“If you’d like to step up to the job, be my guest.”
I ignored that, for obvious reasons. “So you can leave whenever you want. Anyone else can leave whenever they want. I’m the prisoner.”
He cocked his head. “Hmm. Good point. I guess it is all about you.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deep and tried my hardest not to punch him. He’d punch back and my face still hurt from the last time.
I walked past Teraeth to the door opening.
“What do you want with a harp anyway?” Teraeth asked.
“It’s none of your business,” I snapped, and left in search of someone willing to fetch me one from Zherias.
40: INTERLUDE IN AN ABATTOIR
(Talon’s story)
Alshena D’Mon descended the long flight of stairs from the Court of Princes down the hall to the east wing of the palace. She tapped her fan on the wall as she walked, tapped it against the tapestries and the carved wood paneling, tapped it with a fierce staccato beat of excitement.
Servants and slaves scattered when they saw her coming.
Alshena rushed down a different set of stairs: seldom visited, quiet, and dusty. At the end of the stairs she found a blank wall, unpainted, and pressed the mortar in a certain way. Pressing in the wrong way would have been fatal, but that didn’t concern the noblewoman. She knew the sequence so well she could repeat it in her sleep—if she ever slept.
The red-haired matron of House D’Mon hummed a dirty sailor’s tune as she walked down the revealed dark passageway. It led down shadowy twisted stretches of tunnel that Therin D’Mon himself hadn’t used in well over a decade. Finally, the tunnel ended in a dim room.
As Alshena entered the chamber, a man to her left screamed. His shackled body arched up from the low wooden table as he vomited black blood, splashing his body and the floor. A slow stain of sickly smelling bile spread in a pool as the man stopped twitching and lay in obscene rictus.
Alshena lifted the edge of her agolé and stepped over the liquid.
“Ducky, you used too much,” she said.
At that statement, the shadow resting against the wall moved forward, and revealed himself to be Darzin D’Mon. He sighed. “I’m aware, love. I just can’t seem to balance this formula.” He looked disappointed, before his head snapped back up again and he scowled at Alshena. “Gods, do you have to look like her? You know I can’t stand the bitch.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have married her then,” she replied. “Do you realize she looked like this just to annoy you? She’s really quite pretty.”
“She’s really quite dead,” Darzin said.
She bent over and touched the black fluid oozing from the dead man’s body. She sniffed it once, wrinkled her face in disgust, and wiped the liquid off on the dead man’s clothes. “Ugh. Must you poison them? It ruins the flavor.”
Darzin sighed. “I didn’t kill him to satisfy your appetites, Talon. And the whole reason I ordered you to murder my wife was so I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore.” He waved his hand at her form in annoyance.
“Oh, very well. I brought you a new flavor to sample, anyway.” At that sly pronouncement her figure wavered, then shifted and flowed. When she lowered her arms, Alshena D’Mon was gone. In her place was a stunning teenage girl, with dusky skin and waist-length hair fashioned into tiny braids. Both the girl’s hair and fingertips were henna dipped.
Darzin smiled. “Very nice, sweet. A recent snack?” He ignored the dead man lying in the middle of the torture room. He crossed the floor and ran his fingers down the woman’s arms, around to the small of her back. He nuzzled his mouth against her neck with all the tenderness of an illicit lover.
Talon nodded, looking up at him through thick eyelashes. “She was so sweet. I should give your new ‘son’ a thank-you gift for leading me to her.”
Darzin looked her in the eyes and then laughed. “Well, yes, I suppose there must be some advantages to working in a brothel.” He continued chuckling as he removed his arms from around her. “He has good taste, at least.”
Talon leaned over the table and rubbed her reddened fingers down Darzin’s arm. “I bet he’d taste good too. Oh, he’s so pretty. I just want to eat him up. Can I have him, dearest? Please?”
Darzin shook his head and snickered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Talon. He’s my son.”
The room grew quiet.
Talon scraped a sharpened nail against the edge of the blood-soaked table, carving a deep channel in the wood. “If that boy is your son I am the Virgin Duchess of Eamithon,” she growled.
Darzin threw up his arms. “Fine, love. You’re right. He’s not my son, but since his real father will never have the stones to admit the truth, claiming him lets me control the brat. So, no, you can’t kill him.” He paced the room several times.
Talon sat down on the edge of the table and drew up her legs. “He is so sweet, Darzin. Fifteen years old and jaded as a ripe peach. His brain would taste just like ginger jelly.”*
“You can’t have him.”
Talon thought about it for a moment. “You know—”
Darzin frowned at her, half-amused and half-worried by her overwhelming appetites. “This isn’t negotiable, my dear. You want a new slave? I’ll buy you anyone you want, but not him.”
Talon snapped at him, “Don’t interrupt me. That’s not what I was going to say!”
“My apologies, sweet,” he said with mock seriousness.
Talon pretended to busy herself with counting her toes. She said, “This girl he liked so much. The one I ate, Morea. She has a sister. Dear Kihrin was looking for said sister. I think he wanted to play hero and rescue her from her bad, nasty slave master.”
“How sweet,” Darzin said. “A real-life reenactment of the Maevanos.”
“Shhhh … don’t interrupt while Nana is explaining the rules of the game,” Talon said. “With Morea dead, little Kihrin might still want to play hero. Since this sister is as beautiful as Morea was, why, she might even make the poor boy fall in love with her—especially if she was tragic, if she needed to be rescued. She’d be able to get the young boy to do almost anything for her…”
Darzin smirked. “Yes, I see where you’re going with this.”
“Why, he might even take off the Stone of Shackles for her.” The look of sweet delight she gave him, angelic under any other circumstance, could only be described as the purest evil.
“The Stone—?” Darzin raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Talon snarled, and her voice took on a demonic quality as she hissed, “Don’t play games, human. Despite how I appear, I am thousands of years older than you and it is just possible I am not an idiot.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—”
She traced a design with her littlest finger in the silk of Darzin’s shirt. “Haven’t I served you for all these years now? Done whatever you asked? Seduced whoever you wanted? Slept with whoever you wanted? Torn to little itty-bitty pieces whoever you wanted?”*