by Tori Minard
He gazed down at Tariza’s pale, unconscious face. Frowned. Perhaps another slave wouldn’t have aroused such a degree of desperation in him. It must be because of her unique value as a political pawn. No other slave had the same import as she did; that was why he felt so much concern for her.
It certainly wasn’t because he cared for her. Who would? She did nothing but defy him at every turn.
Yet the relief that flooded him as her eyes opened once again did not seem to have the faintest connection to Saturnian politics.
She stared at him in apparent befuddlement, one slim hand sliding halfway up his arm. She blinked. Her gaze cleared, her eyes growing bleak. She dropped her lashes and withdrew her hand.
“The tea is ready, milord,” Paolo said.
“Make sure it has plenty of honey,” Dario replied, still watching Tariza.
“It does.” The boy rose and came to the bed.
“Sit up, Tariza,” Dario said. “You must drink.”
She tried to obey. Her arms buckled at her attempts to push herself upright, so he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into place. Paolo handed him the mug and he held it to her lips. She bent her head to the mug with a strange air of submissiveness, her eyes never meeting his.
Dario glanced up at Paolo. The boy shook his head, muttering something about learning a well-earned lesson. Clearly he didn’t think much of the former Concordian princess.
“Thank you,” Dario said. “You can go back to bed.”
The squire left, still muttering. Dario drew Tariza against his body for maximum heat. Although she seemed to have regained normal consciousness, she still was dangerously chilled and needed every bit of warmth he could provide.
“Why did you do it?” he said. “You must have known you wouldn’t get far dressed like that.”
Tariza gave a half-hearted shrug. “That wasn’t the point,” she said in a lifeless voice.
“Then what were you trying to do?” Dario half dreaded the answer. “Did you want to die?”
“No. I didn’t want to die.” Her voice was barely audible. “But honor had to be satisfied.”
“Honor.” Did she mean what he thought? She’d risked death for the honor of her country.
“To surrender to slavery without protest is ... contemptible,” she whispered. “I could not soil the honor of Concordia that way.”
He’d never encountered a woman who thought of honor in that manner. In fact, he’d never encountered a woman who thought of honor at all. Honor was something for men, not slaves. But Tariza wasn’t a slave, not in the usual sense anyway.
That idea sat uneasily in his mind. She was female, yet her notions of selfhood and duty were more like a man’s than a slave’s. Were all women of Concordia that way? How had they learned to think like men?
They weren’t raised slaves.
He was getting a head-ache.
Dario offered her the cup again, but she pushed it away. “I’m finished. I can’t drink anymore.”
“You need it. Finish it.”
She glanced at him, just a flick of the eyes and away. “You were out there, too. Don’t you also need it?”
“I wasn’t out as long.”
“I am warm,” she said.
He took a sip. The sweet, hot liquid did feel remarkably restorative. But she needed it more than he did.
Dario lifted the mug to her lips. “Drink.”
She sighed. With uncharacteristic meekness, she obeyed his order.
“That’s right,” he said softly. “Take all of it. It’s a long time until morning.”
He half expected her to mock him or make an unslavelike snorting noise. She didn’t. Her head remained bowed as she slowly drank the tea, her voice silent. A shiver of unease went through him.
Surely this was an improvement. Maybe Paolo was right and she’d learned her lesson. Maybe now she wouldn’t fight him anymore. And with her newly obedient demeanor, she’d be less likely to draw the irate attention of other Saturnian men.
He would take care of her, protect her, teach her proper ways. She’d adjust and learn to be happy.
All in all, it was an improvement.
***
The next morning, she wasn’t in bed with him. Dario leaped up fully dressed and tore out of his tent. Damn her to hell. He was going to kill her himself if she didn’t behave better than this.
Men and slaves were already awake, talking in low voices as they broke camp. He glanced around wildly. She wasn’t with the other women – no surprise there. Had she tried to run again?
His gaze fell on Paolo and the horses. A short, heavily bundled figure stood next to him, one small mittened hand on the neck of Dario’s stallion. A lock of blond hair had escaped the figure’s head wrappings.
Tariza.
He strode toward the pair. They turned to look at him as he approached, Paolo looking slightly guilty. Tariza dropped her gaze, just as she ought, her mouth flat and expressionless. Her compliance made Dario’s stomach turn.
“What are you doing out here?” he said harshly.
“I came to see the horses.”
“She asked me to accompany her, milord,” Paolo said as if defending her. “I thought it would be all right.”
Odd. Last night he had nothing but contempt for her and now he was her champion.
Dario looked at the way Tariza had sidled up to the animal. Blaze didn’t usually suffer the touch of strangers, especially women. But he seemed content to allow Tariza to stroke the heavily muscled column of his neck. As Dario watched, the stallion nudged her with his nose and her lips curled up in a ghost of a smile, petting the white streak that marked his face.
“He likes you,” he said in surprise.
Tariza didn’t answer. She continued to stroke the stallion’s nose.
“His name is Blaze.”
Still, she said nothing.
“You really do like horses.”
She glanced up at him, then seemed to think better of it and looked away again. “I told you,” she said, her voice low and toneless. “It’s what I do.”
Slaves – women – didn’t normally have anything to do with horses. They were indoor creatures and rarely went anywhere near the stables. But Tariza wasn’t the usual slave, for all her current submissiveness.
She looked beaten, defeated, her spirit leached out of her. He’d said he wanted her capitulation, and now apparently he’d gotten it, but it tasted sour. He missed her smart mouth. This new version of her was like a pale facsimile of the Tariza he knew.
When they were settled in Saturnios, he’d take her riding. Maybe she could have a mount of her own, at least now and then. It would cheer her, make it easier for her to adjust to her new life.
Chapter 10
Saturnios was a monstrous city, in size as well as culture. It sprawled across the entire floor of a broad valley, its red tile roofs of all shapes and sizes lightly dusted with snow. A multitude of chimneys sent up columns of smoke, contributing to a thick haze in the air. Tariza stared numbly at the sight. After her near death by freezing, she’d been numb inside, as if the ice had gotten into her soul.
She didn’t even feel the brutally cold mountain wind as they picked their way slowly down to the valley.
People in the streets stared at them as they passed, yet no-one cheered or spat or showed any sign of knowing who she was. Today she was just another female, just another slave held on the saddle of her master. If she’d had any feelings left, she might have been grateful for the anonymity. But she was ice, inside and out, and ice can’t feel.
They wound through one street after another, buildings crowding around them on every side, the claustrophobic air of the city occasionally giving way to open spaces where the people worked gardens in the summer or kept small livestock. There seemed to be no broad avenues, no boulevards in Saturnios – unless they were coming in by the back alleys. But why would Dario want to hide his entrance into his own city?
She couldn’t see
m to bring herself to care enough to follow that thought.
Eventually, as the sky was beginning to darken, they came to an area of finer houses, mansions and small palaces. Then they rounded a corner and there it was – Saturnios House. She recognized its distinctive facade from pictures she’d seen. The heavily rectangular edifice took up an entire city block. Lights glowed from the windows and guards in the Saturnios uniform of black and red patrolled the grounds and stood at attention at the grand entrance.
They turned down a side road and rode through a narrow gate rather than entering through the front. In the great courtyard, uniformed men ran to take their horses. Dario dismounted and pulled her off the back of his stallion.
She stood there in the dusk with a few isolated snowflakes falling from the sky and stared dully at the thick stone walls rising all around her. The voices of the men seemed strangely far away.
Dario put an arm around her shoulders. “Come.”
She went with him up a precipitous stone staircase and through a heavy wooden door into the palace. They seemed to have entered in a kind of servants’ hall or side corridor, narrow and dark and unadorned, smelling strongly of the wash they’d used to clean the floor. Had they come in through this unprestigious way because of her presence or for some other reason? She gave a mental shrug. It wasn’t as if it mattered to her.
Dario led her along the corridor to an equally dark and narrow staircase, climbing swiftly upward. She went with him as silently as she’d ridden through the mountains, as if all her words had left her – but it was really the ice in her soul keeping her so quiet.
He paused at a landing one story up and opened a door into a passageway as wide and grand as she’d expected, with fancy plasterwork on the walls and ceiling, and a rich Concordian carpet in tones of cream and blue on the floor. The first chamber they came to had wide double doors, which Dario opened to reveal a well-appointed sitting room near the fireplace, a dining area and, in the back, an elaborate bed with blue hangings.
Tariza shuffled in and stood dripping melting snow on a carpet with colors similar to the one in the corridor. The air in the room felt cold and still, as if no-one had been in it for days. Dario pulled a bell rope on the wall, probably to call for a servant.
He turned to her, his dark eyes warm. How could he look so happy in the face of her despair?
Stupid question. Of course he’s happy. You’ve capitulated.
“Soon we’ll have a fire in here and some hot food.” He unwrapped his scarf.
Tariza nodded to show she’d understood.
Yet another uniformed male appeared. Dario conferred with him, but she didn’t listen to anything they said. She stared out the windows instead.
She could see candle and lamplight flickering in the windows of nearby buildings. It seemed odd they would put a prince in a room facing the street. Shouldn’t he be in one of the rooms that faced into the courtyard? Not that she cared. It didn’t matter to her if Dario was vulnerable to attack while he slept.
The servant left. Minutes later, another arrived and started a fire in the fireplace, followed soon by a second who stood near the door and bowed to Dario. “Your Highness, His Majesty commands you and your slave to attend him in his private chambers.”
Dario’s jaw clenched for an instant, then relaxed so quickly she wondered if she’d really seen it. “Excellent,” he said. “We’ll be there in a moment.”
The servant bowed again and left. Tariza watched Dario out of the corner of her eye. He was frowning. She lowered her head and waited with her hands clasped before her. Whatever was wrong, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything.
He reached into the drawer of a small table against one wall and drew out a slender lead made of braided leather, dyed the color of cherry brandy. Turning to her, he clipped the lead to the collar she wore. “Here in the palace, you must be on a lead. It isn’t safe for you otherwise.”
Why not?
But she didn’t say the words.
“Come along,” he said, giving the lead a gentle tug. “We might as well get this over with.”
They left his chambers and walked down the grand hallway to an even grander staircase that swept upward from the first floor. It curved onward to a third story. Dario climbed the stairs with her in tow.
The king’s chambers were at the head of the stairs, behind double doors even more elaborately carved than Dario’s. Uniformed guards in black with red trim and armed with swords flanked the doors. They opened them at Dario’s approach.
He led her into the room beyond. It was outfitted almost like a throne room, with an impressive chair at one end, near the enormous fireplace. A sitting area lay off to one side of the roaring fire. The king sat on a couch there, with an emaciated naked woman kneeling at his feet.
The woman had long, black hair and was covered in bruises and welt marks. Tariza stopped. What had they done to her? Why was he displaying her in that state?
Dario looked over his shoulder at her. “Come on, Tariza,” he muttered. “Don’t act up now.”
***
Dario swore silently. This was not the time for Tariza to get stubborn. He tugged again on the leash, hoping his uncle hadn’t noticed her hesitation. She blinked and moved forward, so he led her all the way to King Grasos and bowed deeply. Tariza merely stood there, staring at his uncle and the slave. The slave was Miri, the Concordian scout Grasos had taken so much joy in breaking. It was almost as if the king had known Dario was approaching with the former princess of Concordia.
He leaned close to her ear. “Get on your knees.”
She swallowed so hard it was audible.
“Do it now, Tariza. This isn’t the time to act up.”
Thank God, she dropped to her knees without a word. But her gaze remained on the slave, and not on the floor where it belonged.
Finally, Dario looked at his uncle. The man was glowering more poisonously than he ever had before. Shit. This wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“I heard you’d acquired the princess for yourself,” Grasos said, “But I didn’t believe it until now.”
Dario bowed his head.
“What the hell did you think you were doing? You knew I had plans for her.”
“My abject apologies, Uncle. I desired her for myself and I couldn’t resist her.”
“Couldn’t resist, eh?”
“No, sir.”
Grasos drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “I find that hard to believe.”
“I have thought of little else than taming her, ever since I met her at the Bellerenic embassy.” It was the truth.
“You’ve denied me my prize.”
Dario inclined his head toward the other slave. “But you already have a Concordian.”
Tariza made a tiny squeak. He glanced down at her. She was trembling.
“Am I to be denied my own?” he continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “It’s been a dream of mine since I was a boy, to tame one of their women.”
Grasos narrowed his eyes. “Has it indeed?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as you can see, this one is all but useless.” He kicked the slave lightly. “She was all too easy to break. I need a better challenge.”
Perhaps if he hadn’t beaten all the spirit out of her, he wouldn’t be so bored with his woman. The sadistic bastard had indeed broken her. According to palace gossip, she hadn’t said a word in months. But Dario couldn’t speak of these things to his uncle.
“I heard also that you marked her,” Grasos continued.
“I did.”
“Show me.”
Dario bent and took Tariza’s right hand. He pushed her sleeve back to display the tattoo.
The king’s nostrils flared. “It seems you have outmaneuvered me, Nephew. I have to give you credit; you’ve been a clever little shit. But there will be a price to pay.”
“And what price is that, Uncle?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” Grasos grinned, but there was n
o real humor in it.
“Is it true?” Tariza said in a hoarse voice.
“You aren’t to speak,” Dario said.
She was staring at the other Concordian. Another fine tremor went through her body.
“She is a Concordian like you,” Grasos said with a broad grin. This time it looked all too real. “She’s one of your mother’s bitches, but I’ve brought her to heel. There’s no more fight left in her. Would you like to see?”
Tariza shook her head.
“No? You disappoint me.” He grabbed the other woman by the hair, yanking her head back. One eye was blackened, and so swollen she probably couldn’t see out of it. Her lips were swollen and split. She stared with dull eyes as Grasos displayed her. “You see? She no longer resists doing anything I tell her to do. You will be the same way, Tariza Concordia.”
“If she doesn’t resist, then why did you beat her?” Tariza said.
The king’s black eyes glittered as he stared at her. “You are even more forward and impertinent than she was.”
“Why did you beat her?” She spoke through gritted teeth.
“Because it gives me joy!” he roared in her face.
She never flinched, staring up at him like an avenging goddess rising from the earth to destroy him. But she was no goddess; she’d get herself killed if she continued in this fashion.
Dario laid a hand on her shoulder. “Stop this now.”
She lunged for the king and slapped him in the face. “You, Grasos, don’t deserve the name king. You are nothing but a rotting piece of shit.”
Privately, Dario agreed. Publicly, he had to silence her. He clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her backward into his lap. She struggled in his arms and he clamped down even harder to keep her in place.
The king jumped to his feet. “I want the skin stripped from her back.”
“No.”
The king’s lips nearly disappeared. “What did you say to me?”
“I said no. She’s new and untrained. I won’t hold her to the same standard as one of the fully trained slaves.”