“And just how do we get there? On camels? Will our earrings buy camels? ”
“They would buy a lot of things.” Kade smiled brightly. “You are young, and healthy, and wealthy, and well educated. You have beauty and grace. I am sure that Sultana Rasha will still be sympathetic, perhaps even more so now. You have been harshly treated—by men—and she disapproves of women being oppressed. She will see you on your way, back to the Impire where you belong. She may even magic you there. Now that the wardens know about her, she has no reason to conceal her existence or her powers.”
Inos was not sure she believed all that. She did not trust Rasha, and certainly did not want to be beholden to her. Kade tried again. “Remember the God’s words? You were told to trust in love. Love is worth more than all the kingdoms of Pandemia.”
“Whose love? Azak’s?”
Her aunt hesitated and pursed her lips. “If you want my honest opinion . . . No, I don’t think so. You do have a great attraction for men, Inos. He will not be the last man to fall in love with you.”
“But none more truly,” said Azak, coming out of the doorway.
Inos jumped and bit back a sharp comment about eavesdroppers. He was sultan again; she must watch her tongue.
He strode over to her and stopped, very close, and his jewels glittered in the sunlight. His fringe of beard was a two-week stubble, but it was enough to distinguish him from the dashing imp he had been in Ullacarn, or the bushy lionslayer of the desert. He stared down at her with his dark red eyes.
“I have not changed,” he said.
She tried not to show how much that meant. Then she felt guilty. She wanted to use that love against him, to win favors, not to love him in return. Could she ever? Queens did not marry for love; they married for reasons of state.
Was that so very different from what Rasha had done in her younger days?
He smiled, but it was not a very warming smile. It looked too deliberate. ”No answer?”
“Azak . . . I don’t know what to say. Kade was just warning me that we still don’t know for certain about Krasnegar. Skarash is not the most reliable of witnesses.”
Azak snorted. “Of course not. Well, you shall remain here as—”
He twisted and went rigid. She saw beads of perspiration break out on his face.
“Azak! What’s wrong?”
He relaxed with a gasp and shivered. “I came to tell you that we are summoned. I must be taking too long. That was a nudge, that’s all.”
Rasha! The spider at the heart of the web. “Then let us go right away!”
He was angry at having revealed weakness. “There is no hurry. Have you a shawl or something . . . for the walk?” Inos nodded and ran ahead indoors to find a cloth to cover her hair and shoulders. Kade came close behind her.
4
Jeweled amber eyes rolled to inspect the visitors, and the carven demon face writhed into speech. “State your name and business!” On the other flap of the door, the matching demon merely curled its wooden lips in a sneer.
“Sultan Azak of Arakkaran and Queen Inosolan of Krasnegar!” No occult fakery could teach Azak anything about sneering.
“Who is the other one?”
“Her Royal Highness Princess Kadolan.”
There was a pause then, as if the grotesque were reporting to its mistress. The corridor was dim; it felt as cold as a Krasnegarian midwinter. Inos was trying not to shiver, absurdly glad that Azak was there beside her. She doubted she would have had the courage to come and face the sorceress alone. Then she sensed him looking down at her. She glanced up.
“She has power,” he said coldly, and there was no doubt to whom he referred, “but remember what she is. And what you are, Cousin.”
I am nothing! “Of course, Cousin.”
He nodded and went back to outsneering the demonic faces on the door. Inos’s black mood darkened further.
He said he had not changed, but he had. He was sultan again, as he had been when she first met him. On the dock, back in the palace yard, he had spurned the fawning princes, made strong men leap to obedience with one cold glance. She had forgotten just how intimidating he was in his royal role.
And she had changed. She was a queen no longer. Royal status was much more important to Azak than it had ever been to her. Now she was an outcast, like one of the banished princes who sank to being family men in other palaces, or lionslayers serving tradesmen. Although he denied it, he despised them as failures. Rasha’s nudge had come before they had finished their talk—had he been about to offer Inos marriage, or escape to Hub, or steady employment as a breeder of sons? Which did she want?
Rasha’s curse still kept them apart.
“The two of you may enter, the third may not,” the carving stated.
“No!” Kade looked ready to argue with the door.
Inos kissed her cheek. “You go back and wait in the suite, Aunt. Don’t hang around here. We may be some time.”
“I think it is my duty—”
“Go!” Azak boomed, and Kade capitulated.
Inos watched sadly as her aunt wandered back along the long gloomy corridor, and she felt loneliness settle aver her like hoar frost.
Then a squeal from a hinge made her jump. The double doors had swung open.
She entered at Azak’s side, and saw at once that the Kinvale influence had been discarded. Again the great circular bedchamber was overflowing with chests and tables in every possible style. The sumptuous floor was hidden again below a discordant mismatch of rugs, and the lewd wall hangings and erotic statuary that Kade had banished had now been replaced. Inos had been shocked by the first collection, and the replacements were even worse; she blushed to see them. The air reeked with syrupy scents.
Beyond the two big windows stood the white vertical blaze of noon. Light spilled also down the central well of the spiral staircase, and yet it was curiously muted . . . smoky? . . . less bright than Inos remembered or expected, so the big room seemed oddly dim, and cool.
The doors closed with a boom and a fading echo like a drum roll. The two visitors continued to advance, heading for the bottom step. Then Azak halted, and so did Inos. The enormous canopied bed still stood at the far side of the room, beyond the stair, and the sorceress was standing at one corner of it, leaning provocatively against the carved post as if embracing it.
Inos felt a shiver of apprehension and disgust as she saw that Rasha was in her seductress mode, more voluptuous than ever. Only a small space around her eyes was actually uncovered, but the mist of gauze and jewels that floated over the rest of her concealed nothing—not the long fall of russet hair, nor the hot glow of nipple and areola, nor the many ropes of pearls looped around her body and limbs, next the skin. Nor the skin either, the hot, ruddy skin of a nubile djinn maiden. Nothing above the bright enamel of her sandal straps was leaving any mysteries to tempt the imagination. She looked no older than Inos. Did men really appreciate such an obscenity? Did they not see the vulgarity, or the contempt?
“Come closer,” said the moist red lips.
Azak and Inos advanced more slowly, stopped. Inos waited for his cue, until she realized that he would not bow to a dockside trollop. She had set her own precedents long since, and to change them now would be a defiance, so she curtsied. Rasha acknowledged the move with a flick of one shapely eyebrow.
Then Azak fell to his knees and steadied himself with his hands. That fall had not been voluntary, and had probably hurt. “You seem to have learned no lessons, Muscles,” said Rasha. “Oh, but I have!” Azak’s ruddy-stubbled face parted in a joyful gleam of white teeth.
“Do tell.”
“I have learned that you are no match for Warlock Olybino!” Rasha leaned even more seductively against the carved post of the bed, stroking it with her breast. “So what do you expect to happen now?”
He shrugged. “I suppose, when he gets around to it, the warlock will come for you, to claim your words of power. But I hardly expect that an aged, malformed, mutilated whore will be of use to him. He will torture the words out of you and have your throat cut like a pig’s!”
“You would like to be there to watch, of course.”
“I would enjoy few things more.”
“And volunteer to help?”
“Why not? You have caused me enough pain in the past.” Now it was Rasha who shrugged, and the gesture seemed to involve her whole body. She turned her gaze of languid contempt on Inos. It felt like impudence from a girl so young.