Sorcha's Revenge

Sorcha drifted in uncomfortable darkness, the vague awareness of the horse beneath her and the man she rode with denying the comfort of oblivion. She was exhausted and far from home, snuggled beneath the cloak of her riding partner, his body and the horse the only warmth against the cold of northern Kellia.

Sorcha had crossed half the world, from her home in Silveneir to the southern desert of Heimjaro and back again. On her journey she had been kidnapped, enslaved, escaped, caught up in battles and war, and learned things utterly alien to the strict religious culture of her native Silveneir. A large portion of her journey had been spent in the travelling harem of a Darian warlord. Months had passed since then, but her experiences had changed her from the fiery Silvan soldier she had once been. In the harem, she had been trained and conditioned, her personality reformed in ways that she had yet to entirely assimilate.

Westward lay the cold wasteland of the Kellion Moruna, lost to sight in the gathering dusk. On the southern horizon, the city of Narillion burned, destroyed in a three-way battle between the barbarian Kraag, the invading Darian army and the city's inhabitants. Sorcha had been there and was lucky to have escaped with her life. To the east lay her homeland, Silvenenir, across the river Kessel, close compared to the great distances she had travelled, but still many weeks from where she now rode. Ahead, to the north, the silver spires and crystal dome of the Winter Palace gleamed in the fading daylight.

Sorcha did not know when she slept; consciousness faded entirely, and she awoke with a hard thump on the cold ground. As she came to, she felt strong arms around her and blinked dazedly up at her riding partner, Montesinos DeSilva. For a few seconds, half dreaming, she fancied herself back in the harem, her awareness jaded by sensuality.

“Are you alright?” DeSilva asked. On his travels, he had been inducted into the warrior cult of the barbarian Kraag, and so sported implanted fangs in his upper jaw, but his grey eyes were gentle with concern.

Sorcha blinked and looked around. Her surroundings had changed. They were now in a dark, sheltered hall of dressed black stone. Horses stood gathered around, the rest of their companions halting while DeSilva dismounted to check that Sorcha was unhurt. DeSilva's father Montesinos DeKellia, his uncles Kam Daishen and Noth Kalidor, the old man Tendath Drake, all looked down at Sorcha with varying degrees of concern.

The women in the party had less sympathy; Vashta, nominally DeKellia's concubine, had attention only for her daughter Fethne. Sorcha knew Fethne far better than she wanted to; they had been held in the same harem. Blinded at the razing of Narillion and quite mad in any case, Fethne paid little heed to anything around her. DeKellia's other concubine, Hnasi, was one of the feline Hrin, regarding everything with catlike distance.

Last of their party, the grim sword-Diva Meridian Charn glared through the eye slits of her steel mask, cold and tired and with no sympathy to spare for anyone but herself. Of them all, Charn was the only one not related by blood or close personal history.

“You fainted,” DeSilva told Sorcha. “We're at the Winter Palace.”

Sorcha could still hear the roar of the wind somewhere near; behind the horses, the outer palace gates stood wide. They had been beneath the gatehouse, approaching the inner doors, when she fell off the horse.

“Is she alright to stand?” DeKellia asked, and DeSilva helped Sorcha to her feet.

She was too unsteady to remount, but they had reached their destination; DeSilva led the horse on foot and supported Sorcha with his free arm as they started again across the threshold of the Winter Palace.

The inner gatehouse doors opened before them to reveal a phalanx of Kellion men in black livery. Every one of them wore a sword at his hip, but the travellers had been seen from the walls long before they reached the Palace gate, and their welcome was warm. The oldest of the retainers approached Kam Daishen; in his blood-red armour and full-face helm, the First Knight of Kellia was an unmistakeable figure.

“My Lord Daishen,” the retainer said with a bow. “Your arrival is most welcome. The Lady Orcini wishes to speak with you at once.”

“She'll want to speak to us all,” DeKellia said, dismounting and passing his horse's reins to a waiting retainer.

The senior man frowned slightly before he recognized the men accompanying Kam Daishen.

“Lord Dansac,” he said, bowing again to DeKellia and the group at large, “and Master Kalidor; forgive me, it has been many years since...”

“I know that,” DeKellia drawled, brushing past the man to enter the Palace halls. “And no one calls me Lord-anything.”

Half the retainers took the horses to the stables while the rest accompanied the guests into the Palace. DeKellia and Kam Daishen led the way, Vashta leading Fethne by the hand at his back and Hnasi sauntering in his footsteps. Charn slouched off to one side of the group, visibly keeping herself separate.

Sorcha dogged DeSilva's heels, envying him his self-assurance; they were in his homeland, surrounded by his kin, in an old ancestral home of his bloodline. Sorcha's only familiar grounding points were Fethne, whom she hated with a passion, and Charn, who had made it abundantly clear that she had nothing but contempt for any woman who permitted herself to be captured and used as a sex-slave by an enemy.

Then there was DeSilva. Her sister's fiancée and the reason for it all. But her sister was dead, lost in the tides of war that had now thrown Sorcha and DeSilva together again.

The retainers brought them to a large drawing room, well-appointed in archaic Kellion style. Patio windows looked out on snowy lawns and the ice-bound Kessel River. Like the palace in general, the drawing room had seen better days; cobwebs hung in the highest recesses of the room and the décor, once pastel shades of blue and violet, had faded to grey. The grand fireplace was stoked and burned brightly; a small, incongruous cauldron sat in the blaze as if on a kitchen stove, heating mulled wine.

As the door opened to admit the travellers, the mistress of the Winter Palace rose to greet her guests.

She was like no Kellion woman that Sorcha had ever seen. Vashta and Fethne, though Silvan-born, were typical of women raised in Kellion harems. Meridian Charn meanwhile epitomized the highest ideals of Silvan warrior culture.

Lady Vari Orcini, mistress of the Winter Palace and sister to DeKellia, Kalidor and Kam Daishen, was the fusion of both influences in harmony. Queenlike in her poise, her eyes the colour of midnight and a few streaks of grey lighting the black of her swept-back hair. In high-heeled Kellion shoes, she stood taller than any of the men around her. Despite her billowing skirts, she wore a rapier at her hip.

Vari looked first on Kam Daishen, greeting him with a nod before her eyes found DeKellia.

“Vari..." DeKellia stepped forward and took his sister's hand, turning to introduce her to his companions.

"Like a galleon under full sail..." Drake whispered in appreciation. The old man drew himself up as Vari Orcini turned towards him, but he seemed frail and timid compared to her regal composure. Drake was surprised when Vari took his hand and curtsied, very low and graceful.

"You were an old friend of my father," she said, "and you have served him well even since his death. My house has not treated you in kind, Tendath Drake. Forgive me."

Drake was momentarily lost for words, but rallied himself and cleared his throat, stooping to kiss Vari's hand. "It's nice to be appreciated at last," he said, as he straightened up.

"You might have chosen a better time to come to me," Vari said to the group in general. "I have more need of help than I am able to offer assistance."

"It must be bad," DeKellia remarked, wandering towards the drinks cabinet, "if you even have to mention it."

"My dear brother, you can only be aware that the Palace is surrounded by siege-lines on every side. It is simply not credible that you could arrive here without riding through an armed blockade. We are most glad of your coming, but how, pray tell, did you get here at all?”

“I recall something involving an outlaw chief, a disgraced knight and a bunch of tents some way south of here,” DeKellia said, feigning puzzlement. “Siege? I'm sure we'd have noticed that. Or heard about it months ago and come rushing to your rescue at once. We did, here we are. Sorry we took so long, I was literally halfway across the world. I did see an army encamped at your door, but we didn't really notice it; we've just come from the razing of Narillion.”

“The whole city's ablaze in the middle of a blizzard,” DeSilva confirmed.

"I'm sure you're both very proud,” Vari said, archly. “Honestly, Monte, they're still talking about your last party."

"Vast hordes keep showing up," DeKellia said, scraping back his fringe with one hand. "I certainly don't invite them. Quality over quantity, I say, every time."

"Quantity has a quality all its own," Vari replied, "especially where armies are concerned. Currently, I have barely fifty men at arms; twenty times that number have the Palace encircled. Whatever might be happening at Narillion, those men are here solely for me.”

"Where are you getting your supplies?" DeKellia asked.

Sorcha had to restrain a laugh; she was exhausted and confused, and the quixotic mix of urgency and languor in the manners of both DeKellia and their hostess threatened to tip her into hysterics.

Vari brought her brothers DeKellia and Kam Daishen to the fireside, where a retainer poured drinks and the discussion went to supply lines, defence tactics, and military minutiae over schnapps.

Hnasi arrayed herself on the rug before the fireplace, entirely oblivious to human conventions. Vashta brought Fethne to a couch and sat her down, but then hovered between DeKellia and her daughter, torn between conflicting needs. Drake and Charn joined the discussion of tactics, warming themselves by the fire.

Sorcha was left with DeSilva, uncertain of her expected role. In Silveneir, women were brash and assertive. At parties, she had been known to throw tantrums and drinks at men, and compete with other girls even to picking physical fights. In Kellia, women knelt at men's feet and demurely poured drinks until commanded to bed.

It was the natural assumption, even in this rare Kellion home run by a woman, that female guests came attached to a man. Sorcha could feel the unseen structures of Kellion culture steering her into accepting the presumed role as DeSilva's concubine.

She had quite lost track of the conversation at the fireplace, only belatedly aware that DeSilva still hovered at her side, apparently waiting for something.

“Are you going to sit down?” he asked at last, softly.

Sorcha shook herself as if coming out of a trance, only belatedly recalling that DeSilva himself had been raised in Silveneir and was naturally displaying the manners of his upbringing. That it was also her upbringing came as an unexpected shock; all Silvan behaviours had been rigorously drummed out of her in the harem.

At last, DeSilva took Sorcha's hand and guided her to a vacant couch, where he sat down beside her and raised his eyebrows to signal the retainer at the drinks cabinet.

"...We still have access to the river," Vari said was saying. "If they cut that off..."

DeKellia and Drake had both produced long Kellion pipes and were smoking while they talked.

Sorcha tried to follow the conversation, but the journey from Narillion to the Winter Palace had been so traumatic and terrifying that she recalled it only as a nightmare of danger and winter darkness. That they were all speaking in Kellion, a language she was hardly fluent in, did not help matters at all.

An outsider, she suddenly noticed what had gone unremarked by anyone else in the room; DeKellia's brother, DeSilva's uncle Noth Kalidor, had disappeared. Sorcha glanced the question at DeSilva, but he just cut a dry smile and leant close enough to speak in her ear softly, using Silvan for her benefit, “Vari has two suitors laying siege to the palace. It's a very polite siege; Vari has sworn to kill herself if either of her suitors crosses the threshold in arms, and they've each sworn to kill the other should that occur. So they've been here awhile.”

“But where is the Palace getting its supplies? If they're under siege...”

“That's what my father asked her about five minutes ago. The answer is the river, but with Narillion burning merrily on the Kessel's banks...”

“There won't be any more boats from Narillion,” Sorcha finished. “At least, none with fresh supplies.”

“Quite the opposite,” DeSilva agreed. “The refugees from Narillion are only a few days behind us, the status-quo here won't survive a few thousand starving people arriving on the scene.”

Sorcha nodded, listening with one ear to the Kellion discussion and to DeSilva's explanation in Silvan with the other. Her attention was elsewhere though. DeSilva's eyes caught the firelight, flashing alternately bright as the sun on Kellia's icefields, then dark as midnight like the gaze of his father. The Kraagish fangs in his upper jaw leant him a bestial aspect, bringing out the familial capacity for violence belied by his easy charm.

The men who had held Sorcha in the harem had been Darians, southern warriors hulking with muscle. DeSilva had the lean build of a dancer, lithe and strong, graceful as a cat. Sorcha glanced at Hnasi, marking the similarity of her poise to the way that DeSilva's father moved, utterly self-possessed, exuding complete confidence in any situation.

Sorcha found herself wondering what either of them would be like in bed; the father or the son, both equally unafraid to exert control.

DeSilva was still talking. “...So Vari's problems may have been solved by our mere arrival; Narillion's refugees were only a few miles behind us, making the siege a moot point. My aunt's decided to throw a party tomorrow, since there's no point hoarding supplies with so many hungry people about to arrive.”

Sorcha blinked, brought back to the present and only belatedly realising that she had been daydreaming about sex.

She had lost track of how long it had been since she had lain with a man. The last time had been in Uria, an encounter with a Darian warrior. Weeks or months, she could not tell; too much had happened in the meantime. Before Uria there had been another, a Goro warrior, recalled with sadness now for the love he had offered that she could not return. And then, before her Goro champion, there had been the Warlord of Naril, the master of the harem, Odacon Karmensis himself. He had used Sorcha only occasionally, her time in the harem more often spent with one or other of his warriors.

Sorcha stole a glance at Fethne, though she could have openly stared without the blind girl noticing. Fethne and her mother had been Odacon's favourites. Sorcha shuddered, recalling Fethne's kiss, the girl's expert caress, the way her eyes had gazed always on Odacon even while she pleasured another woman for his amusement. Sorcha searched inside for the shame her Silvan upbringing demanded but felt nothing of the kind. She had lost herself again, memories of a warrior's arms around her, his strong kiss at her throat, at her breasts...

“Sorcha?”

DeSilva's touch on her wrist snapped her back to the warm parlour. She tried to suppress a flush of guilt, glancing at Charn for fear that the terrifying Diva had somehow seen or heard Sorcha's illicit thoughts that affronted upright Silvan morals.

Lady Vari was speaking again, the Kellion words resolving into meaning as Sorcha's mind reverted to the present moment.

"...The last banquet I attended was at Pen Kellion; the Masquerade, Monte, do you remember?"

"How did you know that was me?" DeKellia demanded, "I wasn't even invited, I was in disguise... Don't joke with me, Vari; someone must have told you afterwards."

“Oh, I knew it was you. Who else would have the nerve to gatecrash the Northlord's party? Anyway, the occasion seems very apt. A banquet it shall be; I will invite the leaders of my enemies outside to dine with us."

"Is that wise?" Charn asked. She spoke in Silvan, but her meaning was clear and Vari replied in Kellion without missing a beat:

"We are a civilised people. If I invite him, Lord Karvallion will behave in a civilised fashion; we have dined together before. It would be unreasonable to put myself in his power and then expect him to release me; he must come here and behave himself while his army waits without the walls.”

"What about your other suitor, this Darian Major Kern?" DeKellia enquired.

“Well, I rather hoped you'd kill him for me, Monte,” Vari replied, theatrically irritated. “Surely you don't expect me to do it myself? I suppose I must invite him too; if I favoured one of my suitors unevenly, the other would launch an immediate assault. I must invite them both and suffer their company; both men are equally foul in their own way. I had been tempted to poison them at one table, but Kern is a Darian and I have no bane for his kind. And while either of these men lives, I require the other to hold his rival at bay."

"It's a stalemate," DeKellia said. "You've just been sitting here, having dinner with both these warlords for how long now?"

"Roughly ten years," Vari said. "Kern's outlaws are nominally in Karvallion's employ, but it is a paper-thin alliance; they've poured out the blood of legions this decade past in fighting each other. I am become the prize between two armies, dear brother."

"How gratifying," DeKellia said, "although you might resolve the issue by marrying Kern. I take it the Darian would win if the two of them duelled?"

"Without a doubt," Vari said. "Except that even together I doubt they could overcome the captain of my guards.”

Almost on cue, the chamber doors opened, and the subject of discussion entered. Vari's chief bodyguard was Hrin, one of the same feline people as DeKellia's lover Hnasi. He was dressed in Kellion style, with polished riding boots, jodhpurs, black jacket, and a bandolier that took the place of his sword belt, bearing long knives and a brace of duelling pistols. But his face was bestial, black furred and whiskered over numerous scars. His eyes were green and his teeth very sharp.

"Khyle Tarn", Vari introduced her bodyguard. "He's quite competent."

"Kittenthief," Hnasi hissed, brindling at the mere sight of the newcomer. "I know him.”

Hrinor was a small island, and very few Hrin ever left; on the rare occasions that they met in the wider world, it was almost certain that they should know one another.

The Hrinori warrior drew himself up, haughty as any Kellion lord. His whiskers twitched and he growled long and low in the back of his throat. His green eyes flashed at Hnasi, and he purred, "In Kellia it is the custom for women to use less insolence."

"In my country, it is also traditional that a man defend his lady's honour," DeKellia said, in the same lazily formal manner, studiedly casual as he rose to his feet.

"Call them off," Drake said hastily, "before there's bloodshed."

Vari clearly knew her bodyguard well enough to pre-empt trouble. "Khyle," she said, "if you must fight, do so with foils; I would hate to see another casualty."

"Another?" Charn asked, still insisting on speaking Silvan despite the main discussion being conducted in Kellion. "How many has he fought?"

"Khyle tries hard to be civilised," Vari said, playing Charn's game by responding in Kellion still, "but he can't help himself. To date he has fought every one of my retainers and challenged the enemy outside to countless duels. We've just weaned him off taking trophies; when he first arrived, he proudly brought me the severed hand of every man he fought with."

Khyle bowed slightly at the compliment. "Her ladyship appraised me of her difficulties, and I was pleased to assist. I understood that men sought her hand... I was somewhat confused."

"Somehow I'd expect a Hrin to do that," DeKellia said. "I'll fight your man if he wants, Vari, but I offer no assurances."

"Do not presume too much," Vari said. "I know your fame, brother, but in Khyle you may have met your match."

"Are you trying to start a fight between them?" Drake asked in the tone of a gruff uncle. "Kalidor and Kam will be lining up to join in; I hope your man Khyle has good seconds."

"He needs none," Vari said, "but your point is taken, Master Drake, and before there are any more adventures, duels or assassinations, every one of you will have a bath, a meal and a night in a proper bed." She raised an eyebrow at Sorcha and added, “I suspect that some new clothes would be appreciated, as well.”

Sorcha had been too relieved at escaping the cold to care about the state of her clothes. She had crossed Heimjaro and Uria in harem silks, obtaining a change of clothes at Narillion only to be swept up in the rioting. Her outfit now, black Kellion silks more decently cut than those of the harem but still scandalously brief by any Silvan standard, was ragged with travel, reeking of smoke and wilderness.

Vari rose and curtsied to her guests before signing her attendants to take charge. "For Master Drake, the bed in my father's study. Monte, Kam, your old rooms were given over to the guest wing when Uncle Orcini died. I will have them prepared, but your old things were put into storage, not that either of you left much here... where is our dear brother Kalidor?”

DeKellia groaned and covered his face with one hand. “Bloody Dacoit, always wandering off... I'm sure he can handle whatever he's happened to.”

“Indeed,” Vari said, briskly. “In the meantime, you must all be very tired. My servants will show you to the guest wing, there is plenty of room. You have missed dinner, but I am sure something can be arranged."

Traditionally every suite in the Palace would have been maintained by a live-in attendant, company for any guest staying at the house. Over the decline of years, the household of the Winter Palace had shrunk to a skeleton staff; Vari had no resources to spare on idle harem girls for every vacant suite while the Palace was under siege.

Sorcha was again painfully aware of the juxtaposition of cultures. Most of the female servants had been sent away and the running of the Palace left to the male retainers. These were Kellion men, proud regardless of their personal station to serve the Clan Orcini. They numbered a handful of knights and men-at-arms, all linked either by blood or familial friendship between the House of Dansac and the Clan Orcini. Their manners were easy and assured towards Vari's male guests, while the visitors' women were deferentially ignored.

Sorcha drifted in a daze at the back of the party that went to explore the guest wing, the retainers showing the way while one of the few female servants still left in the Palace hurried ahead to light lamps.

Vari herself took Tendath Drake off to her uncle's old study, which was always kept warm. Of the rest, Kam Daishen was shown first to the best single room in the Palace. DeKellia then herded Hnasi, Vashta and Fethne into the largest guest suite available. This left Charn, Sorcha and DeSilva, with half a dozen of Vari's retainers at something of a loss.

There was a brief discussion in whispered Kellion. Charn's eyes narrowed through the eye slits of her mask, immediately suspecting the Kellion men of plotting rape. Sorcha drew back, having been witness to enough of Charn's berserker frenzies to know that the woman was blind to friend or foe when the fit was on her. DeSilva knew Charn too and smoothly joined the retainer's conversation, translating for the benefit of the Silvan women.

“They're not sure what do to with you,” he chuckled. “Kellion protocol would be to put us all in one suite, but they're uncertain if you're both my women.”

“You have five words before they die,” Charn replied.

The retainers saw the shift in her stance and moved politely to flank her. All of them were armed, but Sorcha fully expected to see all six men die on Charn's sword in the next moment. These men were not to know that they faced no normal swordswoman but a renegade Silvan Diva, a sword-mistress more than equal to any six swordsmen alive.

DeSilva chose his five words with care. “Three single rooms will do.”

Charn eyed the retainers again, then eased her grip off her swordhilt, oblivious to the damage she had just done DeSilva's credibility in the eyes of the Kellion men.

Sorcha felt a shift in their attitude to her, too. Their eyes were on her now, an unclaimed woman who was clearly anything but a full-handed mankiller. She stuck closer to DeSilva, but the difficulties were not yet done. The retainers' next move was to show Charn first to her room, keen to be rid of such a disturbing social anomaly.

Charn only snorted behind her mask. “Stroll on,” she said, demonstrating a command of Kellion slang she had disdained to reveal until now. “We'll see the girl tucked up first, I'm not stupid.”

DeSilva's Kraag fangs made it impossible to hide his smirk; he let Charn take the lead in bullying their guides to Sorcha's room.

Charn immediately picked out the door directly opposite and checked that it led to a bedroom. “I'll be in here,” she said, then glared at DeSilva. “And you can find digs at the other end of the building. If one Kellion rat-rapist sneaks down this passage...”

“Understood,” DeSilva said, then turned to Sorcha. “I'll see you tomorrow then. Sleep tight.”

Charn stood on the threshold until the men had gone, her face hidden by the steel mask that revealed only her narrowed grey eyes. Sorcha felt herself frozen like a mouse in the stare of a hawk, even though she was not the subject of Charn's ire.

“Well?” the older woman snapped. “Stop pouting, get to bed.”

Sorcha could not even begin to settle in the room assigned to her. The chamber was more luxury than she could conceive, though it was one of the lesser suites of the Palace guest wing. It had been unused in a long time, the décor faded from lilac to grey and every surface host to a fine veneer of dust.

But the bed was a huge four poster. An ornate dresser dominated one wall, bristling with mirrors and mysterious drawers. In a corner, stood a full-length mirror, one of few Sorcha had ever seen. Nearby was a modesty screen, and hung within, a selection of Kellion clothes. These were fresh and clean of dust, but she hesitated to touch them. The chamber made her feel very small; it was so much more than she had ever had in Silveneir, and her family were not poor.

Comparing where she now stood to her home at Loth Kavnor, Sorcha thought of her family, and then specifically of her sister, Sabra. Bad enough that her eventual return home would mean relating both her disgrace and the fates of the others who had ridden from Loth Kavnor in pursuit of Montesinos DeSilva so many months ago. Worse, she bore the news of her sister's death. The consequences, for Sorcha herself and for the Clan Kavnor at large, did not bear thinking about.

Looking around the opulent room, she began to envy the Kellion harem-girl who had once decorated it.

Exploring, Sorcha found an en suite bathroom serviced by complex Silvan plumbing. She was reminded that the Winter Palace stood in sight of the Silvan border and had been built long ago when relations with Kellia were less tense.

In an alcove in one corner of the bedroom, what Sorcha at first thought to be a cupboard revealed itself as a very small room. There was a bunk inset into one wall, and the whole place was panelled and padded with faded velvet. A tall but narrow window looked out onto the night.

Sorcha realised she was looking at where the harem-girl to formerly occupy the room had slept. This was the girl's bed; the main bedroom was for her master, the guest of the Palace. There was no feeling of a cell in the little room though; it was a comfortable, lived-in space. The ring-marks of cups and plates were on the windowsill, and a patch in the dust where Sorcha guessed a book had lain.

Sorcha recalled her own experiences in the Naril harem after her capture. They had tattooed her, and introduced her to sex, but her few months of training did not equate to the experience of a Kellion girl, born into such a culture. Sorcha wondered if Vashta might have some idea how she felt, a Silvan woman deprived of her sword and the steel mask that was the symbol of their deeply religious culture. Fethne could never understand, raised from early childhood in the harem to ensure her mother's compliance; the girl was as Kellion as Silvan blood could allow.

Sorcha retreated from the little bedroom, the walls seeming to close in on her and the brief glance back into the world of the harem fading again into memory.

Swaying against the bout of dizziness, she went back to the modesty screen and looked again at the clothes. She had barely glanced at them before, still overawed by her arrival at the Winter Palace. To her surprise, besides a selection of scant outfits familiar to any harem girl, she found Silvan clothes; boots and leggins, a tough linen shirt, and a short grey cape that fell front and back around the shoulders. There was a sword belt, but no sword. There was also a mask.

Sorcha stared at it for an entire minute, barely able to breathe.

Looking into the contoured silver mirror, punctuated only by the empty eye-slits, she wondered who had worn this and the other things. Some Silvan soldier, taken alive just as she had been in the endless strife between the nations. That had been the worst moment, when Darian hands seized her and peeled off her mask, the first time a man had ever looked on her face. She had not worn a mask since that moment. The enemies of Silvenir knew well the significance of the mask; its removal had left Sorcha almost catatonic with shock, all but oblivious to being stripped, bound, and carried off in a ship along the Dagon River with a dozen other captured Silvans. She had only come to her senses when she was being brought up from the hold and led to a warrior's cabin.

She picked up the mask now very slowly, as if the mirrored steel might crack like fine-cut glass, and took it to the dressing table.

In the harem she had learned to wear her hair loose, but Silvan women always wore it tied back. There were a variety of styles, the most austere being the temple cue that Charn favoured.

Sorcha selected a brush and straightened her hair, scraping it back into the slightly more forgiving fashion of her clan. As all Silvans were taught to do, she averted her eyes from her reflection until she put on the mask. She did not often want to look at herself in any case; the small tattoo framing her left eye always seemed to be studying her in return.

The cool steel settled on her face, and she tightened the straps to keep it comfortably in place before she opened her eyes. The mask stared back at her from the mirror.

She had expected some huge emotional moment, perhaps the rushing back in of the Silvan persona she had lost when the mask was taken from her. She had experienced a similar disappointment the first time she had held a sword. Indoctrinated throughout her childhood with the glamour and romance of the blade, the legends of Silvan Divas and warrior priestesses, Sorcha had always expected her first encounter with the weapon to awaken some magical fascination.

The mystery of steel that so entranced Charn and DeKellia, Kam Daishen and DeSilva, even Vari Orcini, was completely lost on Sorcha. She felt the same emptiness now, a strange detachment as she turned from the dressing table. Still wearing the mask, she wandered to the bathroom, shedding her travel-worn clothes as she went.

The bathroom, with its countless gleaming taps and unseen fonts in the marble-clad ceiling that let down a warm rain, was another eerie reminder of home. In older times before the wars there had been enough commerce for Kellion nobles to value Silvan plumbing expertise.

The hot water sluiced the grime of the journey off Sorcha's skin and eased muscles that had been tense so long she had ceased to notice. She let the water fall on her uplifted mask, splashing like raindrops on the faceless steel. She looked down, watched the water sluice across her tattooed skin. The Naril Darians, unique among harem-keepers, tattooed their slaves from neck to ankles. A tangle of briar-roses framed Sorcha's breasts, interlaced with the long serpent that wound the length of her body. Butterflies fluttered along one arm while stars decorated the other. A coil of chain knotwork encircled one wrist. A person unversed in Naril ways would have thought the tattoos merely decorative, a less painful alternative to branding a slave. In truth, the tattoos were key to Naril magic, allowing sorcerers like Odacon and his chief disciple Rathelon to use their slaves as living conduits for occult power.

The memories sent a shiver down her spine, her skin tingling with the recollection of Rathelon's hands working their artistry on her flesh. The water falling on her was still warm, but she felt suddenly chilled. Quitting the shower, she towelled dry, discovering a collection of minor bruises from her fall off the horse and other mishaps along the way.

At so late an hour and after so long riding, she should have slept. But the shower left her too alert to rest, and the strangeness of the Winter Palace grew with every moment. Naked but for her mask in the bedroom of a Kellion house, Sorcha felt her grip on reality slipping.

She hurried to get dressed, trying to restore her equilibrium with the clothes and appearance of a Silvan soldier. Only when she was fully dressed did it occur to Sorcha that this room had not been prepared for her arrival. That the mask and clothes were here was coincidence. Sorcha shuddered to consider that the girl who had owned this mask might have been kept here, the trappings of her former fighting life now only a costume for a game between master and slave.

A sudden sense of urgency gripped her. Her hands plucked at her belt and the clasp of her cape but could find not purchase. She started towards the modesty screen again only to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the full-length mirror. A Silvan woman stared back at her, faceless in the mask, and she froze, her stomach knotting up with inexplicable fear. The tension only eased when she moved again towards the modesty screen.

Her hands were shaking as she picked through the Kellion outfits; the moment of panic only faded when she put her choice aside and began stripping off her Silvan outfit.

Through the narrow eye slits of the mask, she watched herself slip into the revealing silks of the Kellion harem. These were cut differently to those she had worn before, but their general style was the same; low-cut, with the midriff and back left bare, brief skirts fluttering almost transparent.

There was a selection of shoes, with high slender heels never seen in Silvan culture. Sorcha selected a pair and went back to the dressing table, avoiding any glance at the long mirror on her way. Only when she had sat down and taken off the mask did she look up her reflection. The tattoo framing her left eye looked back, seeming to wink at her knowingly.

Shaking off the feeling of being watched, Sorcha opened the various drawers in the dresser to explore the selection of make-up.

Gradually, a harem girl appeared in the mirror before her. Sorcha sat back and studied herself, the tattoos all over her body emerging and disappearing through her silks.

She had just put on the shoes and began watching her reflection in the long mirror pace up and down the room, when a floorboard creaked in the corridor outside.

Utterly terrified that Charn might check on her, Sorcha bolted for the bathroom.

With her back to the bathroom wall, she fought to control her breathing, her heart pounding in her chest, waiting and hoping to hear nothing more. Her heart leapt into her throat when the door creaked open. Then DeSilva's measured voice called, “Sorcha?”

“Don't come in!” she hissed, only to hear the door click shut and DeSilva's voice again:

“Are you... hiding?”

“Yes, go away!”

“Um...”

"Bugger off!" Sorcha quipped, a split second before DeSilva lunged around the bathroom door and grabbed her in his arms. His grin became a look of stunned surprise, rendered more comical by the Kraag fangs in his gaping mouth. They stared at each other for a long minute, DeSilva's arms loosely restraining her shoulders but she making no move to pull away.

Then he leaned in to kiss her, and the harem girl in the mirror stepped into her flesh. Sorcha melted into his arms, only for him to stop and draw back from her lips, hesitating.

"I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't know why I'm here.”

"Why do you think?" Sorcha straightened up and put off his slack embrace. “Because I could almost be Sabra, I know."

DeSilva stared at her, fighting comprehension. Sorcha turned away from him and walked into the bedroom, the sway of her hips accentuated by her harem shoes.

"I know Sabra loved you, and I know you wish she was here instead of me. So do I."

DeSilva went on staring, his gaze torn between her body and her reflection in the nearby mirror.

"What are you doing?" DeSilva asked.

"Making myself feel better.” Sorcha picked up the mask from the dressing table. "They all act as if nothing happened, as if life just goes on. But it did happen, Monte; it happened to me and none of them know how to help, even if they want to. So I'm making myself feel better."

"By re-enacting it? This girl in the mirror isn't you, Sorcha."

"And this is?" Sorcha held up her mask at eye-level, a ghostly Silvan warrior standing between them. "My face, my body; how are they not me?"

"You're not a harem girl.”

"I'm not a mask either!" Sorcha flung her mask at the mirror, but the glass withstood the blow, suffering only a minor scratch. The mask rebounded and flew across the room, striking off the far wall before it landed near the bed.

"Shh, it's alright. Bad things happen; you think I don't know that?"

He put his arm around her shoulders, thinking he meant only to comfort her, but their lips met as if by chance and inevitability took hold.

"It's not the same," Sorcha whispered, when they parted from the kiss. "You still have your honour...”

His grip on her arms turned suddenly fierce, his Kraag fangs bared above her throat.

"You hunted me," he snarled. "Your damn clan wouldn't take no for an answer, they wanted me and you didn't care what it cost me to run. If you think I give a damn about your honour..."

He pushed her roughly back from him and she landed on the bed, but DeSilva did not pursue her. Turning, he stormed to the door, only to freeze with his hand outstretched to open it.

Sorcha lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Finally she sighed, rolled over, and sat up. There were tears in her eyes; brushing them away, she smudged her make-up. DeSilva withdrew his hand from the door, turned and stalked back to Sorcha.

She retreated to the centre of the mattress, watching while DeSilva unbuttoned his shirt, then sat down on the bed with his back to her to tug off his boots. Stripped to the waist, he took off his sword and gunbelt, then unfastened his trousers and let them drop to the floor.

His hesitation before had almost made Sorcha consider if he were a virgin, but his assurance as he mounted the bed convinced her this was not his first time. She wondered momentarily if he had ever slept with Sabra but thrust the thought aside even as she shifted to welcome him into her embrace.

In the harem she had known sex every day; long months since had left her starved. The urgency of DeSilva's kiss, scratching her throat with his fangs, betrayed that he had a hunger to sate in turn.

His hands tussled with her brief clothes, peeling the silks away from first one breast, then the other. Sorcha lay back, arms spread wide, moving only enough to lift her hips to help DeSilva dispose of her harem skirts.

He rolled her beneath him, and she parted her legs, clasping him to her with her thighs as he entered her. She had been ready since the moment she took off the mask; she cried out almost at once, clenching her fingers in the muscles of DeSilva's back.

He lifted his kiss from her breasts, surprised to see a blush already spreading across her chest.

“Don't stop,” she whispered.

“You'll wake Charn, she'll have the door down if she hears you scream like that.”

“Stroke my neck.” Sorcha could barely speak, quivering with restrained passion while he remained quiescent inside her. He complied gently, tracing the faint cut his fangs had made on her throat with the tips of his fingers. The touch awoke conditioned reflexes learned in the harem; the urgency of withheld release did not recede, but an inculcated control asserted itself.

“Tell me when.”

DeSilva's lips brushed hers and he began again, moving slowly but strongly inside her. He had not the strength of the Darian lovers she had known before, but his frame rippled with a swordsman's fluid power.

Sorcha gasped and dug her fingers more deeply in his back, bracing herself to urge the rhythm of his hips faster. She clenched her teeth on another scream and DeSilva leant close to breathe in her ear, “Not yet.”

He withdrew and sat back from her on his haunches while she rolled on her side, releasing the denied scream in a shuddering gasp and sigh. He took a few breaths to recover himself, perhaps also fighting for self-control, then guided Sorcha onto all fours with his hands on her hips.

“Not yet,” he repeated, as he entered her.

Sorcha received him with a barely-restrained cry, clapping one hand to her mouth, months of denial threatening to overcome all her trained control.

DeSilva's power increased, fuelling the cataclysm building in Sorcha's flesh. Through the imminent release pooling in every nerve and muscle, she sensed that DeSilva was nearing his climax too.

In the next moment he swore between his teeth, wavered in his rhythm, then thrust into her as if driving his sword to the hilt in a duel and choked, “Now.”

Sorcha buried her face in the bed and fastened a chunk of the mattress in her teeth to muffle the ecstatic scream as the tension snapped at last and successive waves of relief washed away all sense of time, place and even self.

DeSilva collapsed beside her. He lay still for several minutes before he stirred, groped on the floor where he had discarded his clothes, and came up with pipe and tobacco.

“You're incredible,” he said, as he got the pipe alight.

“Do it again,” Sorcha managed, self-awareness reluctantly returning as the rush of orgasm faded.

“Did I say incredible? I meant insatiable.”

“We've got all night.” Sorcha wriggled around on the bed to face him, laid her head on his chest, and collected herself. “You can't be finished after ten minutes. After all that waiting, weeks on the road, riding together since Narillion, knowing each other before that...” she began to kiss and nuzzle at his chest as she spoke. “You can't be done after just one round.”

“Give a man a minute to catch his breath,” DeSilva chuckled, then added, “Ow!” when Sorcha bit his chest hard.

“Tie me to the bed,” she suggested, looking up at him.

“Seriously?”

Sorcha nodded.

“Bloody hell...” DeSilva dragged his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. “Wow.”

His hands began to stroke her back and sides while she lay across him. Sorcha reached forward to kiss him again and felt his body stir beneath her. They shifted in unison, DeSilva rolling onto his side and Sorcha on her back. His hands moved to her breasts, her stomach, down to her thighs, tracing the patterns of her tattoos.

When his fingertips reached her face, he hesitated; Sorcha shut her eyes and tilted her head, offering herself to his touch.

“You're very beautiful,” he said. His fingers traced the tattoo around her eye again. “Tell me about this?”

“It was the last one they did,” she said softly, opening her eyes at last. “Odacon...” she stumbled over his name; the warlord she had called only called 'master'. “He sent me to spy on Isa Maxine and her pirates.” Her hand moved to the tattoo now, stilling DeSilva's touch. “This was so he could see whatever I saw.”

“The tattoos are magic?”

“Yes. But I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

Sorcha flexed her hips and shoulders, settling into the soft mattress, then stretched her arms above her head and crossed her wrists, asking with her eyes and body for what she needed.

Their first urgency spent, they took their time now. DeSilva gently parted Sorcha's legs again and mounted her. His hands settled on her wrists, pinning her arms above her head.

Sorcha hooked one leg around him, lifted the other over his shoulder, offering herself as he began to thrust slowly into her. Their breathing mounted, skin gliding on skin, sweat and heartbeats mingling until Sorcha cried out again, trying to be quiet but unable to restrain the first tremor to pass through her hips.

“Not yet,” DeSilva said, but the instruction had no effect; Sorcha gasped again, then bit her lip for control before she could whisper. “The neck. Stroke my neck.”

His hands were engaged holding her down; he bent his lips to her throat instead, using his fangs to prick her skin lightly before applying his kiss. The effect on Sorcha was the opposite they had intended; as his lips brushed her throat, her control failed utterly and her whole body spasmed, her tattooed skin blushing from brow to ankle. DeSilva had to smother her scream with a hasty kiss.

She gave up any attempt at discretion and surrendered to sensation, kissing him back to keep from shrieking her release to the walls. She felt herself take flight, awareness of her body falling away until she was adrift in a sea of pleasure, seeing only distantly the ceiling overhead and the far wall of the room behind DeSilva's shoulder.

His hands slipped off her sweat-slick wrists and he braced himself on his forearms to either side of her head, his chest brushing her breasts now with every thrust of his body into her. She draped her arms around his neck, holding him to her as if she could make the moment last forever.

Behind DeSilva, the bedroom door opened.

Sorcha yelped in surprise and horror, grabbing DeSilva's biceps and hiding her nakedness behind his. DeSilva froze rigid, then looked deliberately back across his shoulder. In the doorway stood his father, Montesinos DeKellia, with a woman behind him that neither Sorcha nor DeSilva knew. She was dressed all in white, in a long close gown of the style favoured by Kellion nobility.

All four of them stared at each other for a long moment before DeKellia said, “Whoops. Wrong room. You kids um... just keep looking for... whatever...”

The door closed again. Sorcha and DeSilva stared at each other, their bodies still entwined. Then DeSilva thrust once into her, finished, and fell beside her on the bed overtaken with laughter.

“Where does he find them?” DeSilva chuckled, reaching again for his pipe. “Where did she come from? He's got three already... although I'm fairly sure he's not actually sleeping with Fethne.”

Sorcha frowned, thoughts coming slowly through the after-glow of sex. “Why shouldn't he?”

“Because he's sleeping with her mother? Not to mention with Hnasi, although I hesitate to imagine what sex with a Hrin is actually like.”

“I'm pretty sure Odacon had both Fethne and Vashta,” Sorcha said, at which DeSilva laughed again.

“At the same time? Look, my father's not a demonic warlord with a thousand years of rape and carnage to his credit.”

“He's an infamous mass-murderer!” Sorcha gaped. “Monte, seriously, there's a reason your father lives in the woods; he's burned a dozen cities, I was right there when he set fire to Narillion!”

“Oh, now he didn't raze the city single-handed...”

“No, you helped! You were right there with him, dousing rats in oil by the dozen! What did he call it, 'Fire-Rats'? 'Rat-War'?!”

DeSilva took an intense interest in repacking his pipe. “The Kraag would have burnt the city anyway.”

Sorcha boggled at him, staring at the implanted ur-wulf fangs in his upper jaw, the mark of his adoption into the barbarian clans of the north. His uncle Noth Kalidor had been inducted long ago and brought DeSilva as his nephew to the Kraagish High Khan to also undergo the rights of initiation. DeKellia, although he did not sport Kraagish fangs, had at one time been married to a Kraag woman and fathered at least one barbarian child. Sorcha found it hard to see much distinction between DeSilva and his family setting the city ablaze versus leaving it to be burnt by the Kraag.

Narillion was a charred ruin now, the Kraag encamped in the wreckage while the Darian army licked their wounds on the west bank of the Kessel River. Sorcha doubted that either faction had moved in the two weeks since the burning of the city. Meanwhile, there were two further armies, smaller but far more imminent, encamped close to the Winter Palace; that much at least Sorcha had understood from the conversation of Vari and DeKellia.

“What's going on?” she asked DeSilva, while they lay together staring at the ceiling. “With the Palace being under siege and so on; I hardly understood all that Kellion.”

“I thought you learned Kellion from the girls in the harem?”

“Yes, but not properly. On deck it was all Kellion...”

“On deck?”

“It was a ship,” Sorcha reminded him. “The harem was on a ship. On deck, formally during the day, they spoke Kellion. But below decks,” she snuggled against him and tickled her fingers down his chest, “you know... at night... we spoke in Silvan. The Darians only spoke their own language if there was a battle or something.”

DeSilva nodded, being himself fluent and literate in half a dozen modern languages and a handful of archaic ones. He came from a family of polymaths, men and women able to command multiple disciplines simultaneously. Although no rival to his father's mastery, DeSilva was both an expert swordsman and gunfighter. He had also inherited the familial catlike agility, although his uncle Kalidor was the undisputed acrobat. Besides these physical talents and distinct from the rest of his family, he was a scholar, expert to varying degrees in linguistics, history, astronomy, and politics.

His brow furrowed as he listened to her, his usually pale grey eyes darkening in thought until Sorcha was reminded of his father's eyes, a blue so dark they seemed black at first glance. Kalidor and Vari had the same midnight stare, and presumably so did Kam Daishen, though Sorcha had never seen the red knight's eyes. But DeSilva had his mother's eyes, grey and changeable as the sea.

Sorcha studied him now as he lay by her side. Leanly athletic, his pale skin marked here and there by small scars of old injuries. The largest was a shallow seam on his right shoulder, the newest a small collection of round wounds near his ribs. Sorcha traced the shoulder-scar with her fingertips until DeSilva said, “That was a Darian at Lake Karmensis.”

Sorcha's finger stopped. She had been at Lake Karmensis, aboard the ship that waited while Odacon's warriors stormed the shore. Her lover, one of Odacon's crew, had died in that battle.

DeSilva mimed a back-handed cut with an imaginary knife. “He caught me on the backswing and we both fell off the rampart. Lucky it was a short drop on the inside.”

Sorcha recalled a castle wall seen at a distance from the deck of the ship, two figures grappling in the moonlight. She recalled also the heavy long knives of the Naril warriors, the ceremonial care they took over all their weapons, and the daily hours of dedicated practice to hone their skill at arms. DeSilva was still elaborating on the fight. Sorcha stopped him by pointing out the other set of scars. He flinched when she touched him there.

“That was in Uria. I'd rather not talk about that.”

Sorcha knew without needing to be told that he had got these wounds at or near the time of her sister's death; he had been with Sabra when it happened.

Sorcha sat up and looked around for her clothes, then realised that she could not appear in public dressed as she had been when DeSilva found her. She got off the bed and went to the bathroom, leaving DeSilva to smoke alone in bed while she showered. The sweat of lust washed off her body, she dried and went behind the modesty screen to get dressed.

“Who said we had all night?” DeSilva asked, reluctantly stirring in bed.

“We don't. Your father knowing is one thing, but if Charn were to find us, now or in the morning, there'd be blood.”

“Why are you scared of her?”

“Because she's frikking scary?” Sorcha stuck her head back out from behind modesty screen. “She was ready to kill the servants earlier, she's insane. If she even imagined that you'd raped me under her nose...”

“Rape? Steady on, you threw yourself on the bed with your legs akimbo! Twice!”

“Oh, shut up!” Sorcha threw a bundle of harem silks at him. “She'll call it rape, she'll say I'm all traumatised and confused and that you took advantage. Then she'll cut your balls off.”

“But you don't think of it like that?”

“I'm not thinking about it. I'm thinking about what happens next. Charn mustn't know about this.”

“About us, you mean.”

“I don't know what I mean, you work it out.”

Dressed, she started for the door, only to stop when DeSilva called out, “Where are you going? This is your room.”

“Then you go back to yours.”

“And risk getting caught by Charn?” He laughed and re-lit his pipe. “No fear.”

Sorcha turned pale. “Are you insane? The longer you're here, the more likely she is to check on me and find you!”

“Why should she check? She'd hear anyone creeping up the corridor, right?” DeSilva grinned. “The only reason she'd pop in here would be to try it on with you; everyone knows she's a dyke.”

Sorcha quailed, memories of the pirate woman Isa Maxine rising in her mind. DeSilva frowned at her reaction.

“What's wrong?”

“There was a woman, a pirate named Isa Maxine...”

“I've met her. Blond, green eyes, nudist, nymphomaniac, mad as a box of frogs.”

Sorcha nodded, unsmiling. “Yes. I was on her ship for a while, she... Charn doesn't look at me the way Maxine did, that woman...” she moved away from the door, almost stumbling before she reached the bed. DeSilva sat up and put his arm around her shoulders.

“You don't have to talk about it.”

“Odacon let her have me twice.” Sorcha flinched, then leant against DeSilva's support and looked up into his face. “It wasn't rape. A slave can't be raped. Her master already owns her consent.”

“You don't have to think like that now; you're not a slave anymore.”

“How else should I think of it? Monte, half the time I can't think at all, things only make sense when I'm...” she tugged at her clothes as if noticing them for the first. “I need to undress.”

DeSilva restrained a chuckle and helped her out of her shirt, then laid her out on her back to peel off her boots and breeches. Naked, she curled up against him with her eyes closed.

“Better?” He chuckled.

“Yes.” She glanced up at him, her tone incongruously soft for her words. “I'm not the least bit stupid, Monte. A slave isn't allowed to think for herself, but I was never allowed to do that anyway; the Naril didn't teach me to think like a slave, my parents had done it already.”

“So why in hell's name do you want to go back to them?”

“Who said anything about want?” Sorcha began to kiss chest again distractedly. “Haven't you been listening? What I want doesn't matter. If it did, I'd have gone west with...” she cut herself off suddenly, glancing up at DeSilva with a mix of guilt and fear. “I wouldn't go home if I had any choice.”

He stooped his head to kiss her. She responded fiercely, grateful to let her body speak in a language so much clearer than words. For a long time, they laid together, hands and lips moving over each other’s bodies, but their passions were spent, and they gradually drifted off to sleep.