“We are honored, your Majesty,” Inos said frostily.
Queen Rasha’s dark eyes narrowed. “So you should be. I do not recall a Queen Inosolan? Krasnegar? Goblin country?”
Princess Kadolan said, “My niece has just lost her father, King Holindarn. Today? I suppose it’s tomorrow now—just yesterday.”
The sorceress sneered at Inos. “And you inherited a magic casement, so the first thing you wanted to do was to play with it?”
“I was desperate!” Inos shouted. “Imperial troops have seized my kingdom, the people are on the brink of civil war, and Kalkor is going to invade as soon as the ice goes!”
Sultana Rasha’s exquisite eyebrows rose again. “Kalkor?”
“The Thane of Gark.”
“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” Now she was certainly intrigued. “And what is the imperor’s interest in a flyspeck fiefdom like Krasnegar? That doesn’t sound like Emshandar. His new marshal, perhaps? He seeks to provoke the jotnar?”
“I don’t think the imperor even knows his troops are here. The proconsul in Pondague made a deal—”
Inos stopped abruptly. Rap wondered why; he was having great trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. The sorceress was taking up far too much of his attention—the diamonds twinkling below her gorgeous earlobes, the smooth perfection of her arm. Funny how at first he’d mistakenly thought her arms were draped in sleeves! The effort of not using his farsight on her was making his head throb, and yet he hardly needed it, for her hot, ruddy-hued skin seemed to glow through the gauzy stuff of her draperies.
Rasha strolled toward him, but her attention was on Inos. “A deal? Don’t lie to me, girl. I can read your mind if I wish, or cast a truth spell on you. I prefer not to—it takes all the fun out of things. What sort of deal?”
For a moment Inos and Rasha stood eye to eye in silent challenge. They were about the same height, the same age—but how had Rap ever believed that Inos was beautiful? How plain and dull she seemed, compared to the other girl’s radiance! How weary and bedraggled! Her grip on Rap’s hand grew very tight, then she dropped her gaze.
“I have a distant cousin—or great-great-aunt, or some such relation—the dowager duchess of Kinvale. She wants to marry me to her son. He has a claim to my throne, if a woman cannot inherit.”
“So!” The sultana beamed. “And can a woman inherit?”
“I think so!” Inos said angrily. “My father said so! By the laws of the Impire I could.”
“But Kalkor disagrees, so the imps want to block the jotnar? Well, well!” Young queen Rasha’s smile was delectable, yet sinister enough to stir the hair on the back of Rap’s neck. “Politics is a tiresome men’s game, but sometimes we poor, feeble women are forced to play a hand or two, just to protect our interests.”
“You will help me?” Inos exclaimed.
“We’ll see,” the sorceress said darkly.
“I shall need to know a little more. ” She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Sagorn, standing stiffly at the end of the line. “Men can be so obnoxious at times…”
She frowned as if puzzled and sauntered over toward him. Rap had never seen a woman move with such grace. Even without his farsight he could detect the glory of her long legs moving within the filmy robe, and he caught glimpses of tiny silver sandals. Oh, those hips! Of course this was sorcery at work. No woman should be able to raise his heart pound like this just by walking across a floor. She had not looked like this when—but he couldn’t recall what she had looked like when she first appeared. It was how she looked now that mattered. Oh, wonder of womanhood! Oh, vision of all man’s desire! Sorcery curdling his brains—dangerous! He knew it, knew he was helpless against it. She was turning him into a helpless slave, a human jelly. All other thoughts had fled his mind.
Inos wrenched her hand loose from his sweaty grip and he barely noticed.
Sagorn straightened up and licked his lips. “Would you turn down the intensity a little, ma’am?” he mumbled. “It’s very hard on the arteries at my age.”
“But what a wonderful way to die!” She laughed and reached up to stroke his cheek with a teasing finger. Rap felt fires of insane jealousy leap through him like lightning bolts.
Sagorn moaned—and was the much-too-handsome Andor.
Queen Rasha sprang back, raising a hand as if to strike. For a bewildering fraction of a second, Rap imagined a glimpse of a heavy, middle-aged woman in a shabby brown wrap, with unkempt gray hair and bare feet, with wrinkles and sagging cheeks. Then the delusion was gone, and the glorious Queen Rasha was there again, radiant in gossamer and pearl, studying Andor in languid amusement.
With hair in disarray, in a gown too large for him, Andor was clutching his left arm, whose sleeve was already darkening with blood, yet he contrived to bow gracefully nonetheless. “Oh, yes!” he said. “Exquisite! Majesty, how may I serve you?”
Queen Rasha nodded to acknowledge the bow, regarding him with some curiosity. “A sequential spell? Fascinating! And well done, too—a very sharp transition. Can it truly be a matched set? Let’s see, the old one would have been the scholar—”
“And I your devoted slave.”
“Of course a lover,” she said curtly, seemingly more to herself than to Andor. Before he could say more she cut him off with a snap of her fingers.
And he had gone. In his place was Darad, huge and ugly, his head still dribbling blood from Rap’s chair-work. He howled, clasping a hand to the eye that Little Chicken had injured. Andor’s blood—and now Darad’s own—had now soaked through the left sleeve of the robe, and his sudden move produced a ripping noise from an overstretched shoulder.
“The fighter!” The sorceress pulled a face and snapped her fingers again.
The gown seemed to fall inward, around the slight form of the flaxen-haired Jalon. His dreamy blue eyes widened at the sight of Rasha. “The artist, ma’am,” he said, bowing. “Your beauty shall evermore be on my lips and my song raised in your—”
“Some other day.” Sultana Rasha snapped fingers a third time, and the brown robe collapsed yet again. All that was visible of the latest occupant was a narrow, dark face peering out from under a tangle of lank black hair—a small and very ordinary impish youth, his mouth and eyes now stretched wide in terror. With a wail, he tried to fall on his knees before the sorceress, but his feet were as immovable as Rap’s, and he succeeded only in dropping to a squat. He raised clasped hands in supplication. The sound of chattering teeth filled the chamber.
“Well!” The sultana appeared to be less antagonistic than she had been toward his predecessors. “Scholar, lover, soldier, artist—and you must be the financier of the group?”
The youth wailed, big eyes peering up at her from a nest of heaped robe. “I mean no harm, your M-M-Majesty!”
“But you’re a bazaar fingersmith if I ever saw one!”
He whimpered. “Just crusts, lady—a few crusts, when I was hungry.”
This was the fifth member of the gang? Thinal, the thief whom Sagorn had called their leader, and Andor’s brother. A less memorable face Rap had never seen. It was pocked, moreover, with oozing acne pustules and marred by unsightly tufts of hair. No one would willingly look even once at Thinal; he would disappear instantly into any crowd in any city of the Impire. Yet the king had told Inos she could trust him!
The sorceress nodded approvingly. “Very fine work. Who did it?”
“Or-Or-Orarinsagu, may it please your Omnipotence.”
“A long time ago, then?”
“Over a c-c-century, Majesty.” For a moment the teeth chattered again, and then the little thief managed to blurt out a plea: “M-M-Majesty? We c-c-crave release…”