“Why do you not speak?” she asked, her voice all pure innocence.
Bitch, he thought. “It’s as if he were here, Sularia, watching his mistress writhe and moan beneath me.”
“Is that all I am to you?” Her tone was sultry now, caressing like warm oil. “A means of striking at Garian?”
“Yes,” he said cruelly. “An he had a wife or a daughter, they would take their turns with you in my bed.”
Her eyes drifted to the face in the crystal. “He has no time for a mistress, much less a wife. Of course, you are responsible for the many troubles that take his time. What would your fellows think, an they knew you took the risk of seducing the King’s mistress to your bed?”
“Was it a risk?” His face hardened dangerously. “Are you a risk?”
She shifted in the cushions so that her head was toward him, her hips twisted to emphasize their curve against the smallness of her waist. “I am no risk,” she said softly. “I wish only to serve you.”
“Why?” he persisted. “At first I meant you only for my bed, but of your own will you began to spy in the palace, coming to kneel at my feet and whisper of who did what and who said what. Why?”
“Power,” she breathed. “It is an ability I have, to sense power in men, to sense men who will have power. I am drawn to such men as a moth to the flame. I sense the power in you, greater than the power in Garian.”
“You sense the power.” His eyes lidded, and he spoke almost to himself. “I can feel the power inside, too. I’ve always felt it, known it was there. I was born to be king, to raise Nemedia to an empire. And you are the first other to realize it. Soon the people will take to the streets of Belverus with swords in hand to demand that Garian abdicate in my favor. Very soon. And on that day I will raise you to the nobility, Sularia. Lady Sularia.”
“I thank my king.”
Suddenly he unbelted his dressing robe and threw it off, turning so that the man in the crystal—if he were actually able to see from it—would have a clear view of the bed. “Come and worship your king,” he commanded.
Mouth curving in a wet-lipped smile, she crawled to him.
V
As Conan made his way down to the common room at the Sign of Thestis the next morning, he wondered again if he had fallen into a nest of lunatics. Two lyres, four zithers, three flutes and six harps of assorted sizes were being played, but by musicians scattered about the room, and no two playing the same tune. One man stood declaiming verse to a wall with full gesticulations, as if performing for a wealthy patron. A dozen young men and women at a large table covered with bits of sculpture shouted over the music, telling one another in detail what was wrong with everyone else’s work. Three men at the foot of the stairs also shouted at one another, all three simultaneously, about when morally reprehensible action was morally required. At least, that was what he thought they were shouting about. All the men and women in the room, none past their mid-twenties, were shouting about one thing or another.
He and Hordo had been made welcome the night before, after a fashion. There had been but a score of people in the inn then. If it was an inn. That was another thing the Cimmerian doubted. The lot of them had stared as if Ariane had brought back two Brythunian bears. And among that lot, with no more weapons than a few belt knives for cutting meat, perhaps they had seemed so.
While Hordo had gone out back to the baths—wooden tubs sitting on the dirt in a narrow court, not the marble palaces to cleanliness and indolence found elsewhere in the city—the odd youths had crowded around Conan, refilling his cup with cheap wine whenever it was in danger of becoming empty and prodding him to tell stories. And when Hordo returned they pressed him, too, for tales. Long into the night and the small hours of the morning, Conan and the one-eyed man had vied to top the other’s last tale.
Those strange young men and women—artists, some said they were, others musicians, and still others philosophers—listened as if hearing of another world. Oft times those who called themselves philosophers made comments more than passing strange, not a one of which Conan had understood. It had taken him a while to realize that none of the others understood them either. Always there was a tick of silence punctuating each comment while the rest watched him who made it to see if they were supposed to nod solemnly at the pontification or laugh at the witticism. A time or two Conan had thought one of them was making fun of him, but he had done nothing. It would not have been proper to kill a man when he was not sure.
At the foot of the stairs he pushed past the philosophers—none of the three even noticed his passing—and stopped in astonishment. Ariane stood on a table in the corner of the room. Naked. She was slim, but her breasts were pleasantly full, her waist tiny above sweetly rounded hips.
He swung his cloak from his shoulders—the wavy-bladed sword was safely hidden in the tiny room he had been given for the night—and stalked across the room to thrust the garment up to her.
“Here, girl. You’re not the sort for this kind of entertainment. If you need money, I’ve enough to feed both of us for a time.”
For a moment she looked down at him, hands on hips and eyes unreadable, then astounded him by throwing back her head and laughing. His face reddened; he little enjoyed being laughed at. Instantly she dropped to her knees on the table, her face a picture of contrition. The way her breasts bounced within a handspan of his nose made his forehead suddenly grow beads of sweat.
“I’m sorry, Conan,” she said softly, or what passed for softly in the din. “That may have been the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I shouldn’t have laughed.”
“If you want to exhibit yourself naked,” he replied gruffly, “why not go to a tavern where there’s a bit of money in it?”
“Do you see those people?” She pointed out three men and two women seated near the table, each with a piece of parchment fastened to a board and a bit of charcoal in hand, and each glaring impatiently at the girl and him. “I pose for them. They don’t have the money to hire someone, so I do them a favor.”
“Out in front of everybody?” he said incredulously.
“There isn’t much room, Conan,” she said, amusement plain in her voice. “Besides, everyone here is an artist of one sort or another. They do not even notice.”
Eyeing her curves, he was willing to wager differently. But all he said was, “I suppose you can do what you want.”
“You suppose right.”
She waved to the people sketching and hopped down from the table, producing any number of interesting jiggles and bounces. He wished she would stop leaping about like that while she had her clothes off. It was all he could do not to throw her over his shoulder and take her back up to his room. Then he noticed a twinkle in her eye and a slight flush on her cheek. She knew the effect she had on him.