She smiled her affection at him.
His lip curled in a sneer as he threw the parchment on the table. “My guess is the man can’t get it up without watching someone else in the act. You’d better hope he’s never returned to power.”
“Is he asleep?” She watched the redhead nod. “Are you sure?”
Padding silently to the half-wall, she watched him in the dim lamplight, but he never turned over and she couldn’t see his face. In the morning, she was agitated. “He’s not eating,” she stated.
“Not much,” Dye agreed.
“Do you think he’s trying to…end his life?”
Dye shook his head. “He’ll eat when he’s hungry.”
That day Davik broke his pen and used the splintered end to scratch on the plaster walls of his cell: The Harlot, all twenty-eight verses. That kept him busy for two days. When he was done, he went back over each letter, scoring his ballad deep into the wall. Dipping the broken pen into the jar of ink, he filled in the letters so the words stood out in cruel, stark relief on the white plaster background. She sent him a jar of wine. He sat with his back against the wall and drank half the jar before he passed out in the middle of the afternoon—on his back.
* * * * *
“Are you sure?” she asked Dye.
“I’m sure,” Dye told her.
Leaning on the half-wall, she gazed down at the Khallic Prince.
Like most Khals, he was a handsome man, with thick, straight, blond hair and a strong square chin. Unlike most Khals, his eyes were blue—blue-green, actually—rather than brown. Other than that, his features were perhaps not so blunt, a little finer, a little more angular than a typical Khal’s. And though not as tall as his brother had been, he topped six feet—putting him a good three inches above his countrymen. Blond Khals were pretty much five-ten. Uniformly five-ten. But then, the King of Khal was a big man. Rhyssian blood. It turned up everywhere. Height—in a Khal—was usually accompanied by Rhyssian red hair and was more common in the North Country than in the South.
He was not so different from any other Khal. Until he smiled. When he smiled it started in his eyes, then flickered at the corner of his mouth. He suppressed it, like a naughty but favored child who couldn’t be trusted to behave. But when he gave it rein, and he laughed! She shook her head as she surveyed his dark-rimmed eyes, his hollowed cheeks, the clothes that hung loosely on him, then pushed herself away from the wall.
“It’s been ten days. He’s hardly eaten. He grows thin.” She strode down the corridor, Dye following her.
“He’ll eat.”
“I would talk to him.”
Dye sighed. “I’ll have him chained.”
Chapter Fifteen
When she came to him it wasn’t at the wall; she came through the door. But he was expecting her; why else had he been chained to the bench? The chains chimed a harsh metallic note as he gestured to the walls around him. “What do you think of my work?”
“It’s fairly written,” she said quietly, choosing her words purposefully.
She wore plain doeskin leggings and linen jerkin, leather vest. A loose thong of leather caught her hair behind her neck. Errant wisps of hair, dark and rebellious, escaped to sneak around her face. His eyes dropped to her feet.
The boots were the same.
How could he have ever thought she was beautiful, he wondered as he stared at her face. With her hair pulled back she appeared harder, more severe, more like a soldier. Dark smudges beneath her eyes made her look worn, like a soldier with problems.
“I couldn’t decide whether to call it The Harlot or The Betrayal.”
She nodded. “You were betrayed,” she agreed. “Although I managed to do it without lying.”
“Should I congratulate you? You never said more than ten words!”
“I didn’t want to tell you anything,” she admitted. “I didn’t even want you to know my name. Although I had been only two years in Kartin’s army, and just recently promoted, I was afraid your spies might have informed you of me. But Petra is a common enough name.”
“Petra is common,” he agreed. “And hard.”
“‘I can submit—willingly’,” he mimicked her with mocking tone. “You just about jumped onto my dick.” He gave her a look of cold detachment.
She pressed her lips between her teeth and looked at the ground. “My grandparents were of Slurian descent.” She raised her eyes to his.
His eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to tell me you were controlling my—” And then he realized what she was saying. “You were…stroking me! With your thoughts!” His eyes flared with heat and he struggled to maintain his detachment. “What need to control a man’s mind when you can control his balls?”
She returned his gaze, levelly.
“Was it,” he gritted, “any of it—real?”
“It was all of it real.”
His look turned to hateful scorn. “The fainting?”
“Everything. The fainting. The scars on my wrists. Five years in your father’s prison. That’s not why I took on the mission, but it made it easier. My…what turned into—affection—for you, and your brother. My arrivals. It was all real.”
“Everything,” he said bitterly. “Including Warrik’s very real death. Despite your sincere affection for him,” he said with poison.
She met his venomous gaze bravely and nodded. “I’d have stopped his death, if I could have,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I believe that. That you could have stopped his death. But you didn’t.” He turned his face from her. “I see now, it was all real,” he said, his voice like a razor. “Including the very real knife at my throat.”
Her lips parted as she realized her error. She shook her head. “That was a bluff. I was trying to stop Warrik.”
“You were trying to kill us,” he said flatly. “I have the scar to prove it.” He fingered the thin pink line that slashed his throat.
“If I’d sought to kill you with the knife, you’d be dead,” she told him. “But…it was my brainchild,” she admitted. “My plan from conception. It was my intention to submit to you from the start, in the hope you’d not bind me. I was to make sure you and your brother were inside the inn—and distracted—on the fourth dawn.”
“Why so long!” he interrupted with agonized frustration. “Why four days?”
“I didn’t know how long it would take to get into your…inside your headquarters. I had to allow myself enough time. But Warrik—”
“Warrik didn’t stand a chance when you baited him with that showpiece ass of yours. He was baited and hooked from the start. And gutted in the end. You missed your calling,” he said savagely.
She nodded, knowing what he meant.
“At least whoring would have been an honest profession.” Davik shook his head. “When my men brought you in, you’d neither food nor water; I assumed you’d left the city in a hurry. If I’d given it more thought, it might have occurred to me you didn’t plan on getting far. You didn’t, did you? No farther than our camp.”
She nodded.
“Mithra Fucking Andarta!” Frustrated, he raised his angry eyes to the ceiling. “That bright blue skirt,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “How could I not have realized? Who would try to run the sentry line in a brilliant, blue skirt, except someone who wished to be caught?”
She pressed her lips together and took a determined breath. “I was nervous when Warrik began undressing me in your presence—it felt strange to be with two men—but I hid it, intent on my mission, determined to submit. And do it well enough that you’d keep me for at least a few days. I figured I could take it, no matter how bad it was. I never considered I might be facing the reverse situation. Could I take it, and follow through with my plan, no matter how good it was?
“I’d heard you were careful, intelligent. I was most concerned about distracting you, drawing you in. When Warrik took me on his lap, I was dry. You can’t fake that. I was afraid too. Afraid of his si
ze, but mostly afraid you’d see right through me. I did my utmost to draw you in, engage your interest.” She took a breath. “And I touched you. With my mind. Intimately; to excite you. As soon as you entered me, I knew the mission was a fait accompli. That was all that mattered.
“That was all that mattered,” she murmured, “up until that first arrival. That first kiss.
“I could have cried when Warrik pulled me off you in the middle of my arrival. “But then you were beside me…” her hand strayed to her face; unconsciously her knuckles brushed the side of her cheek “…kissing me.” Her eyes went very distant.
She was drawing him in again, he thought with disgust. Or trying to. He gave her a cold look of distaste. “And I’m to believe you’re in love with me.” Her eyes snapped to focus on his face. “I hope you are,” he said. “I pray you are. It will make my revenge that much more satisfying.”
She nodded and continued. “I kept telling myself I could do it; right up until the point I knew I couldn’t. I tried to escape to my men. To abort the mission. When I failed, you told me to find another solution. I came up with what I thought was a reasonable plan with a fair prospect of success. I thought the knife at your neck would stop your brother long enough for me to explain. In retrospect, I can see the plan was flawed. I was willing to risk Warrik’s life to save yours. I mismanaged the situation.”
He regarded her with narrow-eyed disgust. “And the bowman on the mountain? I was to believe your own countrymen pursued you? Or was he simply another man you’d betrayed?”
She shook her head. “He was there to kill you, not me. The man acted on his own; a man from my unit. He’d argued against the mission and was angry when I moved ahead with the plan. I didn’t know he’d followed us—didn’t know he was there—but when he saw us struggling together, he may have thought you were trying to force me.”
“I killed him,” she said with matter-of-fact regret. “When I ordered him to stop. He hesitated—automatically—out of habit.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Don’t rob me of that too. I killed him. I killed him.” Intuition kicked in and his mind made the leap. He stared at her, a mean malicious glint in his eye. “He was your lover.”
She nodded. “It had been a while. I didn’t know he still had an interest.” She ground the heel of her palm into her temple as if searching for the next words.
“The fact that you and your brother were so often together made the two of you a enticing target. Always beside each other in battle, in the same place at night. Anyone who took out one of you was almost guaranteed to get the second. The problem was your lack of routine. We never knew where you’d be. Your schedule varied so much. Sometimes you rode the sentry lines at midnight. Sometimes you slept till near noon. But we knew we could always find you both in the same place.” She smiled, but it was grim. “We thought it was because you didn’t trust each other. I never guessed it was because you were so close.” She looked at the ground and nodded. “Close enough to share the same woman and do it with as much tenderness as I’ve ever known.”
“Tenderness!” Finally he smiled, but it was a smile without warmth or tenderness. “Are you that naïve? Are you really? So naïve you don’t know the difference between tenderness and being fucked?” He threw back his head and laughed with pure malevolence. “I can see how you might mistake one man’s intentions. But two? Two men at once? That’s not tenderness, sweetheart. That’s plain old spread-her-legs-for-me-while-I-ram-my-dick-up-her-cunt-and-fuck-the-slut-as-hard-as-I-can.”
She accepted this tirade calmly and nodded. “I tried to convince myself I owed you nothing. That you were just two bucks rutting in the same doe. That, if either of you cared about me, you probably wouldn’t be able to share me. Wouldn’t be able to watch the other man take me. I admit my life has lacked tenderness in any great quantity, but yes, I thought I knew the difference.”
“A life without tenderness,” he mocked her cruelly. “Let me out of these chains and I’ll demonstrate how I feel about you, if only to avenge Warrik. When I’m done, you’ll know you’ve been fucked—and without tenderness.”
She half turned from him then, as though she could no longer bear the weight of his gaze. “I told myself it wasn’t betrayal. That I’d not be breaking your trust or friendship, when you’d offered me neither. But by then it didn’t matter how you felt about me. The problem was reduced to how I felt about you.” She shrugged and the action appeared to cause her pain. “I thought you deserved an explanation,” she said, “from me…before…
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hollow. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, no more than I can forgive myself, but I’m sorry nonetheless.” She turned back to him a last time. “Your brother would have made a good King.”
Like he cared what she thought! Rage licked his temper to a point. “Who’s fucking you now?” he asked with vindictive pleasantry, as though she hadn’t spoken. “Kartin?”
* * * * *
“Arrange his escape,” she told Dye after leaving the viewing cell.
Dye gave his head a warning half-shake. “You can’t do that, Petra.” He hurried to catch her up. “When Kartin finds out, you won’t be able to get out of here fast enough. You won’t be able to run fast enough or far enough.”
“I’m not going to run. Kartin won’t remain in power.”
Dye’s jaw dropped in astonishment. He grabbed the girl’s wrist and whirled her to face him. “Why! Why, Petra!”
“Because Kartin is not the man to lead Khal.”
Chapter Sixteen
“And that man is?” Dye pointed back toward the cell. “Maybe at one time, Petra. But that man will never get over what we did to his brother. He’s sunk so deep in slogging hatred, he’ll never see his boots again. He’ll never see the North as anything other than the enemy.”
She turned on him. “Give him a break, Dye! He loved his brother.”
“And I loved mine. But I didn’t allow his death to destroy me.”
She took a step backward. “Don’t, Dye. Don’t let me think I’ve destroyed him. I can fix this. We can fix this. But you’ve got to help.”
* * * * *
The cell door blasted open with a loud crack that left it shivering on its hinges, but Davik barely acknowledged the intrusion. The redhead slammed into the cell and threw a tray on the bench then turned to face the Prince of Southern Khal. “Eat,” he bellowed. “You’ll need your energy if you plan to escape.”
His chains recently removed, Davik rubbed his wrists. With icy mien, he regarded the intruder. “Why should I want to escape?”
With a wide gesture, Dye indicated the surrounding walls. “So you can enact your revenge, of course. Come man, you can’t expect me to do everything; show a little initiative. I’m counting on you not to faint in the middle of your flight.”
Flight! Why should he wish to leave when everything he wanted was right here?
The girl.
With broad intolerance, the redhead regarded the Prince a few moments, then his eyes wandered impatiently and stuck as he stared across the room. Davik followed his gaze to the black verse on the wall. “You know, fuck doesn’t rhyme with cock; not exactly.”
“It’s close enough,” Davik muttered disagreeably.
Dye nodded. His eyes harbored a malicious glint. “You know,” he said. “The men in her unit have a wager going. It’s ten to one you can’t get it up on your own, without watching.”
Davik struggled to his feet.
“And that’s the real reason behind your reven—”
With a mangled oath involving deities behaving badly, Davik threw himself across the room at the man. Despite the ferocity of the Prince’s rage, the redhead was ahead of Davik, twisting his arm high on his back, crushing his windpipe beneath a hard forearm. Dye laughed maliciously. “Oh, please. Give me an excuse, man. Just give me an excuse and I’ll break both your arm and your neck.” When Davik ceased to struggle, Dye shoved him away. The Prince hit the wall h
ard and slid to the ground. “You’ve some life left in you then,” Dye smirked. “She’ll be glad to know of it.”
The door slammed behind the redhead and Davik listened for the bolts slotting into place. He glowered at the tray then crabbed over to it and fed himself slowly. He was to escape then, courtesy of his hostess. He chewed and swallowed. He could go along with that. He would accommodate her that far. As far as through that door. He watched the door with cold expression. After that, he would find his way to her—along the shortest route possible.
When he woke, the sun was in his eyes. Groggily, he searched his environs and cursed. He was leagues from Veronix, south of the city. Nearby, tied to a tree, a saddled horse tossed its head and whickered. Lurching to his feet, he caught up one of the water skins hanging from his mount’s harness.
Drugged. He’d been drugged and brought here. He drank thirstily and flipped open one of the saddlebags, searching for the food he knew he’d find. Tearing off a hunk of flatbread with his teeth, his eyes traveled north toward the city. No help for it, he thought, resolutely. He attempted a mount from the ground but couldn’t pull it off in his weakened condition. Leading the horse to a fallen tree, he got on the beast’s back and turned its head south.
From his distant vantage point, Dye watched the Prince disappear into the flatlands.
* * * * *
The Prince ricocheted through the Great Palace in Taranis, delegating in short, blunt bursts of energy. Residents and visitors, men and women alike, parted before him as he dragged a vacuum behind him that sucked up an entourage of subordinates. Servants, stewards, soldiers, guards scattered as they received their commands.
“Mother!” Davik turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt.
A long knife-edge of a woman stood before him. “See your father before you leave, Davik.”
The Prince suppressed a shiver as The Queen of Khal brushed coolly by.
Kingdom of Khal: Redeeming Davik Page 8