The Harem Master (14 page)

"Stupid, secret passages are so stupid," Kitt said with a sigh but found the key and, when Ihsan nodded it was correct, tucked it away. Walking over to the bed, he knelt beside Ihsan, sank his fingers into Ihsan's hair, and dragged him down into a long, deep kiss. "Be careful while I am gone, lomista."

"Come back to me alive and whole," Ihsan said.

Kitt smiled and kissed him one last time, then rose and slipped away, sliding into the shadows as though made for them. Which he had been. He had not left them until Ihsan asked.

A few minutes after he left, a knock came at the door. Ihsan retrieved a pair of long, thin daggers from under the bed, then settled at the table, tucking them just out of sight but where he could easily grab them. "Come in."

Captain Fatih entered alone and knelt several paces away from the table. "I have come as requested to report, Your Highness." His eyes went to Sabah, Haluk, and Demir. "How are they?"

"Recovering just fine, Captain," Ihsan said. "Kitt knew the poison and how to counter it. All they need now is rest. What have you to tell me?"

Shoulders dropping slightly as he relaxed, Fatih replied, "The king is well, thanks to the services of your concubine. But he is weakened and still asleep. One of his concubines ingested too much poison and could not be saved; the other is extremely weak and wavers. Lord Setter and Lord Tessel are well, Lady Myre is weakened, and the delegation from Havarin will not speak with us, but we suspect that Lord Jove is either dead or so weak they are not yet certain he will survive the night. We found the poison in the pudding, again thanks to Lord Kitt. He said that Lord Demir noted it. We also found a large amount in a single carafe of wine, though only his Majesty's concubine seemed to have drunk it. That is all we know for now, Your Highness."

"Thank you. Keep me apprised. Arrange an appropriate service for the dead concubine; see that our best healers are given to Lord Jove. Inform all who must know that I will be taking over my father's duties tomorrow and as long as he is too weak to manage them comfortably himself. Send his secretaries to me at once that I might prepare. Send guards you trust to protect me, my harem, and Lord Demir. I also need servants to bring me plenty of water for them and to be prepared to drink it themselves before I touch it. Someone else should bring me cups, and they too should be prepared to drink from them to ensure my safety."

"Yes, Your Highness." Fatih bowed, rose, bowed again, and departed when Ihsan nodded.

Ihsan checked on Sabah, Haluk, and Demir, made certain they all drank a bit of what little water he already had in the room. When they were tended, he stripped off his banquet clothes and pulled on some more suitable for work, tucking away more knives before he cleared the table of the leftover card game and prepared to work.

Euren's eyes snapped open. She stared out at the darkness, looking for a shadow that did not belong. What had woken her?

On either side of her, Canan and Asli slept soundly. Gulden was asleep nearby, preferring space. Scattered across the rest of camp was Cobra, and they all seemed fast asleep. She counted, but everybody was there. Still no sign of what had woken her.

Then she heard it: soft footsteps, the kind of careful, near-silent walking that took a great many hours of training. Behind her, coming from the cluster of rocks they had put to their backs for safety. Beyond them was nothing but scrubland, rocky paths overlooking steep drops.

Whoever had decided to come over those rocks must be of reasonable skill and familiar with the area.

Keeping the rest of her body still, listening to the slow footsteps, Euren crept a hand beneath the spare cloak she had folded to use as a pillow. Her fingers found the special sheath that held three of her throwing knives. Pulling one free, focusing on keeping her breathing normal, and gripping the knife firmly but not tightly, she waited.

Closer… closer… closer…

Euren snapped around, sat up, and thrust, driving the knife through thin leather armor and into the would-be assailant's stomach. Yanking the knife back out, she helped him fall to his knees, then drove her knee into his face and let him collapse to the ground.

By that point everyone else had stirred. Emre spoke sharply to his men, and two of them surged forward to take care of the attacker.

"The rocks!" Asli cried out, voice rough with sleep but sharp with alarm.

Euren spun back around—just in time to see a knife lodge in the throat of the man on the rocks. She turned back around, following the direction the knife must have flown, and her gaze landed on Meltem. Her hair had come loose in sleep and spilled around her shoulders in a riot of curls, making her look mussed and half-wild. "Impressive throw."

"Thank you." Meltem strode across camp toward them, pulling her hair back as she did so. "We should see if there are any others."

"I'll take care of it," Emre said. "Seems only fair since I slept through the whole mess until too late. Our honored father would kill me if he knew I'd been so sloppy." He signaled to one of the other men, and they darted off, scaling the rocks like spiders and vanishing like shadows in the dark.

Euren used the jacket of the man she'd killed to clean the blood from her knife, then pulled the sheath out and put the knife away.

"An efficient kill, Princess," said one of the men looking over the body.

"Killing should always be efficient if it must be done. No one should die more miserably than can be avoided," Euren said quietly.

"Your husband said you were well-trained, Highness, but I admit …" The man trailed off, shook his head.

Euren might have smiled if the situation had been more light-hearted. "To be fair, royalty is seldom trained in such things; they've too many other lessons to master. But my father is Captain of the Guard, and he was harder on me than his men." She looked down at the body, pushing back the familiar tumult of emotion. "The killing I learned being a smuggler. Not on purpose, but it was my life or his, and since that first one I've had to kill three others. I hope this is the last man I have to kill."

"We all hope our latest kill will be our last," Meltem said quietly. "Your father sounds much like mine. He was certainly more ruthless with my brothers and me than he was with anyone else in the tribe." She looked over the dead man, then up at the Cobra standing nearby. "So we killed them both?"

"Yes, my lady."

"Pity, we might have learned something useful. I should have aimed to wound."

Euren motioned toward the fire. "Bring lanterns and we may yet learn something."

Asli, Gulden, and Canan lit several lanterns and carried them over. Euren knelt beside the dead man, wrinkling her nose. He smelled like he had not bathed for several days. Hopefully they would be well away before death added its stench.

"Bandit?" Meltem asked. "He looks like the type we get in the sands from time to time: filthy, desperate, foolish."

"Mm," Euren said, grimacing as she examined the body. "I agree with the filthy and foolish, but I don't know that he was desperate. His armor is good quality, and he has a metal flask, not leather." She pulled the dagger still sheathed at his waist. "This is good steel, well-balanced. Desperate men cannot generally afford good steel." She picked through his jacket and the pouches on his belt a bit more, coming up with a small purse of coins. Pulling the drawstring, she tipped the coins into her hand. "Ten sovereign marks. These men didn't need to rob us." She handed the money to Asli, who tucked it away in the folds of her own clothes.

Meltem thumped her fist on her thigh. "Assassins sent after you, then. That begs the question of how he—they—knew where to find us. We've told no one outside this group what our mission is, and the only other person who knows is my honored father. Could one of the monks be responsible?"

"Anything is possible, but after all this time I find that hard to believe," Euren replied. "If someone there wanted me dead, it would have been easy enough to make it look like illness or an accident. There's no reason to wait until now and hire bandits to kill me. Anyway, the clothes this man wears, the fact he would so carelessly carry his money where anyone could snatch it—he is from a city, but not Tavala, the royal city." Her mouth quirked. "Anyone who grew up near the market knows better than to put their money in easy reach, and bandits have the same sense. This man comes from a place where they are not as cautious with their coin. Chaya, perhaps, or Temeesa. Those are the nearest cities and the easiest place to hire a cheap assassin quickly."

Brows lifting nearly to her hairline, Meltem asked, "What exactly was your father training you to do?"

"Take his place," Euren replied with a faint smile. "He was not at all amused when I ran off and married a crown prince instead."

"I think I would prefer my child to be a captain rather than a queen," Meltem replied. She brushed her hands off and stood. "Get rid of the body, throw it where the animals will take care of it. Let us finish helping pack up camp. Princess—"

"I can pack as well as anyone," Euren said, faintly amused, and strode off, harem around her as they began to pack their own belongings.

They were just getting it all strapped to the horses when Emre and the man who'd gone with him returned. "We found a camp—four other men but twelve horses. Either they are traveling far and hard, or there is another camp somewhere. I felt it better to come back and warn you than to go looking for it. But it is good we're leaving, and we should definitely be on guard. We cut the horses loose to slow them down and give us more time to get well ahead of them, but I'm not going to rely on that. It troubles me they knew where to find us." He bowed to Euren. "I apologize we did not better protect you."

"Cobra Amir, if not for your people, my women and I would have a far more difficult time of it. Our little group of four would have stood no chance against twelve mercenaries. No apology is necessary. Let's be on our way." He nodded, and Euren spun around to mount her own horse.

They rode for three hours before the sun slowly began to drive back the dark. Only endless hours stuck on a horse with her father and years as a smuggler kept Euren on her horse. She must have dozed at least a few times, which was sloppy, but they'd spent entirely too many hours awake. They had only been at camp a couple of hours and had stayed awake just long enough to see to the horses and eat a quick supper.

At least the traveling would go much more quickly once they were out of the mountains and the roads became broad and well-paved.

Emre finally called a halt mid-morning, when they came to a public watering area at the base of the mountain. There was a small group of people clustered around the well in the center of the clearing; a short distance behind them was an old wagon, a pair of weary-looking horses feeding nearby. The group's eyes widened when they saw the Cobra, and they hastily made signs of protection before scurrying away from the well and back to the safety of their wagon.

At a signal from Emre, Meltem approached the well while the rest of them hung back. She dismounted, then removed her head and face wraps. Damp strands of hair had slipped from the knotted braid of her hair, and they clung to the sides her flushed, sweaty face. She smiled at the gawking group, then lowered one of the two buckets into the well.

Euren removed her own wraps, wiping sweat from her brow with her sleeve. She would gladly give her husband's fortune for a bath. "Not so far from home now."

"It's hard to believe," Asli said. "We've not seen it for so long." Her voice was wistful, hopeful. "I scarcely can believe we're nearly there. It feels strange to think we'll never again return to the monastery."

Canan laughed as she drew off her own head covering. "If you ever get nostalgic, I am sure we can stay in a temple for a few days, enjoy the rustic life before we remember why it's not actually all that enjoyable and go scurrying back to the palace."

"Some priestess," Gulden drawled.

"Why do you think I gave it up to be a concubine?" Canan retorted.

"You gave it up because you are terrible at being a priestess, and the High Priestess was going to throw you in the well if she caught you being
helpful
with one more guest," Euren said.

Canan shrugged. "I can't help that being a priestess is the most boring thing in the world." She dismounted as Meltem walked over to them bearing cups of water. Taking one, Canan lifted it up to Euren. "My parents should have sent one of my sisters to be a priestess if they wanted somebody who was going to be pious and well-behaved about it. I am far too devoted to the pleasures of the flesh to give any devotion to vague beings I will never meet."

"Tsk," Euren said with a grin. Accepting the cup, she quickly drank half of it, then handed it off to Asli while Gulden and Canan shared the second cup. "Thank you, my lady," she said to Meltem.

Meltem bowed her head, smiled briefly. "Highness." She took the cup when Euren held it out, then refilled and returned it. "Would you like something to eat?"

"I would not be adverse," Euren replied. "Have we the time to spare to sit and eat?"

Emre nodded. "The horses could use the rest. Though I hesitate to linger in so public a place for too long."

"Then let us press on until we come to a place more suitable. I thank you for this rest, though. I have not yet decided on the first thing I will do when we reach the palace: sleep or bathe." Euren sighed, thinking longingly of soft beds and hot baths.

Gulden grinned. "Surely my princess wants nothing more than to fall into the arms of her dear husband."

"My husband is currently enjoying all the luxuries of his station. He can suffer until I am clean and rested and feel like dealing with him." She smiled as even some of the Cobra chuckled.

Still snickering, Asli leaned in and kissed her cheek, tugging at one of her damp curls. Drawing back, she said, "I vote for the bath. It's been so long since I've enjoyed the luxury of a proper hot bath."

"The sooner we go, the sooner we arrive," Meltem said, but she lingered a moment before finally turning away to return the bucket. Across the way, the travelers continued to not-so-subtly stare. Though Euren's group had not spoken loudly, it was possible their words had carried enough to be overheard.