,” he replied. “Where may I find the barbarian called Conan?”
“I don’t know,” she lied automatically. The admission already made was one too many.
“A pity.” He bit off the words, sending a shiver through her. “A very great pity.”
Davinia searched for a way to deflect him from his purpose. All that passed through her mind, echoing and re-echoing, was ‘a very great pity.’
“You may keep the necklace,” he said suddenly. She stared at him in surprise. He did not have complete control of himself still, she saw. He had continually to lick dry lips, and his eyes drank her in as a man in the desert drank water. “Thank you. I—”
“Wear it for me.”
“Of course,” she said. There was still a chance. She left the room as regally as she had entered, but once outside, before the slaves had even closed the doors, she ran—despite the fact that to be languid at all times was one mark of a properly cared-for mistress.
Renda, arranging the pillows on Davinia’s bed, leaped as her mistress dashed into the chamber. “Mistress, you startled me!”
“Tell me what you know of this Jhandar,” Davinia panted, as she dropped to her knees and began rooting in her jewel chest. “Quickly. Hurry!”
“Little is known, mistress,” the plump tire-woman said hesitantly. “The cult professes—”
“Not that, Renda!” Tossing bits of jewelry left and right, she came up with the stolen necklace clutched in her fist. Despite herself, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Mitra be thanked. Tell me what the servants and slaves know, what their masters will not know for half a year more. Tell me!”
“Mistress, what has he … .” She broke off at Davinia’s glare. “Jhandar is a powerful man in Turan, mistress. So it is whispered among the servants. And ’tis said he grows more powerful by the day. Some say the increase in the army was begun by him, by his telling certain men, who in turn convinced the king, that it should be so. Of course, it is well known that King Yildiz has long dreamed of empire. He would not have taken a great deal of telling.”
“Still,” Davinia murmured, “it is a display of power.” Mundara Khan had never swayed the king for all his blood connections to the throne. “How does he accomplish it?”
“All men have secrets, mistress. Jhandar makes it his business to learn their secrets. To keep their secrets, most men will agree to any suggestion Jhandar makes.” She paused. “Many believe he is a sorcerer. And the cult does have immense wealth.”
“How immense?”
“It may rival that of King Yildiz.”
A look of intense practicality firmed Davinia’s face. This situation, which had seemed so frightening, might yet be turned to her advantage. “Fetch me a cloak,” she commanded. “Quickly.”
When she returned to Jhandar, surprise was plain on his countenance. A cloak of fine scarlet wool swathed her from her neck to the ground.
“I do not understand,” he said, anger mounting in his voice. “Where is the necklace?”
“I wear it for you.” She opened the cloak, revealing the rubies caressing the upper slopes of her breasts. And save for the necklace, her sleek body was nude.
Only for an instant she held the cloak so. Even as he gasped, she pulled it closed. But then, rising on her toes, she spun so that her hips flashed whitely beneath flaring crimson. Around the room she danced, offering him brief tantalizing glimpses, but never so revealing as the first.
She finished on her knees before him, the scarlet cloth lowered to bare pale shoulders and the rubies nestled in her sweat-slick cleavage. Masking her triumph with care, she met his gaze. His face was flushed with desire. And now for the extra stroke.
“The man Conan,” she said, “told me that he stays at the Blue Bull on the Street of the Lotus Dreamers, near the harbor.”
For a moment he stared at her, uncomprehending; then he lurched to his feet. “I have him,” he muttered excitedly. “An the Hyrkanians are found … .” All expression fled from his face as he regarded her. “Men have no use for lemans who lie,” he said.
She replied with a smile. “A mistress owes absolute truth and obedience to her master.” Or at least, she thought, a mistress should make him believe he had those things. “But you are not my master. Yet.”
“I will take you with me,” he said thickly, but she shook her head.
“The guards would never let me go. There is an old gate at the rear of the palace, however, unused and unguarded. I will be there with my serving woman one turn of the glass past dark tonight.”
“Tonight. I will have men there to meet you.” Abruptly he pulled her to her feet, kissing her brutally.
But not so well as Conan, she thought as he left. It was a pity the barbarian was to die. She had no doubt that was what Jhandar intended. But Jhandar was a step into her future; Conan was of the past. As she did with all things past, she put him out of her mind as if he had never existed.
XII