The Harem Master (32 page)

And that Ihsan could get now, especially since Sabah was as likely to be asleep in the dead of night as he. Ihsan drained a second dish of wine, then rose and pulled on slippers before heading for the secret passage. A short time later he stepped out into Demir's—Sabah's—bedroom.

Exactly as he'd expected, the bed was empty. Sabah hadn't even wanted to use the room, but the secret passage entrance made it far too useful a place for them to be together on the few occasions they were able.

Leaving the bedroom, he wandered into the sitting area, stomach clenching as he saw the table where he'd been sitting when Demir had kissed Kitt as if it was his sole purpose in life. Ihsan still could not get that kiss out of his mind; he was fairly certain Kitt, Haluk, and Sabah couldn't either, though they'd never discussed it. There were enough problems; their personal ones would have to wait.

Sabah, unfortunately, did not seem to be there. Damn. Ihsan could not go get the files himself, so there was nothing for it but to wait. Maybe he should return later. There was no telling when his father would next summon him, even at that wretched hour.

He sat and lingered anyway, fiddling with the taaki set left lying on the table, head spinning with thoughts but unable to settle on any of them. When he heard the distant call of the guards announcing the third hour of the morning, however, he gave up. Whatever Sabah was doing, it was keeping him busy. Ihsan could certainly wait another day or so—it wasn't like he had anything else to do.

Returning to the secret passage, he retrieved the lantern he'd left waiting just inside it and slowly headed back toward his own room, exhaustion picking away at the edge of his thoughts.

The sound of voices sent the exhaustion and thoughts scattering away. Ihsan doused his lantern and crouched low, but by the abrupt silence from the other voices—at least two—they'd noticed him.

Ihsan crept forward a few steps, until he could feel the edge of the wall where it turned at the intersection from which he could head on to the king's chambers or his own. Reaching out, slowly, carefully, hardly daring to breathe, Ihsan set the lantern in the middle of the intersection, then drew back and waited.

It didn't take long. The men muttered, too low for him to catch the words, definitely not familiar voices. If they'd had a lantern, they'd doused theirs as well, which spoke of a familiarity they shouldn't have.

But no, as they drew closer, he saw that they did have light, just smaller, little lanterns that they'd banked—enough that they didn't see the lantern booby trap until one of them tripped over it. Ihsan surged forward and up, grabbed the second one from behind, and snapped his neck.

Rounding on the second, Ihsan drew a dagger from his sash and lunged forward, taking him right in the gut. Yanking the knife, shoving the bastard into the wall, he lifted the dagger again and held it to his throat. "The dagger is poisoned, but you'll still die slowly and painfully. Tell me what you're doing here and I'll let you die quickly."

The man opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "Paid to kill the king, the prince, and the princess."

Euren. Panic raced through him like fire and ice all at once. Ihsan tamped it down; Euren was hardly helpless. "Who have you killed so far?"

"Just the king," the man replied.

Ihsan drove his dagger into the man's throat, then yanked it out again and let the man fall to the ground. He wiped the blood on his face away with his sleeve, snatched up one of the small lanterns that had not gone out, then bolted through the tunnels to Euren's rooms.

The secret passage door gaped open when he reached it. He ran faster when he heard someone shout. "Euren!"

He threw himself into her room, looked around—and dropped his dagger in relief when he saw her standing by the side of her bed, over the body of her would-be assassin, daggers in his throat and his stomach. There was blood on the floor, the bed, and Euren. Ihsan ran across the room to her and caught her up, not letting go until his trembling had stopped. "Merciful Divine, I'm glad no one is very good at sneaking up on you."

She cupped his face, drew him down into a brief, hard kiss. "It's all right, Ihsan. I'm fine."

He nodded but still captured her hand and pressed kisses to the palm. When he felt like he would not fall apart with the next breath, he said, "What happened?"

"I heard the door open. That sound is so familiar, I heard it a thousand times at the temple when we snuck in or out of the passages there. Men can muffle footsteps, but that scrape of stone… I waited for him to get close, then gutted him." She drew back, pushed away her hair. "I'm glad the others weren't here. I don't know if I would have been able to move in time. This is eerily similar to the attack on the road."

"What attack on the road?" Ihsan demanded. "Woman—" He broke off as she pressed a finger to his lips.

"My poor reception put it from my mind, much as I hate to admit it," she said, slowly removing her fingers and resting her hands against his chest. "It was a couple of days after we left the monastery. Two of them. I caught the one sneaking up on me; Meltem took care of the second one. Emre and the others found the rest waiting in the woods and ran their horses off. After that, we got here as quickly as we could, left men behind to watch. Emre has never said, but I suspect the men he left took care of at least one other threat. But I've no idea who could have hired them, and why they'd wait until I left the monastery to try and kill me. It's not like it would have been hard to sneak into the monastery for even a half-decent assassin."

"Could have been assassin spiders, I think that's what Kitt is always calling them," Ihsan said and at her puzzled look, said, "A type of spider that eats other spiders. But the one we saw in the Desert didn't go out hunting its prey. It waited patiently for the prey to walk by and then struck."

"You think the assassins were waiting until I left the monastery."

Ihsan shrugged. "It's impossible to know, but if you were holed up in a monastery far away from here, you were no threat, and assassination is a complicated, messy business. So if I were the one who wanted you dead that seems the most efficient method: order men to watch you and kill you only when it seemed you were going to be a threat again." He squeezed her arms when she shivered. "Sorry."

"Better to know, even if now I feel violated," Euren said with a sigh, resting her forehead against his chest briefly. After a couple of minutes, she drew back and frowned at him. "How in the world did you get here so quickly? I would have thought they'd strike us at the same time to prevent this very thing."

"Luck," Ihsan replied. "The assassins going after me never made it. I encountered them in the tunnel. I'd gone to see Sabah, but he wasn't there, and they…" He trailed off as what the assassin had said finally struck home. "My father. They've already killed my father and then were going to kill me. I—" He broke off, words abruptly drying up.

Euren cupped his face. "Ihsan. Go to your father. I know you won't settle for doing anything else. I'll go find Sabah and Kitt, let them know what's happened. Once we know for ourselves, we'll get everyone back in place and alert the guards. All right."

He kissed her, hard and quick. "Love you." Darting off back into the tunnels, grabbing his dropped dagger on the way, Ihsan snatched up the lantern and moved as quickly as he dared through the tunnels. Euren was somewhere behind him and called out softly for him to be careful before she split off toward the harem hall.

When he reached his father's chambers, everything was quiet, ordinary. He could hear the buzz of insects, the noise of night birds fighting in the garden. Nothing seemed amiss until he passed through the archway from the front rooms to the bedroom and saw two concubines lying on the floor in pools of their own blood. Damn.

Ihsan walked around them, drew one of his daggers as he approached the bed… and did not know what to feel when he saw Kagan lying there with his throat slit, eyes cold and vacant, as lifeless as the nameless soldiers Ihsan had seen more times than he cared to count.

His breath hitched, eyes stinging. He turned away, stowed his dagger, and quickly fled the room. The world was better off with Kagan dead, and it wasn't as though he and his father had ever cared about each other… He shook his head. It didn't matter. This was a major goal achieved, and he was just letting it affect him so because he was already unsettled by all the problems he was facing—problems his father had caused.

Slipping back into the secret passage, he lingered, not quite certain what to do next. Euren. Kitt. Sabah. He needed to get to them, that was it.

His legs felt heavy and stiff as he resumed walking, slowly making his way back to Euren's room.

Movement ahead of him in the passage drew him to a halt—and the tension bled out again as he registered Sabah, Kitt, and Euren. "Ihsan!" Sabah reached him first, running up and grabbing him. "Are you all right? You look like you…" He stopped then said quietly, "I'm sorry."

"What's to be sorry about?" Ihsan asked, fighting the exhaustion washing over him like a tide as his body calmed down from fear and fighting. "With my father gone we can fix everything, and we didn't even have to do the killing."

"Be quiet," Kitt muttered, hugging him from behind. Euren stepped in closed, pulled his head down to press their foreheads together.

Ihsan didn't have the energy or, to be honest, the will, to push away from their comfort. He knew there were people perfectly happy to go through life mostly or even entirely alone, but he would never be that type of person.

After several minutes, he finally nudged them away. "We need to get moving, alert the guards. Merciful Divine, I'll never complain of sleeping problems again."

"Must not have been very good assassins if you were able to get the better of them so easily, but I'm not complaining," Kitt said.

"I don't understand," Sabah said as they resumed heading for Euren's room. "If you killed two, and one went to Euren's room, why didn't they just go one and one and one. Why send two to kill the king and then go to kill you?"

Kitt's mean little laugh filtered through the tunnel. "Take care of the easy marks first, then focus everyone on the hard target."

Ihsan rolled his eyes, pushed open the door to Euren's room, and hopped down. He offered a hand up to Euren. "Who in the world would name Euren the easiest target of the three of us? If they'd sent three after her, they might have almost succeeded. But one? Please." He kissed the back of her hand then let it go. "Whoever hired them doesn't know us very well."

"Or holds women in contempt in general," Sabah said. "Like a certain Steward who was ordered to leave Tavala immediately, but lingered four days."

"To be fair, he was unconscious and then too sick to move for two of those days," Ihsan. "I almost wish he hadn't recovered; that would be one less thing to worry us."

Kitt muttered softly in Rittuen, then said more clearly in Tavamaran, "I should have just slit his throat while he slept. Nobody is going to miss him."

Ihsan didn't reply. "We need to hurry up because the guards are already going to notice this body has been here for some time."

"I'll tell them I snuck my harem in to see me," Euren replied. "It's a violation, but a believable one, and once they find the king dead, it won't matter. Better get going, all of you."

"What are we going to do about the bodies in the passage?" Ihsan asked.

Kitt shrugged. "I'll wait until everything quits down and then hide them in the body carts. That seems to be a done thing around here. Euren's assassin can take the fall for all of them."

"Sounds good to me, now get going." Euren hugged them, then kissed Ihsan before withdrawing and stripping off her clothes. "Good luck."

"Merciful Divine go with you," Ihsan said, then hustled back into the tunnel with the other two, pulling the door shut behind him.

Sabah and Kitt pressed close in the dark, kissing him hard, leaving his mouth wet and bruised. He kissed them each one last time before gently pushing them away. "Once all this settles down I will find a way to have you at my side again or I swear I will tear this place apart." He swallowed. "It's—it's unbearable."

"For us, too," Sabah said. "I keep working and working because I don't want to sleep in an empty bed that isn't mine."

Kitt muttered in Rittuen. Ihsan did not catch the words, but the sentiment was clear enough. "Go," he whispered and walked on himself before he dallied any longer. He walked quickly, not quite running, blowing out the lantern as he stepped into the storeroom. Setting the lantern on the shelf, he padded back into the main room.

He heard the soft rush of footsteps just in time to turn, and the knife meant to go between his ribs instead sliced his side. Ihsan snarled, clutching at his side as he reeled away and drew one of his own daggers, still sticky in places with the blood of his earlier kills.

Damn, damn, damn. They had made some really stupid assumptions—even Kitt had thought assassins had never made it to Ihsan's room.

He dodged as the man came at him again, wincing as the movement pulled at his wound, blood pouring hot and sticky over his fingers. He scrambled away, put the table between him and his attacker, grabbed the carafe of wine still on it, and threw. It struck the assassin in the face, wine splashing everywhere, blood pouring from his nose. Ihsan leapt up onto the table and lunged forward, sinking the knife into the assassin's gut. He shoved the man back, dropped, and swept his legs out from under him. The man's head made a hard, ugly crack as it hit the floor. Not waiting for him to recover, Ihsan circled around him, crouched down and got hold of him, and snapped his neck.

The pounding of feet made his own head shoot up, just in time to be grabbed by another man. He grabbed the man's wrist with his bloody hand, fumbling for the remaining dagger in his sash, grunting when the man slammed a hand into his nose. He dropped to the floor, legs sprawled over the body of the first.

Smirking, the assassin knelt to finish the job, candlelight catching on steel. Ihsan finally got the damned dagger out of his sash, swung up with it—and snarled as his wrist was grabbed, twisted painfully. The man hauled him up, pinned him tightly so Ihsan's back was to his chest, and pressed his dagger to the side of Ihsan's neck.