Scarlet Nights. Lucinda Betts
me. Who did you chase into my palace?”
“I’m a trader from the far west,” he said. He would use the same practiced lie he told officials who questioned his presence in their lands. “I followed a man from the desert through the city to your water shrine. My men followed others into the caves.”
“And you were chasing them because?”
“The traders broke their end of a trade agreement. The man I chased, I merely wished to…” He touched the daggers the soldiers had allowed him to keep. “I merely wished to speak with him.”
She walked a few steps around him. Again, she reminded him of a panther. With one swipe of her claw, she could eviscerate him. “You’re telling me that you were chasing merchants?”
“Yes.”
“And your men, the ones lurking in the caves outside the city? They were chasing merchant traders as well.”
His heart thudded. She’d captured his men. “Yes, my lady.” He hoped Kamir had interrogated the slavers before the queen’s men found them.
“Funny, your second-in-command, Lord Kamir, says the same, and yet…” She paused. “Something seems out of place.”
He bowed, wondering if he were making a mistake. Should he tell her the truth? What if she would eradicate the slavers as eagerly as he would? But then, what slaver would have the audacity to hide in her very palace, if that were true? “No, my queen.”
“You weren’t chasing slavers? Like the ones who abducted your brother, perhaps?”
Axel felt like he’d been punched in the gut. How did the queen of this foreign city know about his brother? How did his brother’s abductors end up on her proverbial doorstep?
“Ah,” she said. “I see I’ve astounded you.”
“Yes.” She certainly had.
“Lady Solstice told me of your brother, that he’d been taken.”
“Yes.” That cleared up the mystery of how she knew his name. But rage simmered in his blood. Why would Solstice tell the queen of his darkest moment? The bitter taste of disgust filled his mouth. Solstice had never known what was precious. “My brother was taken by slavers, it’s true.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
Something in her tone seemed sincere. He looked at her, her luminous skin. Did he have an ally here? “Was someone in your family taken?” he asked. Would she know his pain?
“No.” Her red hair reminded him of flames. “My family was slain by the Jatiss.”
“I see,” he said, although he didn’t. The woman standing before him was responsible for ending the war between the people of Marotiri and the Jatiss. He hadn’t realized the Jatiss had killed all she’d held dear. Regardless, she didn’t understand the pain of having someone stolen into a life of servitude. “You have a forgiving heart, then,” he said.
She looked at him like she was taking his measure. “Under certain conditions my heart forgives.” She circled around him like a cat. “But I wouldn’t necessarily find comfort in that, if I were you.”
“I assure you I meant no harm by entering your palace in such an unconventional manner.”
“That, at least, sounds like the truth.”
Relief. Maybe she would release him, then. “I speak only the truth to you,” he said.
“That, I don’t believe.”
“Your majesty?”
“Your reputation precedes you.” She sat on one of the settees and bade him, with an elegant hand, to do the same. Despite his dirty clothes, he obeyed.
“What reputation is that?” He waved at the fine art on the walls, hoping she was talking about his trader front. “I sell nothing of this caliber, although I have some Tedresi crystal goblets you might appreciate.”
“I’ve heard from some of the minor queens and kings that you’ve brought them gifts—for their dungeons.”
“Dungeons?”
“Lord de la Couere, let’s not play games. The gifts to which I refer are not goblets but slavers and their minions.”
He swallowed. Her flesh was white. Rumors said she had no patience with slavers…and she suspected the truth about him. He should simply lay this mess at her feet. She might actually help him.
Except that the lead slaver was within her walls, and rumors could be wrong. He looked at her a moment. Her lush breasts strained against the thin silk of her gown, and he had the feeling that if he leaned over and kissed her parted lips, she wouldn’t object. How could she? She honored She Who Listens.
He couldn’t trust her.
“My stairs,” she prompted. “The ones no one has used in decades. How did you find yourself there?”
“I beg to disagree with you, my lady. Those stairs are far from unused. My horse is there, along with two others. Even now you’ll likely find sconces burning along the walls. Someone inside your palace walls was expecting someone else to use them today.”
“And it wasn’t you they were expecting?”
Axel shook his head. “I had no plan to come into the city today. Not until the trader bolted for Marotiri proper and your palace.”
“Not even to visit Lady Solstice?”
“No.”
“But I thought you were old childhood playmates.”
“I had no intention of visiting Lady Solstice.”
“Where did the so-called trader go?” She fired questions like an expert archer fired arrows: one after another, and they all flew true. “Once he was within my walls?”
“I don’t know, your majesty.” Axel ran his hand over his hair and wished he were anywhere but here, preferably in a bath. “I only know where they didn’t go. They didn’t go to the room where Solstice was fu—” He cut himself off. He’d been about to use very uncourtly vocabulary. “Where she was…”
“Where Lady Solstice was honoring the goddess with Lord Grip,” she finished for him.
Honoring the goddess, he thought. Fucking was fucking no matter what you called it. “As you wish, your majesty.” He nodded his head.
“So I’m housing an unscrupulous trader in my palace?” Again, that arch expression. “How disturbing.”
Axel didn’t answer.
“Tell me about Lady Solstice,” the queen said. “How is it that you were this close to her home and you weren’t going to pay her a visit?” She arched a russet eyebrow. “Is the trader business that successful that you’ve no need to visit near kin and curry favor?”
Here, at least, Axel felt safe in telling the complete truth. “I didn’t think she’d enjoy a visit from me, my lady. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”
“But you were friends?”
He paused, wondering if their relationship could be characterized as friendship. It had seemed deeper with that. Until she’s joined the whore-queen’s court. “Yes.”
“Lady Solstice tells me you didn’t approve of her choice to honor She Who Listens. But where I grew up, most white-skinned people honored her. Not in your family?”
“Like most in Greenhaven, my family honored the One God—and so did hers.” He adjusted himself in the chair and tried not to waft more dirt into the room. “Most of us avoided the Shrine to the Hag Goddess there.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe it was the name.”
“And you objected to her choice to honor