The Invisible Hands - Part 1: Gambit (59 page)

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have to, eh… clean up. The other one comes with me to a place where

I’ll give him the rest of your payment. Acceptable?”

“Acceptable,” Thoraz agreed.

“I’m a professional soldier,” Boynar said. “I’ve seen action.”

“I thought so,” the thug replied. “The Zinchara?”

Boynar nodded.

Laurich had prepared thoroughly for his last evening in Nira. Only twenty-one, he owed his position as junior assistant to His Excellency the Ambassador to his pedigree, which was far superior to that of fat Heemar, he reckoned himself. He wasn’t wrong, as his family belonged to a minor branch of a noble family that had written several pages in the history of the last five centuries of Lorsanthia. He had arrived, straight out of the Academy at Tyleme eight months ago. In the beginning, the town had looked a decrepit heap of rubble compared to the Lorsanthian capital with its broad avenues, large, open squares and marble wherever the eye looked. Nira had narrow, filthy streets, most without covering of any kind. People threw their offal, dirty water, and worse out of the windows right onto the street, with barely a yelled warning.

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But within the week he had found a redeeming quality to the garrison town. His name was Pendrick. He was nineteen years old and most excitingly, he was blond. High blond, yellow golden blond, like young wheat. For Lorsanthians the color had a strange, voluptuous attraction, due to its rarity and its association with the noble metal.

Laurich himself had black hair with a dark blue sheen, like most of his compatriots, and a light olive skin. The curls were artificial, the straight, prominent nose and the full lips were not. Neither were the pitch black eyes. He was slim with long, lanky limbs. An easy smile in an oval shaped, handsome face completed the charming picture.

He had taken a perfumed bath and laid out his best clothes, refined but subdued according to Lorsanthian standards, while pondering the situation of the ambassadorial delegation with mixed feelings. Fat Heemar — damn him — had ruined things completely, he estimated.

Through his bungling, what should have been a peaceful annexation of a barbarian kingdom now would probably turn into a war. A short war, for sure, but still a war. He had to find a way to disassociate himself from this fool. For his career, certainly, but also for his plans with the delectable, fuckable Pendrick.

He had made Pendrick’s acquaintance returning from a routine mission as a glorified messenger boy. Laurich had seen a sweet looking, yet incongruently sturdy blond guy enter a tavern in a side alley near the main northern gate. The Tooth and Nail was dark inside, but for Laurich the blond hair had acted like a beacon. Barely an hour later they lay together in a not too clean bed, two floors higher. They were both young, and neither the difference in nationality nor the strained relations between Ximerion and Lorsanthia seemed to bother either of them. Laurich liked to dominate his sexual conquests, and Pendrick liked — needed — to be fucked. It was almost symbolic for the future relations of their nations, Laurich thought.

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They kept seeing each other on a regular basis. Outwardly, it was

strictly a loose relationship between equal and willing partners.

Laurich hid his possessive jealousy as well as he could, always present— ing his charming, easy-going side. But from early on, he was determined that Pendrick must be his and his alone. In the quite literal sense.

If only that old goat of an ambassador had handled things with a modicum of skill, Ximerion would have become a satrapy, and Laurich would have been one of the most important men in it as an assistant to the High Ambassador. With Lorsanthian law superseding the local regulations it would have been easy to buy Pendrick from his parents.

Cheap, and for his own protection, of course. He would have him cas— trated at Tyleme, by specialists, so as not to blemish him. According to Lorsanthian lore, it would preserve his youth some years longer, and anyway, he didn’t need balls just to be fucked, did he?

It could still happen, after a quick and victorious war, and provided Laurich played his cards right and managed to attach himself to whomever would replace Heemar. For it was doubtful that, after this diplomatic faux pas, the Purple Room would appoint him as supreme supervisor of the new satrapy.

It was with all this jumbling through his head and the prospect of what would be the provisional last night with the highly desirable Pendrick, that he left the large house that served as the Lorsanthian Embassy in Nira. He turned into a dark, deserted street on his way to the quarter of the Northern Gate and saw a man smiling at him. Then all went black before his eyes.

He hadn’t even had time to draw his poisoned dagger.

Boynar hadn’t wasted his time in Nira. Or around Nira for that matter. On one of his reconnaissance trips he had found a little abandoned farm. Originally it had probably stood in the middle of fields, surrounded by a vegetable garden, but since it had been deserted a 50
nearby wood had encroached upon it. The house and an adjoining

barn were now surrounded by trees. As it lay a few miles from the Northern Highway nobody ever went there. Which had given him the opportunity to prepare a few things during the day without being hindered or being interrupted.

The main gates of Nira remained open during the night in times of relative calm. Private merchant caravans arrived at all hours, and sometimes they left Nira late in the evening as well, to be in time for markets in neighboring small towns. The covered mule-drawn wagon, with Boynar and Thoraz on the seat, and his two companions in the back, didn’t draw any suspicious looks from the soldiers at the gate.

Laurich was tucked away, bound up tightly, gagged and still unconscious, beneath a cheap carpet. The soldiers didn’t even come out of their guard house.

“This place, it is far?” Thoraz asked once they were half a mile outside Nira.

“About an hour and a half’s ride, I guess,” Boynar answered.

They remained silent for the rest of the journey.

Laurich regained consciousness with a shock when a bucket of cold water was thrown over him. He was lying on the ground. The first thing he noticed was the smell of decaying wood and old straw. He sat half upright. There were ropes around his wrists but they didn’t seem to impede his movements too much. With his eyes he followed them upwards to two pulleys, attached to a traverse beam. He sat in the middle of what appeared to be an old barn. Then he saw the four men.

On a sign from one of them, another one took him under his arms and helped him stand upright. The third began pulling at the end of the ropes and he felt his arms being lifted upward, higher and higher. He had to stretch himself. Still higher the rope was pulled, until he had to stand, first on his toes, then on the tips of them, barely managing to 50
keep his balance. His toes, his bare toes, he now noticed. Only then it

dawned on him that, except for his silken loincloth, he was naked.

Every fiber of his being revolted against this demeaning treatment.

He, Laurich Meerdach, of a junior branch of the august Meerdach-Li, a Lorsanthian noble, an accredited junior diplomat attached to the Embassy of His Divinity was treated as a pleasure slave.

Laurich wasn’t shy, nor was he a prude, but being a Lorsanthian, it was ingrained in him that only slaves were ever seen in public almost nude. His brain seemed still to be sluggish. What had happened? He tried to remember, but the last thing that came to mind was that he had left the Embassy for a farewell meeting with his slave-to-be Pendrick. Slave-to-be. Pleasure slave. Had he fallen in the hands of slavers? It was the most likely explanation. If true, it was both an outrage and a comfort. If they meant to sell him, they weren’t going to harm him. They weren’t going to damage their wares, he corrected himself bitterly. They might sample them, though, he realized with renewed horror. His mind started working frantically. Then it occurred to him that maybe they didn’t know just who they had dared lay their dirty paws on. He peered into the half darkness ahead. Two men stood there, immobile, visible only thanks to two sputtering torches attached to nearby beams. They hadn’t helped manhandle him. They had to be the leaders. Although he began to feel tired from the strain of having to stand on the tips of his toes, he mustered all the arrogant self-consciousness, both inbred, a result of belonging to an ancient aristocratic family of a civilized, mighty nation, as well as acquired in the Academy, the highest and very exclusive schooling institution for the well born.

“I am Laurich Meerdach,” he said, trying not to betray his fears. “I am a diplomat attached to the Embassy of His Divinity, Vartoligor XIII, King of Kings. As such my person is inviolate. Who are you and what am I doing here? Answer me and I will consider not lodging an official complaint with your authorities.”

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Both men just smiled. One of them came toward him.

“I understand that the high king has revoked your lot’s ambassadorial status, and that you are to leave Nira tomorrow, and Ximerion within a week. If you fail to comply you will be in fact an outlaw at the mercy of anyone who can lay hands on you.” Boynar grinned. “We may have been a few days early, but who is going to care, you think?”

Laurich let the words sink in, and decided to tackle the problem another way.

“Listen,” he said, now in as reasonable a tone as possible, “I understand I’m in your hands. You call the shots. You’re probably out to make a profit. Whatever you think you might get for me, I can match three times. Four times. In gold, in precious stones — whatever you want. Without all the hassle of having to transport me and find a buy— er. Untie me, give me back my clothes, and let’s negotiate this like civilized people.”

He saw his mistake immediately. The man looked him over as if he was seeing him for the first time. He cringed while the dog was inspecting his bare feet with their manicured nails, his epilated legs and thighs. He was letting his lowborn eyes feast on Laurich’s slim waist and taut belly muscles. When finally he took the young diplomat’s delicately oval-shaped face in one hand, and turned it into the light of one of the nearby torches, Laurich knew that this was the first time the barbarian had considered him in just that way.

“Yes, I can see why you would think something like that,” Boynar drawled. “You’re first class merchandise. You would be the most sought after whore in some brothel in Soranza, Torantall even. At least for a few weeks.”

The mere mention of that possibility made Laurich spit with rage in Boynar’s face. The Northerner backhanded him four times, hard, in quick succession. Blood dribbled out of one corner of Laurich’s mouth.

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“Mind your manners, young barbarian,” Boynar said, while he

wiped off the spit with the same hand. “You seem to misunderstand the predicament you’re in. Let me enlighten you. I saw you enter the fort in the retinue of Drevau Heemar. You are young, yet you were obviously not a servant or some other inconsequential attendant. I figured you must be the youngest member on his staff. I don’t want you to pay for your freedom in gold. What I want is information.

Thanks to some young Ximerionian nobles with more beer in their belly than brains in their head, I already know everything that was said during the audience. What I want to know is what your portly boss is going to recommend to his masters.”

Even under the dancing light of the torches, and despite Laurich’s olive tinted skin, Boynar could see the young man had paled considerably.

“I… I don’t know,” he stuttered, not so much out of stubbornness as out of terror. Death Without End. That’s what they had taught as— piring diplomats at the Academy of Tyleme. Any failure to maintain the most strict confidentiality about even the most minute details bore the punishment of Death Without End. Regardless of rank, birth, age, or years of faithful, unblemished service. They had told him many stories of men who had risen to the most exalted positions, only to be brought down by a minor indiscretion, and made to suffer for years before finally being allowed to die, just a sexless rump with a head.

The vile treatments, administered by the most lowborn, primitive brutes, bore no description. Anything, literally anything was better than running the risk of sooner or later falling into the hands of Lorsanthian authorities and being known as, or even being suspected of having been loose-lipped.

He flinched when again he was backhanded four times in quick succession. It didn’t change his resolve to remain silent.

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“Don’t lie to me, young man,” Boynar said, barely breathing

harder.

Laurich gave him an imploring look.

“You don’t understand,” he pleaded. “I can’t tell you anything.

Even telling you I don’t know anything worthwhile is putting my life at a horrible, horrible risk.”

Boynar turned around, and gave Thoraz a nod. In his turn, Thoraz gave his two henchmen, who were standing behind the young Lorsanthian, a sign.

One of them came in front of Laurich, and with one gesture tore off his loincloth. The thug grinned, showing his teeth. For Laurich what was happening to him was unthinkable. He was a Lorsanthian of the highest birth and rank, and now he stood completely naked, his private parts bared, stared at by primitive barbarians who weren’t fit to kiss his boots. His tied up arms prevented him from even using his hands to cover himself.

“You filthy dog,” he bit at the man, anger and outrage mingled with fear and shame.

“Quiet, boy,” the thug said, unperturbed.

With a big smile he slapped his full open hand on Laurich’s member. The young Lorsanthian yelped in pain. The thug looked him deep in the eyes, as if saying ‘And what are you going to do about it?’ and squeezed his testicles in an iron grip. Tears sprang to Laurich’s eyes.

“Stop, please, stop,” he begged, although the man had already let go. It finally became clear to him that his situation was hopeless. Not only had these barbarians bared him, they even had dared touch him.

He had fallen into the hands of uncivilized brutes who knew neither decency nor shame, and who would not recoil to inflict all sorts of indignities upon him. As if to prove him right, the man in front of him made a sign to the one still standing behind him.