*
Tanaki watched the young man leave the hall and then rose, stretching her arms over her head, and arching her back. Her feelings were mixed as she wandered back into her living area. Kiall’s innocence was both appealing and surprising – like finding a perfect flower growing on the edge of a cess-pit. She poured herself a goblet of wine and sipped it. A young man in search of his love; a dreamer. Her eyes narrowed.
‘The world has some savage shocks in store for you,’ she whispered. A cold breeze rustled the heavy hangings, touching the bare flesh of her legs. She shivered.
‘I miss you, Father,’ she said, picturing again the tall lean warrior, seeing his slow smile, watching it soften his cruel face. Tanaki had been his favourite – despite her birth being responsible for the death of her mother, Kenya. Tenaka Khan had lavished all his love on his only daughter, while his sons fought for a kind word – or even a nod which might be interpreted as praise. She thought of her eldest brother, Jungir. How he had longed to be accepted by his father.
Now Jungir was the Khan, Tanaki’s other brothers murdered, and she was merely living out her life awaiting the inevitable.
She smiled as she remembered her last meeting with Jungir. He so wanted her dead. But the Khan’s generals would never accept the complete obliteration of Tenaka Khan’s blood-line and, as everyone knew, Jungir Khan was sterile. Not one of his forty wives had conceived. Tanaki chuckled. Poor Jungir. He could ride the wildest horse, and fight with lance or sword. But in the eyes of the Nadir he was suspect, because his seed was not strong.
Tanaki pressed her hands to her belly. She had no doubt that she could conceive. And one day, perhaps, when Jungir grew desperate, she could be back in favour and wed to one of the generals. The face of Tsudai leapt into her mind and she recoiled. Not him! Never him. His touch was like the feel of lizard skin, and the memory of his tomb-dark eyes made her shiver. No, not Tsudai.
She pushed him from her mind and thought of Jungir as she had last seen him, sitting on the throne and staring down at her. ‘You are safe, bitch – for the moment. But know this . . . one day I will see you humbled. Live for that day, Tanaki.’
So instead of death Tanaki was banished here, in the desolate wastelands of the south. There were few pleasures to be found in this land, save for the heady joys of alcohol and the succession of young men she took to her bed. Yet even these pleasures soon palled. Bored with her life, she had watched the inefficiency of the slave trade – alternating between glutted markets, with the price low, or no trade at all. Added to this, there was no central point where slaves could be auctioned and prices guaranteed. It had taken Tanaki less than four months to establish the market town, and within a year she also coordinated all raids into Gothir territory. Prices had stabilised, the new, improved, market was buoyant and enormous profits were being made. The gold meant little to Tanaki, who had spent her childhood surrounded by the wealth of conquered nations. But the trade kept her agile mind busy, and away from thoughts of Jungir’s revenge.
No matter how great the pressure from the generals, she knew there would come a time when Jungir would feel strong enough to have her killed. So strange, she realised, that she did not hate him for it. It was so easy to understand what drove him. He had yearned for his father’s affection and, failing to win it, had come to hate that which his father loved.
Tanaki pulled aside a velvet curtain and gazed out of a narrow window.
‘He left you nothing, Jungir,’ she whispered. ‘He conquered most of the world; he united the tribes; he founded an empire. What is there left for you?’
Poor Jungir. Poor sterile Jungir!
Her thoughts turned to the young man, Kiall. His face loomed in her mind, the grey eyes gentle, yet with a hint of steel. And there was passion there too, raw and unmined, volcanic and waiting.