Portal of a Thousand Worlds Page 19

  “You’d better hit the other one, or I’m going to look lopsided in the morning.”

  She did, even harder.

  “Enough of that,” he said. “Should I now put you over my knee and spank you? I don’t like that sort of game. Of course you’re with child! It would be unnatural if you weren’t, and I’m bursting with joy. I know it’s unmanly, but I love babies! Even girl babies! It had better be a quick wedding. Public or secret?”

  “You’ll want to get your hands on my money as soon as possible, I expect?”

  “I won’t touch your money. The wedding contract will leave it all in your name, every copper bit of it, to spend as you will.”

  She eyed him narrowly. “I didn’t know that was possible!”

  “That married women are allowed to own property? I simply cannot imagine why your father has never thought to mention that. I insist on it. As owner of a household, you can even obtain a permit to arm your guards. Then you can be my sponsor and I will earn my noodles in the arena. I have brought home sixteen thousand imperials for your father so far.”

  “How much?”

  “Sixteen thousand, four hundred, eleven. I swear I will never touch your money. Your body, now, is another matter. I will continue to paw it relentlessly.” He ran a hand along her thigh.

  “But I know nothing about you,” she protested.

  “You know I love you and that you love me.”

  “Do I?”

  “You certainly know that I am the world’s greatest lover.”

  A trace of a dimple peeked out and vanished again. “Greediest if not greatest. Also the world’s greatest sand fighter. And the world’s slickest liar. But your family? Your parents? I know nothing about them!”

  He stood up and lifted her upright to embrace. “Neither do I,” he said, and smothered her protest with a very thorough kiss. Then he said, “If I’m going to lie, I want us both lying.” He lifted her, carried her over to the bed, and adjusted them into a comfortable nose-to-nose position. She did not resist.

  “Now, when have I ever lied to you?”

  “Telling me you climbed the wall.”

  “I never said I climbed the wall! You assumed it because I came in the window.”

  “All that nonsense about Celestial Womb, then? I heard the story of Sea Flower and the Storm Prince at my grandmother’s knee.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear around arthritic knees. I was spinning silk to get between a pretty girl’s legs. No man counts that as lying. You knew it and you consented. Noble Lance was real enough, wasn’t he?”

  She was starting to relax and respond to his banter. “Nobler than anything in my previous experience.”

  “Good.” Subtly, Silky started stroking. “You should have told me sooner about your little silkworm. You have nothing to worry about, nothing at all. True, I’m an orphan and know nothing of my origin. My earliest memories are of the docks and the gutter, an orphan waif fighting dogs for the scraps, rat bites on my arms. I don’t know what my real name was, even. I was adopted by a fraternity that taught me to fight. Your father is my first employer.”

  “My mother would rather die than see me marry a sand warrior.”

  “Let her make her own decisions by all means.”

  “My father will kill you.”

  He can try! “I’ll bring him around,” Silky said truthfully. “Just watch me! The fourth thing you must do is go to your mother and break the happy news. She has a party planned for tomorrow, doesn’t she? Tell her before that and ruin it for her.”

  “And what are the first three things I must do first?”

  “Rape me, rape me, and rape me,” he said. “Break our record.”

  Verdant laughed and his skin chilled as it sometimes did in the arena when he sensed a miscalculation.

  “Help yourself, lover,” she said. “This is your last chance. Make the most of it.”

  “And what does that mean?” Suddenly, he knew exactly what it meant.

  “Silky, dearest, I would very happily live with you forever in a permanent daze of fornication, but that isn’t practical. My mother and I are of one mind.”

  “She is in on our little secret?”

  They had used him! How dare they?

  “It was her idea, bull. I needed a marriage to pry my wealth out of Father’s talons, and only the shame of a baby would get me one. It was Mother who suggested I submit to you. She was furious that Father had polluted her house by admitting a brute warrior.”

  Silky sat up, too furious to think of sex now. She had let him think he was seducing her! He was the one who had won her that money by killing off her husband and brothers-in-law. Ungrateful slut! “You trapped me!”

  “Of course,” she said, mocking him. “You were the best stag on the hill. I’m grateful for all the hard work you put in to please me. Yes, you are a fantastic lover. If bed was everything and the rest of the world didn’t matter, you’d be the only possible choice, and I’m sure you’ve put a fine, healthy baby in me, but this must be good-bye.”

  Silky knew that Jade Harmony was stupid and Morning Jewel even more so, but he had credited their daughter with some brains. “You honestly think your father will find you a husband because of this? He will never let go of your money that way. He’s turned down eight offers for your hand already.”

  “What?” She tried to sit up. “I don’t believe it!”

  Silky pulled her back down and wrapped her in arms and legs. “At least eight. I go through his correspondence regularly, but I may have missed a couple. He’ll pack you off to visit some mythical rural aunt for a few months and put the baby up for adoption. He may do worse than that! Your little silkworm can’t win your freedom by himself. He needs his daddy’s help.”

  She tried to move his left hand. “Stop doing that and keep talking.”

  He kept talking while still doing that. “I can offer him a son-in-law he can’t refuse. Your mother will be hysterical with joy. We will head upriver and you can bear our child far away. When we return next year, I won’t be a sand warrior anymore. Doesn’t that sound more exciting?”

  She punched him. “What sort of business? What else do you do for my father, other than slaying dragons and prowling through his accounts when he’s not around?”

  “Ask not what I do for your father,” Silky growled, suddenly aflame with a desire to dominate, “but rather what I am about to do to you. And, if you are very good, I will then reveal the rest of your life to you.”

  In the middle of the morning, Sand Warrior Silky just happened to be wearing his full sand-warrior regalia when he was summoned to the master’s counting room. The page muttered a warning about a bad mood.

  After seven months in his service, Silky had decided that he disliked Jade Harmony very much and despised him even more. By last month, the merchant had taken to the Gray Helpers’ way of doing business to the point of requesting an outing. The proposed subject had been quite young and even Archives had been unable to make out much of a case against him as a threat to the client. Silky had reluctantly made the score, cutting the man’s throat in an alley and faking a robbery, but he had done it mostly so that Jade Harmony could never pretend that he didn’t know what he was doing.

  The fat man had a very small soul for his size, insisting on a kowtow even when the two of them were alone together. That sort of thing he would pay for, some day, but regrettably not today.

  Jade Harmony left Silky on his knees. Add that insult to the list. He was depicting rage like an actor—face stark white, eyes bulging, hands shaking. “You raped my daughter!”

  Temptation: She raped me. No, mustn’t! “Never, Master!”

  “Debauched her, then.” She seduced me first, blast her!

  “With respect, Eminence, she is a widow. When I told her I would come to her room in the middle of the night, she d
id not set out tea bowls and a chess set.”

  “You abused my trust and hospitality. I will report this to your abbot.”

  “I already have.” He congratulated me on a job well done.

  Probably Jade Harmony detected the threat in those three little words, because he vibrated even more in his frenzy. “You have ruined her!”

  “I am planning to make her much richer. And thus you, of course.”

  The merchant grabbed up a bronze lion and rushed at Silky. He seemed quite surprised to find his wrist being crushed in steel fingers, his arm completely immovable, and the eyes of an assassin glaring down into his.

  “May we discuss this like reasonable men?” Silky said softly. I would so love to break some of your bones in self-defense. He removed the lion and placed it gently back on the lacquered cabinet. “Your daughter and I love each other very much.” In bed, on the floor, and up against the wall; every one of the fifty-six positions listed in that tract you keep locked in your muniments chest—the trapeze, the plowman, the heron and turtle, the weeping birch … “I will gladly marry her.”

  Rubbing a whitened wrist, Jade Harmony bared yellow teeth. “I daresay you would. Fortunately, imperial law forbids Gray Helpers to marry!”

  “I doubt if Verdant knows that and she certainly does not know that I am a Brother unless you have told her. If she marries anyone else, you lose control of her money. Either he gets it or she keeps it. But legally, I will be a rapist, marrying her under false pretenses, so I can have no claim on it.”

  That caught the fat man’s attention. “So?”

  “The nightingale will sing to two broom stars.”

  “What?”

  Silky sighed. “Business. Huge business. Sit down, client, and listen to the sound of gold clinking as your faithful aide weaves dreams before you.”

  When Jade Harmony failed to move, Silky took him by the shoulders and pushed him backward a few steps, until he toppled onto a cushioned sofa, going down like an old-growth cedar. Silky pulled up a stool for himself, putting his knees between Jade Harmony’s knees. He waggled a finger.

  “The prophecy, remember? The omen. There are two broom stars in the sky now and they will still be there next month for the nightingale to serenade. All the astrologers in the Good Land are gibbering already. They are all convinced now that the Portal of Worlds will open, the year after next.”

  Porcine eyes shrank even smaller. “What happens then?”

  “Who knows? Barbarian hordes coming out? Imperial armies vanishing inside, as did Emperor Virtuous Ruler’s? Legends proliferate. But the price of land in the Fortress Hills must be falling like hail.”

  “But what will happen?”

  “I, for one, expect nothing to happen,” Silky said cheerfully. “And do not intend to be near enough to see. Whatever the Portal does, the land will still be there afterward. Barbarians tend to be hard on herds, but you can move yours to safety in the Year of the Firebird. The Portal will close, the hills endure.” He pulled the scroll from his belt and tossed it in the merchant’s lap. “This is a contract of marriage between your daughter and Mandarin of the Fourth Rank Effulgent Brushwork, dated three days from now.”

  “Another of your impersonations?”

  “No. I am not old enough to do a good mandarin. He’s one of ours, Gray Brother Luminous, but his probity and erudition will leave you speechless. Having met your daughter at her late husband’s house and hearing that she is now available, he has begged you for her hand in marriage. Your wife will roll on the floor, giggling. The wedding must be rushed because the Golden Throne has just posted him to a new assignment and he cannot linger.”

  The fish was nibbling. A merchant marrying his daughter to a top-rank mandarin would soar socially. “Assignment where?”

  “Imperial secret. The seal he uses on the marriage contract will be mine, as will two of the legs in the wedding bed. Next day, Verdant and I will go up-country together to buy real estate and drop babies, respectively.”

  “Buy land for whom?” The conversation was now about money.

  “We will buy land with her money in your name, understand? Our contract is to make you richer, not her. Next year, her official husband will suffer a tragic accident, and your twice-widowed daughter will return to the bosom of her family, bringing all that land with her. Don’t tell her that bit.”

  “A Gray Helper cannot marry!”

  Silky sighed. “Irrelevant.”

  “Have you told her all this?” Jade Harmony’s pretense of reluctance merely made him look sly.

  “I have certainly not mentioned the Gray Order. I suggest you now exhilarate your wife by explaining the solution you found, tell Verdant the happy news, and start rushing out the invitations.”

  “You expect me to commit perjury on a wedding contract?”

  Another sigh. “Me too. I don’t suppose a death of two thousand cuts is much worse than the one-thousand version.”

  Jade Harmony leaned back on the sofa and smirked greasily. “No! I deal in silk and spices, not real estate. I certainly will never trust you with my money or hers. You will leave this house now and never return. Tell the Abbot to assign an older, better man to my contract. My daughter does not lack for suitors, and in any case, there are much quicker ways of disposing of unwanted bastard trash.”

  Delighted at the opportunity thus presented, Silky flipped his right forearm dagger into his hand and poked the point into the merchant’s groin. The fat man uttered a terrified squeak and shrank backward and upward until he was spread-eagled against the wall above the sofa and could go no farther. The knife went with him all the way.

  “Dispose of my son, you will not,” Silky said. “You are also proposing what lawyers call a breach of contract, Master. I will now qualify you for a job in the imperial palace. Just remember not to drink anything for three days; if you can pass water after that, all will be well. Ready?” Silky seemed himself a bloodthirsty monster as well as he could without a mirror.

  “Mercy! Mercy!”

  “You don’t deserve mercy. The holy Abbot has been working on this plan for years, and we have no time to find a substitute client. I have killed nine men and worn my pizzle to a frazzle impregnating your daughter, just to get us to this point. How can I trust you now?”

  Jade Harmony’s teeth chattered. He could not see the dagger, because it was hidden from him by a belly that overhung like a temple eave, but he knew exactly where it was and his eyes were aimed in the right direction. “W-What do I have to do?”

  Smiling, Silky repeated his instructions. “And if you do not obey my orders exactly, Master, you will be dead before sunset and I will marry your daughter anyway. Do you understand?”

  “Y-Yes.”

  “You believe me?”

  “Yes!”

  “And you will obey every brush stroke of my instructions?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  The monk sheathed his blade and stepped back. “Tomorrow I will present a list of properties she will need to liquidate in order to free up sufficient funds. It is extensive. A mandarin of the fourth rank, remember. Effulgent Brushwork. Now summon your family and tell them the wondrous news.”

  Pity the poor orphan not invited to his own betrothal! The Harmony household had been anything but harmonious all day, and especially so after Brother Luminous arrived in his mandarin seeming to meet his bride. The night was half gone before calm returned and the guests left. A light appeared in Verdant’s window. As she was preparing for bed, Silky donned a princely robe borrowed from the House of Joyful Departure. After being exposed to the grandiose Prefect Effulgent Brushwork, she deserved to be reassured about the man she was really going to marry—Brother Luminous was a skilled philanderer and would have no compunction about cuckolding his young colleague if the opportunity presented itself.

  When Silky finished seeming, his
reflection in the mirror was awe-inspiring. His robe alone must be worth a couple of gold taels; his arrogance was worth thousands. That slim dark line of mustache across his lip, drooping at the ends to his jaw line—magnificent! His queue hung to his thighs and his fingernails were as long as daggers. He set off to dazzle her and celebrate their engagement.

  Perversely, Verdant had locked her door. In a pitch-dark corridor, hampered by the fingernails and his cumbersome robes, Prince Noble Lance needed almost two minutes to pick the lock.

  The bolt clicked, and he was free to go in. He opened the door partway to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the light, then pushed it wide and entered. Regrettably, she was fully dressed, standing by her dressing table, holding a pistol in both hands with the barrel pointed straight at him. He closed the door quietly, staying where he was. At that range, the ball could blow his entrails out into the corridor, but the chances were excellent that she would hit the ceiling instead. Those flintlocks packed a kick like a three-humped camel.

  Making no hasty moves, he inclined his head respectfully. “Felicitations on your elevation, lady.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Your future husband, Noble Lance. Have you forgotten so soon? Emperor Auspicious Grandeur begat Prince Obscene Gestures and Prince Obscene Gestures begat—”

  She flicked the pistol as if trying to dislodge a fly and he jumped. “Don’t do that!”

  “I want to know who you really are, and how you control my father.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He smiled. How could she resist him? “You’ll remember me when I get my clothes off.” He began to struggle with the accursed buttons, scores of them.

  She pointed the gun straight up. “If you don’t answer me, I will fire this and waken the house.”

  That was a much more credible threat. He unseemed his fingernails and continued to work on his buttons. “Silky is truly my name. I pretend to be a sand warrior to deceive your mother and a sand warrior pretending to be a clerk of accounts to deceive the servants. Now I am pretending to be a prince because I desperately need to get back into your bed. See how honest I am?”