The Ardoon King Page 86

  Chapter 84: Hard Truths

  Thal’s fear was palpable. She had not expected Fiela to abandon her so soon. Persipia could do almost anything she wished to Thal, and the woman readied herself for a slap across the face, probably followed by several others. Then, worse.

  Instead, Persipia merely walked up to her and said in a low voice, “I know she doesn’t know about the affair. But you’re thinking that if I am too hard on you, you’ll confess a version of the truth to her. You’ll say that you love Ben dearly and you’ll rattle on and on about how much you two have in common, and how lonely you are, and how much you admire her husband, and how you never meant for it to happen, but it did, and you’re so very, very sorry.”

  Thal stared, her hands remaining at her side. Persipia walked back to her desk and opened a drawer. She reached inside and a second later there was a brief flash of bluish light. Smiling, the woman withdrew something and turned back toward Thal, moving the thing in her hand quickly behind her, but not so quickly that the other woman didn’t detect the glint of black metal.

  Oh gods…

  Persipia, hands behind her, walked back to the woman.

  She said, “You know Fiela extremely well by now. You know how kind-hearted she is. You know that if you confess to the affair she’ll feel pity for you. She won’t hold the affair against you. She loves who you love, after all, and she loves you, if I’m not mistaken. She will cry with you over how unfair this world is. She will bemoan your fate at my hands for simply falling in love with the wrong man. We’re all human, after all. We all have our moments of weakness. You gave into your physical desires, but so did Ben. It was a terrible, terrible mistake that you regret every day of your life. Right?”

  The other woman gazed at her defiantly.

  “Guess what’s behind my back,” Persipia said, leaning forward.

  When Thal didn’t respond, Persipia said, “I shall make a wager with you. If you can correctly guess what is behind my back, I won’t use it against you. Ever. If you guess incorrectly, however, I may, and your new name will be ‘Little Mouse.’ You will answer to that name and tell everyone, including Annasa Fiela, that it is a term of endearment that you are fond of.”

  She brought one hand forward, and Thal flinched, but the hand was empty. Persipia ran her fingers through Thal’s hair. “Is that not appropriate? You have those beautiful big brown eyes that make you so adorable, and you scurry about to places you don’t belong without others seeing you. You’re a rodent, but the type of rodent that makes a good pet.”

  She swayed side to side, the other hand still behind her. “You may think that a very steep price to pay if you lose the wager, but I swear to you that the reward for winning is far, far greater. What I have behind my back will make your life a living hell. I know you are very smart. So, guess.”

  Unnerved, Thal slowly raised her hand and touched her lower lip.

  Persipia nodded. “Speak.”

  “A device that causes pain,” said the woman, trembling.

  Persipia smiled. “A bit broad, but I’ll allow it, if you can give me an example of the device you’re talking about.”

  Thal touched her lip, and when the gesture was acknowledged, mumbled, “A stun gun.”

  “A good guess, and understandable,” said Persipia. “Yet incorrect. You lose, Little Mouse.” She removed her other hand from behind her back and showed the woman the device she was holding.

  It was a smartphone.

  Thal’s face was blank at first. Then it registered confusion. Then, terror.

  “Ah, now you see,” said Persipia. “Do you remember that cute ‘fetch’ who started serving you and Ben three weeks before you left Steepleguard? She is one of my best spies. Ambitious, gorgeous, and a bit of a psychopath. She’s also skilled at listening, and hiding in shadows, and planting little digital cameras. Like the ones in the king’s study. Impressive machines. High definition and stereo sound.”

  Persipia looked at the device’s screen and began to navigate through menus. “How long before the king made you serretu, I wonder? What was the plan? Oh, you would have refused at first, acting as if that was the furthest thing from your mind. But in time you would have ‘reluctantly’ accepted. Once you’d befriend Fiela, the girl queen would have begged you to be her sister. Lilitu would have capitulated because she has a soft spot for Fiela. You’d be in.”

  She made a final tap and flipped the phone around so that Thal could see the screen. A video began playing, the sound muted.

  “How can you be so smart and so stupid at the same time? Did you really think the king was undefended against your kind? He and Fiela are my saviors and protectors. In return, I secretly protect them from snakes like you. Sorry to say, you are not the first. You just got the furthest.”

  Thal stared at the screen with wide eyes. She began to quiver.

  Persipia said, “This video is from the first time you seduced the king. It’s been edited down to the juicy parts. It starts with discussions on the tablets, as always. Then there’s some minor flirtation, and few ‘accidental’ hand touches, but nothing unusual.”

  She flipped the phone so that she could see the video. “Ah, yes. You’ll love this.” She turned the screen back toward Thal. “This is where the king steps out for a few minutes and you use his desk phone to make a call to someone else in the building. I’ve got the sound muted, but I bet you remember what you said.”

  Thal began to quietly sob.

  “You said, among other things, ‘I will try tonight’ and ‘guard the door.’ You also mentioned ‘the whore, Lilitu.’ But why should I tell you what you already know? I know who you were talking to and I know who was guarding the door, at least after the first night. The person you were speaking to is out of my reach, but the man guarding the door works for me now. It wasn’t hard to convince him to turn traitor, given the punishments he’d have faced if I’d handed him over to Lilitu.”

  Persipia grunted, as if not liking what she had to say. “Here’s an interesting factoid, Little Mouse: You initiated every sexual encounter. You made similar calls every night you seduced the king, some being more incriminating that others. Yet you made no calls on those nights you did not seduce him. How can one explain that, save the obvious?”

  She examined a nail on her free hand and made a clicking sound with her tongue. “That makes two people whom I owe my life to that you’ve taken advantage of in order to further your own agenda. I wonder how Fiela would react if she learned of your scheme? Of your betrayal of her? She thinks you are her best friend. She will be more than devastated. Have you ever seen her truly angry, Little Mouse? I have, and I do not wish to do so again. And what of Lilitu? Gods! You would wish that Fiela killed you after a few hours with your ‘whore.’ Even Moros was a saint compared to you. One wonders if there would be anything left to cut between your legs!”

  Thal looked pleadingly at the woman, clearly desperate to speak, but knowing not to.

  Persipia pulled the smartphone away. She raised her eyebrows, waiting, and Thal now sobbing, raised a shaky hand, putting a finger to her lower lip.

  “You’re adorable, Little Mouse. Very well, you may speak.”

  “Please,” the woman moaned. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t even know them. Not then.” She groaned, “I do love him. I love her.”

  Persipia shrugged. “I don’t care about your regrets. It doesn’t excuse your scheme. You would have moved forward with it if I hadn’t stopped you. Perhaps you did develop an affinity for Fiela. Perhaps you love the king and perhaps he loves you. That does not make you innocent. You spun a web and are now caught in it.”

  Thal swallowed hard and touched her quavering lips. Persipia nodded.

  “I was going to tell them,” the woman mumbled. “Everything.”

  Persipia shook her head. “You had no such plan. You’d have done that before your probation hearing, if that was your intention. You’re have never let things get this far if you planned to confe
ss. Clearly, you’re more afraid of your controllers than of your parole.”

  The other woman, stilly crying, looked away.

  Persipia said, “In fact, you were told to keep your mouth shut. Your fellow conspirators suspected there was evidence their plot. They told you to let sleeping dogs lie. You became a necessary sacrifice. That’s why Ben has not protested the terms of your parole. You must have talked him out of it. I know the man. He thinks our punishments too severe. Unless you convinced him not to, he’d have raised hell by now.”

  Persipia went to her desk and placed the phone back in the drawer it came from, returning with a handkerchief. “The unofficial and unspoken deal between me and your friends is that I get you, the daughter of Hobuk, as a hostage. A gift, even. They get to scurry back into the woodwork.”

  She began dabbing at Thal’s face, wiping away the mucus that was collecting below her nose as she cried. “Do you know what’s so pathetic about all this, Little Mouse? Fiela thought she was protecting you from me during the parole negotiations. And she devised the notion of parole to protect you from vigilante justice. She pretended to beat you to protect you from Lilitu. Ben signed the writs of probation and dominion to protect you from vigilantes and execution. Fiela told me that Sam almost got his head blown off trying to protect you from her in Cash. I am here protecting you from Fiela and Lilitu by not revealing your treachery, and from justice by not revealing your violations of the Code. Truth be known, I am protecting you from your own faction. Some of your old friends view you as a loose string that needs to be cut. The only reason they don’t is because they know I would rain hell down upon them if they did.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “Everyone has tried to protect you, Little Mouse. Fiela, Lilitu, Ben, Sam and now me. Even Barnum, truth be known. But you were the bad guy the entire time. What fools you have made of us all. What fools you are still making of most of them. It must be those big brown eyes of yours.”

  She lifted the other woman’s chin. “Do you want my protection? If not, we can end this tonight and you and your fellow conspirators can travel to the underworld together.”

  Thal’s vision was blurred by her tears. She shook so badly that she just managed to touch her lower lip.

  “You may speak,” said the consort.

  “Please,” the woman croaked. “Please protect me.”

  “Very well. But you must understand you will never be redeemed and you must abandon all hope of salvation. I own you. You will stop asking silly questions. I will use you however I wish to use you. If you are a dutiful slave, I may be kind to you. If you are not, you will pay a heavy price. Nod if you understand me.”

  Thal’s once beautiful face was now a tortured topography of regret and sorrow. She nodded.

  Persipia was pleased that the woman had been so easily broken. She had no actual plans to abuse the woman. She could take whatever liberties she wanted, true, but she had had suffered too much physical abuse to want to inflict it on another person. As for sex, she had no appetite for that mysterious burden. She knew the routines, certainly, and she thought she knew them very well. But for Persipia, balancing Steepleguard’s books brought as much joy as sex ever could, which was to say, not much. In this, she knew. Thal was the luckiest woman on earth. Most slaves fared far worse.

  The simple fact was that Thal was brilliant and would be far more useful to Persipia as an office assistant than a brutalized sex toy. In time, the wardum would get into a routine and would accept her new station. She would live an outwardly normal life - with some significant omissions, of course. Persipia knew she would need to terrorize the woman every once in a while just to keep in her in line, but she had neither the inclination nor the stamina to terrorize her slave on a daily basis. It would be both tiring and counterproductive.

  “Good,” she said. Now, here’s what’s going to happen: You’re going to make Fiela the happiest and smartest young woman in the world. You will also continue to work on the tablets with the king, though with me present. I will keep my promise to Fiela that you not be injured or even marked. I don’t have to, of course. I don’t think you’ll be blabbing anything to her, knowing the consequences. But I always keep my promises to the young Annasa. If you’re very, very good, I may even spare you from Lilitu.”

  The other woman convulsed, tried to touch her lip, failed. Her eyes had lost focus.

  Persipia hugged her. “Shhh. Don’t worry, Little Mouse. Yes, I could lend you to her. She would reward me greatly for just an hour with you. But I know she would ruin both your body and your mind, and I need you healthy. I shall refrain from handing you over so long as you are a good little slave. You will be, right? You may nod.”

  Thal nodded vigorously.

  Persipia leaned back. “The real tragedy of this drama is that it was so unnecessary. Had you not plotted against the king, he still would have loved you. Fiela would have been your best friend, and you, hers. Even I would have grudgingly welcomed you into our little club if you’d approached it in an honest manner. A king may have as many wives as he likes. You didn’t need to plot against him.”

  She pointed at the floor. “Kneel, Little Mouse.”

  Thal knelt and bowed her head to the floor.

  Persipia sighed. “You could have had it all, Little Mouse. But you pissed it away.”