Palatine Hall, Darnan
The three kashmari spirited Brand away in a large, opulent carriage drawn by a team of mechanical horses that ran so smoothly that, had he not seen the buildings flashing by, the gladiator would have thought they weren’t moving at all. The wide stone boulevard gave way to a narrower road lined by thick trees that loomed in the coming darkness.
“So,” Kushchai said, leaning forward to smirk at Mirane, “what will you do after you lose Navar to me?”
“Keep dreaming,” she said with a smile, “for the Navar of your dreams is the only place you’ll ever set foot in my city.”
“My gladiator hasn’t been beaten since I hired him.”
Mirane turned to Brand with a smirk. “Can you give the great and terrible Lord Kushchai an accurate preliminary assessment of the fight tomorrow?”
Brand’s mouth went suddenly dry as three pairs of kashmari eyes—silver, blue, and blazing red—looked expectantly at him. He cleared his throat.
Just tell them like it is.
“I saw Percy fight last season. He’s fast and skilled. He’s fought both the creatures of Duat’s caverns and many other gladiators, which is more than I can claim, as I’ve spent most of my life fighting men. Theoretically, that means he’ll be flexible and capable of changing tactics quickly. As Lord Fafnir pointed out, I have far more experience as a gladiator, but that also means I’ve found certain tactics that work well and I may overuse them out of habit. I think overall it’ll be an even fight.”
Mirane smirked at Kushchai. “Don’t be so certain your man here will win.”
“He’s too modest,” Kushchai said.
Jinn smiled. “No, he’s practical and professional, which is a point in his favor. Thankfully, Percy is just as sharp.”
Brand found this whole situation uncomfortable. The kashmari were arguing about his abilities almost as though he wasn’t sitting here. Jinn seemed to notice Brand’s discomfort.
“You’d better get used to this,” he said to the gladiator as the other two continued to debate. “You’re their plaything, now. If you survive tomorrow, you’ll be pampered beyond anything you’ve ever dreamed; but it does come at a price.”
Brand shrugged. “Not all that different from how Lord Fafnir treats you city lords.”
Jinn cocked his head. “You’re strangely perceptive for a human. Yes, we play the high lord’s games, and in return, we retain both our lives and the right to govern.”
The lord tilted his head ever so slightly towards Mirane. He lowered his voice to a murmur.
“Mirane hasn’t lost Navar—yet. Though it is a near thing. And that makes her especially dangerous to you. Keep your wits about you around her.”
“Aren’t you on her side?” Brand muttered back.
“None of us are on anyone else’s side. Besides, I want you to lose, not die.”
Kushchai noticed the two muttering together and said, “What are you whispering to my gladiator?”
Jinn leaned back and grinned. “I’m trying to bribe him to throw the match tomorrow, of course. What else would I be doing?”
“That’s your idea of a fair match?”
“I’m testing out his loyalty to you. A Duati would never think to betray his patron, no matter how much coin was offered.”
“And how did my man do?”
Jinn spread his hands. “Admirably, I’m sorry to say.”
“Did you hear about poor Sotol?” Mirane leaned forward to lay a bejeweled hand on Brand’s forearm, but her glittering eyes were fixed on Jinn. Brand’s heart began to beat a little faster. Jinn’s warning evaporated from his mind like raindrops in the desert.
Jinn shrugged.
“He got what he deserved. Sleeping with a human—What was he thinking? Fool.” The gray kashmari pulled out a small hand mirror and a white pen. He carefully began to draw markings on his face. They were similar to the markings Kushchai wore, though he used tick marks and dots instead of circles and lines.
“Still, it’s absolutely dreadful what Fafnir did to him, don’t you think?” Mirane pressed.
“Of course it was dreadful,” Kushchai said, “otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a punishment. The message was clear, though. Stay in line or be destroyed. The old Dragon sure keeps us on a short leash.”
Brand decided to study the ornate golden scrollwork inlaid in the door he was sitting by. If this was a short leash, he wouldn’t mind being tied down by it for the rest of his life. The tone of Kushchai’s voice was bitter, though. Perhaps theirs was a gilded cage. Mirane lifted her hand from Brand’s arm to fiddle with the pins holding her hair up on top of her head.
Remember who you are, Brand reminded himself forcefully. You are nothing to her. Just a plaything.
Mirane snatched the mirror and pen out of Jinn’s hands and began drawing on her own face. “One wonders why it’s still illegal, though. It’s been hundreds of years.”
“You’re just sore that you’ve run out of kashmari to seduce,” Kushchai said.
Mirane drew a long white line down her delicate chin. “I used to have quite the way with human males.”
Jinn snorted. “Or just males of any species.”
Mirane grinned. Brand felt his face flush slightly.
Kushchai rolled his eyes, then changed the subject. “Both of you are cowards, keeping your faces clean for the Dragon, then putting ordyeni on as soon as you get out of his sight. I’ve always worn them around him and never had a problem.”
“He likes you,” Mirane said. “Besides, that doesn’t prove he has changed his stance on ordyeni in general. Just that he tolerates them on you.”
Kushchai turned to Jinn, who shrugged and nodded his agreement. Kushchai clicked his tongue, then gestured toward Brand.
“Give him some too, while you’re at it.”
Mirane turned her attention to Brand with a mischievious grin. She stuck her tongue out between her teeth as she began to mark his face gently. He looked down and forgot to breathe for a few heartbeats. He swallowed hard and looked up again, trying to focus on her nose while breathing steadily.
“You have such lovely eyes,” she purred.
Brand’s eyes flickered to Mirane’s own eyes and marveled at how intensely blue they were, as though she had gems for irises.
Brand asked, “Why was the high lord dressed so…”
“So badly?” Kushchai finished dryly. “His Eternal Excellency, His Majesty the Dragon, the Lord of Everything doesn’t care about fashion. I’m fairly certain he’s been wearing the same five suits for the last thirty years.”
“He does have a lot to deal with besides looking good at parties,” Brand pointed out.
Kushchai snorted. “He doesn’t need time to pick out clothes; he has servants for that.”
“It’s probably just another aspect of these games he plays with us,” Mirane grumbled as she drew a line down Brand’s jaw. “Look like something the hound dragged in, get the lowly city lords to underestimate you, then cut out their hearts when they overstep.”
“No one in their right mind would overstep,” Kushchai said. “It’s not as though his love life suffers, either. The man just doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to care.”
Mirane finished her work on Brand’s face and turned away. Brand breathed again. The carriage came to a gentle rocking halt a moment later. Brand tried to look out the window to see where they were, but the sun had sunk below the trees. A little pathway lit by glowing lights twisted away into the darkness.
“There can’t be electricity out here,” Brand mumbled.
Beside him, Lady Mirane said, “Or trees in the desert, but Kushchai manages somehow.”
“Just a matter of knowing the right tree,” Kushchai said smugly as he climbed down.
Brand stepped out of the carriage and saw what he couldn’t from inside the carriage: the lit pathway led up to an enormous mansion that sprawled out in either direction. The looming walls were partially obscured by behemoth topiaries trimmed to look like slender women. Tall pillars stretched up half a dozen floors to the roof. In front of the grand wooden doors, other carriages were disgorging lords and ladies, councilmen and councilwomen, kashmari and humans, all glittering in the bright electric sconce light.
“First time?” Jinn asked.
“What?” said Brand.
“He means seeing my mansion,” Kushchai said, stepping forward to lead the way. Melodramatically, he added, “Tonight you drink with lords, Champion. Tomorrow, you’ll be a god.”
The three kashmari laughed at their little joke. Brand just felt a bit uneasy. He followed them up the steps and joined the throng entering the mansion. Kushchai hooked his arm around Brand and half dragged the gladiator towards the back of the house. The kashmari lord led him down a grand hallway lined with portraits of Kushchai that stretched to the ceiling and a row of busts of many different men and women. Brand could hear dozens of voices burbling from ahead.
They passed a large mirror on the wall and Brand caught sight of himself wearing his top hat with the kashmari ordyeni painted on his face. Mirane had placed a series of short white lines starting between his brows that went up, formed a point, and then curled down around his eyes to his jaw. Other lines went from his cheekbones down to his jaw.
The stripes of a sand tiger, he realized.
The white paint stood out sharply from the rest of his tanned brown skin and matched the streaks of white in his beard and hair. He winced. All he needed tonight was a reminder of how old he was.
Finally, they came to a wide-open kitchen crammed with more kashmari than Brand had ever seen. There were tall and slender lords and short and round ladies, and everything in between, with skin in varying shades of grays and blues and even a male with pale maroon skin.
Their clothes were finer than he had ever seen, and both sexes wore bangles, earrings, cuffs, and collars, any kind of metal or jewel that could catch the light and shatter it into a thousand pinpoints of light. The whole kitchen sparkled with shards of broken light that danced around the ceiling and walls like a twisting constellation.
Kushchai grabbed and raised Brand’s hand as someone pressed a drink into the gladiator’s other hand. The crowd grew silent.
“The Champion of Darnan!” Kushchai bellowed. He upended a glass of champagne into his mouth.
“The Champion of Darnan!” the crowd chorused. They all downed their drinks. Brand followed suit, though he winced as it burned going down. Some sort of whiskey, and not a very good one. Someone replaced Brand’s glass.
From across the room, Jinn held up the hand of another man that Brand recognized as Percy, his opponent. The man was a head shorter than Brand, but well-muscled. He had the pale skin and light hair of the people of Duat, an oddity of people stuck underground for generations, Brand supposed. A long scar rippled from his right ear down his square jawline and across his throat. His grey eyes met Brand’s and the other man raised his glass to Brand. Brand raised his glass in return as Jinn yelled,
“The Champion of Duat!”
“The Champion of Duat!” the crowd chorused again.
The second drink went down a little better because Brand was bracing for it. When he glanced over at the other gladiator, Percy was grinning and reaching for another drink.
Brand turned back to Kushchai and found Mirane pressed in close to the other city lord, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We could join our forces, you know, and beat the old windbag at his own game.”
Kushchai’s eyes traced her lips and for a moment, it looked like his hand would reach around her back to press her closer. But instead, he pried her arms from around his neck and pushed her away.
“Not with a fool like you,” he sneered. “I’ll take your city and bury you beneath it without a grave marker, whore.” Kushchai turned to Brand. “I’ve got to talk to someone,” he said as he left.
Around him, the kashmari returned to their slurred conversations.
Mirane slipped her arm into Brand’s.
“Come with me,” she said. “There’s something I’d like to show you. Something we talked about earlier.”
Brand planted his feet. Her hand tugged ineffectually against his own. She turned back to him.
“What is it?”
“The night before a gladiatorial fight in which you are the patron of my competition? A fight upon which rides the future of your city?” Brand shook his head. “What are you going to try to do to me?”
Mirane reached her free hand up to Brand’s face and stroked his beard, her eyes wide and beautiful. Brand felt as though the air had been knocked clean out of him. She seemed even more beautiful in this soft light, the fullness of her lips, the curves of her breasts and hips barely hidden by her gown.
“The High Lord would kill me if I tampered with you,” she said. “Our wager was as much oath as it is a contest. I just want to show you something I thought you’d find interesting. Nothing more. Come on.”
Brand sighed. She was right. If Fafnir loved his games as much as it appeared, he most likely wouldn’t take too kindly to one of the competitors cheating.
She gave a little tug on his hand, and this time Brand followed.
* * *
Kushchai turned away from Mirane and searched the crowd until he found B’alam Nehn leaning on a counter with a wine bottle in each hand. The fat kashmari’s pale blue cheeks were already flushed a darker blue. He was laughing merrily with another kashmari man downing shot after shot of some green liquid. The other kashmari laughed heartily one last time and then fell to the floor. Kushchai rolled his eyes and moved toward B’alam Nehn.
Kushchai hooked his arm under the elbow of B’alam Nehn and steered the kashmari out of the kitchen. The fat kashmari muttered something about missing the best part of the party but didn’t resist. Kushchai ignored him.
As they left, Kushchai thought he saw the corner of Mirane’s dress flick around a corner. He pursed his lips. He could have her for himself, he knew. She’d offered on more than one occasion, and the city lord couldn’t deny that when she was close, that was all he wanted. But each kashmari had their vices, and Mirane’s was her insatiable lust. The way she threw herself at anything male that moved irritated Kushchai. Kushchai hoped he never had to mingle with whatever miserable wretch of a kashmari she’d managed to snare this time.
Kushchai steered B’alam Nehn into a little room down the hallway. A single desk sat in the center of the windowless and bare-walled room. Kushchai shoved the wine bibber into the chair and spun it to face him.
“Lord Kushchai, whatever I have done to displease you—”
“You tried to kill my champion. Three days before the most important gladiatorial contest of his career. In my city, while you are a guest, no less.”
“I had no intention of killing him,” the soaked kashmari blubbered. “He’s Cadmus Brand. I couldn’t kill him even if I sent an army of machine suits at him. I just wanted to rough him up a bit, you know, after what he did…”
Kushchai kicked the chair over. B’alam Nehn slammed to the flagstone floor. One of the wine bottles shattered and sent red droplets flying across the room. A large piece of jewelry skittered across the floor. B’alam Nehn’s hand was cut and bleeding badly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He scrambled to his feet, cowering behind the fallen seat of the chair as Kushchai stepped forward to loom over him.
“You should be very glad indeed that it was Cadmus Brand you tried to ‘rough up.’ If he’d been killed or seriously injured, you’d have wished you were the one who was dead.”
“Yes, m’lord,” the kashmari groveled.
Kushchai grabbed B’alam Nehn by the throat, his angular face centimeters away from the fat kashmari’s bulbous nose. The city lord could see a purple vein throbbing in B’alam Nehn’s temple, but the other kashmari didn’t squirm or struggle in Kushchai’s grasp. Instead, B’alam Nehn kept his eyes averted.
Kushchai’s voice was soft, but his lip curled up over his elongated canines. “Don’t cross me again, B’alam Nehn.”
In one smooth move, the city lord dropped B’alam Nehn from one hand, grabbed the intact wine bottle with the other, and smashed it across B’alam Nehn’s temple. The kashmari crumpled to the floor.
Kushchai spun on his heel and left, not bothering to watch the ethereal black mist rising from B’alam Nehn’s body. Just before he left, however, a glint from the floor caught his eye. The Darnanian city lord knelt and picked up the piece of jewelry that B’alam Nehn had dropped.
It was a large crystalline seed wrapped in delicate little golden vines. Kushchai could just make out a slender amethyst seedling coiled at its heart. A faint purple light suffusing the seed pulsed slowly.
“Where did you get this?” Kushchai whispered, entranced. But B’alam Nehn could no longer answer. His blood seeped across the floor.
Kushchai drew a handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wrapped the seed. He pocketed it and walked out, leaving the dead kashmari splayed out on the flagstones behind him.
Just outside the door, a servant flagged the city lord down.
“Sir, a message came for you while you were otherwise engaged. It’s from the ambassador of Gresh.”
Kushchai took the offered paper and read it. His eyes widened, and then a grin crept over his face.
“Notify the ambassador that I will personally ensure the capture of this criminal. Then take this to Captain Mej of the city guard. Tell Mej that once he finds this man, he is to notify me before they take him into custody. And make sure Mej knows that this…Erekir…is not to be harmed in any way. No tampering, no possessions.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
* * *
Brand followed Mirane out of the kitchen and up the stairs into a little drawing room. Mirane led him over to a large glass display case and pointed inside at what to Brand’s eyes was obviously a pharmakon’s alembic. It was very similar to the alchemical still in Brand’s secret lab, of an older design and dusty from time but very much intact.
“What is it?” he asked, feigning mild interest.
“A pharmakon’s tool,” she replied, placing a hand on his arm and slowly stroking it, sending shivers up his arm.
In a low voice, Mirane said, “Kushchai and Jinn won’t ever talk about alchemy or pharmakons because they think saying it out loud will make them real again, but they’re just as fascinated as I am. We used to hunt them. Those two fossils will never admit it, but to hunt a pharmakon—that was living. I’ve never felt more alive than when I’d finally get the pharmakon in my hands and squeeze the life out of him.”
Brand nodded and gave an impressed grunt, not sure how to respond.
Does she know? How could she know? Brand nervously downed his latest glass of liquid. He coughed. “That wasn’t whiskey.”
Mirane laughed, and in his ears, her voice sounded like magic pouring through a string of bells. She brushed his hair gently out of his eyes and slowly stroked his face and ran her fingers through his beard.
He tensed, but her gentle strokes turned his mind to mush. She moved closer, a slight smile playing across her lips. Her breath smelled of spice, warm and slightly musky.
Brand tried to rally his thoughts to come up with something intelligent to say, but all he could come up with was, “Too bad all the pharmakons are gone, then, huh?”
Mirane arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow over a jewel blue eye. “What?”
“I mean…because you can’t…can’t hunt them,” Brand said hastily.
Mirane’s lips curled up again, a sly eagerness settling in her eyes.
“I have other things to keep me busy,” she purred as she reached forward and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Uh…This is not a great idea,” he said slowly, more as a token statement. The warmth of her body pressing against his skin was intoxicating.
She doesn’t know what you are. You’d be dead if she knew, he reasoned. Just relax. How many other times in your life are you going to be with a woman like this?
Alarm bells were going off in the back of his mind, yelling at him how this could get him killed, but he shoved it into a dark corner and locked it away as he reached up and cradled her chin in his palm.
“No one has to know,” she whispered as though reading his mind. Their lips met, and he stopped trying to think at all.
