“Know who you are?” came a voice from the doorway, and Vyndra jumped in spite of herself.
“Kandar,” she breathed. Pride said to stand her ground defiantly, but she could not stop herself from backing away as the cruel-eyed prince swaggered into the chamber, a bloody sword in his fist. In the corridor behind him were turban-helmed soldiers, also with crimson-stained weapons.
He stooped to take something from the floor—the veil she had worn while dancing—and fingered it thoughtfully as he advanced. “Perhaps you think you are a noblewoman,” he said, “perhaps even the famous Lady Vyndra, known for the brilliance of her wit and the dazzling gatherings at her palaces? Alas, the tale has been well told already of how the Lady Vyndra fell prey beyond the Himelias to a savage barbarian who carried her off, to death perhaps, or slavery.”
“What can you possibly hope to gain by this farce?” Vyndra demanded, but the words faded as six veiled women, swathed in concealing layers of silk, entered the room. And with them was Prytanis.
Smirking, the Nemedian leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “The gods are good, wench,” he said, “for who should I find in Gwandiakan but Prince Kandar, who was interested to learn of the presence of a certain woman nearby. A purse of gold he offered for the nameless jade, and I could only accept his generosity.”
Annoyance flashed across Kandar’s face, but he seemed otherwise unaware of the other man. “Prepare her,” he commanded. “Prepare both of them. I will not refuse an extra trifle when it is put before me.”
“No!” Vyndra screamed.
She whirled to run, but before she had crossed half the chamber, three of the veiled women were on her, pushing her to the floor. With a corner of her mind she was aware of the other three holding Chin Kou, but panting desperation flooded every part of her. Frantically, futilely, she fought, but the women rolled her this way and that, stripping away her so-recently donned robes with humiliating ease. When she was naked, they would not allow her to regain her feet but dragged her writhing across the floor with kicking legs trailing behind her. At Kandar’s feet they forced her to her knees and his gaze chilled her to the bone, turning her muscles to water, stilling her struggles. Chin Kou was knelt beside her, as naked as she and sobbing with terror, but Vyndra could not take her eyes from Kandar’s.
“You cannot hope to get away with this,” she whispered. “I am not some nameless—”
“You are nameless,” he snapped. “I told you, the Lady Vyndra is gone”—slowly he fastened the veil across her face by its tiny silver chain—“and in her place is a new addition to my purdhana. I think I will name you Maryna.”
“Your sister,” Vyndra panted. She had had no trouble with the veil while dancing; now it seemed to restrict her breathing. “I will free Alyna. I will—” His slap jerked her head sideways.
“I have no sister,” he growled.
“What of my gold?” Prytanis demanded suddenly. “The wench is yours, and I want my payment.”
“Of course.” Kandar took a purse from his belt, tossing it to the slit-nosed man. “It is satisfactory?”
Prytanis eagerly untied the purse strings and spilled some of the golden coins into his palm. “It is satisfactory,” he said. “If only Conan could see—” His words ended in a grunt as Kandar’s sword thrust into his middle. Gold rang on the floor tiles as he grabbed the blade with both hands.
Kandar met the Nemedian’s unbelieving gaze levelly. “You gazed on the unveiled faces of two women of my purdhana,” he explained. The razor steel slid easily from the dying man’s grasp, and Prytanis fell atop his gold.
Face smarting, Vyndra gathered the last shreds of her courage. “To kill your own hirelings and take back the gold is like you, Kandar. You were always a fool and a worm.” His dark gaze made her realize it had been the last of her courage. She clenched her teeth with the effort of facing him.
“He saw your face unveiled,” the prince said, “and that of the Khitan woman, so he had to die, for my honor. But he earned the gold and I am no thief. You will be beaten once for that and again for each of the other insults.”
“I am of the Kshatriya blood.” Vyndra spoke the words for her own benefit, as though to deny what had happened, and no one else seemed to notice them.
“This was the last of your strange companions,” Kandar continued. “The others are already dead. All of them.”
A whimper rose in Vyndra’s throat. The vanishing of a small hope she had not know was there until it was gone, the hope that the huge barbarian would rescue her, left her now truly with nothing. “You will never break me,” she whispered and knew the emptiness of the words even as they left her lips.
“Break you?” Kandar said mockingly. “Of course not. But there must be some small training in obedience. Some small humbling of your pride.” Vyndra wanted to shake her head in denial, but his eyes held hers like a serpent mesmerizing a bird. “On the morrow you will be placed on a horse, garbed as now, and paraded through the streets of Gwandiakan so that all may see the beauty of my new possession. Bring them!” he snapped at the women.
With all of her heart Vyndra wanted to muster a shout of defiance, but she knew, as she was dragged to the horses, that it was a wail of despair that echoed in the halls of her palace.
CHAPTER XX
At a crude plank table by himself in the corner of a dirt-floored tavern, Conan was reminded of Sultanapur as he tugged the hood of his dark cloak, borrowed from a groom at Vyndra’s palace, deeper over his face. Wondering when he would next be in a city without the need to hide his features, he emptied half the cheap wine in his wooden tank in one long swallow.
The others in the tavern were Vendhyans all, though far from the nobles or wealthy of Gwandiakan. Carters who smelled of their oxen rubbed elbows with masons’ apprentices in tunics stained with gray splashes of dried mortar. Nondescript turbaned men hunkered over their wine or talked in hushed tones with black eyes darting to see who might overhear. The smell of sour wine warred with incense, and the muted babble of voices did not quite mask the tinkle of bells at the wrists and ankles of sloe-eyed doxies parading through the tavern. Unlike their sisters in the West, their robes covered them from ankle to neck, but those robes were of the sheerest gossamer, concealing nothing. The jades found few customers, though, and the usual frivolity of taverns was absent. The air was filled with a tension darker than the night outside the walls. The Cimmerian was not the only man to keep his face hidden.
Conan signaled for more wine. A serving wench, her garb but a trifle more opaque than that of the trulls, brought a rough clay pitcher, took his coin and hurried away without a word, obviously eager to return to her cubbyhole and hide.
That tightly wound nervousness had been evident in the entire city from his arrival, and it had grown tighter as the night went on. Soldiers were still arresting homeless waifs and beggar children, such few as had not gone to ground like pursued foxes, carrying them off to the fortress prison that stood in the center of Gwandiakan. But even the soldiers could sense the mood of the sullen throngs. Patrols now often numbered a hundred men, and they moved as though expecting attack at any moment.
The streets had been full of talk earlier, full of rumor, and the Cimmerian had no trouble in hearing of the men he sought. Quickly he learned the location of Prince Kandar’s palace, one of the few east of the city, and of that where Karim Singh was said to be staying. Before he had gone a hundred paces, however, he heard of another palace said to house the wazam, and fifty paces beyond that a third, both widely separated from each other and from the first. Each corner brought a new rumor. Half the palaces of Gwandiakan were said to contain Karim Singh. Tongues could be found to name every palace as housing Naipal, and many spoke of an invisible palace constructed in a night by the mage, while still others claimed the wizard watched the city from above, from the clouds. In the end it was frustration that had sent Conan into the tavern.
A wave of dizziness that had nothing to do with the wine swept over him, not for the first time that night, clouding his vision. Grimly he fought it off, and when his eyes cleared, Hordo was sliding onto a bench across the table from him.