Dark Empress

by S. J. A. Turney

  After that, things had become easier and much more interesting. Yasmin had warned Asima who to watch for and who could be trusted. Over the following weeks, a campaign of advancement had begun. As far as the other occupants of the harem were concerned, Asima and Yasmin barely knew one another even by sight, and such anonymity granted surprising power. Messages were passed secretly and evidence planted to lower the status of those who currently stood out above the two girls.

  Ladies who were so straight and noble Asima wondered how they managed to bend in the middle found themselves disciplined for possession of stolen sweetmeats and smoking pipes. Gradually and slowly, and with infinite subtlety, Asima and Yasmin moved up the ranks of the almost four dozen girls in training.

  Each year, on the feast of the maker, the girls of age would be presented to the God-King in the temple and he would choose three, in sacred memory of the three aspects of the creator. Three girls would become wives or concubines, out of perhaps twenty or more. The rest would wait until the next state occasion, when they would all be presented at the palace to the hungry eyes of Princes, satraps and senior commanders of the Pelasian military as potential brides or concubines.

  Asima and Yasmin had been determined to be among those chosen and, since they would be selected a year apart they were no threat to one another until they were both in the Royal court.

  Almost two months after she arrived at Akkad, Asima had caught sight for the first time of the God-King of Pelasia. He was nothing like she had expected. For no real reason, the picture she had formed in her mind was of an overweight, overbearing and over-dressed fop who would have carpets rolled out before him as he walked and rose petals cast beneath his feet. The ancient tales in the Empire spoke of the Pelasian God-Kings as such.

  This man was so far from that, Asima had found she had trouble adjusting her thinking.

  She had been standing and recovering with three of her classmates after a gruelling athletics lesson, at the edge of the gardens and close to the gate passage, when the gate had been opened and the light from beyond flooded into the dark aperture, picking out the decoration on the walls and ceiling.

  The God-King had come for one of his wives. Asima had learned that no King of Pelasia retained his name; to call him by name was disrespectful. He was simply the God-King. But even he, as a man, was forbidden entry to the harem; not that he would have tried, it seemed.

  Pelasia’s absolute ruler was a man in his early sixties at a guess. He could be older and very well preserved, but he was certainly no younger. Tall and lean, he dressed in simple black, almost like one of his soldiers, the only thing that marked him being the symbols of the royal line stitched into his cloak in gold and the very simple gold circlet on his brow. He was clean shaven and with short grey hair and piercing bright green eyes that reminded Asima of a cat caught in the light. Almost the precise opposite of Asima’s imagined ruler, the God-King was a simple and noble man, handsome in an almost indefinable way, who carried such weight and gravitas that even standing in a room full of kings, emperors and princes, he would still stand out.

  Asima instantly recognised that this was a rare figure indeed and could understand now why the wives and concubines she had occasionally encountered spoke with such love and reverence of the man. Asima had smiled at that moment and had settled into her role, determined that her future would be at the side of this unsettlingly attractive older man.

  Asima and Yasmin, after the second month, began to divide their time better. Now that the order of precedence in the harem had changed enough to move them both close to the top, their campaign of character assassination slowed. Now they need only keep themselves among the top runners, while allotting more time to learning those things that would make them stand out among their contemporaries.

  Since that day she had seen the God-King before the harem gates several more times. It transpired that one of his most favoured pastimes was hunting and, once he had returned from a morning out with his court, he would often call at the harem and take one of his wives or concubines with him to the palace until the morning.

  Discrete enquiries had further strengthened her resolve and bolstered her favourable impression of the God-King. It would appear that, despite his reputation for his… appetite seemed the most appropriate word, the God-King was charming and respectful and often took one of his favourites merely to spend the evening playing games of towers or listening to poetry or taking night time walks among the gardens.

  By the start of Asima’s fourth month at Akkad, she had been a little disturbed to realise that she was happier now than at any time in her life. Moreover, she had more direction, determination and resolve that ever before and the potential for a fabulous future, living beyond the imaginable means of even the wealthiest merchant.

  Toward the end of the fifth month, however, the pace in the harem changed. In seven more weeks the festival of the maker would begin in Akkad and across the country. There would be a series of events in the capital over several days, culminating in the events at the great temple, where the God-King would choose three new ladies. Preparations in the harem became manic and lessons would be cancelled for the younger students for a whole month in order to concentrate on preparing those older girls for the upcoming event.

  Asima had suddenly found she had unexpected time on her hands and saw considerably less of Yasmin. It was good to become accustomed to that, though, for in the very near future she would likely see nothing of her for a while. Those girls who were being groomed for the festival began to be taken out of the harem on escorted occasions and shown other areas of the palace; introduced to those people they would need to know. They were permanently occupied with preparations and the younger girls virtually ignored.

  And that was why it had been such a surprise when Yasmin had found Asima daydreaming in one of the solar rooms and dragged her hurriedly to the stairs and back up to the very corridor where they had first collided. Along a little further and they had reached the witch’s antechambers and this very window.

  And now Asima stood at the window, frowning at the palace grounds as Yasmin tapped her fingers on her folded arms tensely.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “Just be patient”, the other girl replied.

  They could hear, muffled by the distance and corridors, the ringing of bells. Asima shook her head.

  “That’s your call, Yasmin. You have classes.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Asima blinked.

  “If you miss your classes you’ll be punished. And it will be noted among the people that really matter here.”

  Yasmin smiled broadly.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What?” Asima said incredulously. “Are you trying to ruin everything we’ve been working towards?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  Asima turned her head and stared in the shadowed hall at the nearest thing she had in Akkad to a friend.

  “What?”

  Gently, but firmly, Yasmin grasped Asima’s shoulder and turned her back to the window.

  “Look.”

  Asima, baffled and shocked, did as she was told. A small group of riders had come in from somewhere out of view to the left. There were eight… no nine. Their horses were steaming and had obviously been ridden hard. All of them wore the plain black of soldiers, though one wore a cloak with gold designs similar to that of the God-King and, as he dismounted and slowly removed the black scarf wound around his head, also wore a circlet.

  Asima stared and the strangest thing happened: the man with the circlet turned and cast his gaze across the wall of the harem almost as though he knew he was being observed. Asima caught her breath. The man was like a younger version of the God-King himself. Handsome and tall, he was clearly one of the royal line. Not one of the God-King’s sons, though, since they both had yet to reach manhood, while this specimen had clearly done so a while ago.

  “Who is he?”

  Yasmin grinned.


  “He is the reason I miss my lesson. He is the reason I shall be punished several times in the coming weeks and he…” she sighed and Asima recognised the hopeless adoration in the sound, “… he is the reason I shall not be selected by the God-King.”

  “Yasmin, I will grant you that he’s handsome, but the God-King is both God and King. There is no one in all the world higher than he. Why settle for the moon when the sun is within reach?”

  Yasmin stared at her as though she were insane.

  “Look at him, Asima! Just look at him. He will be mine. You can have the God-King. I will have Prince Ashar Parishid for my own.”

  “You know him?”

  Yasmin nodded, grinning like a fool.

  “We have spoken. He has been in the palace for a while during our escorted visits. He apparently used to spend much of his time at Velutio but, since the Empire has collapsed, he’s come home. I stumbled on a walk through the main palace’s garden. The witch went to whack me, but Prince Ashar stepped in and stopped her. He helped me up, Asima! A prince helped me up!”

  Asima smiled a calculating smile as she examined the man below.

  “Then I hope things go well for you, Yasmin. I really do.”

  And she really did. She knew the ropes in the harem well enough now and had no use for Yasmin, and the idiot girl had just taken herself out of the running. There was nobody left that Asima considered a threat. She would be a Queen soon enough.

  In which Calphoris encounters Pelasia

  The ship lunged forward through the waves like a hungry animal in sight of food. The call had gone up a few minutes ago that a Pelasian sail could be seen around the headland and the ‘Wind of God’, a former Imperial navy vessel now crewed by the Calphorian militia, furled the sails and began to hammer out a rhythm for the three banks of oarsmen.

  Ghassan, too young still to serve in an official capacity with the militia, stood ready in the stern of the ship. Resigned to his lot after months of bailing out water by hand during heavy storms, scrubbing the deck in the searing sunshine, and helping clean the wooden bowls after the serving of meals, he was really rather grateful to have such an exalted position as rudder monitor.

  While there were officers, marines, pilots, oarsmen and so many other important positions on board, Ghassan’s most important duty to date appeared to have been sitting quietly out of the way and making sure that no lines or random flotsam became entangled with the rudder. A month ago, one of the militia’s ships had encountered just such a problem during an engagement with pirates and had been unable to manoeuvre. They had been lucky to escape with their lives, and now it was standard practice for one of the juniors to be set on permanent duty during any engagement watching for exactly that problem.

  Ghassan clicked his tongue irritably as he glared malevolently at the rudder. The Wind of God, and he still had no satisfactory answer as to which God that was anyway, had so far, in his five months of service, tracked two pirate vessels and lost them in the open sea, apprehended a smuggler in a small trading ship, and driven off several unlicensed fishing vessels. And now that they finally were facing a Pelasian, he was at the back, in the dark, watching a plank of wood. Still, back here he was close enough to listen in on the conversation of the officers on the deck above.

  “It’s a Pelasian, alright, and a military vessel to boot. We’re on a line for attack, captain, but you need to give the word.”

  Ghassan, sitting in the shadows beneath, separated from the oarsmen further forward by wooden bulkheads, nodded vigorously to himself and willed the captain on.

  “It’s a thorny problem, Sater” the captain replied.

  In the silent darkness, Ghassan shook his head.

  “These are contested waters. What we do here, Sater, will set a fairly important precedent. If we attack and the satrap of M’Dahz has his vessels in these waters with the full backing of his government, we could find that we’ve inadvertently started a war between Calphoris and Pelasia.”

  Ghassan could almost hear the first officer nodding thoughtfully.

  “But if he’s just testing the waters, captain, and we let him be, we’re more or less granting the Pelasians control of these waters. Can we afford not to act, sir?”

  The captain made a grumbling sound and then shouted along the deck.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Still coming on slowly, sir. She’s not picked up speed. I don’t think she’s in an attack position.”

  “But she’s definitely a military vessel?” the captain replied.

  “Yes sir. New, too. Didn’t think this satrap had such big, new ships.”

  Ghassan frowned and listened on.

  “Sater, I need your honest opinion”, the captain said flatly. “Our lives and careers might all ride on the next few minutes.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Ghassan glared angrily at the rudder as though it were trying to ruin his life. How could they not see? Did they not know the Pelasians?

  Before he even realised what he was doing, Ghassan was on his feet, the perils of clogged and tangled rudders entirely forgotten. As he passed the doorway between the bulkheads, he entered the main rowing section of the ship.

  Powered by both sail and oars depending on requirements, these ‘daram’ vessels as they were known in the south, were the standard military ship of the old Empire. Equipped with a ram, three banks of oars, three sails, a housing at the rear for all senior command functions and a tower amidships armed with ranged weapons, they were the perfect military vessel. The problem was that, over the centuries since their innovative appearance, the style had been copied and converted for their own use by the Pelasians and private fleets. Indeed, many pirates used daram they had captured.

  The oarsmen turned to stare as this young man strode insolently past them, though they never once faltered from their professional rhythm. Along the length of the hull, below decks, the first two ranks of oarsmen sat, the inner row several feet higher than the outer and interspaced so that the oars had plenty of room.

  Without acknowledging any of their looks, Ghassan stormed past them and to the stairs that led up on deck.

  As he climbed towards the daylight, Ghassan swallowed nervously. He wasn’t absolutely sure what he was doing, but someone had to do something and nobody else seemed to want to act. Still, it was a dangerous choice. To leave his post was to invite a flogging alone for, though still underage for active service, he was still paid by the militia and had taken the oath. To approach the captain and speak out of turn? Well, if he was unlucky, he might find himself in an hour or so bobbing around in the middle of the wide sea with nothing but a plank to call friend.

  As he reached the deck, he turned for a moment and glanced over his shoulder. The Pelasian ship was heading straight for them and he knew; couldn’t say why or how, but he knew with absolute certainty that if they didn’t act fast, the Pelasians would be on them.

  “Captain!”

  He now began to run along the deck. The top row of oarsmen in the open air stared at him in surprise. The upper deck rank would only join the beat and dip oar to water when full speed was called for.

  Now, some of the junior officers were stepping to intercept him. He could see the marines standing in position. They were formed up but clearly not ready for action, their weapons sheathed. The captain and first officer turned to look at him as he ran toward them. He managed to get within almost ten feet before the crew grabbed him and pulled his arms round behind his back.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, boy?”

  The speaker was a marine officer, the commander of a boarding party by the emblem on his upper arm; Ghassan had a good memory for insignia.

  “With respect, sir, I must speak to the captain.”

  The man grinned condescendingly.

  “Oh you must, must you?”

  “What is the meaning of this?” bellowed Sater, the first officer, as he approached the fracas.

  “Urchin from
below says he must speak to the captain, sir.”

  Sater looked Ghassan up and down. The first officer had a good reputation among the men and Ghassan bowed his head respectfully.

  “Talk to me, boy.”

  Ghassan nodded. This was more than he could hope for.

  “Sir, I don’t know how to explain this, but you’ve got to attack.”

  The various men holding him laughed though, Ghassan noted with a small amount of relief, Sater did not.

  “And why does a rudder monitor sitting in the dark, barely old enough to shave, believe he has reason and right to dictate command policy?”

  The comment sounded condescending, and yet there was something about the way the first officer looked at him that suggested it was a truer question than the others knew. Moreover, Ghassan had presumed a boy like him was basically invisible to the senior crew, and yet Sater had known his job.

  “Respectfully, sir, I’m from M’Dahz. I’ve met the satrap Ma’ahd, stood with our militia against him. I know how he thinks and what he’s capable of.”

  “Go on…”

  Imperceptibly, the officers’ grip on his arms loosened enough to prevent the discomfort he had been feeling.