“It amused me to hear the great Kadar Kardeef cry for mercy, and then to deny it.”
Jagang roared again, a beastly sound out of place for such a mannerly bedchamber. She saw the blur of his arm swinging for her. The room whirled violently around her. She expected to hit something with a bone-breaking impact. Instead, she upended and crashed onto unexpected softness: the bed, she realized. Somehow, she had missed the marble and mahogany posts at the corners—they surely would have killed her. Fate, it seemed, was trifling with her. Jagang landed atop her.
She thought he might beat her to death now. Instead, he studied her eyes from inches away. He sat up, straddling her hips. His meaty hands pulled at the laces on the bodice of her dress. With a quick yank of the material, he exposed her breasts. His fingers squeezed her bared flesh until her eyes watered.
Nicci didn’t watch him, or resist, but instead went limp as he pushed her dress up around her waist. Her mind began its journey away, to where only she alone could go. He fell on her, driving the wind from her lungs in a helpless grunt.
Arms lying at her sides, her fingers open and slack, eyes unblinking, Nicci stared at the folds of the silk in the canopy of the bed, her mind unaffected in the distant quiet place. The pain seemed remote. Her struggle to breathe seemed trivial.
As he went about his coarse business, she focused her thoughts instead on what she was going to do. She had never believed possible what she now contemplated; now she knew it was. She had only to decide to do it.
Jagang slapped her, causing her to focus her mind back on him. “You’re too stupid to even weep!”
She realized he had finished; he was not happy that she hadn’t noticed. She had to make an effort not to comfort her jaw, stinging from what to him was a smack, but to the person receiving it was a blow nearly strong enough to cripple. Sweat dripped from his chin onto her face. His powerful body glistened from the exertion she had not perceived.
His chest heaved as he glared down at her. Anger, of course, powered the glare, but Nicci thought she saw a tinge of something else there, too: regret, or maybe anguish, or maybe even hurt.
“Is that what you wish me to do, then, Excellency? Weep?”
His voice turned bitter as he flopped onto his side beside her. “No. I wish you to react.”
“But I am,” she said as she stared up at the canopy. “It is simply not the reaction you wish.”
He sat up. “What’s the matter with you, woman?”
She gazed up at him a moment, and then turned her eyes away.
“I have no idea,” she answered honestly. “But I think I must find out.”
Chapter 14
Jagang gestured. “Take off your clothes. You’re spending the night. It’s been too long.” This time, it was he who stared off at the walls. “I’ve missed you in my bed, Nicci.”
She didn’t answer. She did not believe that in his bed he missed anything. She didn’t believe she could conceive of him understanding what it was to miss a person. What he missed, she thought, was being able to miss someone.
Nicci sat up and threw her legs over the side of the bed as she untangled herself from the black dress. She pulled it off over her head and then laid it out across the back of a padded leather chair. She reclaimed her underthings from the tangles of the bed covering and tossed them on the chair before drawing off her stockings and placing them, too, on the seat of the chair. He watched her body the whole time, watched her as she tended to her dress, smoothing it to straighten what he had done to it, watched the mysterious allure of a woman acting a woman.
When she had finished she turned back to him. She stood proudly, to let him see that which he could have only by force, and never as a willing gift. She could detect the sense of privation in his expression. This, was the only victory she could have: the more he took her by force, the more he understood that that was the only way he could ever have her, and the more it maddened him. She would just as soon die as willingly give him the satisfaction of that gift, and he knew the brutal truth of that.
He finally forced himself away from his private, bitter longing and looked up into her eyes. “Why’d you kill Kadar?”
She sat on the edge of the bed opposite him, just out of his easy reach, but within range of his lunge, and shrugged her bare shoulders.
“You are not the Order. The Order is no single man, but an ideal of equity. As such, it will survive any one person. You serve that ideal and the Order, for now, in the capacity of but a brute. The Order could use any brute to serve its purpose. You, Kadar, or another. I simply eliminated someone who might one day have been a threat to you before you can rise above your present role.”
He grinned. “You expect me to believe that you were doing me a kindness? Now you mock me.”
“If it pleases you to think so, then do.”
Her smooth white limbs were a vivid contrast to the heavy, dark, variegated verdant bedcover and sheets. He lay back atop them against several rumpled pillows, immodestly displayed before her. His eyes looked even darker than usual.
“What’s all this talk I keep hearing about ‘Jagang the Just’?”
“Your new title. It is the thing that will save you, the thing that will win for you, the thing that will bring you more glory than anything else. Yet, in return for eliminating a future threat to your standing, and for making you a hero to the people, you draw my blood.”
He put an arm behind his head. “Sometimes you make me believe the stories that people tell, that you really are crazy.”
“And if you kill everyone?”
“Then they will be dead.”
“I have recently been through towns visited by your soldiers. It seems they didn’t harm the people—at least, they didn’t slaughter everyone in sight, as they did when they began their march into the New World.”
He lunged and seized a fistful of her hair. With a snarl, he yanked her onto her back beside him. She caught her breath as he rose up on an elbow and directed his disturbing gaze down into her eyes.
“It is your job to make examples of people, to show them that they must contribute to our cause; to make them fear the Imperial Order’s righteous wrath. That is the task I assigned you.”
“Is that so? Then why did the soldiers not make examples, too? Why did they let those towns be? Why did they not contribute to striking fear into the hearts of the people? Why didn’t they lay waste to every city and town in their path?”
“And then who would I rule but my soldiers? Who would do the work? Who would make things? Who would grow the food? Who would pay tribute? To whom will I bring the hope of the Order? Who will there be to glorify the great Emperor Jagang, if I kill them all?”
He flopped onto his back. “You may be called Death’s Mistress, but we can’t have it your way and kill everyone. In this world you are bound to the Order’s purpose. If people feel the Order’s arrival can mean nothing but their death, they will resist to the end. They must know that it is only their resistance which will bring a swift and sure death. If they realize our arrival offers them a moral life, a life which puts man under the Creator and the welfare of man above all else, they will embrace us.”
“You dealt death to this city,” she taunted, forcing him to unwittingly prove the validity of what she had done. “Even though they chose the Order.”
“I’ve given orders that any people of the city still alive be allowed to go back to their homes. The rampage is ended. The people here betrayed their promises and thus invited brutality; they saw it, but now that is finished and a new day of order has come. The old ideas of separate lands are over, as it was ended in the Old World. All people will be governed together, and will enter a new age of prosperity together—under the Imperial Order. Only those who resist will be crushed—not because they resist, but because, ultimately, they are traitors to the well-being of their fellow man and must be eliminated.
“Here, in Anderith, was the turning point in our struggle. Richard Rahl was at last cast out by
the people themselves, who came to see the virtue of what we offer. No longer can he claim to represent them.”
“Yet you came in and slaughtered—”
“The leaders here betrayed certain promises to me—who knows how much of the general population may have collaborated in that—and so the people had to pay a price, but collectively they have also earned a place in the Order for their courage in emphatically rejecting Lord Rahl and the outdated, selfish, uninspired morals he offered them.
“The tide has turned. People no longer have faith in Lord Rahl, nor can he now have any faith in them. Richard Rahl is a fallen leader.”
Nicci smiled inwardly, a sad smile. She was a fallen woman, and Richard was a fallen man. Their fate was sealed.
“Perhaps here, in this one small place,” she said, “but he is far from defeated. He is still dangerous. After all, you failed to gain everything you sought here in Anderith because of Richard Rahl. He not only denied you a clear victory by destroying vast stores of supplies and leaving the systems and services of production in total disarray, but he also slipped right through your fingers when you should have captured him.”
“I will have him!”
“Really? I wonder.” She watched his fist, and waited until it relaxed before she continued. “When will you move our forces north, into the Midlands?”
Jagang stroked his hand down his woolly chest. “Soon. I want to give them time to become careless, first. When they grow complacent, I will strike north.
“A great leader must read the nature of the battle, to be able to adjust his tactics. We will be liberators, now, as we move north into the Midlands, bringing the Creator’s glory to the people. We must win the hearts and minds of the unconverted.”
“You have decided this change? On your own? You do not consider the will of the Creator in your campaign?”
He glared at her insolence, as if to tell her she knew better than to even ask such a question.
“I am the emperor; I need not consult our spiritual guides, but since their counsel is always welcome, I’ve already talked to the priests. They’ve spoken favorably about my plans. Brother Narev thinks it wise and has given his blessing. You had better keep to your job of extinguishing any ideas of opposition. If you don’t follow my orders, well, no one will miss one Sister. I have others.”
She was not moved by his threats, real as they were. By his suspicious look, he was beginning to understand her vision, too.
“What you are doing is fitting,” she said, “but it must be cut up into little pieces the people can chew. They do not have the Order’s wisdom in seeing what is best for them—the public rarely does. Even one as bullheaded as you must be able to see that I have anticipated your plans by helping those you can’t afford to kill to understand that you are sparing them out of your sense of justice. Word of such deeds will win hearts.”
He cast her a sidelong glance. “I am the Order’s cleansing fire. The fire is a necessary conflagration, but not the important end—it is merely the means to the end. From the ashes I, Jagang, create, new order can sprout and grow. It is this end, this glorious new age of man, that warrants the means. In this, it is my responsibility—not yours—to decide justice, when and how I will dispense it, and who will receive it.”
She grew impatient with his vanity. Scorn seeped into her voice. “I have simply put a name to it—Jagang the Just—and begun to spread your new title for you when the opportunity arose. I sacrificed Kadar to that end, for all the same reasons you’ve listed. It had to be done now in order for it to have the necessary time to spread and flourish, or the New World would soon harden irreversibly against the Order. I chose the time and place, and by using Kadar Kardeef’s life—a war hero’s life—proved your devotion to the cause of the Order above all else. You benefit.
“Any brute could ignite the conflagration; this new title shows your moral vision—another manifestation of worth over other men. I have planted the vital seed that will make you a hero to the common people and, even more important, to the priests. Are you going to pretend you think the title inadequate? Or that it will not serve you well?
“What I alone have done will help win what your powerful army cannot: willing allegiance without a battle, at a cost of nothing. With Kadar’s life, I, Nicci, have made you more than you could make of yourself. I, Nicci, have given you the reputation of honor. I, Nicci, have made you into a leader people will trust because they believe you to be just.”
He brooded for a time, turning his gaze from her hot glare. His arm finally fell open and his fingers tenderly trailed down her thigh. The touch was an admission for him—an admission that she was right, even if he would not say the words.
After a few moments he yawned, and then his eyes closed. His breathing evened, and he started to drift off into a nap, as was his way with her. He expected her to remain right where she was, so that when he awoke she would be available to him. She supposed she could leave. But it was not time. Not yet.
He finally awoke an hour later. Nicci was still staring up at the canopy, thinking about Richard. There seemed to be one piece missing in her plan, one more thing that she felt needed to fall into place.
In his sleep Jagang had rolled over on his side facing away from her. Now, he turned back. His dark eyes took her in with a look of lust rekindled. He drew her close. His body was as warm as a rock in the sun and only slightly softer.
“Pleasure me,” he commanded in a husky growl that would have frightened any other woman into doing as ordered.
“Or what? You will kill me? If I feared that, I would not be here. This is by force, not consent. I will not willingly take part in it, nor will I allow you to deceive yourself into believing that I want you.”
He backhanded her, knocking her across the bed. “You take part willingly!” He seized her by the wrist and dragged her back toward him. “Why else would you be here?”
“You ordered me here.”
He smirked. “And you came when you could have fled.”
She opened her mouth, but she had no answer she could put into words, no answer he would understand.
With a grin of victory, he fell on her and pressed his lips to hers. As much as it hurt her, for Jagang this was gentle behavior. He had told her several times that she was the only woman he ever cared to kiss. He seemed to believe that by expressing those emotions for her, she could have no alternative but to surrender feelings in kind, as if spoken feelings were currency with which he could purchase affection on demand.
It was only the beginning of a long night—a long ordeal—she knew. She would have to endure his forceful violation several more times before morning. His question haunted the distant place in her mind.
Morning came, accompanied by the dull throbbing of a headache from her succeeding beating, and the sharper aches from the places where he’d struck her when he came to find that what he thought was her willing submission was but a delusion that left him more angered than before. The pillows were stained with her blood. It had been a long night of rare sensations experienced.
She knew she was evil, and deserved to be violated in such a brutal fashion. She could offer no moral objection to it; even in the terrible things he did to her, Jagang was nowhere near as corrupt as she. Jagang erred in simple matters of the flesh, and that could only be expected—all people were corrupt in the flesh—but because of her indifference to the suffering around her, she failed in matters of the spirit. That, she knew, was pure evil. That was why she deserved to suffer whatever he did to her. For the moment, that deep dark place within came close to being sated.
Nicci touched her mouth and found the cuts painful, but closed. The healing of wounds, though, did not offer the warranted sensations of receiving them, so she resolved to have one of the other Sisters heal her, rather than give him the satisfaction of witnessing her suffering the inconvenience of the injures.
With that, her mind turned to thoughts of Sister Lidmila.
Nicci realized th
at Jagang wasn’t in bed beside her. She sat up and saw him in a chair not far away, watching her.
She pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts, speckled with droplets of dried blood. “You are a pig.”
“You can’t get enough of me. Despite what you say, Nicci, you wish to be with me. If not, why would you stay?”
Those nightmare eyes of his watched her, trying to find a way into her mind. There was none. He could no longer be a nightmare for her. Richard guarded her mind.
“Not for the reasons you wish to believe. I stay because the ultimate cause of the Order is a moral one. I wish it to succeed. I wish the suffering of life’s helpless victims to end. I wish everyone to finally be equal and to finally live with everything they need. I have worked nearly my entire life for those goals. The Order can see to it that such a fair world comes to be. If I must endure you—even aid you—for such an end, then it is but an insignificant gnat to swallow.”
“You sound so very noble, but I think there is something more basic behind it. I think you would have left if you could, or”—he smiled—“if you could, you would have left if you really wanted to. Which is it, then, Nicci?”
She didn’t want to contemplate the question. Her head hurt.
“What’s all the talk about you building a palace?”
“So you heard, then.” He took a deep breath and sighed wistfully. “It will be the grandest palace ever built. A fitting place for the Emperor of the Imperial Order, for the man who rules both the Old and the New Worlds.”
“The man who wants to rule. Lord Rahl stands in your way. How many times has he bested you, now?”
Jagang’s eyes flashed a rage she knew could turn violent. Richard had frustrated Jagang a number of times. Even if Richard hadn’t been victorious over Jagang, he had stung him. Quite an accomplishment, really, for such a tiny force against the array of the Imperial Order. A man like Jagang hated the humiliation of a sting almost as much as he would hate to be gored.
“I will eliminate Richard Rahl, don’t you worry,” Jagang said in a low growl.
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