No sensible servant wanted contact with a doomed man who might wish to destroy as much as he could before his own inevitable end.
Fortin walked into the lift shaft and began to rise. Not because he was one of Penny’s favorites, as those who watched from behind half-opened doors thought; but because Fortin too was a god.
He wondered if Penny hated and despised herself. Probably not. She wasn’t perceptive enough to realize that she should, that they all should.
Fortin got off the lift at the top level, where the spire swelled into the huge, gilded egg of Penny’s private suite.
Maids were straightening one of the great rooms. They peered at Fortin through the open door. One giggled. They were nude except for wisps of white gauze in their hair and a similar tracery of pink around their hips.
Fortin stared at them coldly. “This isn’t for you,” he said, jutting his hips forward to emphasize his words.
The girls’ bright, scrubbed faces changed. One of them quickly closed the door.
Fortin entered the white angora room that was Penny’s particular favorite. He paused when he heard laughter, but the balcony door was open and the sounds came through it.
The necklace was on a dresser. Fortin fingered the stone for a moment. It was warm, blood hot, even though it must have been several minutes since Penny tossed it aside to get on with a variation of the one matter that interested her more than her own appearance.
Fortin slipped the transparent strap over his head and let the jewel bounce against his own chest. For a moment he looked at himself in the dresser’s triple mirror and saw the form of Rolls, complete with the first hint of a paunch rolling over the cord of his orange jockstrap.
And again, a muscular stud with sullen, swarthy features, not Fortin but any one of a thousand men who’d gained Penny’s attention in an existence where duration no longer had meaning. The jewel concealed itself.
Fortin looked toward the balcony door. It stood open at an angle. Reflected in its crystal surface, ghostly against the cloud-streaked sky beyond, he saw Rolls and Penny.
The palace’s mistress was leaning her whole torso out over the top rail. Her chubby calves intertwined with the railing’s vertical supports, and Rolls’ great hands gripped her breasts.
Penny cried in delight as Rolls stroked into her again from behind, and again, and again.
A risky position, even with Rolls’ strength and Penny’s own undoubted athleticism. But what was even godhead without risk?
There was no expression on Fortin’s face as he stepped into the lift shaft. He would leave the palace as a faceless member of Rolls’ entourage and hand over the necklace as soon as they were clear.
When Rolls was done with it, Fortin would slip the necklace back here.
And Fortin would revisit Ruby.
Chapter Sixteen
In order to accommodate the influx of recruits drawn by rumors of war, the tables were butted end to end. They were clear of food, now, and the night’s serious drinking had begun.
Hansen squeezed the shoulders of the men to either side of him, Malcolm and Maharg; muttered, “Wish me luck”; and ducked under the trestles to reach the service walkway between tables and hearth.
“Hey!” called one of his fellows. A husky woman with pitchers in either hand stopped so abruptly that some of her beer sloshed, but Hansen strode directly toward Golsingh at the crosstable.
He’d learned by now that Taddeusz wasn’t going to permit an underling—particularly Hansen—to approach the king if he could help it. With the table between them, the warchief couldn’t prevent the contact, unless he was willing to lower himself and his dignity by crawling under the trestles the way Hansen had done.
Malcolm sat less than a third of the way down the left bench now. Most of the recruits were gutter-sweepings, not respectable warriors. Good warriors were going elsewhere. That was one of the things Hansen had learned in talking with Malcolm and his fellows.
Servants fluttered out of Hansen’s way. At the head table, Unn and Krita stared at him. The face of Taddeusz’ daughter was flushed from the hearth, but Unn’s pale skin was perfect except for a smudge of ash on her forehead.