Horns for the Harem Girl (2 page)

“And in our seventeen years of friendship, how many times have I listened to your advice on women?”

Crane nodded and tilted his head.

“Talk,” he said. “This one is different. I feel something... something in my chest that I can’t explain. Tell me who she is.”

Because he was trying to decide whether to tell his friend the truth about the woman, or weave a careful lie to remove temptation, Arad said, “I must know. I
must
have her.”

They were words Crane had heard a thousand times before, but not with this tone. Not with this urgency and honesty. When he looked at his friend’s face, Crane saw that aside from whatever was going on in Arad’s chest, the draw to his face was completely foreign. He looked a bit like he was going to have some kind of fit, Crane thought with a smile. “She’s... oh this is complicated.”

“I like complicated,” Arad said honestly. “Makes things more interesting.”

The king began ranting about something else. He was toasting this, and then toasting that. He said some words about their neighbor to the east and how they were going to give them one last chance before crushing them. It was all very rousing, but Arad had no patience for it.

Crane shook his head. “Oh, dear. Complicated doesn’t do it justice.”

She had violet eyes, Arad saw. And behind the shroud of her veil, he saw a curl of lighter brown hair tucked behind an ear. And on that ear were a number of piercings that ringed the outside of her ear. As he watched her, she took notice of it, and turned her eyes to him. He felt her gaze caress his. Without looking away, because he felt like he couldn’t possibly, he took a deep breath. “I’ve never loved a woman, Crane,” he said.

“I disagree with that. Perhaps not long term, but you’ve definitely—”

“That wasn’t love,” Arad cut him off, hoping this woman could read lips. “This...”

“She’s in your father’s harem, Arad,” Crane said. That jolted his friend out of the dream cloud he’d taken up. “You
can’t
have her. Not unless you want to insult your father.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” the prince said, curling the left end of his mouth up into a sly smile. “Nor, I’m sure, the last. Give me a pen, paper. I’ll write her a note.”

Crane exhaled sharply and grabbed Arad’s hand. For the first time, the big prince’s eyes were pulled from his fixation. “You
can’t
,” Crane said urgently. “I won’t sneak any letters into the harem. First of all, you’d be insane to try, and second of all, the king would have my head.”

“Oh, he would do no such thing. This isn’t the middle ages. At worst, he’d send you back to London in shame.”

“That’s very much better than beheading,” Crane said, draining the last drop of wine that had collected in the bottom of his cup. Again, he sighed heavily. “She’s a commoner. And no, so far as I know the king hasn’t taken any particular liking to this one. Her name is Helena Astana, and she’s new.”

“I know that,” Arad said. “Look at her eyes, look at the shape of her hips.” He grabbed Crane’s hand in excitement. “My God, Crane! Look at the way she moves from side to side. She’s a witch and she’s taken my soul without casting a single word of a spell.”

Crane arched his eyebrows. “Well, my friend, one thing’s for sure, no matter anything else.”

“That I’m in love? That this is the most beautiful creature this earth has ever seen?”

Crane laughed. “That may be. But I was going to say that you’ve got lines that could excite a dead lion. In fact, sitting here listening to you yammer on about her, I find myself getting slightly aroused. I’m not sure what it is, but I think I need to shower and to calm my nerves.”

Crane rose from the table, hoping to get away before his friend asked him directly to take a message to this mysterious commoner with the admittedly lovely eyes and curve to her hips. It was too late; as he stood, Arad once again grasped his friend’s wrist. “You
will
take her a note. Tell her I wish to see her in secret – in the shadows of night. Don’t tell her anything more, because I’d like to keep at least a little mystery on my side.”

He sighed, knowing it was useless to try and protest, and took his leave. Crane bid goodnight to the king, excusing himself for having drunk too much, at which the king laughed heavily and slapped the frail-looking Englishman on the back before bidding him goodnight. As he left the hall, Crane chanced one more glance back to Arad.

The young prince’s eyes, he saw, were locked
exactly
where he thought they’d be.

And Helena, to Crane’s upset, seemed just as enraptured as did Arad.

This is going to be a long, awkward affair
, Crane thought, wiping the sweat from his head.
At least I have one more night to rest and recover before I have to start lying for him again. One of these days, this is all going to catch up
.

––––––––

“D
amn it all!” Helena plucked the harp just so that the note came out like a dying catfish’s muffled cry of agony. And then, because she’d pulled too hard, the catgut made a springing noise and popped out of the harp’s frame. “Why do you do this to me?!”

She stood up, huffing, and waved her arms around wildly. She didn’t notice Maret, her trainer in the harem and the eldest member of it, enter her curtained-off quarters. “Are you trying to fly?” the old woman asked, and then laughed though she masked it; it’d never do to have the younger members in high spirits when they couldn’t finish their harp lessons. “Sit.”

“Yes, matron,” Helena said, letting out a groan as she sat. “I can’t do this. I try and I try, and nothing ever happens.”

“Hum,” the older woman grunted. “Show me.”

With a heavy hand, Helena plucked at the harp, to the exact same effect as before, only without the string breaking.

“See?” she asked. “I’m doing exactly what you showed me, and this is as much of a failure as my singing.”

“No,” Maret said. “Very little is as disastrous as your singing.” Again she smiled, laughing to herself. “Now, put the string back through the peg. Good, tighten it down and test the sound. Lightly, like this.”

Maret swept her hand across the strings, bringing out a thick, melodious tone. Only the newly-replaced string didn’t sing quite right. “Tighten it until it’s in tune with the others.”

Helena turned the peg in quarter-turns, testing it each time until it seemed to be on key. “Did I get it?”

“Close enough for royal work. Now, sit again.”

Helena did, and Maret sat behind her. The older woman’s heavier, thicker frame settled comfortably behind Helena’s smaller, younger one. Maret’s heft made the bench creak, but as soon as she began stroking the strings with her fingers, she seemed a half-century younger. Tilting her head back, her thick, callused digits danced across the strings, producing a melody that flowed like sweet butter into Helena’s ears. When she finished, she sat back in on the stool, clapped Helena on the shoulder and smiled. “Light fingers, dear. If you tug at it like you’re trying to yank a dog through a sieve, then you’ll get the sound of just that.”

Before Helena could wrap her head around exactly what she’d just been told, Maret had disappeared back into the common room with a little grumbling and some good natured laughter. As the old woman made her way through the room where all the women of the harem – some eighty of them these days – gathered, Helena tried to smile, but couldn’t.

It wasn’t that she hated where she was, or even that she felt sad at having left home. Truth be told, spending her days completely failing at learning to play the harp, or squeaking her way through old Saraman songs instead of beautifully singing them was far from the worst things could be.

But there was something nagging at her.

The prince
, she thought.
The way he watched me, the way he stared at me with those smooth, commanding, beautiful eyes the color of the sea where it touches the horizon. Why was he looking at me like that? Why did he keep watching and watching? Was I doing something wrong?

She looked into the oval-shaped, turquoise rimmed mirror that she kept on top of the desk she was given when she joined the harem. “Joined” might be a bit of a loose term for what happened. Really, she was the sixth girl in a family of eight children that barely survived in the good years. Her father worked tirelessly, or at least did so before he got too old to keep pretending to be tireless.

In the short farming season, he did what he could to raise enough figs and dates and tubers to keep the family in food for the year. For the rest of the time, he worked in the huge oil fields an hour from the family’s home by bus. For most of her childhood, those were her memories of her father. He was away for two weeks at a time, then at home for one. During that week, he cooked all sorts of wildly spiced meals, he drank and sang with his friends all night long – but never with the children. But that had less to do with him and with the children than it did with tradition.

For all its riches and wonders, Salomana was stuck in ways so old they made the surface of Mars look like the inside of a brand new Land Rover.

But then, the famines came. Three years of low rain, dead dates and broken dreams. Three years of pain and suffering. Two sisters and one brother lost to illness broke her father’s heart. The drinking and singing turned to just drinking, and the friends he used to merrily greet the dawn with turned to a television that played nothing but state announcements and commercials.

Her father’s madness saddened Helena’s mother, but she didn’t turn cold or bitter, only inward.

So, no, things could be worse than clumsily plucking a harp or singing badly and feeling embarrassed.

She ran the tip of a finger along the turquoise rimming the mirror. All women who came into the harem were allowed to bring with them whatever they wanted, to make their transition to court life more comfortable. For Helena, it was just the mirror. Her mother made it for her when she turned eight, and she’d treasured it ever since. Seeing her pack the mirror brought tears to her mother’s eyes, though her leaving had not.

“My very own prince,” Helena said, pouting slightly at the mirror. Her full, red lips were just perfect for a good pout – her father had always said so, and her mother had always said that one day she’d get everything she wanted from some fool of a man with those lips. Somehow, she thought that she wouldn’t get
this
man to do what she wanted. “What an idiot you are,” she chided herself. “A commoner and a prince? Not only is that unlikely, it’s illegal.”

She shook out her curls, and re-fastened the barrettes that held her mane back out of her face. When she had the veil, the comical wildness of her hair wasn’t visible, but without it? She smiled at herself in the mirror, the dimple in her chin begging for a jewel. The fashion was to mark dimples with simple studs – diamonds if you could afford them, sapphires if not. The dimples in her cheeks now
had
diamonds. Luxury was as uncomfortable to Helena as it was unfamiliar, and in a way she resented it. Why should she have so much while people like her father and so many others just like him had so little? It didn’t seem right.

“Helena!” a voice, shrill and unfamiliar, came from the common room. She was so new that it was rare for anyone to address her by name – usually it was ‘girl’ or ‘you’ so hearing her name was a bit disconcerting. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs of memories both good and bad. “Helena Araka! Are you here?”

Is that the messenger
? She’d heard him before, now that she had a moment to think about it, but why on earth would he be calling for her?

“Here!” she answered, gathering her things. She went for her veil and then remembered that certain members of the court – the messenger, Frido being one of them – were allowed to see members of the harem in their various states of undress. So long as they were decent, the accoutrements were not all necessary. “Back here! One second!”

Helena pinned back her hair in a hurry. She didn’t want to look like a terrified lion charging around the bowels of the palace. Her room was very airy and open, which she loved a great deal, especially these sweltering spring days. The breeze swept through her quarters and blew her open silk robe apart, baring her breasts.

Another seductively warm breeze swept through her quarters as she gathered herself, and her nipples pebbled, brushing sweetly against the inside of her silk robe. The outside of the garment was patterned with swirls and whorls of rich purples, reds and greens – the colors of the kingdom. The inside was the softest, purest cotton that money could buy, and it felt every bit the expense that it was. She felt her body whisper in pleasure as the fabric brushed her nipples and she tied the belt around herself, aware that she was vaguely visible through the cloth, but not particularly worried about it.

Her inhibitions about her body hadn’t lasted through the first week of her training as a woman of King Saram’s harem, though every so often she’d get a crimson blush across her cheeks when some new person commented on her body, or she let slip more than she meant to.

“Helena Araka! I have a note for you from Jon Crane! Hurry up, don’t have all day to sit around and wait for you to pretty yourself up!”

She huffed, and cinched the silk belt down tight on her hips. The way the garment hugged her body accentuated the natural curves she’d had since she became a woman. Her hips were wider than her shoulders, and her stomach a little fluffier than most of the other women in the harem had. She wasn’t embarrassed of it though, her curves made her unique, to her eyes.

And apparently to the eyes of a prince
, she thought, grinning to herself as she pushed through the curtains and into the common room. The general commotion that she’d grown so accustomed to over the past few weeks had been replaced by quiet excitement. This was what happened when anyone got a note that involved someone important.

She crossed the room, summoning every shred of grace and elegance that Maret had taught her, but she felt them nonetheless.