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"Do not stir," he said harshly.
This was forbidden ground to all save him and a few servants. Something dark had fallen from the woman's hand. He bent and picked it up. His hand jerked as if to throw it away again when he realized what it was; a little folded tablet of lead, with a figure scratched on it, and some lines of writing.
A cursing tablet! Kashtiliash thought, stomach crawling with the sickness of horror.
He recognized the scorpion-tailed, four-winged, lion-pawed drawing. In his studies in the House of Succession he had read the mighty collection of incantations known as Utukku Lemnutu, The Evil Demons. The lines pressed into the lead were crude, but there was no doubt that they showed Pazuzu, the Lord of the Demons of the Waste-master of sandstorms and bringer of all ill fortune for travelers. But the words inscribed below were not a prayer or spell to foil the demon's wickedness. They were an invocation, a summoning.
"The punishment for sorcery directed at the King's person is flaying alive," he grated.
"Not you! My Lord King, your handmaiden lies at your feet-it is not against you! Look inside the lead, and my lord will see!"
She did lie at his feet. He carefully bent the soft metal back, and a fine dusting of hairs fell into his palm. They were the color of desert sand, light and fine-hair such as was almost never seen in the land of Kar-Duniash. Cropped short, in the ma
"You conspire against the queen, the Lady of the Land," he said. "For that also the punishment is death."
Ku-Aya surprised him, wrenching her wrist free and hunching backward, hissing like an Egyptian cat. "The queen! The sorceress who has bespelled our lord!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "The u
"Silence!"
Kashtiliash controlled himself with an effort, his breath slowing. He dropped the knife and pistol on the table, grabbed the woman by her neck, and pitched her into the royal bedchamber. Then he belted on a light kilt-it was unlawful, unlucky, for ordinary men to see the King's nakedness, at least here in the palace-and shouted for the guards. They came, along with a sa resi, an eunuch chamberlain.
The armed men bristled at the sight of the anger on his face, facing outward and bringing their rifles to port-arms as they glared about for intruders.
"Stand easy," Kashtiliash said, gesturing impatiently. "There is no enemy here." He nudged the woman with his toe. "Captain Mar-biti-apla-usur."
"Command me, King of the Universe!"
"This woman has gravely displeased me," he said. "She is to be expelled from the palace. As she is, taking nothing."
The guard captain bowed. "What shall be done with her then?" he asked.
"I do not care. She is become a weariness to my spirit."
The guardsman bowed again, grabbed the blubbering woman by her hair, and pulled her out of the chamber as she scrambled to rise. The officer would probably add her to his household, or sell her-Kashtiliash had spoken truth when he said he was indifferent.
"Oh King, live forever," the eunuch said, rising from his prostration. "Do you wish another woman?"
"At this hour? Leave me, go, go," Kashtiliash said.
His sigh was half groan in the silence as the chamber emptied. There is only one woman that I wish were here, and I am angered with her. Or at least with her brother, the general of the allied Nantukhtar forces here in Kar-Duniash.
Raupasha had claimed Ke
"Officer on deck!"
Private Kyle Hook swung his legs down from the bunk and came to attention. Sick call beat lying on the hospital bunk looking out the window-though it was pleasant enough to watch everyone else working for once. The colonel had arrived, red-haired little I-am-at-God's-Right-Hand O'Rourke himself, and everyone was ru
Prancing around on that fancy horse of his like he's something special, Hook thought. Dumb mick was working as a fucking waiter when the Event happened. I should be out there, not him.
The doctor made her rounds, small and neat in a blue Coast Guard uniform and white coat; most of the ones in this room were ambulatory cases, but there were a few pale and drawn with fever that she stooped over as they lay. Her face hardened when she came to Kyle Hook.
"So," she said, looking him over. She was a slight gray-haired woman with pawky blue eyes that made nothing of his extra inches of height. "Malingering again, eh, Hook?"
"No, ma'am," he said, working his left arm slowly and cautiously. "Shoulder hurts something awful, ma'am."
"Take off your shirt, then," she said briskly, and put her black bag down on a window ledge.
"I'm not well, Dr. Wenter, really I'm not, ma'am," Hook said, muffled by the T-shirt he was cautiously removing.
"You're a malingerer, a liar, and a thief, Hook," the doctor said briskly, yanking it free and bringing a yelp from him.
He kept himself meek; if you shaved a gorilla and stuffed it into a blue sailor suit, it would look a lot like the orderly behind the medic.
"Turn your ugly face to the wall, and shut up. How you ever made it through Camp Grant mystifies me. Even the Marines…"
Because I didn't have any choice, bitch, he thought, bracing his hands against the mud brick.
It had been Camp Grant or Inagua Island Detention Center and shoveling salt for five years. He'd thought the Marines would be a better choice, seeing as he was an Islander born; thought he'd be sure of promotion, maybe a commission. But it was always the same story, persecution wherever he turned. Nearly washed me out to Inagua anyway, the motherfuckers. He'd had to bust his balls just to end up a rifleman here in the ass-end of nowhere, after a reaming-out full of threats he knew were no bluff. If there hadn't been a war on, he would have ended up shoveling salt.
"Ah," the doctor said, after a probe brought another yelp out of him. "As I thought, nothing but a boil. Well, I can lance it for you and the fever'll be down in a day or two."
"Lance-" he began in alarm, catching the glint of the blade out of the corner of his eye.
"This will hurt you a lot more than it will hurt me," the doctor said cheerfully. "Hold still."
He did, while the cold sting of the metal made equally cold sweat start out on his torso. Call me a thief! Well, yes, he'd taken things now and then, but he needed them. Mother and father dead right after the Event, murder-suicide, foster parents the Town assigned him doddering oldsters busy with four young Alban brats… what did they expect? A good dutiful student and then a good dutiful fisherman or potato-grower. Not Kyle Hook, no indeed. He remembered what life had been like in New York, clung to it when others let themselves forget. His father had told him he'd go to Princeton or Yale one day… Then the Event had come along and taken away his youth, the best years of his life; nothing but blister-hard work and school and endless boredom left.
He stifled a scream as the wound ointment was irrigated into the opened boil like burning ice over the raw flesh. You couldn't let something like that show in the Corps; too many Alban bastards who'd despise you if you did, and life would be even more hellish without some respect. Stinking savages, but there were a lot of them-and he had to ke