Arthes: The Emperor’s Palace
Liane smiled for the emperor as the sentinels who had searched her so thoroughly closed the door behind her, leaving her alone with the ruler of Columbyana. She had long ago learned to ignore the queasiness that roiled in the pit of her stomach whenever she looked upon him. There had been a time when she’d feared this man above all others, but now she felt only revulsion and a strange kind of loyalty. Lust, too, played a part in the sensations in the pit of her soul. She’d tried to ignore that aspect of the relationship, but Liane didn’t believe in lying to herself. She lied to everyone around her by necessity; she could at least be honest within.
The emperor could have killed her years ago, or worse, banished her to Level Thirteen. But he had not. He had cherished her, in the only way he knew how. He had allowed her freedoms she had never expected when she’d been captured.
The imperial bedchamber on Level One of the palace was the most lavish of all the rooms. Emperor Jahn Sebestyen Alixandyr Beckyt enjoyed his comforts, large and small, and his bedchamber was no exception. The ceilings were twelve feet high and painted like a night sky, dark blue with silver stars and a golden moon so that Sebestyen could lie on his back and pretend that he was brave enough to leave the protection of the palace. The walls were papered in swirling blue and gold and the furnishings in this extravagant bedchamber were fit for a man of royal heritage, with gleaming dark wood and elegantly embroidered blue fabric the color of an evening sky. A sweet scent, the emperor’s favorite, filled the air as fragrant oils simmered in ceramic bowls set in all four comers of the room. The only art on the walls was a flattering portrait of the emperor himself, painted just last year.
A large bed draped in bright blue fabric dominated the room, shimmering with artificial light from above. Tall, fat columns rose at each corner of the bed, which was adorned with silky pillows in all shapes and sizes. The emperor, draped in a long-sleeved, floor length, high-necked crimson robe, reclined upon the bed with his head propped in one hand as he studied her.
Sebestyen, Emperor of Columbyana, was a tall man, slender but not thin, elegant in the right light but certainly not pretty. His face was too angular to be called pretty, though it was striking and masculine and memorable. Yes, he was definitely memorable.
His blue eyes had the ability to see right through a woman, and there had not been a night in the past sixteen years that Liane had not seen or dreamed of or remembered the power of those eyes.
Long, well-shaped bare feet peeked out from beneath the hem of his robe. Beneath the concealing garment he didn’t sport bulky muscles like some of his soldiers, but he was well built and was stronger than he looked.
“Is it done?” he asked softly.
“Of course.” Liane stepped slowly toward the pale man. Like him, she wore a robe of deep red. The full skirt danced around her legs as she walked to him. The simple robe was a hard-earned symbol of her station in this palace. After years of being a slave and one of many concubines, she had clawed her way into a position of power. A position unheard of for a woman such as herself.
“Did he confess to his crimes against me?”
“Of course not.” They never did. Only a fool would confess to conspiring against the emperor. In this case she had not even asked for an admission of guilt. The evidence that had been presented by Minister Sulyen, the emperor’s Minister of Defense, had been quite damning. The Minister of Finance had been meeting secretly with representatives from one of the largest clans in Tryfyn, the country to the west of Columbyana. The leader of this particular clan had been anxious to expand into Columbyana for years, but always stopped short of declaring war. Like the rebels who were led by that upstart Arik, the broken clans of Tryfyn were a mere annoyance. The emperor feared a rebellion from within much more than he feared the rebels or the Tryfynians.
Behind the bed upon which Emperor Sebestyen reclined there were heavy curtains that appeared to completely cover a large window, but there was no opening to the outside world there or anywhere else on Level One. They were ten stories off the ground, here in the highest level of the massive and grand Imperial Palace, and yet on this level there was not a single opening to the outside world. The original windows on Level One, as well as a skylight in the main ballroom, had all been filled with mortar and brick long ago.
Shortly after the emperor had taken his throne at the age of thirteen, a seer had told him that when the sun touched his face it would signal the beginning of the end for him. That warm touch would foretell the end of his rule, his happiness, and his life. Sebestyen might’ve arrogantly dismissed the prediction, but since the wizard Thayne had correctly forecast Emperor Nechtyn’s demise only a few months earlier, he took the warning seriously. It was for that reason that the man on the bed was so pale. He hadn’t seen the sun in seventeen years, and he left the windowless Level One rarely—and even then, only well after sundown.
“Did he beg for his life?”
Sebestyen always wanted details, and Liane always gave them to him. She offered him a mix of fact and fiction, since her simple methods were not diabolical enough to satisfy the emperor. She did her job and she was good at it, but she saw no reason to make her prey suffer simply for the emperor’s entertainment. Her victims had made the mistake of annoying their leader, either personally or politically, and they had to pay the price. But she refused to toy with them.
Liane didn’t feel guilty about her place in the government of Columbyana. Death was preferable to Level Thirteen, the only other option for Emperor Sebestyen’s enemies.
She sat on the edge of the bed. “What do you want to know, my lord?”
“You’re to call me Sebestyen when we’re alone,” he said, reaching out to touch her face. His fingers were unnaturally cold for such a warm night. “How many times must I tell you so? I want to hear you say my name.”
“Sebestyen,” she said obediently, allowing the syllables to roll across her tongue as if she could taste them.
He rewarded her with a smile. “I want to know everything. Every detail. Every word. But first, take off that gown.”
She stood and slowly unfastened the garment, which was all she wore. The fat knotted buttons slipped through her fingers, from the top fastening at her throat to the one just past her waist. When that was done she shrugged the heavy robe off and let it fall to the stone floor.
There had been a time when she’d cowered as she stood naked before this man, when she’d shuddered and shivered and prayed for death at his touch. But no more. Over the years she had learned that her body was just a tool, like the knives she wielded at the emperor’s order. No man made the woman she had become fearful. She cowered for no one.
Liane was a year older than the emperor, and the eldest of the concubines at his command. But her body was firm, her breasts high, her waist small. There was a hint of honey brown in her skin; even when she remained indoors she did not lose all the color from her flesh. As he looked at her, she knew the man liked what his eyes beheld.
One day he would trust her enough to allow her into this room with one of her knives in her hand, and when he made that mistake she would kill him. Not quickly, the way she had earlier assassinated the minister who had betrayed Sebestyen with seditious words, but slowly. Painfully.
But that would not happen tonight.
She crawled onto the bed and reached out to unfasten his robe. Sebestyen had a dusting of dark hair on his chest, and that only made his paleness more striking. Even though his skin had not seen the sun in years, it was healthy and stretched over nicely honed muscles that hinted at his strength. His face was not traditionally beautiful, but his body was everything a woman could ask for. Some nights that fact made her job easier. Other nights, it did not help matters at all.
She traced a muscle on his torso with one finger. "He thought I was an imperial gift,” she whispered as her hand slipped lower, delving inside the confines of the robe, “and when I entered his private room through the secret passageway he welcomed me with open arms.”
Sebestyen grinned. “He did not even think to search you, did he?”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“Foolish mistake.”
The man Liane despised took a handful of her hair in his fist and pulled her closer, so that her face was very near to his. Their noses almost touched. He held her so tightly her scalp stung, but she did not cry out. His dominant blue eyes locked onto hers, as if he thought he could hold her by his gaze alone. “Did he run his fat fingers through your hair?”
“No,” she said calmly. “That is a privilege reserved for you and you alone, Sebestyen.” He always insisted that she wear her hair down, completely unfettered, because he was fascinated by the mixture of gold and brown strands and the way they wove together. No other woman in his palace had such hair. He had commented upon it the first time he’d seen her. She tried very hard not to think of that time.
His own hair was a thick, very dark brown, without a hint of curl. It was slightly longer than shoulder length and usually worn loose, as it was tonight. When he pulled it back into a queue, like so many of the gentlemen did these days, it accentuated the strength of his face and made him look harsher.
“Did you give my traitorous minister a taste of the emperor’s favorite concubine before you killed him?”
“Just a taste,” she whispered. It was a lie, but it was the lie Sebestyen wanted to hear. She’d killed the poor man quickly, before he’d even had time to shed his crimson robe.
She wished for her knife now, but Sebestyen, for all his words about her being his favorite, did not trust her. He did not trust anyone, which was the only reason he’d lived so long. But one day...
“He had wanted you for years,” Sebestyen said absently. “On more than one occasion, he asked for permission to have you summoned to his bedchamber.”
Liane shuddered. No wonder the minister had smiled so widely when she’d appeared before him. “And you refused him?”
“I do not share you with just anyone, Liane. He did not deserve you. He did not earn you. Not until tonight. I almost hate it that you gave him a moment of joy before you dispatched him.”
“It was only a moment,” she whispered.
He smiled. For some sick reason it pleased him to think of her roles in this palace combined into one moment. Sex and death; love and hate.
At Sebestyen’s command she removed his robe, slowly sliding the fine fabric off his sinewy arms, working the crimson from beneath his body and tossing it to the floor where it landed beside her own discarded garment.
When they were both naked she touched his body as he liked to be touched. She caressed his skin, gently at first and then not so gently. She raked her fingernails easily down his chest, careful not to mark his skin, then traced the line of dark hair from his navel to his genitals.
She stroked her palms over his muscled thighs, her thumbs teasing the sensitive flesh at his inner thighs until his eyes were hooded with desire and his penis was fully erect. Only then did she wrap her fingers around him and stroke the hard, hot flesh.
He had given her as a favor to many men in the years since she’d been captured, so she knew not all males were like the Emperor Sebestyen, in looks or in temperament. Some were pretty, others ugly but content. Some were stout or terribly thin, while others had bodies that rivaled this one. Some laughed in bed, while others were very serious about the task of making love. They were not all cruel.
And still, she hated them all. Some more than others, but even those few she called friends sometimes roused hatred within her. She’d turned that hate to her advantage, learning to use pleasure to control the men who took her to their beds. Learning to pretend that she wanted to be spread and crushed and helpless beneath them. The old crones and the Masters who kept and trained the concubines who occupied Level Three had taught her well.
Sex was power. Pleasure was a weapon.
“Did he scream?” Sebestyen asked as he yanked her up against him so that her breasts were pressed against his hard chest.
Again he pulled too hard, but Liane did not utter a sound of complaint. She just smiled. “Yes, my lord, he screamed.”
“Did you scream, Liane?”
She licked her lips and lied again. “I did.”
Sebestyen did not kiss. Not ever. He found it undignified and beneath him. Liane had been kissed before, by the Masters employed to train the emperor’s concubines and by men Sebestyen had sent her to as a reward for faithful service or simply to learn if they talked in their sleep. Not the ones he asked her to kill, but the others—the ones she was simply ordered to amuse. Once or twice those kisses had been pleasant, on other occasions they had been repulsive. On some days she longed for a skilled kiss, but not from this man. She was glad she didn’t have to endure those lips against hers.
The emperor did not kiss even his own wife. Then again, he rarely touched the empress at all. The Empress Rikka resided in her own quarters on Level Five. Sebestyen had the newest empress brought to him on occasion in an attempt to sire an heir, but thus far he had been unsuccessful. If Rikka didn’t find herself with child soon, she’d follow in the footsteps of the others. All the way down to Level Thirteen. It would be a devastating fall.
Sebestyen forced Liane onto her back with a twist and a shove, and she laid her head upon a shimmering blue pillow and made up a story about the assassination. Something sufficiently sordid and violent to please the emperor.
He responded as he always did, caressing her as she told the tale. Listening attentively and touching her. Arousing her.
“Did you tell him, while he was inside you, that I ordered his death?”
“Of course, my lord,” she whispered.
“Sebestyen,” he commanded. “When we are in my bed I don’t want to be emperor. Say it.”
“Sebestyen,” she said softly.
“Did he have his pleasure before you dispatched him?”
“No. I didn’t fancy catching his seed. Only yours, Sebestyen.”
“Do you love me, Liane?” he asked, taking one of her wrists in his hand and squeezing tight. Too tight.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before answering. “No.”
He grinned widely. “That’s why you are my favorite. I have many women on Level Three, all of them younger than you, some of them prettier than you, all of them trained in the ways of carnal pleasure and anxious to please me. If I asked them if they loved me they would say yes without pause. And yet I crave you, Liane. Perhaps because you’re more like me than anyone else. You’re ruthless and passionate, cold and hot.”
She wanted to scream I am not like you! But she didn’t. To show emotion in Sebestyen’s presence would be a mistake. If she showed emotion as the others sometimes did, he would grow tired of her and she’d lose her place on Level One. She wasn’t finished here, not yet.
She reached down to grab him once again, to caress him with fingers that had been taught how to touch, how to arouse. “Love is for the weak. Do you think me weak, Sebestyen?”
“Never.”
“Good.” She licked her lips as she stroked his hard length. “I am not a girl who will fall in love because you have a prick and know how to use it. I am a woman who has become a soldier because you asked it of me, and I fight in your name. I kill in your name. I do as you bid me, here in your bed and elsewhere.”
The emperor rolled atop her and spread her legs wide with his knee. His breathing came hard now; his face was flushed.
“You are a soldier, Liane. My soldier. Tonight you have done as I commanded, and as always you were faultless in the execution. What do you ask as your reward?” His voice was gruff, his eyes so deeply hooded they were almost closed.
Liane gave the answer that was expected of her. “Only you, Sebestyen. I want only you.”
He filled her roughly and quickly, and she closed her eyes. She hated the Emperor Sebestyen. Despised him to the pit of her soul. But she had learned long ago that she couldn’t fool him. Not here in his bed. She had faked her pleasure once, and he’d known. He’d hit her across the face before sending her back to Level Three, and it had been months before he requested her again. It was then that she had learned how strong he was, in spite of his slender build. It had been many years, but she had not forgotten.
She could not be caught in a lie. Not now, not when she was so close. He did not trust her, but she was as close to him as any minister or general or priest. She was closer than most. When things went bad for him—and that would happen, sooner or later—she would be here. She would be the one he turned to in troubled times. And when he did, she’d be ready.
For now, she turned her mind to other matters. While Sebestyen moved inside and above her, while he touched her as intimately as was possible for a man of his kind, while they gasped for breath and began to sweat and reached for the ultimate in physical pleasure...
Liane thought of the woman she might’ve been if she’d never been captured. She thought of the husband she might’ve had, the children she might’ve carried, the simple home in which she might’ve lived. In her mind, it was that man who joined with her. Not Sebestyen. Instead of a cruel ruler she would be mated to an ordinary man who would never share her, much less give her away on a whim. A farmer, perhaps, or an artisan. A man who truly loved her and would protect her.
And then she didn’t think at all, she just felt. His body, hers, their quickened heartbeats and their heated breathing. Her body demanded satisfaction, and the man she hated more than life itself gave it to her.
Liane screamed with pleasure, her legs and arms wrapped around the man above her. She grabbed a handful of his hair and held on while wave after wave of release swept through her body. Her body bucked beneath Sebestyen’s. It quivered and clenched. She shuddered and gasped, clutched desperately at the man above and inside her, and came back to reality to find cold eyes staring down at her as Sebestyen continued to ride her.
“Now do you love me?” he whispered hoarsely.
“No,” Liane answered breathlessly as he pounded into her.
Sebestyen closed his eyes as he shook above her. She felt his seed infiltrating her. Tainting her. Poisoning her.
When he was finished he withdrew and rolled away. It was Liane’s job to clean and dress him, and she did so wordlessly. She collected the ewer of water and the fine linen cloths that had been laid out for his use and placed them on the table nearest the bed. Using her gentlest touch, she bathed him. He reclined on the bed, sated and lazy, while she washed his entire body. She did not know where his mind had gone while she accomplished the chore, but he said nothing and did not fix his eyes upon her. Finally she collected his robe from the floor and helped him put it on. She even knelt before him on the mattress and fastened the braided buttons for him.
She was planning to bathe and dress herself and then go back to her own chamber for a good night’s sleep—she’d gotten little sleep last night, after all—but Sebestyen sat up on the bed and reached for her again.
“I wish you could be my empress,” he said as he grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her toward him. He had never before said such a thing, and Liane did not know how to respond. “Rikka is a cheerless girl who finds sex a chore, not a pleasure. She lies beneath me limp and passionate as a pile of rags and says, ‘I love you, my imperial highness. I love you so much, my lord and master. Oh, oh, I love you.’ ” He imitated the poor girl’s high-pitched voice.
“She is young and foolish.”
"If she does not get me an heir soon she will not have the chance to become old and foolish.”
Liane wrapped her body around Sebestyen. Arms around his neck, legs around his waist. She grabbed his hair and held him in place while she looked deep into his cold eyes. “A concubine cannot become empress, as we both well know.”
“The laws are mine,” he said. “I can break them if I choose.”
“And who will dispose of your enemies if I am locked up on Level Five having babies?”
Since three discarded empresses had already been dumped in Level Thirteen, she suspected it was Sebestyen himself who could not produce children. His second wife had become pregnant soon after their marriage, ending the whispers about Sebestyen’s ability to produce an heir. But the empress had lost the child early on in the pregnancy, and there had not been another. Liane had often wondered if the girl had already been with child when she’d wed the emperor.
“I can serve you better in my present position,” she said.
“I suppose you’re right,” he conceded.
She almost had him where she wanted him. She was so close. One day she would be able to come and go as she pleased. Level One would be at her disposal. This bedchamber, the emperor’s offices, the ballroom where he gave audience to his subjects and servants. No guard would dare to stop or search her. She would have the complete trust of the emperor. “I enjoy my place in this palace, Sebestyen. I will be your lover, your slave, your assassin. I want nothing more.”
He grinned widely, pleased with her answer. “Stay for a while, my lovely executioner. Rikka is to join me this evening, but I am not in the mood for sniffling declarations of love and a wife’s cold penance.”
Liane licked her lips and stroked his length beneath the crimson robe. Already he was growing hard again. “When she comes to you, tell her you don’t feel well.”
“I will have someone deliver that message for me,” he suggested. “It distresses her to see you here, and while I really do not care if Rikka is distressed or not, it is annoying to hear her sniffle and moan.”
She wanted to sleep. She wanted to escape the smell of this room and the sight of Sebestyen’s cruel smile. But this was an opportunity she could not allow to pass by. What happened between now and the time she killed him did not matter. Nothing concerned her but the end of the game. Not what she had to do to get there, not what might happen to her after.
If he were ever foolish enough to fall asleep while she was in the room with him, she’d bash him over the head with the hideous bust of himself that sat on the opposite side of the room. She’d wrap a length of the cord that decorated his false window around his neck and squeeze until he stopped breathing. She wasn’t strong enough to do that now, while he was awake and aware, but if she could catch him sleeping...
There would only be one chance, she knew that. If she failed, there would be no second opportunity. He had to trust her. In the end, he had to believe that she was his only ally in Columbyana.