Warrior (66 page)

“He’s always going to come between us, Starros.”

“Not tonight, Leila,” he begged. “And not in here.”

Leila finally managed to get the buckle undone. She leaned forward to kiss him seductively. “All right then, my love, not tonight. Not in this room.”

Leila tossed the belt aside and set to work on his trousers, only instead of her hands she decided to use her teeth, which put an abrupt end to both the conversation and any thoughts Starros was having about . . . well, everything.

After Starros left his study, Mahkas sat for a while, wondering about what the young man had said. The lad showed remarkable maturity in his words. And he’d demonstrated wisdom beyond his years with his suggestion that it might be inappropriate for him to speak with Leila on such a delicate matter. He hadn’t expected that from a bastard fosterling.

He should have suspected the young man was brighter than he appeared, Mahkas supposed.

Marla hadn’t wanted him appointed as Orleon’s future replacement out of a sense of duty. Starros was capable and could be trusted, and Marla wasn’t about to waste that sort of valuable resource in the Palace Guard.

And Starros was right, of course. It would be totally inappropriate for the assistant chief steward to discuss the intimate details of any affair of the heart with the daughter of the house. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t even be on first-name terms.

But then, these weren’t normal circumstances.

Mahkas rubbed at the scar on his arm absently, his correspondence forgotten. Leila’s intransigence over Damin was beyond insubordination; it bordered on outright disobedience. Mahkas wasn’t sure how much longer he could put up with the sulking, the heavy sighs and the sullen defiance Leila demonstrated every time Mahkas broached the subject. Much of the reason he had agreed to Damin joining Almodavar on the raid into Medalon was to give him an opportunity to straighten things out with his daughter. She had to understand. She had to stop this nonsense and start doing something about seducing her fiancé, not driving him away.

How many other daughters got such an offer? How many other girls lay awake at night,
dreaming of a chance to wed—or even bed—Damin Wolfblade?

Yet Leila wanted no part of it all—as far as Mahkas could see—because of some silly resentment from her childhood that she should be well and truly over by now, considering she was twenty-three.

Her ingratitude was beyond his understanding. Mahkas could have arranged any number of marriages for his daughter and not even bothered to consult her. What more did she want from him? He wasn’t selling her to a complete stranger for a few acres of land and a few head of cattle. He was letting her marry a man who loved her. A man she had grown up with. A man who would one day be High Prince of Hythria. How many daughters got even a fraction of that sort of consideration from their parents?

And what more could she want in a husband anyway? Damin had wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. He was young, good-looking, had no unbearable bad habits that Mahkas knew of. Admittedly, he never seemed to take anything seriously, but he was only young. No doubt he’d grow out of that eventually.

Leila should thank the gods her father had found her someone so agreeable. When she was seventeen, old Lord Snowden of Narrawn, in Elasapine Province, had made a very attractive offer for Leila that he’d rejected out of hand. Had Mahkas accepted the offer, Leila would be living in a draughty old fortress in the foothills of the Sunrise Mountains outside of Byamor by now, stepmother to Snowden’s eight children from his five previous wives.

And yet she still had the temerity to scorn his choice.

Mahkas rubbed at his arm even harder, only noticing what he was doing when it really began to hurt. He pushed up his right sleeve and examined the small lump with concern. It seemed to bother him more and more lately. It was such a tiny little thing, too. The physicians he’d consulted about it—at Bylinda’s insistence—all agreed that it was the legacy of some long-forgotten war wound. According to the healers, it was not uncommon for a shard of metal, too small to find or even notice when the wound was first inflicted, to work its way to the surface many years after the original injury. It would come out eventually, they assured him, of its own accord. Digging around for the shard before it was ready to exit the body would merely increase the likelihood of infection, with no guarantee they would find anything so small.

So he itched and scratched and suffered the irritation, because a small lump was vastly preferable—and much less painful—to having a gangrenous arm amputated.

Mahkas cursed the itching and fingered the long scar beside the lump to distract himself. He’d collected that one defending Riika the day she was kidnapped by the Fardohnyans just before they’d killed her. It ran almost the full length of his arm and had come close to ending his career as a soldier.

A stupid risk to have taken considering he was the one who’d arranged the kidnapping.

Mahkas pushed that thought away hurriedly. He had long ago convinced himself he was innocent of any involvement in Riika’s death. It had been Darilyn’s idea. Darilyn had forced him to take part. And Darilyn had paid for her treachery. Mahkas had told himself that so often now, he actually believed it was true.

He pulled his sleeve down and made himself concentrate on the problem of Leila and Damin. His sisters were long dead and nothing could be done to alter that. But he could alter Leila’s fate. He could ensure the daughter of Mahkas Damaran lived as a princess. Not for his daughter the fate of a penniless wife, trying to hold together the appearance of prosperity because she suffered a noble name with no fortune or land behind it.

It still irked Mahkas that, even after all this time, he had no independent wealth of his own. His fortune was Krakandar’s fortune; Damin’s fortune. Everything he earned and anything he spent came from his nephew’s coffers, not his own.

The ultimate irony
, Mahkas thought.
Any money I receive when Damin marries my daughter will
be money I’ve made for him, watching over his lands, his inheritance
.

But how was he going to make Leila understand this?

How was he going to make her do the right thing, not just for herself, but for her whole family?

Perhaps
, Mahkas thought,
Starros should talk to her, after all
.

It was right of the young man to say that it might be inappropriate, but even Mahkas knew that Leila had been closer to Starros than any of the other children when they were growing up. He’d always stood up for her, even against Damin. Maybe Leila would listen to Starros. His opinion was objective. He wasn’t a member of the family. He had no vested interest in the decision. It mattered little to Starros who Leila married.

For a moment Mahkas stopped worrying about Leila long enough to wonder what Starros did for female companionship. While officially a fosterling, he’d been allowed access to the palace
court’esa
, but, strictly speaking, they were out of bounds now he was considered staff rather than family. No doubt the fosterling was entertaining himself with some of the younger household slaves. Maybe even the housemaids. With a warm and rare feeling of paternal generosity, Mahkas promised himself he would find Starros a suitable match when the time came. Someone who might be able to serve Leila as a handmaiden, perhaps. There might even be a girl in Bylinda’s entourage the fosterling already had his eye on. There were certainly one or two Mahkas had fondled surreptitiously, when he was certain his wife wasn’t looking.

Mahkas shook his head. He was getting distracted. The question wasn’t who Starros was sleeping with. The question was, could Starros finally make Leila see the error of her ways?

Mahkas had no doubt that Starros would do as he asked, if only because he must be anxious to make amends for his gross breach of protocol the day Damin arrived. And he must see the logic in the match; probably even welcome it. Fond as Starros was of both Leila and Damin, Mahkas could well imagine his delight at the prospect of Leila married to his good friend.
And maybe, if Starros explains
things to her, as her friend—as Damin’s friend, too—Leila will begin to understand
.

Mahkas leaned back in his seat and smiled.
Yes. It’s a good idea. Quite a brilliant idea, actually
.

He glanced at the water clock on the mantel. It wasn’t that long since Starros had announced he was going to bed. He’d still be awake. Now that Mahkas had settled on doing this, he didn’t want to wait. Damin might be home any day. Starros had to talk to Leila as soon as possible. The sooner she understood, the sooner she would start to do as her father wished and the sooner Damin would come to realise that his cousin loved him. Once that happened, Damin would start to pressure his mother to make the arrangement formal, Mahkas reasoned.

Mahkas rose to his feet, picking up the candelabrum on the desk, and headed for the door.

It was chilly in the corridor leading to the staff quarters. As a free servant rather than a slave, Starros’s room was on the same level as the family suites, although in a different wing. Slightly larger than the average staff bedroom, and boasting a small dressing room as well as its own entrance to the slaveways, Starros had been well favoured when he took on his apprenticeship with Orleon, as his accommodation indicated.

A draught in the hall made the candle gutter and flare as Mahkas strode along the corridor.

When he finally reached Starros’s door he hesitated, smiling to himself as he heard the obvious sounds of passion coming from inside the room.

Well, the question about who Starros is sleeping with is about to be answered
, Mahkas chuckled to himself, wondering if it was that new girl Bylinda had bought last year in Byamor when they’d gone to visit Charel Hawksword and Kalan’s twin brother, Narvell, to celebrate the young man’s twenty-first birthday.

Leena, that was her name. She was the daughter of two slaves from the Warlord of Elasapine’s own household and Charel had vouched for her personally. She was a buxom young thing, Mahkas recalled, of about eighteen or nineteen. And very attractive. So attractive that even Mahkas had cornered her once or twice, just to take a nibble out of what was, essentially, forbidden fruit. He’d never slept with her, though. He was too good a husband for that. Bylinda didn’t mind him sleeping with the palace
court’esa
—that’s what they were there for—but she took a very dim view of him spoiling her handmaids. It was a well-known fact that as soon as the lord of the house started sleeping with the handmaids, they got all uppity and full of their own importance and it was impossible to get a decent day’s work out of them after that.

The cries from Starros’s room grew louder, more intense, as his partner urged him on. Leena was certainly an enthusiastic and uninhibited lover, by the sound of it. Mahkas smiled as he turned the door handle, thinking that at the very least—in addition to embarrassing poor Starros—he’d finally get a good look at Leena naked, something he’d fantasised about on more than one occasion.

Mahkas hesitated for a moment longer and then threw open the door, half erect himself both from the voyeuristic delight of listening to their lovemaking and in anticipation of seeing Leena in all her voluptuous glory . . .

He blinked in the sudden and unexpected light as the door slammed back against the wall, blowing out a good half of the countless candles that seemed to cover every flat surface in the room.

A scream filled the room as Mahkas’s brain took a moment or two to realise what he was witnessing; to register that it wasn’t the voluptuous and dark-haired Leena who sat astride the bastard fosterling, her head thrown back, as she demanded
more, harder, faster
. . .

It was his own daughter.

He bellowed a wordless cry of anguished, horrified fury that echoed throughout the sleeping palace.

Leila screamed again as he lunged at her, grabbing her by the arm, dragging her off the bed, off
him
. . .

“
Guards
!”

Mahkas wasn’t just angry. He was beyond rage. Beyond reason.

“
Leila
!” Starros cried, reaching for her desperately.

Mahkas put himself between them, twisting Leila’s arm with such ferocity that her screams were as much from the pain of his grasp as they were from their discovery. Instead of cowering in shame, Starros clambered over the bed, desperate to tear Leila from her father’s grasp, but the regent swung his elbow savagely up into the bastard fosterling’s face, throwing him across the rumpled bed and against the wall.

A red veil of rage danced before his eyes as Mahkas dragged Leila into the hall. By now, the guards on duty had responded to his cries. Naked as a whore, struggling like a wild animal, Leila begged to be let go. A dozen Raiders pounded along the hall with drawn swords in answer to Mahkas’s shout.

Leila lashed out at him with her foot, connecting with his shin, making Mahkas grunt with the pain and momentarily lose his grip. On her hands and knees, sobbing like a child, she tried to crawl away from him. Furiously, he reached down, grabbed a handful of her long blond hair and dragged her back to his side.

“Arrest him!” Mahkas bellowed, pointing to Starros, who was trying to push himself up against the wall. His face was broken and bloody, his expression more dazed than defiant. “He tried to rape my daughter!”

Starros barely had time to stand before his room was full of Raiders. Although he was unarmed, he tried to fight them off with no chance of succeeding. Mahkas, his hands still tangled in Leila’s long hair, began dragging her along the hall, naked, humiliated and terrified, kicking and screaming in protest.

Starros cried out to her again, but he had no hope of reaching Leila as the guards overwhelmed him and the bastard fosterling’s illicit love affair with Leila Damaran—along with his career as the chief assistant steward of Krakandar Palace—came crashing down in an abrupt and bitter end.