The Champion (3 page)

She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t. He remained standing, his wrists chained and his long stomach held taut, his sleek body lit with the glow of the oil lamp. He pressed his lips together, as if biting back the taste of words in his mouth, but said nothing.

Nadira drew an uncertain breath, struggling to overcome the unexpected silence. “There is something else, additional profit to be made, favors I would grant. Let us speak plainly, you have built a reputation as a heathen, a seducer, and there are warrants…but I will pardon you of all these crimes, and add more treasure to your reward, if you lend me your knowledge of precious jewels for a few days. I may need your advice on the particular use I have for this diamond. It is no mere piece of jewelry, not something I require for vanity’s sake. There is a machine…I…I have a special purpose for the stone, a crucial plan that will reshape Ruman in the eyes of the world.”

He stood unmoved, considering her without a word.

She wet her lips, a moment passing before she realized her mistake. “Yes, I see. Unwise of me to offer proposals when you are still bound in chains. How can you trust me, when you have been treated this way? You will be released immediately and shown to the royal apartments. Tomorrow, after you are properly rested, we will speak about the diamond and what further profit you might make on it. Is that satisfactory?”

Something glinted in the depths of his eyes. After a moment, he inclined his head, indicating deferential agreement, or mockery…it wasn’t entirely clear which.

Nadira summoned the cell guards with a clap, avoiding the thief’s gaze as she issued her terse commands and headed for the corridor.
Don’t look back. Don’t…
She knew that she couldn’t, that she would only give herself away if she did, and yet still, it was difficult, The man standing there, the light shadowed along his bare chest, had just become more vivid, and more dangerous, than her dreams of him had ever been.

J
acob was led, under guard, to a lavish suite in the North Tower, its length sectioned by pillars of dark wood, their carved facets embellished with gold. Large windows offered a view of the crescent moon over the hills, the long glass panes shaped by scrolling metalwork and colored glass borders. A row of satin cushions lined the wall in pastel shades, set behind a low table glowing with oil lamps and vases of fragrant white orchids.

A handful of serving boys entered the room, wearing crimson coats and white gloves, placing heaping bowls of fresh breads, olives and bright mandarins on the table, their rinds so clean they looked polished. The servants arranged a line of goblets and a decanter of water chilled with slices of lemon, plus an uncorked bottle of wine—a forbidden luxury.

The oldest boy bid him into a tiled bathing room with a fountain pool surrounded by planted bamboo, its floor mosaic depicting water patterns and rippling pieces of light. The servant approached to assist, but Jacob stepped back with a hiss, gesturing the boy to leave.

He received no argument, watching as clothes were laid out for him on the canopied bed in silence and the servants took their leave, followed by the guards and the clicking sound of the door lock.

After a moment of waiting, he spat the lock pick into his palm, grimacing at its dull shine against his skin. Its length had proved too awkward to effectively maneuver under his tongue, preventing him from answering the Sultan’s awkward monolog. Not that it mattered. Silence had worked in his favor, far better than he would have thought.

He checked the rooms, then the windows, finding two narrow panes that swung open to the breeze on metal hinges, both offering a straight drop of over thirty meters to the gardens below. He unclasped the wide fabric belt from his waist and tore it at the seams, ripping loose a handful of light throwing blades and a roll of metal wire from the fabric sleeve.

The guards at the gate had found the diamond easily enough and become careless, assuming that there couldn’t be anything he’d taken greater pains to conceal. He’d expected that. What he hadn’t expected was the Sultan, a lithe figure with soulful eyes, soft spoken, even in his ambition.

I have a special purpose for the stone, a crucial plan that will reshape Ruman in the eyes of the world.

It was a fitting preamble to war, though hardly original. Every cratered wasteland and burning city had been formed with similar words, spoken by men who dreamed of having the eyes of the world set on squarely on their regal shoulders, of reshaping a million destinies with one act of lunacy.

Jacob had accepted that he’d never understand men who turned murderous under a preponderance of privilege, though his life had been of their making since before he was born, his father never more than a name on a crypt wall, a mention in Academy textbooks.

He’d learned the great Kessler tradition from aunts long widowed; cousins who’d assured his place in elite training institutions, and three brothers who never came home. They had all done their part to bestow the expectations. The realities, however, he’d learned on his own, left alive on gray battlefields that no one should have survived, drenched in blood so thick he seemed to breathe it, lost among those who’d lost everything.

Even after almost two decades, he found little reason in it, positions taken and retaken, then abandoned, men sacrificed to accomplish nothing, remembered only in nightmares, in tarnished artifacts, warped and stained and kept, until even they were lost.

No soldier need suffer it, however, when the battle that would have taken thousands of lives simply never happens, when the urge to ‘reshape’ was terminated before it could yield mortal devastation.

There was reason enough in that.

Pressing his lips together, he glanced at the view from the window. If his information was accurate, the royal apartments were stacked along all the upper floors of the North Tower, with the Sultan’s private suites occupying the top. He could easily climb higher using the windows and ledges and enter the corridors above. He’d need only few minutes for the guards, but longer for the Sultan, for an interrogation best done in the darkest hours.

Narrowing his gaze on the horizon, he watched the cold glitter of stars above the hills, finding no peace in them now.

Nadira turned the large diamond in her hand, watching colored streaks of light play in its depths. It was a thing of exceptional beauty, cut with amazing skill. Letoures was famous for robbing tombs and ruins left forgotten in vine choked jungles, but this stone held none of the rough texturing left behind by ancient jewelers. It was perfect.

She pressed her lips together, tilting the diamond toward the light to find rays of color dancing within its solid blue heart. Rare. Priceless. Cold. That was the kind of beauty that could be owned.

Osman had given her many sparkling gems and pendants, also hundreds of dresses and shoes, silks and veils. She’d been his favored pet, meant to shine solely for him, and soon made as hard as the stones he adorned her with. How many years had it been, since that girl from the desert arrived on the palace steps, a tribute from a lesser vizier seeking favor? Had she expected a kind master or a cruel one?

She clenched her teeth, feeling a moment’s revulsion. The diamond cast its own dark light within the cradle of her fingers.

Grimacing, she placed the stone back in her table drawer and gazed into the mirror above it, finding not a prisoner, or a ghost, but a woman restored, her face scrubbed clean of its mask, of its lies. Still young. Still beautiful, with two drops of honey wax glossing her lips, a medallion of pink sapphires resting at the part in her dark hair. She’d exchanged her white robes for peach silk; her dagger for pearls…lies for truth.

Will you believe me, thief? Will you understand what I tell you…why I had to do it…why changing Ruman is the only way I can escape it…Will you understand? Will you care?

She pressed her lips together, knowing that the last question should not have felt like the most important one. She shouldn’t be breathless, certainly shouldn’t be flushed, yet the thought of being so close to him, of being a woman around him…

“Insanity,” she whispered, rising from her seat.

Lifting the oil lamp from the table, she moved from her secure dressing room to the outer salon, her fingers stroking behind the closest pillar, finding the latch that sprung its inner door. The lock clicked and the small entry swung back, revealing the hidden passage used by members of the Harem.

One corridor opened into many, into stairways and false doors, all of them narrow and cold, offering uneven steps polished with use. Nadira kept the lamp steady, checking herself several times, changing direction twice before arriving at the proper door.

She tugged on the brass lever extending from the wall, activating an old pulley system, its metal wires and gears rusty. A crack appeared in the false stone, grinding softly as it widened to form an opening just large enough to slip through. She pressed herself against the wall and pushed through, hearing the secret door rumble shut behind her.

Glancing around the salon, she found it empty, the bread and wine untouched. Watery noises echoed from the fountain room.

She walked toward them, her breath burning in her throat. Through emerald stalks of bamboo, she saw him standing in the pool, tall and lean, his body naked in the faint light of oil lamps. He angled his head under the spill of water, scrubbing it through his hair, crystal beads dripping from his muscular arms, his wrists adorned with colored braids of thread. Her eyes darted down the wet shine slicking his narrow waist, to the fullness of his relaxed cock, water forming glittering rivulets from its rose colored tip.

Leave, leave now, before he—

He looked up, his gaze narrowing through shadowed breaks in the bamboo. She stood frozen in place, unable to move.

He wiped the water from his face, his attention flitting to the swell of her breasts under the shining fabric of her dress.

“And who would you be?” he asked.

How could he have missed her? He’d checked the rooms, but perhaps not thoroughly enough. She was small, a pretty slip of nothing in beaded pink silk. If she’d hidden herself cleverly, she might have seen him taking the knives from his belt.

“I am Nadira,” she said, speaking the same archaic but common language as the Sultan.

“How long have you been here, Nadira?”

Her lips parted, her eyes lingering on him, as if she couldn’t tear them away. “Long enough.”

Not the answer he wanted to hear.

Jacob nodded, stepping from the water and wrapping one of the starched white linens around his waist. He approached her, expecting her to back away, but she stood her ground, looking up at him with her honey colored gaze, a heated blush warming her cheeks.

“Why?” he asked.

“To talk with you.”

“The Sultan sent you.”

“It was my choice to come. I—”

He waited for her to finish, then realized that she couldn’t, her purpose suddenly too much for her. “The guards let you in?”

She shook her head, strands of diamonds glinting from her hair. “There are places in the walls.”

The walls?
He’d been a fool. “In all of the rooms? Secret doors everywhere?”

“Just in the salon.”

The place where he’d hidden the knives. Jacob kept his expression neutral through force of will. “And are there others in the wall? Someone watching us now?”

She looked confused. “No.”

Perhaps she was telling the truth, or perhaps she didn’t know. Either way, his simple plan had just acquired an unwelcome dimension. The woman had to be dealt with—in whatever way that fool Letoures would have dealt with her—in order to maintain the image of the man she and her masters expected to see.

A drunken, thieving, gambling womanizer.

“Do you they permit you to drink wine?” he asked her.

“I come from the deep desert, from the ancient tribes. Our religion is older and does not forbid it.”

“Well,” he said softly. “Allow me to pour you a glass.”

Nadira followed him into the salon. The water was still slick on his broad back, the starched linen knotted at his waist reminiscent of the pharaoh images painted on tomb walls in the desert, the color of the threaded braids around his wrists as faded as their ancient bracelets. Placing two of the goblets by the decanter, he poured a half measure of wine in each.

“You said that it was your choice to come here.” He held one of goblets up for her. “You enjoy the company of thieves?”

“You’re more than a thief,” she replied, accepting the wine. “I’ve listened to stories about you for years. It always sounded impossible, the things you did…the chances you took. They should have killed you a dozen times, but you survive.”

“And you admire that.”

“It is not easy to survive.”

He sipped from his glass, his gaze holding hers.

“Perhaps you think I’m foolish,” she murmured.

“No,” he said. “But you may have overlooked a few of my vices.”

“I know what you are,” she countered. “At least your famous seductions involve only willing participants.”