of names for him, but that one really twists his nose. It fits him, though—he’s got biceps like the humps on his camel. I’ll have him show you sometime.”
Halfway down, she suddenly slackened her pace, as if the urgency—whatever it was—was over. Azak was padding down the stairs behind Inos in his kidskin slippers. Aunt Kade was just passing the panther.
“But Rap!” Inos exclaimed. “Doctor Sagorn? You can’t just leave them there for the imps!”
Rasha continued down the stairs without replying. The lower chamber was as overloaded with furniture as the upper had been, mostly innumerable chests and tables of random styles. Two windows added little to the light spilling down the central stairwell. The walls were poorly lighted, therefore, and yet cluttered with ornate mirrors and bright tapestries barely discernible in the shadows. Musk and flower scent hung in the air like syrup.
Despite her worry over Rap and the others, despite her bonedeep weariness, Inos was intrigued by these exotic, alien rooms. They were like nothing she had ever seen, not even in the Duke of Kinvale’s collection of lithographs; a collection that he had amassed from all over the Impire, and had inflicted on her during several mind-numbing afternoons. Neither in art nor reality had she ever seen decor so alien. Double doors vast enough to admit a coach and four stood shut; against the opposite wall was an absurdly huge bed, the largest four-poster in the world, wide and high, draped in filmy gauze. Then her eyes had adjusted to the gloom and the nature of some of the statuary penetrated her fog-shrouded mind. She took an incredulous second look at the illustrations on the walls and was suddenly very glad that such obscenities were so poorly lighted. Kade would have an apoplectic fit.
Hastily Inos turned her attention back to the sorceress. Surely the legionaries would be breaking down the door by now? “You must save them!”
Rasha spun around. “Must? You say must to me, child?”
“I’m sorry, your Majesty! But I beg of you please save them!”
“Why should I?” inquired the sorceress, smirking. “Because they’ll be killed!”
“Better than what you’d have got, dearie, if I’d left you there! You know what gangs of men do to pretty girls?”
“No!” Inos had never even considered such a thing. Imperial legionaries? A band of raiding jotnar, certainly, but not the imperor’s army! It had been Rap who had been in danger, and the goblin, also—not her! “Not that!”
“Yes, that!” the sorceress said, her mouth twisting in an expression Inos could not read. “I know more about men than you’ll ever guess at it, sweetie girl. Believe me, I know!”
Inos was still a couple of steps up, staring down at her in horror. Possibly the sorceress thought she was not being believed, because she suddenly discarded about twenty years, to become again the gem-bedecked, sylphlike maiden who had so bewitched Rap, her flesh glowing hot and tantalizing through garments of mist.
She smiled mockingly up at Inos. “All men have to do is die, and they have to do that eventually, don’t they? That’s nothing compared to what a woman might get. What do I owe them? What does any woman owe a man, ever?” She glanced past Inos, apparently at Azak. “Well, Wonderstud?”
Receiving no answer, she chuckled and turned away, sauntering toward the great bed with her hips swinging, ruddy flesh and ox-blood hair shining through garments that seemed to have become flimsier than ever, over a body even more voluptuous.
Inos had heard of women who dressed like that and behaved like that-had heard of them mostly in whispered tales in the castle kitchens. She had never expected to see a queen do such things.