Demon's Fire (19 page)

He grabbed his least rumpled linen coat and prepared to leave. There was really only one person he could talk to about this. Charles wasn’t certain he’d be objective, but he didn’t think he’d judge.

“Mr. Pahndir has left the city,” the servant informed Charles. He was a portly, youngish Bhamjrishi male, but he was mustering a fair approximation of the disapproval Ohramese butlers were famous for. “The house is closed to customers.”

“He’s left?” Charles repeated, having a hard time believing it. “Just like that? No warning?”

He was standing on the grand front stoop of The Prince’s Flame, his jacket slung over his shoulder, his shirt slightly damp with sweat. The butler shrugged airily.

“I believe he was called home on business.”

“I wasn’t aware the prince had business in his homeland.”

“He’s gone,” the butler said more forcefully. “For an undisclosed period. There’s no point in you coming here.”

He began to shut the door, but Charles caught it. Something about the butler’s manner, or maybe it was the effect of being disappointed after having screwed up his nerve, made him dig in his heels. “Surely he left some message to give to friends.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about Mr. Pahndir’s
friends
.”

This crossed the line from disapproval to insult, not only toward Charles but toward Pahndir himself. Charles stepped into the butler’s face. The servant’s sneer couldn’t hide the fact that he was quailing. Beads of sweat were glistening on his brow.

“Look,” Charles said in the hard, cold voice he’d learned on the street. “Why don’t you call Mr. Pahndir’s valet to speak to me?”

He remembered the more helpful, scar-faced servant from his last visit. Charles was pretty sure he could talk to him, man to man, and discover the real story.

“Mr. Biban is ill,” the butler said primly, “and unavailable to converse.”

“You’re lying,” Charles said.

“And you’re deluded,” the butler returned. “Now leave before I call the Watch.”

Charles felt such an urge to pop him in the nose that it was a wonder his fist didn’t shoot up by itself. The butler’s budding jowls were quivering, his freshly shaven cheeks an unpleasant shade of brick. He looked like he
would
call the police, if only for the pleasure of tattling.

“Very well,” Charles said after treating the man to a few more seconds of glowering. “When Mr. Pahndir returns, please inform him Charles Watkins called.”

The butler drew breath as if preparing to spew more rudeness. Charles’s lowered eyebrows made him think better of it.

“Fine,” he snapped and wisely grabbed his chance to hastily slam the door.

Charles stared at it for a moment before scrubbing at his head.

This was a poser, sure as hell. What did Pahndir mean by leaving without a word? And why couldn’t he have hired more polite servants? Was it all some crazy trick a human couldn’t understand? Helpless to answer, he tramped back down the steps. He’d probably made a fool of himself, but he hardly cared.

Beth at the least deserved a farewell note.

Much, much later, Beth deposited Mrs. Hemsley and her numerous packages at the Ohramese embassy. She was gladder than she’d ever been for Bhamjran’s abundance of electric cabs. After all that shopping, she didn’t think she could have dragged her feet another step.

They hadn’t even stopped for lunch to watch the elephants.

She slid her key into Herrington’s front door with a lovely sense of coming home. When this place had started striking her as home she wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t deny it did. The feeling made her want to find some way to stay here after digging season closed.

“Beth,” Charles said from the parlor entrance as soon as she stepped in. “I need to speak to you.”

She smiled at him; couldn’t help it, no matter what was happening between them. Charles was as much “home” to her as any set of walls.

“If you’ve got something to eat in there, you can speak to me for hours.”

He looked startled, then colored just a bit. “I did prepare a plate of sandwiches.”

“Lord bless you!” she cried and hurried in. Practically starving, she ate two crustless triangles in quick succession. Nabbing a third and chewing slowly enough to notice it was tasty, she sat on a footstool to face Charles in the matching chair. Her mood sobered when she saw how serious he was.

“I have news,” he said. “About Pahndir.”

Beth’s heart literally skipped a beat. She swallowed with difficulty. “What news?”

Charles leaned forward over his knees to gather both her cold hands in his. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but he’s left town.”

“Left town?”

“For an ‘undisclosed’ amount of time, according to his butler.”

Beth studied Charles’s face, trying to read what he wasn’t saying. He didn’t seem to be gloating, just concerned for her. His fingers tightened on her hands with comforting naturalness.

“Beth, they’ve closed The Prince’s Flame. It doesn’t sound like he plans to come back soon.”

“But…where would he go?”

“Home, apparently.”

“He can’t go home. He’s been exiled.”

“Exiled?”
Charles looked like he wanted to ask a question or two about that, but then he shook his head. “Maybe he’s been pardoned. Maybe he was too elated to say goodbye before he left.”

Beth pulled her hands from his and rose, though what she could do better standing she didn’t know. “He can’t be pardoned, Charles. Everyone thinks he’s dead. His family staged an accident and had him secretly imprisoned in a pillow house. They betrayed him to save their own reputations when he couldn’t get over grieving for his wife. The Yama think feeling too much emotion is a form of insanity. From what Pahndir told me, he wouldn’t go back there even if he could.”

Charles rubbed his hand across his mouth. Whatever he and Pahndir had talked about when they were on their own, it wasn’t this.

“You’re sure this isn’t just a story he told you? Maybe to gain your sympathy?”

“Charles!” She’d been wadding her tunic on either side of her hips out of nervousness, but this made her let it go. “Don’t try to turn Pahndir into someone you couldn’t like simply because you’d be more comfortable if you weren’t attracted to him.”

His head snapped up at her bluntness. A moment later, he drew a breath and looked down. “All right,” he said. “I admit concocting a story just to impress you doesn’t sound in character, but how can we really know what Pahndir would do? You said yourself his culture is different.”

She turned away toward the tall, peaked windows that overlooked the street. What did she know about Pahndir apart from what he’d told her? How could she be sure any of his actions were sincere?

I know my heart,
she thought,
and I trust my instincts. They’ve never led me that far astray before.
What’s more, she knew Charles liked Pahndir—in spite of himself, but he did. Charles was no easy man to cozen. He guarded himself too well for that.

“Charles,” she said, “if you don’t have faith in my judgment, please have some in your own. Whatever you think about…what we offered you yesterday, I know Pahndir has a certain amount of emotion invested in us both. He wouldn’t leave without speaking to one of us.”

“Perhaps he intends to send a note from wherever he is.”

“He wouldn’t
leave
,” she reiterated, knowing Charles was trying to be reasonable and unsure if she had the right to tell him about Pahndir’s approaching heat. “He has…strong incentives to remain close by. I think—” Her hands came up to her bosom and clenched together. “Charles, I don’t want to believe it, but I think something must have happened to him.”

Charles had risen behind her. Now he took her shoulders and turned her gently around. “What do you mean, you think something happened?”

Hearing the words repeated sent a chill through her heart. Beth tried not to let her chin tremble. “Yesterday, he said someone in his family had come to town, someone he regards as an enemy: another prince named Muto. Maybe he’s behind Pahndir’s abrupt departure.”

Charles’s bright blue eyes widened. “He mentioned that to me, too. He said someone who didn’t wish him well had been watching him.”

For whatever reason, the memory of Pahndir’s remarks brought a wash of hectic color into Charles’s face. Beth ignored the indecipherable pang tightening her throat. Her reaction to the bond between Charles and Pahndir was not remotely the issue now.

“I have to go to Herrington,” she said. “He knows people. He can find out where Pahndir is.”

“No.” Charles caught her arm before she could more than lean toward the door.

“Charles, I know he’ll be angry, but Pahndir’s safety could be at stake.”

“Beth, there isn’t a single doubt in my mind that Herrington already knows you and the prince are involved. He’d consider it his duty to know. He takes protecting you seriously.”

“But he never said…I mean, I thought he might suspect, but—”

“Trust me, Beth, he knows.”

They stared at each other, the awful possibility Charles had been entertaining finally rising in her mind as well.

“Lord Herrington wouldn’t hurt Pahndir.”

“He might. He might not even think it was wrong. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but he had Max abducted when he was little, as a ploy to get Roxanne to turn to him for help.”

“Damn,” Beth said and gnawed her lower lip until it hurt.

Charles rubbed her shoulders bracingly. “I could be wrong. Herrington might have nothing to do with whatever happened, and he might be perfectly willing to help. For now, though, I think it would be better if you went to someone else. Maybe one of Pahndir’s friends has heard from him.”

“He mentioned a woman,” Beth said. “Xishi Midarri. She married a prince named Cor. He’s the one who freed Pahndir from the pillow house. I got the impression they live in Bhamjran.”

She also got the impression that Pahndir had been in love with Xishi, and possibly still was. Under those conditions, would Xishi or her husband want to hear from Pahndir’s new lover?

“Charles,” she said, nerves making it hard for her to meet his eyes, “I know the people in my life don’t always feel they can rely on me. If I do something right, they have a tendency to be surprised. Maybe you feel the same way after the way I…went ahead and slept with Pahndir.”

“Beth, that isn’t my—”

“Please, let me finish. I need you to help me look for Pahndir. He might be in danger, and I’m not certain I can do this on my own.”

“Beth.” His grip on her shoulders tightened until she looked up. “I never intended to let you search on your own. You’re my friend, and you always will be. As to that, Pahndir is sort of my friend as well.”

He didn’t seem terribly happy to be admitting this, but relief flooded Beth nonetheless.

“We’ll start with the Midarris,” Charles went on, his tone brisk and practical. “There can’t be that many Yamish princes in this city. I expect we’ll have no trouble finding them.”

His captor’s name was Sahel.

They’d been on their seemingly endless camel trek into the desert for the remainder of the night and half of the next day before she and her comrades exchanged enough conversation for him to discover what to call his enemy. A few hours more gave him two additional names. Aran and Delilah were her lieutenants, if lawless desert chieftains could be said to have such things.

Sahel, by contrast, knew everything about Pahndir. How old he was. Where he’d been born. The fact that he’d been known to enjoy rather rough foreplay.

He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by her informed state. Muto had been spying on him for years, probably long before Thallah’s death.

Sahel knew his wife’s name, too, which made Pahndir long quite passionately for a second opportunity to throttle her. The farther they rode from civilization and any chance of pursuit, the more talkative—and personal—she became.

Did he wonder if his wife had killed herself because of him? According to Sahel, he probably should, since he was such an easily defeated specimen of manhood. Maybe Thallah would have been happier with one of Sahel’s harem. She could have enjoyed true submission from her partner without being obliged to shore him up in front of his family.

Pahndir’s certainty that Thallah wouldn’t have wanted her former kindnesses used against him enabled him not to be drawn into arguing. This, however, was the extent of his victories.

The women kept him bound to the jouncing saddle, his arms trussed behind his back with slim steel cables that had been braided over with leather strips. The leather he could have snapped, but the steel defeated him. An hour of struggling against his bonds had his arms screaming with pain from shoulder to wrist. Not struggling didn’t greatly alleviate his discomfort, but it did provide less entertainment for Sahel.

She was determined to wrest that from him any way she could.

He lost any doubt of this at sunset. They’d been riding as fast as the camels would trot, without a halt, since he’d been abducted. He didn’t know which part of the Vharzovhin they’d reached, because the landmarks were strange to him. Pahndir’s body could survive a lot of abuse, but his leg now had a permanent cramp from hooking around the horn of the saddle, and his bare head ached from baking beneath the sun. He’d had no food, no water, and pride was all that had kept the aftereffects of the ether from causing him to throw up. Though obviously hardened to this kind of journey, Sahel and her crew were finally starting to look weary.

He could have cried when Sahel signaled for their little caravan to stop, though he managed not to outright fall off his camel when the beast knelt down.

Her lieutenants freed his wrists and poured him water from the goatskin they’d been sipping from all along. His hands being too numb to lift the small tin cup, Sahel tipped it to his mouth herself.

She backhanded him when he neglected to say thank you.

“We have no man for you,” she said, a comment his equally numb mind didn’t follow. “Not like your wife used to let you have. No worries, though—our Delilah can compensate for that.”

They shoved him onto his face in the dusty sand. They had stopped in the middle of nowhere. Nothing surrounded them but flat, cracked desert and the now multicolored sky. They were completely exposed and utterly alone. Free to be their own law, the lieutenants pulled down his trousers. Then one of them—Delilah, he presumed—raped him in the anus with a length of polished wood.

Shock only paralyzed him for a few heartbeats. He’d had no circulation in his arms, and very little in his legs until a few minutes earlier, but he still managed to fight hard enough that it took all six of the women to hold him down.

The struggle exhausted everything he had left. By the time they let him go and rolled him over onto his back, he barely had strength to blink. Once again, Sahel stood looking down at him.

She nudged his unaroused penis with the dusty toe of her boot. “How disappointing. We were told this sort of thing would get a rise out of you. Especially so close to your heat.”

“At least he’s big,” Aran said. “The other demon didn’t lie about that.”

“Big is as big does,” Sahel said. “We’ll try again when we make camp tonight.” She pushed his cock harder with her boot. “Nothing to say for yourself, demon?”

He swallowed, his still-parched throat a hot line of pain. “Nothing you want to hear.”

She smiled at the first words he’d said all day. Her turban’s tail hid her face, but he read her amusement in the lines creasing her dark brown eyes.

“No worries,” she said, apparently a favorite phrase of hers. “I know you demon males think you can’t be broken, but I have all the time in the world to make you sing.”