by Джеффри Лорд
«Do not stand-or sit-upon ceremony with me here-ah?»
«Blade-Liza, Your Splendor.»
«Nor call me by my title, either,» she added. «I spit upon ceremony whenever I can. And I would spit upon the ceremonious if I could. But even I am not my own mistress-yet. I am told that you come from a land said to lie in the Beyond, Blade-Liza. Is that so?»
«It is.»
«The reports that came to me said so. But some of the warriors who follow the Serpent see marvels in anything that is not in the War Wisdom. The more fools they. Do you have such notions among your people, the-English, is that it?»
«I am indeed of the English, and we do have some of that kind of person among us, although we have no War Wisdom quite like yours.» Fortunately, Blade added to himself. We have enough trouble fighting wars as it is.
The queen's eyes widened. «No War Wisdom. Then how do you fight your wars?»
Blade started to explain, but the queen held up a hand to command silence. Then her lips curled again, in what Blade could only describe as a lustful grin. He no longer had any doubt as to what she planned to do with their privacy.
«Blade-Liza, I would like to have you by me, as Queen's Steward. That is a post that must be held by a warrior of the First Rank, with — certain other qualities-besides. For the moment it is held by a lout named Nris-Pol-ah, I see you know him. But he wearies me. He is beginning to lose his other qualities. And he was never blessed with very many brains to begin with. So I think I will find out if you are fit to take his place. And then-«She paused for so long that Blade was driven to prompting her.
«And then?»
The queen lowered her voice, as if afraid of being overheard. «And then if you have-qualities-between your ears as well as between your legs, we can move on to other matters. You can move on to other matters, such as no man in Melnon has ever touched before.»
Mir-Kasa's words were ambiguous, but to Blade's trained ear her tone was not. She had dreams of absolute rule; and of Blade as her consort in that rule. Why would she consider an outsider for such a position? But then-who else but an outsider? He would have no loyalty to the War Wisdom, the Peace Wisdom, the system of High and Low People, or any of the other stifling traditions of the Towers of Melnon. He would be a new broom that she could use to make a clean sweep of all her enemies. Well and good, but not what he would have done by choice. However, when one can only choose between riding the tiger or being eaten by it…
Blade nodded, letting his eyes show the rest of what he wanted to say. Mir-Kasa's grin broadened until Blade thought it was going to meet at the back of her head. Then she threw back her head, snatched the tiara off, and dropped it on the rug. Her long dark hair flowed unconfined down her back. It was a very fine back, Blade noticed-as straight and supple as a young girl's. He returned her grin with one of his own.
It was as if the grin had injected her with an aphrodisiac. Her lower lip trembled, and her even white teeth clamped down on it. Her nostrils flared, and Blade saw her breasts heave as she took a deep breath. Then she motioned to him, sharply, almost as if she were angry.
«Come out of that water. No, do not bother to dry yourself off. I want you wet against me, wet. And I want to see how you treat a woman. A woman, Blade, a woman. Not a queen. For now and for all these moments between us forever I am not a queen but a woman with a man. Is that clear?»
If Mir-Kasa's words had not been clear, the look on her face would certainly have been so. To judge from the hunger Blade could see there, the about-to-become-ex-Steward Nris-Pol could have been a eunuch. He doubted whether that was really the case. It was more likely that Her Splendor Mir-Kasa, Queen of the Tower of the Serpent, had rather extensive appetites.
He climbed out of the bath and strode dripping and naked across the carpet, leaving a damp trail behind him. For a moment his eyes fell on the girl's body. If Mir-Kasa was going to insist on making love with that gruesome reminder of the way of life in the towers lying on the rug only feet away …
She was. Blade shrugged mentally as she came toward him, eyes half-closed, mouth open. He had made love under less agreeable circumstances, and to far less attractive women. Mir-Kasa's age might be showing in her hair, but Blade could not see it showing anywhere else. The high full breasts thrust out the material of the tunic in solid, firm, unsagging shapes, and the skin of her neck showed only the faintest lining and wrinkling.
Then she was in his arms, her lips clinging hot and wet to his, and Blade knew that both the maturity and the madness in this woman extended deep into her. All by itself, the kiss was an almost frighteningly powerful erotic poem. For a moment Blade had the unnerving sensation that this woman was going to physically suck him in, every inch of his body, and mix herself with him. His arousal almost cooled for a moment at the image. Then he felt her hands moving down his body, not waiting for any subtle caresses. They went straight to his up jutting maleness and went to work on it with the same fierce intensity. A momentary thought flashed through Blade's mind, that his maleness was going to be up-jetting before too much longer with this kind of handwork. And then where would he be? Not Queen's Steward of the Tower of the Serpent, that was certain.
As her hands flickered around him, his own were searching up and down her body, squeezing, caressing as best he could through the clothes. He was also looking for ways of taking those clothes off, for there was a rutting madness boiling up in him. He wanted her as bare to him and his hands as he was to her.
Her garments seemed to be made without buttons, hooks, zippers, fasteners, or openings of any sort. For a moment doubt flickered through his mind. Was he supposed to tear the clothes off the back of a queen? Then another thought came into his mind and stayed there. If he did not get her clothes off soon, he could hardly count on giving her what she so obviously wanted. His hands went up to the neck of her tunic, and clutched the fabric.
As they did, her eyes rolled toward him with an unmistakable assent in them. His grip tightened on the fabric, and he tore downward, with all his strength. The fabric was tough, but not tough enough to resist Blade's muscles. The tunic split open halfway down Mir-Kasa's back. As Blade let go, it slipped down off her shoulders and halfway down her arms. And as it slipped, her breasts sprang into view, free and fully exposed.
They were magnificent-there was no other word Blade could think of. There was no other word he could have thought of, even if he had been able to consider them and contemplate them unaroused and at his leisure. But he had no leisure, he was thoroughly aroused, and his merely contemplating any part of Mir-Kasa's body was the last thing in either of their minds.
Blade's hands followed his eyes downward in a single swift lunge, cupping the full ripe curves of both breasts. The nipples were already flushed with blood and hardened into solid little points. He felt them stiffen still further as his hands cupped and caressed and stroked. Mir-Kasa's head went back again, and her mouth opened to let out her breath in a great tearing, gasping sob.
It seemed that she was letting out all the breath in her body, and all her strength was going with it. She sagged down into Blade's arms so suddenly that he nearly let her fall. But he caught her in time, bending at the knees and bringing his lips down to meet hers. Another devouring kiss, and she was dragging him down on the floor, rolling back and forth so that the solid masses of her breasts swung gently to and fro.
Her head was back on the floor now, and her dark hair spreading out fan-like around it, making a dark frame for her passion-twisted face. She whimpered now, deep in her throat, like a wounded animal, and closed her fingers once again on Blade. He bit back a groan at the effort it took to control himself under the work of those superbly competent fingers. He sank to his knees, and reached down for her skirt. He reached down for it, reached up under it, ran his hands up bare legs on to bare thighs and on still higher. She wore nothing under the skirt, nothing at all. Blade's moving hands encountered a mat of curly hair already dripping like dewy grass with the queen's fierce
arousal. As his fingers thrust and clutched and probed in and around that hair, Mir-Kasa's lips curled back from her teeth. Her passion was making her almost ugly, but it would have taken more than that now to repel Blade. Nothing short of a stunning blow on the head could have kept him away from the woman writhing on the floor before him. The woman, not the queen.
She had wanted to be treated as a woman, seen as a woman. As far as Blade was concerned, she would have her wish. And she would have one more experience as a woman instead of as a queen. He would take her as a woman, without deference or delicacy, responding to nothing except the urge in his groin and the pounding in his ears.
His fingers plucked and tore at the waistband of her skirt. It did not give way, but it was elastic. Inch by inch he dragged the skirt down. A stomach still flat as a board and showing only a few stretch marks came into view, with a surprisingly small navel set neatly in it. In a whimsical moment, Blade lowered his lips to that navel, and kissed it. Mir-Kasa paid no attention. He pulled the skirt farther down, exposing the beginnings of her pubic hair curly and dripping-damp as he had felt it, dark and shot here and there with gray as he had imagined it. Then suddenly the waistband gave way entirely. In a single jerk the skirt flew down over perfectly rounded and swelling hips. Blade flung it away with almost hysterical strength.
As he did so, Mir-Kasa heaved herself into a sitting position. A quick tear and a quick flick of the wrist, and the remains of her tunic went flying away to join the skirt. She sat before Blade, legs open, mouth open, eyes closed, now as bare as he was. Her arms rose blindly to thrust her hands into his as he knelt down in front of her. She hoisted herself higher up still, until she was half-standing. Kneeling on the rug there, with his arms locked around her middle, Blade took the Queen of the Tower of the Serpent.
She made neither sound nor motion nor gesture as his fearsomely stiff and swollen member burrowed its way up into her wetness. She was not tight at the moment he entered, but then her skilled pelvic muscles began to writhe and twist in a pattern as terribly skilled as the rhythm of her hands. This time Blade did groan out loud with the effort required not to release at once. But he only groaned. His effort to hold back succeeded.
Mir-Kasa beat him to their common goal. Suddenly her eyes rolled up in her head and her arms locked around Blade like the tentacles of an octopus. Her body sagged down onto his, shaking and twisting and writhing as a whole series of massive spasms tore through her. Her body jolted and bumped against Blade, driving him down on to his back on the rug, with her on top of him. As they sank down, he drove still deeper into her, and her wetness poured down around him.
One small, lingering, rational part of his mind told him that he should hold on, keep going, try to satisfy her still more. But the rest of his mind was either no longer working or it was listening only to the uproar of his body. And that uproar finally rose beyond Blade's endurance. He arched his hips upward, and all his breath went out of him in the same moment that all his semen went out of him.
He went on pumping until it began to seem that all of his body's fluids were going to follow the semen. He had a moment's grotesque vision of his dehydrated corpse growing stiff beneath Queen Mir-Kasa. Then the vision passed. After a slightly longer time, so did his spasm.
He lay sprawled on the floor, completely drained both physically and mentally, barely aware of the pain in his abused shoulder. He was a little more aware of the Queen slumping down on top of him with a faint groan, letting his now limp member slide out of her. They lay there in a passive heap for a good while, practically bathing in each other's sweat.
By a heroic exertion of mind over matter, Blade was the first to recover. At least he was the first to speak a coherent word. «Mir-Kasa, I do not know about my own qualities. But yours are-«He could not quite find the proper adjectives.
He did not need to. Mir-Kasa dimpled almost like a girl, and her weary face broke in a faint smile. «Your qualities are-not lacking, Blade. Between your legs-well, that is a masterpiece that whoever fashioned you can be proud of.»
She rolled off him and lay on her back, her breasts still rising and falling with her quick breaths. She reached out and gently curled her fingers around «the masterpiece.» Then she smiled again, and in a stronger voice said, «Are you wondering why I-took you-now? After your war and your wound and everything else?»
That was a question that seemed to require the same answer that Blade would have given anyway.
«Yes, I am.»
«It was a-test. If you could do well-if you could show your qualities-when you were tired-«
«What marvels might I not perform when I was in really good condition?» Blade could not keep a slightly mocking tone out of his voice.
She raised a hand to his lips and gently stroked them. «Don't mock yourself. Your qualities are-well, Nris-Pol at his best has not done half this well. And he will not get the chance to see if he can do better. Tomorrow you shall become the Queen's Steward of the Tower of the Serpent.»
Blade nodded. «What am I to do in that position-other than more of this?»
She laughed. «You are very definitely to go on doing this, and on, and on. And you will do it in that position and as many others as you and I together can think of. I hope that you have something between your ears half as good as what I've found between your legs. And I hope the first will guide the second. I love variety, and there has been little of that for me lately.»
«I shall do my best,» said Blade. And he added, with a grin, «Considering what inspiration I have, what else could I do?»
Again the quick dimpling, but this time it was followed by a more sober expression and tone of voice. «That is much of what you will do, but not the greatest part. It is what everybody will know you are doing. But the greatest part of what you will be doing, I hope none discover. That part will be more dangerous. But it will also have great results.»
Chapter TEN
The first result of Blade's becoming Queen's Steward was that from a mere scoffing skeptic, Nris-Pol, the former steward, became Blade's open and active enemy.
Not that Blade really blamed the man. To sit in the Council of Wisdom and listen to the queen cast him down from the powerful office was bad enough. To see a man who had literally come from nowhere elevated not only to the status of a hero but to his old office was worse. And worst of all was sitting and listening to the queen's explanation of why this new arrival and new hero was receiving the appointment. Custom and good manners dictated that she veil the reasons slightly, but nobody had any doubts on the matter. Nris-Pol was being kicked out of the Stewardship and out of the Queen's bed because Blade-Liza was better at making love to the queen than he was. Nris-Pol was proud, and his temper became as foul as a half-starved bear's.
However, there was nothing he could do, except grumble and growl and spread evil gossip and ugly rumors. The stewardship was by law and custom and common sense entirely the gift of the Queen herself. «Common sense» was perhaps the strongest consideration, since one of the steward's duties was the sexual gratification of Her Splendor. With some queens this had been an easy job. With others, such as Mir-Kasa and her mother Bena-Kasa, it was a demanding job that wore out a good many of its holders. So the queen's preferences would have ruled whether the law said so or not. Any Council of Wisdom that ignored the fact would have shown itself sadly lacking in the quality after which it was named.
The fact that Nris-Pol was as impotent officially as he had become in the queen's bed did not keep him silent. Nor did it keep him from causing trouble. A rumor that he spread industriously was that Blade and the queen were considering compensating the dead slave-girl's family for her administered death at the hands of the First Warrior. Blade found both the rumor and the idea that it could have any serious effect ludicrous. That is, he found them ludicrous until people began coming up to him and asking him quite seriously:
«Is the queen compensating that girl's family?»
«How are you ever going to find the r
ight people? You must realize, the Low People breed like animals. They have no real families. They could never have them. So the money would never get to the people who deserved it, even if they did deserve it.»
«It's a ridiculous precedent.»
«It's dangerous nonsense.»
And much more in the same vein. Blade started taking both the rumor and the talk it was causing more seriously, at least to the point of denying the rumor. Neither he nor the Queen were planning on compensating any Low Person for anything suffered at the hands of any High Person. Did they think he was a fool? Or Queen Mir-Kasa? Obviously a few people would have liked to say yes, but no one quite dared.
Eventually Blade mentioned the matter to the queen herself. The discussion that followed gave Blade a much clearer notion of how things were run in the Towers of Melnon. At least in the Tower of the Serpent, he corrected himself. Each tower had its own set of rulers with their own set of rules and rivalries. And the Tower of the Leopard was set apart from the others by even more than that. He still had not found out what those differences were, however, and he did not feel that Mir-Kasa was the right person to ask. At least not now.
But she was very eloquent on the problems of Low People versus High People in the Tower of the Serpent.
«Of course I wouldn't think of offering compensation. That girl was wantonly disobedient. She would never have fitted into my plans for the Low People.» Blade resisted the temptation to ask what those plans were. He had already tried once, and Mir-Kasa had at once become exceedingly cold and formal. «It is not time for you to know them,» she had said, with glacial politeness. «Please do not ask me again.»
The queen shrugged and continued. «Besides, whoever said that the Low People breed like animals is quite right. It's all catch-as-catch-can down there on the Low Levels.»
Blade ventured to inquire, «Are you sure it's their fault?»
Mir-Kasa looked at him as though his face had broken out with yellow and pink spots. «You sound too much like Bryg-Noz for your own good. Or my peace of mind. He was always saying that the Low People are wretched because we force them to live under wretched conditions, and nonsense like that. The present batch of Low People is useless. But in time-yes, in time-we shall see.»