Mortal Suns Read Online Free Page B

the middle door and waved Mokpor peremptorily forward. As he modestly obeyed, she saw him give her a look, her slender form and darkly curling tresses, probably her gold earrings too. Not an utter fool, Mokpor. When the queen was done with him, Ermias might be available. He smiled. Ermias tossed her head, letting him admire her supple neck that was three years younger than Hetsa’s.
    “Radiant Sun!”
    Mokpor knelt gracefully on one knee, as the middle door closed at his back. Kneeling was the manner of Oriali, the Eastern Towns, from which he had come. It also displayed his fine legs, in pale leather boots and firm leggings. Deliberately, he always misnamed the queens, not as Daystars, but as Suns, an honorific allowed only princes, and the Sun-Consort.
    “Well, you’re late.”
    “I was delayed.”
    “You dawdled.”
    “How could I, my glamorous and gleaming one? How
would
I, when I was to come here?” His starry eyes flashed. His fair hair sparkled with attention, thickly curled, like the narrow Eastern beard around his jaw. She had said, she liked his trace of accent.
    He was exceedingly well-dressed. Hetsa’s patronage had decidedly helped him. That first evening, when he had come with an example of the new liquid flame-red dye from Artepta, he had seen at once, his luck was in.
    Now Hetsa signalled languidly to his box. Oh. She was in a mood.
    “What haveyou got to show me?”
    Mokpor took another chance. He rose, strode to her, and lifted her to her feet as easily as if she were a doll, squeezing her close. “My blazing need for you, my queen. Can you feel it?”
    Hetsa turned her face. Mokpor chased her mouth with his own, and caught it. After a moment she responded to his kiss.
    He knew better than to question her. She was often out of temper. But then, she was a woman. She had lost a child years ago, they said, and it had spoilt her looks. But she was still toothsome enough, and when he had pinned her as she liked, and was racing within her, bending now and then to beard-tickle and suck her breasts, Mokpor was not unhappy.
    Outside, at the command of Ermias—that minx—some musicians were playing loudly with gourd-harps, drums, and bells. A good thing. Mokpor was aware not everyone could get noises like that out of a queen.
    She would buy the spangled cloth, too. He would tell her it was the color of her eyes.
    Beyond the wide window, open to the passage of spring day …
    Hetsa contemplated, at first dreamily, the constant sounds of the palace. A noise of trotting horses, a rift of distant laughter. Birds singing in the gardens that ran down to the lip of the shore. The soft lap and whisper of the Lakesea, nearly calm today as water in a cup.
    From the outer room, Ermias had taken the other girls, and the green turtle, probably, away. But the guardsman would stand at the outer doors, and some ready, serviceable slave would be there in a corner, waiting stoically.
    All was peace, smooth as if combed. Why then, this sense of a problem, stealing near?
    She need do nothing. There, on that rail, her excuse if any were required, hung the lovely, half-transparent, honeyish web-silk, with its threads and stipples of brightness. And Mokpor had left her, as a tribute a flagon of Bulote perfume, the kind that had esoteric ingredients and was mixed in the temples of the love goddess. This had flattered Hetsa. That he should gift her, so for a moment she had become his beloved mistress, rather than his queen. The cloth, of course, was expensive, but then, she did not often overspend—unlike others.
    Her bodywas warm, sated. He had told her he had gone mad almost, during his month away from her. And he had possessed her vigorously twice, and a third time done things to her with tongue and fingers and a wicked little wand, until her shriek set the vessels on her mirror-table ringing.
    And yet, now, this. What was it?
What
?
    She raised herself on one elbow and glanced about the room. The day was stilly mellow there,