Lords of Grass and Thunder (4 page)

“Ahh . . . Ah . . .”

She covered his lips with her hand when he would have cried out, her silent laughter warm against his cheek. “Bekter will hear,” she whispered. “Do you want your brother to know?”

No.
Torn by shame and greed he wished only to keep even the knowledge of her to himself.

“Who are you?” He reached out with strong arms to hold her close. This time it was she who pulled away, wiping herself fastidiously with a corner of his shirt.

“My name is Lady—But no, not yet. Let us make a bargain.”

He thought that she would name her price then. The realization that she was indeed a soldier’s whore troubled him because he had begun to build fantasies of magical women drawn to the worth of his blood, if not his rank. When she made her demand, it seemed she read even the dreams of his waking mind.

“A kingdom, for a name. When you bring me the silver cap of the khanate, then will I give you my name.”

“How—I will not kill my father,” he said, though it was in his mind that he would. But Prince Tayyichiut was heir. Mergen’s death would bring Qutula no closer to the dais than he was now.

“Not a patricide.” The lady’s voice hissed softly against his ear. Her tongue flicked at his throat, where the blood pulsed quick at the angle of his jaw, while her hands wandered freely beneath his clothes. “I could not love a patricide.”

Prince Tayy, then, she meant him to murder.

When the serpent poisoned Tayy’s father, the prince had been an untried boy with neither the experience to lead nor the confidence of the chieftains who elected the khan. They had chosen the dead khan’s brother who had, in turn, redeemed the honor of his word when he named his weak young nephew his heir. Qutula had felt certain that his father would see the error of that decision before it came to fruition. Now, however, Prince Tayyichiut returned from battle as the darling of the khan’s advisers and the hero of the army. It gave one pause to wonder how long Mergen himself would live with so popular a candidate waiting for his place on the dais.

In his calculation of the future, Qutula had forgotten that he was not alone until a whisper brought him back to himself with a start.

“Events are not on your side, young prince-as-should-be,” she urged him with her words and her body.

She followed his thoughts as a hunter followed its prey, not by visible sign, for it was too dark to see. Somehow she had learned the patterns of his mind: where a thought would take him next and how he would reach the end of any trail. But who could she be? How had she grown so familiar with the workings of his intellect?

“Will you come again?” he asked. He told himself he would use a future visit to ferret out a name, a rank. When he would have rested his hand upon her breast again, however, she withdrew farther from his reach.

“Maybe. If you promise.”

To murder his cousin, she meant. As the lady read him, so Qutula learned the pathways of her thoughts. She leaned over him and with her mouth and fingers and her soft, soft thighs, she teased him with her own promises. “Swear it,” she whispered.

He was dizzy with her scent, which had deepened with the rich smells of moss and loamy earth and the slightest trace of something less wholesome lurking at the bottom of it all. And sex, of course. She smelled most strongly of the sharp tang of his musk and her own juices, mingled with their sweat in the covers. When she mounted him, he could only groan, “Anything, anything,” into the hand she placed over his mouth

She sighed back at him, “Promise, promise,” and held him on the brink that way until he said the words.

“I promise.”

It seemed the words were all the outpouring he needed. She withdrew from him and he held her only lightly, not wishing to impede her, only to ask a favor, “If not your name, then may I have a small token of your visit, my lady? Or when I wake this will all seem like a dream.”

He did not mean his request as a threat to forget his promise, but cold and bitter eyes gleamed out of the dark at him, as if he had betrayed her.

“You already have such a token—”

He didn’t understand, or chose not to. “Love marks fade,” he answered with a little nip at her shoulder. “I would remember this night forever.”

After a moment, she softened toward him.

“Of course.”

With that she pressed her lips to his breast, above his heart. He felt the prick of needle-sharp teeth and his heart beat faster in its cage of bone. Death seemed to creep closer, ready to slip inside the low round tent and steal him away, and he didn’t seem to mind when she touched him like that . . .

Sense returned with the rising of Great Sun in the morning. Qutula’s eyes flew open, the events of the night spinning like a fever in his head.

“Bek!” he called, wanting the evidence of his brother’s ears to confirm that it had been no dream. But his brother slept so soundly and so cold upon the ground that he might have died in the night.

“Bekter! Wake up!”

At last his brother did, shaking off the unnatural lethargy with bleary eyes. “My head is killing me,” he said. “How can I be so drunk and remember nothing of the feast?”

While his brother’s state did nothing to assure him that the events of his own night were true, Qutula discovered he was relieved that the secret remained his alone.

“What’s that on your chest?”

The jade he wore on the string; his brother must have seen it. Qutula bristled at the question, but he didn’t want to rouse Bekter’s suspicions. “Just a broken bit of something I picked up on the battlefield. I thought I showed it to you before.” It felt different when he tucked it back into his shirt—the carved spiral that had covered it like a rune had disappeared. Had his night visitor taken the shard he had brought down from the mountains and replaced it with one of her own? It pleased him to think that she had wanted a remembrance of him as he had wanted one from her. But Bekter wasn’t looking at the jade.

“Not that. The mark on your chest.” Bekter’s eyes had begun to focus again, and they had fallen on the very place where the lady had pricked him with her teeth.

“It must have been a spider. A little bite, nothing more.” Qutula shrugged off his brother’s interest, but Bekter persisted.

“No spider, brother, but a coiled serpent green as grass. You must have been drunker than I, to get the wrong tattoo!”

A tattoo. Idly his fingers passed across the mark that tingled in parts of his body distant from his breast. He had asked her for a token and his lady had left him this. His smile brought a like one to his brother’s sickly face.

“A reminder of some lady?” Bekter asked. “Do I know her? Is she pretty? Is she expensive?”

“She’s not that kind of lady.” Qutula answered his brother with a tart pursing of his lips to discourage further questions. “I can’t tell you more.”

He made it sound as though he defended the lady’s honor with his silence, which he did as any young man would. In this case gallantry hid his ignorance, as well as the promise he had made. Not a serious vow, he assured himself, but a lovers’ game for the dark. The tattoo began to burn, however, and did not stop until he admitted to himself that he knew what he must do. Then the gentler warmth returned.

His brother had watched the silent debate cross Qutula’s narrow features with interest. “I think there’s more of a tale here than meets the eye,” Bekter said. “When you’re ready to talk, I’ll be your willing audience.”

“No tale at all for you to turn into a song, but indigestion.” Qutula passed off the pain of the tattoo with the same drunken evening that had answered Bekter’s curiosity about his headache. But he covered the mark well with his shirt and caftan before he left his tent. A lady’s token, like her name, belonged to no one but the man to whom she gave it.

Chapter Three

M
UCH LATER, WHEN ASKED what he remembered of that return from war to the great tent city of the Qubal clans, Mergen would say the barking of the dogs as they ran alongside the horses, nipping at the heels of his soldiers. Proud at the head of his army as they rode down the broad avenue, lined on either side by white felt tents of many lattices, he noticed only in passing the flash of Sechule’s dark hair moving through the crowd. He had set his gaze on the great ger-tent palace at the head of the avenue, its silver embroidery glowing like Great Moon herself to welcome his first return from battle as the khan.

How would his mother greet him? he wondered. She loved him as a son, but he had not been her first choice as khan. That son, that brother, had died and Mergen had survived. Surely survival must mean something to the old ones waiting for an accounting of this foreign war. In the silver cap of the khanate and the lavishly embroidered silk robes he wore, his magnificence must amaze his people crowding either side of the avenue. But vanity didn’t urge him to wonder if he cut a splendid figure on his horse. The clans who had elected him could replace him if they found him lacking.

In such an event, of course, there would be war. The riches he displayed on his horse and his person, the very tilt of his head and the way he held himself in the saddle, warned his adversaries that they had a fight on their hands. Or, if his presence failed to issue the proper warning, assured that they might easily remove him. He had neither the breadth of chest nor the regal stature of Chimbai-Khan who had gone before him, but he believed that the wisdom of his thoughts must show in his solemn carriage. The keen eye he set upon the crowd must prove him a dauntless foe.

If his own looks did not inspire confidence, however, the ten thousand Qubal warriors at his back, and the ten thousand of his conquered enemy who followed in chains, must. Cheered by the solid presence of his armies, Mergen was ready to pay attention to his companions.

Prince Tayyichiut, in the embroidered silks and cone-shaped silver cap of the heir, attended him at his right hand as the youth had so often ridden at the side of his father. The boy had become a hero, but he seemed unable to encompass the thought as yet. He scanned with satisfaction the crowd cheering and throwing flowers as they passed. “The wars have made you popular, uncle,” he said as a bluebell tumbled off his cap.

“It’s not my name on the lips of the clans, nephew.” Mergen had keen hearing, and he knew the limits of his popularity. “The Qubal celebrate their hero-prince.”

“No—” Prince Tayyichiut turned in his saddle as if seeking some other prince, some other hero with his name who had captured their love.

“Salute your people,” Mergen instructed, “for they are yours indeed, and only in my keeping until I can return them to you.”

The dogs running at his side increased the din with their barking, as if in agreement with the khan. The prince seemed less convinced than his hounds, but he’d been raised at the khan’s court. When reminded, he squared his jaw and sat straighter in his saddle, raising his hand to greet the crowd as his horse continued its stately walk down the grassy avenue. He would grow into his fame as a hero must, Mergen thought, while those of more subtle skills accepted the burden of rule and the joy of teaching their successor. The crowd already showed that Prince Tayy would make a popular khan. Mergen had to ensure he became a wise one as well.

He turned to share his doubts with General Yesugei, who rode at his left hand, but the general’s thoughts were elsewhere. His eye followed the movement of black hair slipping through the crowd. Yesugei had one wife and was looking for a second. Mergen doubted the wisdom of the direction his affection was leading him in, however.

“She will never settle for the place of second wife in your tent,” he reminded his friend. Sechule had always put ambition above her heart.

Her beauty had drawn Mergen to her tent against his better sense for more seasons than he cared to think about, so he understood the attraction. But her ambitions had followed Sechule under the blankets, making an uneasy third in their bed. He must put himself forward, she had said; his cunning made him more fit to be khan than his brother. Her complaints had tired him long before their affair had ended.

He could only warn Yesugei, his friend of many battles, what he knew of the woman Sechule. “If the brother of the khan did not satisfy her ambitions, a general who stands a step below the dais can expect to do no better.” One who could offer her only second place in his tent in particular stood no chance against Sechule’s pride.

Yesugei dismissed his concerns with a breezy wave of his hand, as if sweeping pebbles off the board. “I have many herds and flocks,” he reminded the khan. Mergen had served his clan well, but they both knew he had gathered no wealth of his own, increasing his brother’s fortunes instead. “Sechule can have her own house in my camp and rule over it as she wishes. She may even keep her sons with her, though they will be looking around them for wives of their own soon enough.” Mergen’s sons as well, but they would never be called so while they remained unacknowledged.

“She’s a haughty woman,” the khan reminded him. “And cold when she doesn’t get her way.”

“I would never criticize my khan—” Yesugei affected a boastful tone, in jest, “—but some, perhaps, are better at pleasing a woman—her way.”