Reign of the Favored Women Read Online Free Page A

The croon of our mothers’ tongue took him as much by surprise as the point of my blade, warmed by his own blood. But suddenly, irrationally, I wanted him to know.
    “That was not the beginning, Barbarigo. Not the beginning at all. Do you remember me now? My voice, at least, from behind a carnival mask. My voice which, against all nature, hasn’t changed in the intervening years. It was I, Barbarigo, who thwarted your attempt to elope with the lady that January evening so long ago. It was I, in the Foscari’s hall. I, Giorgio Veniero. And you—” I laughed in spite of myself at the mercy it would have been. “You threatened to turn me in to your father.”
    My adversary’s face paled as if I’d hit an artery, though, by my life, I’d as yet given him no more than a scratch.
    “Yes, I—I remember,” he stammered. “I—I haven’t forgotten—nor forgiven—in all these years.”
    “Nor I, Barbarigo. Nor I. Though, by my life, I wish I’d let her go with you. I pray to heaven you had taken her out of my life, to give me my life again.”
    Barbarigo shifted. I refocused the attention of my blade, so he would not think emotion had weakened my resolve.
    But then I realized I did not truly want him dead. Neither his life nor his death presented any threat to me or my two ladies at all. If I’d turned and walked away from the chink in the tradesman’s wall, refusing to get involved in Safiye’s machinations, we would have remained safe, too. But now she had drawn me into her maelstrom once again. Who knew where it would end? And who knew what effect this could have on my lady and her tiny, precious daughter? Evil was the only word that came to mind.
    I could not escape the thought that this was how Baffo’s daughter had planned it all along. Once again I was playing her dupe. I had hoped, even prayed, that what I had suffered in that castrator’s dim little house in Pera had freed me of the spell the sight of her cast on every being in the world. Now rationality glimmered in the back of my mind: The haze of jealousy I’d been laboring through for the past hour was not the way to peace in my life.
    My rashness might even bring harm to Esmikhan and Gul Ruh.
    I would rather, I admitted in the brute part of my brain, turn this dagger on myself. And if I no longer stood on watch for my ladies, certainly they would suffer. At the very least, I would suffer without sight of them, unable to watch the daily miracle of their lives.
    Who benefited if I cleansed the glistening life from young Barbarigo’s eyes, purified the air we panted together? Neither the empire nor Murad, my lady’s brother, whose honor was most at stake here. Only she. Only the almonds-dredged-in-poison-eyed daughter of Baffo. She who orchestrated everything. The only safety—I remembered this now—was far from her sight. To kill her lover was not the way to lie low.
    Barbarigo read the hesitation in my eyes and attempted a half smile to encourage it. I took the look as a challenge—the sort that drives reason away—and, in answer, drew back yet again for the final lunge.
    And, as I did, I was caught by my own sable collar and thrown in my turn against the next stretch of wall. When my head cleared, I found the dagger knocked from my hand with a singing roll into a display of large brass bowls.
    And my eyes were transfixed by the blue-flinted-with-green that was the eyes of Ghazanfer.
    “Go! Run!” the great eunuch hissed over his shoulder at the young attaché.
    Barbarigo seemed as immobilized as I was with the monstrous, crushed hands resting on my shoulders. His Venetian eyes blinked wider with fright than they had with my blade tickling his ribs.
    “Go!” Ghazanfer’s Turkish rumbled again.
    Then I found my voice and spoke in Italian. “Stay away from her, Barbarigo.” The hands came down heavier and inched towards the vulnerability of my throat. But as long as air was there, I kept on shouting. “Barbarigo, I swear to you on the