Dark Djinn

by Tia Reed

  “I am not so free with my kisses.” She sprayed her neck with a floral perfume.

  “I am well aware of it, chaste Princess that you are in his company. Three nights, was it?”

  The bottle slipped from her hand onto the dresser, spilling the contents. “You watched?” She could have died from mortification.

  “I am djinn. I see all. Now, what do you think that liberty will cost when your brother and fiancé claim you? In comparison, do I demand that high a price?”

  The freedom granted her in this land was a bliss porrin could not rival. Her capture was a thought she could not entertain. She bolted from the room, wondering if she had misjudged Rochelle. She would beg Matisse to permit her to stay. She would let him kiss her in public, lie with him every day if he turned Mariano and Ahkdul away.

  She found Jordayne in a parlour, tending to lists of provisions.

  “My dear, how nice to see you. But you have a purpose, I see.” Jordayne said, raising an eyebrow. She dismissed the maids to a worktable in a corner of the room, and drew Kordahla to a settee, curling her legs up beside her. “Don’t be shy. Tell me how I can help.”

  “If I want to attract someone’s attention, how might I do it?”

  “A male someone, I take it? And you have competition?”

  Kordahla nodded, surprised by how perceptive this woman was.

  “Then get rid of this for a start,” Jordayne said pulling the shawl off her and tossing it over the back of the settee.” She called a maid over to divest Kordahla of three of the underskirts. Kordahla looked down. The shadow of her legs was visible beneath the diminished layers of skirt. Days in the skimpy garments could not stop the blush rising in her cheeks.

  “You really must learn to make use of those glorious curves of yours,” Jordayne said, sliding most of her bracelets over her slender hand and piling them onto Kordahla’s arm. Kordahla’s fading blush deepened.

  Jordayne stepped back to survey her handiwork. “I don’t think any man will be able to resist you. But you don’t want any man, do you?”

  They settled back on the settee. “How do I make him take me seriously?” Kordahla asked.

  Jordayne took her hand. “Have you thought about being the one to start the kissing? He might simply think he’s honouring your wishes by keeping his distance.”

  Given the nights he had taken pleasure in her, Kordahla doubted it, but she held her tongue. “If I want to please him, I mean intimately.”

  That gave Jordayne pause. The older woman blinked. “Are you asking how?”

  Kordahla shook her head. “What,” she breathed.

  “I see.” Jordayne leaned over and whispered in her ear.

  Kordahla’s eyes grew wide. Her cheeks were aflame before Jordayne was finished. In the shock of the secret, she could think of no response. After a few seconds of silence, Jordayne brought her other hand onto Kordahla’s. “My dear. Do be careful. Intimacies here do not bind so deep as they do in Terlaan.”

  “They are coming for me,” she said.

  Jordayne kissed her on the forehead. “Then go to him.”

  Heads turned as Kordahla glided the internal palace halls in a mist of sweet perfume. Had the lanterns not muted the calligraphy on the walls, had dusk not rendered the lines from histories extolling fair Myklaan illegible, she might have lost her nerve. Their truths, of the liberties women usurped in this land, and the atrocities realm had perpetrated on realm, were at worst confronting by day. By night, they condemned her wanton choice.

  “Timak you must go,” she said, stopping at a corner. The boy had followed her to Jordayne and back. His touching loyalty was a hindrance at this private moment. Her emotions were awhirl, akin to the spirals in the motifs framing the quotes. Her heart beat with irregular strength, like the heart of the pigeons which flew into the windows in Tarana. This giving of herself was not an easy thing. And yet, when he came to her, she was like a lump of clay, moulded under his desire into precious derral. Into, if she were not to discard her upbringing, dishonour.

  Timak slipped his hand into hers. “You need me to draw the guards away.

  Looking down at him, she squeezed his hand. In truth, the guards standing at distant intervals along the halls had been worrying her, and not because they might choose to bar her from their Lord’s room. Rumours were flying around the palace of a Princess oft in the Lord’s company, and a djinn that had invaded her room at night. Enjoy them, Jordayne had said. There is nothing so delicious as a scandal.

  “I want to help you,” Timak said. “I want you to stay here with me.”

  She felt a rush of affection as she touched his cheek. “I adore little brothers.”

  His shy smile was a blessing. It brought a sad, sweet smile to her own lips.

  “I can help.” He stepped away.

  She let him turn the corner.

  “She has to.” She heard him murmur. “There’s no other way for her to stay.”

  The genie, it seemed, did not approve. She heard the soft tap of his feet, then the quiet urgency of his voice. “The djinn is scaring the princess. She’s crying.”

  She slipped behind a pillar, waiting until the guard’s quick steps had retreated beyond detection. Taking a deep breath, she went to Matisse’s door and gave a timid knock. His voice did not ring out to bid her enter. Such a welcome would have played too easy. Trembling inside, she lifted a hand to try the door. It was bolted.

  “Al-low me,” the echo of a hated voice drawled.

  The lanterns dimmed. The door swung open. Reason begged her to walk away. Duplicity and deception: aid from the djinn was a curse under any guise.

  They were coming for her. He had come to her. And so she walked inside. The outer chamber was furnished with oak furniture, fashioned in a style that evoked his masculine strength. She coasted to the door on the right. Low voices drifted out. A giggle. The sounds of rustling sheets.

  Blood whooshed in her ears. Just walk away.

  Her feet did not obey.

  They were coming for her.

  A light touch was all it took for the inner door to creak wide, to leak the sweaty musk and jasmine from inside.

  He had exploited her.

  They were naked atop the sheets. Rochelle sat astride him, her shameless caresses enticing his arousal. His eager gropes sent shivers of delight down his mistress’s spine. Their wicked conversation continued, as though their intimacy were nothing more than diverting play. The whoosh in her ears became a roar. The few paces it had taken to cross the outer room had revealed the catastrophic depth of her folly. She was filthy, degraded, dishonoured. A conquest, that was all she had been. His eyes drifted, alighted on her. The amusement in them snuffed out.

  Kordahla fled the room, tears streaming down her cheeks. Matisse called her name. Rochelle giggled a few words. He laughed out loud.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The guards came for her before the luncheon hour, a formal escort into the throne room through a side door. Shah Ordosteen sat upon his gilded throne, crooked under the burden of his gravity and his crown. He blinked when he saw her, as though she were some apparition. How peculiar she felt like one; both leaden and light, as though she must glide right through these walls before she might wake from this devastating betrayal. Her eyes swept over the airy room, over the tiered balconies garlanded with intricate stone carvings rising over the grand arches. Was he observing from among them, amused by how easily she had capitulated to his desires? Bored by her company now she had?

  Ordosteen straightened. “Your brother and fiancé have arrived.”

  Fiancé. That single word bespoke her fate. She turned her stone face fully toward him. He cleared his throat, could not meet her eye.

  “They are demanding to see you. Demanding Myklaan turn you over or declare war.”

  She nodded slowly, absently. There was no place for a runaway princess here. “You have chosen to meet their demands,” she said, making it easy for him. She harboured no recrimination. Her shame
was too great to look the man who had taken the most precious gift she had to give in the eye. Whatever Shah Ordosteen decided, she could not stay here.

  “Our realm is not in a position to shelter you. I am sorry, my dear.”

  “I hope you will be happy together,” she said, and meant it. No one deserved to feel this filthy despair, this emptiness that was keener for having thought she loved.

  Embarrassed, Ordosteen cleared his throat. His age had never been more apparent in the lines on his brow. He held out her veil, her mother’s veil, the green one with the golden threads. “I believe this is yours. Take it. It may offer a morsel of comfort.”

  She glided to him, too light to walk, too heavy to fly. The veil looked odd, draped over her hand, a relic from another age. “Was he indigo?” she asked. He owed her that much.

  His answer was strained. “Yes. And you will never speak of it.”

  A spark of surprise took hold in her, not for the admission but for the burden he shouldered. After the numbness of the night, the emotion was a jolt, and she reacted around the eyes.

  Sleep had been a long time coming. When it had finally carried her away, it was deep and dreamless. She had woken unrested, her sense of betrayal unmitigated. In her nightgown, she had shifted about the room, restless, sullen, and sick, refusing to allow doors or shutters to be thrown open to the day. She had stared at the visage of the gambolling figures painted on bedhead, wardrobe and dresser, counted the small gold tiles between the cream ones, and found patterns in the green marble on the floor. It was hours before she had found the wits to request a demure dress, a servants’ full length shalvar kameez if need be.

  “I will receive no visitors,” she had told her handmaid, Nina, as the girl laid the garment on the bed. “No one at all. Leave me now.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the girl had said with a graceful curtsey, yet allowing Timak to slip beneath her arm as she opened the door.

  The sensitive child had hidden under the bed, remaining silent and still until she, seated at her dresser and lost in contemplation of her folly, forgot he was there. A hundred times she must have relived Matisse’s every contrived touch, heard Rochelle’s voice. I can guess what this new bargain of yours might involve. So, when the commotion from the gardens announced her brother’s arrival, Ordosteen’s decision was clear to her, perhaps even before it was clear to him. Without thinking, she dressed herself, tucked the watermelon gem between her breasts, and awaited her fate.

  It was not until she laid a hand on the door to admit the guards that Timak emerged, clinging to the bedpost, so fragile and hurt.

  “You must hide. Don’t come out until you are sure he has gone,” she had said. His silent tears had almost been her undoing, but she had closed the door before he could run to her.

  Walking to meet the Shah, down the halls scribed with profound poems of love, and of loss, her armed escort marching before her and behind, she had wondered what cruel game the djinn played. Two pacts made, two lives intertwined, only one which could discover joy. The folly was hers. The djinn had their own agenda. She had known that from the start.

  “You will never speak of it,” Shah Ordosteen said.

  Soon, so soon, her lips would seal forever.

  Kordahla draped her mother’s veil over her hair, careful to cover every strand, and wound the ends along her bare arms. Nina, a city satrap’s younger daughter at ease with the fashion of this land, had not heeded her wishes. The short-sleeved choli, though it covered her midriff, was less than modest. Even with the veil wrapped around her body, it was obvious the bodice did not meet the skirt. Another transgression for Ahkdul to punish.

  “I am ready. But you will refrain from calling Ahkdul my fiancé. I do not regard him as such.”

  “Kordahla…”

  Her eyes were away from him again, her head high. She had felt a spark of surprise but that fledgling emotion had been unable to take flight. There was refuge in feeling nothing because feeling something would tear her apart from the inside out.

  “My dear,” he tried again. “Both Jordayne and Matisse speak highly of you. Under different circumstances, Myklaan might have welcomed you with open arms. If there is anything I can do to make this easier for you…”

  Her eyes slid to his of their own volition. How could she blame him when she had suffered the cruel manipulation of the indigo djinn herself? “You have been generous beyond expectation, but I dare to request a favour. Do with me as you will, but look after the boy.”

  Ordosteen’s eyes softened. “I am not a barbarian. Lord Ahkdul has no claim to him save the value of the coin he paid. The boy will be safe. On that I give you my word.”

  It was a comfort, if not a hope, the Vae see that it be done. Their images sparkled on the dome, observing all, but not presiding. Never that.

  “I would see my brother now.”

  “Yes, of course.” The shah of Myklaan gestured to the guards, who marched down the length of the hall. She turned as they opened the tall arched doors dividing the throne room from the iwan. Mariano and Ahkdul stood framed for a moment, then strode the length of the room. The doves splashing in the canals outside cooed to them, but even all these paces away the hunch of the Verdaani Lord’s shoulders, the prominence of his brow, reminded her of the brute that he was. Even so far away, she could tell both men stared in silent rage. There was nothing of this liberal realm about them: nothing of a fountain’s merriment in their step; nothing of evening’s lassitude in their pose. Nothing. And Mariano, emissary in a foreign court, had forgone the open vest and kamarband he favoured for Terlaani turban, baggy shalvar, and long kurta, burgundy to represent the Crown.

  They stopped at the bottom of the dais and accorded Ordosteen a tense bow.

  Ordosteen cleared his throat. The formal greetings, the false welcome stretched interminable, though the stilted words did not last a warbler’s entire song. And then it came.

  “Prince Mariano, Lord Ahkdul, I deliver Princess Kordahla into your care. She has been treated well. Neither Terlaan nor Verdaan can take issue with our hospitality or our cooperation.”

  “Your compliance in the matter of the Princess is duly noted,” Mariano said. His eyes locked on her. They held nothing of their usual affection. “But there is another matter. She carried with her two valuable items from our Realm. Terlaan demands their return.”

  “The Princess did not bestow any gifts upon members of this household,” Ordosteen said. “I am given to understand from my captain that she arrived at our border with nothing. If she brought items with her, they remain in her possession.”

  Mariano cast cold eyes over her. “Minoria, are they on her person?”

  Only then did she notice the mahktashaan behind her brother. Were it not for the cerulean crystal around his neck, she would not have identified him. What betrayal had he suffered to lose the calm confidence that distinguished him in an instant from the horde of the hated soldier-magicians.

  Clutching his crystal, Arun spoke a magic word. “The crystal is not in this room,” he said.

  Mariano turned to Ordosteen. “We request permission to search the palace.”

  “The mage guild is a likely to have appropriated them,” Arun said to Mariano. Her brother added it to his request.

  “My permission is withheld.” Ordosteen said. “You may search Princess Kordahla’s room, if you wish. Beyond that, the palace is denied you.”

  Mariano would not have expected another answer, bearing the tidings he did, but neither would he capitulate with so valuable an item at stake. Even a closeted Terlaani princess understood this. “The return of these item is not negotiable,” her brother said, predictable, unbendable. “We leave here with them, or consider your intentions hostile.”

  The wretched situation was degenerating into naked threat. It had never been her intention to start a war. “I lost the crystals,” Kordahla said. “In the scums.” Let Myklaan keep them. Vae’oeldin, let the mages even find a way to employ them. If they sa
ved another Ilyam the loss of his father, prevented even one citizen succumbing to addiction, let the Myklaani have them. Vae’oenka knew this realm had been kind to her for a time.

  “It seems the matter is settled,” Ordosteen said.

  Far from it. Even a closeted princess denied access to her father’s counsel could guess at that. Those crystals were sacred to Terlaan. They were the secret to the realm’s magical and military prowess. Her word was worthless. The Crown Prince and Minoria knew it. For now, Mariano chose to remain silent, flicking his eyes across her in contemptuous dismissal.

  “I have acted in good faith.” Ordosteen rose, though he remained upon the dais. “To further demonstrate our goodwill, I relinquish three of our citizens to you, prisoners who sought to despoil the princess.”

  Both Mariano and Ahkdul snapped around to face him at that. Mariano’s face was the colour of a beet. Ahkdul was turning back to her, a look of such loathing on him that she knew she would pay for this too.

  “How can you be sure she was not sullied?” the brute asked. His fingers formed claws by his side as though he longed to throttle her for enticing men to violate her.

  Ordosteen held up a forestalling hand. “They were prevented from their crime by a captain, but they ravaged a young girl the princess travelled with. They are yours to deal with as you see fit.”

  “In Terlaan, they would pay with their lives.”

  “As you see fit,” Ordosteen reiterated, walking down the steps. “As an indication of our goodwill.”

  “We wish first to question the princess,” Mariano said, leaving no doubt as to her status.

  “You may use her chamber. The guards will escort you,” Ordosteen replied. He was peering at her, a worried frown on her face.

  “She travelled with my page,” Ahkdul said. “I have use for him.”

  Ordosteen’s eyes grew defiant. “Princess Kordahla arrived with Akerin guides, a man and a girl.”

  Ahkdul drew his bushy brows together. When it was clear he would make no challenge, Ordosteen turned to her with an unwelcome look of pity. Between them, these men had robbed her of every decision. They had treated her as a bargaining tool. There was but one choice left to her, and she intended to take it because, by the Vae, she would not allow them to turn her into that brute of a man’s trophy wife. Ordosteen’s pity would only stand in her way. She stepped away from it to find Arun blocking her way. Prisoners did not take the lead.