“Enter, Najir.”
Najir smiled and did exactly that, throwing open both doors and advancing. Hearing his entrance, the Master of House Drakoulous rose from her table and faced him as he dropped to a single knee and bowed his head.
“My Lady.”
“Najir,” she greeted him, rounding her worktable and reaching out to stroke fingers through his hair. “You are bursting with news, I see.”
“Yes, my Lady. I have found what you have needed for so long.”
It took her a moment of thought and a lightly crinkled brow as she considered his meaning. Najir couldn’t resist a chuckle, and he knew it was the cause of her instant understanding. She drew in a soft, shocked breath and took his face between her hands. Searching his eyes, she demanded, “Tell me! Tell me everything!”
Najir did so quickly, leaving out no detail of the auction and its central commodity. He watched with great pleasure as his description of the new slave made her pupils dilate with excitement. To his surprise, she also dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him so tightly he couldn’t resist wrapping his arms around her supple body and hugging her in equal measure.
“You brilliant boy!” she praised in a whisper against his ear. “And better still that you set Majum back on his ass in the process. He must have been livid!”
“Positively,” he assured with a chuckle.
She quickly stood, drawing him up to his feet as well. “That alone makes our new addition worth each and every precious stone. When does he come to me?”
“Any minute now, my Lady.”
“Oh, Najir,” she whispered fast and hot, her dark eyes dancing with delight. “What a wonderful time this will be! I can tell you are looking forward to it as well. You will enjoy having a companion, I think.”
“I enjoy seeing you take great pleasure in things,” he countered, reaching out to stroke thick fingers down the length of her throat. She smiled, purring softly in pleasure at the familiar and favorite touch.
“Hold on to that idea,” she told him with a promising wink. “I have much to do if I am going to work on our new friend immediately. I wasn’t expecting this wonderful fortune and I am completely unprepared!”
“I’ll go to the living quarters and see to preparations there,” Najir said before she needed to instruct him. He knew what needed to be done and she would easily trust him to do it. “Shall I arrange for anything special?”
“No. Just see that he is situated with great care and left in total stasis until I’m ready. I will prepare the rest myself. Now go. Hurry!” She laughed in delight, clapping her hands together as she turned back to her workstation. Najir paused for only a minute, grinning as he watched her run both hands over her gloriously curved hips, whispering softly to herself of her plans.
Then he hurried off to do her bidding.
2
“That fucking bitch!”
The resonant roar was punctuated with a mighty crash as the Baron Wheyn Majum grabbed up the nearest piece of furniture and flung it into a wall clear across the room. The table shattered into splinters and glass, spraying a kickback of debris for several feet.
The Baron’s guard, Captain Hyde Sozo, watched his employer pitch his fit with darkly amused eyes, though he knew better than to show any other outward signs of his humor.
“What bitch would that be, sir?” he asked, although he already supposed he had a pretty good idea.
The Baron turned on Sozo in fury, jerking an indicative finger toward the guard. “That highborn whore is going to regret the day she thought to send a slave to spit in my face on her behalf!”
“I assume the auction didn’t go well?” Sozo ventured as he hitched a hip onto the corner of a nearby writing table. He swung his leg absently, the hilt of the frizzon blade tucked into his boot catching and refracting light again and again.
“She sent that blond, muscled confection of hers to the auction house so she could buy a new toy for herself, while publicly cutting me in the process,” Majum growled as he marched angrily to his desk and broke open a smoking blot, taking a deep draw on the hand-rolled combination of herbs and narcotic. “Damn but he was a prize, Hyde! Never have I seen anything like it. Drakoulous’s confection comes damn close, but he doesn’t have the bellcat eyes this one had. And this new one was bigger. Rougher.”
“Impossible to bring to heel?” Sozo queried archly, knowing very well what it was that pleased his boss.
“He would have cut his own throat before obeying me,” Majum agreed with dark avarice in his black eyes. “I knew it the minute the auctioneer said he’d fought free of the stasis field more than once.”
The captain laughed out in sharp disbelief. “That’s impossible. Unless the Rhou has been buying substandard equipment or forgetting to calibrate before using it.” Sozo shrugged a shoulder grudgingly. “Still, even then it’s an impressive trick.”
“So you see why I was willing to pay a pretty price for him,” the Baron remarked as he watched the guard captain reach for the decanter resting on the table he was using, filling glasses for them both. “And now she has him! Gods, what a matched set they will make if she breaks him alongside Najir. I’d like to punch a fist through her conniving skull.” Majum’s leather glove creaked as he fisted a hand violently for emphasis.
Sozo caught up both glasses and crossed to hand one to the Baron. “I always wondered how she got that first barbarian under her control. Remember his auction? He’d already killed one of the assistant handlers. You wanted him bad, too.”
“Don’t think I don’t remember that,” Majum spat after tossing back half of the drink in a single swallow. “That was the first time she fucked with me over a slave. I should never have let her get away with it. Now she thinks she can do it again? She’s going to pay prettily for this, I promise you that.”
“All right, barring that opportunity at the moment, I have a question for you,” Sozo posed, giving Wheyn a crooked grin. “Rhou has peddled flesh to you for years. He knows damn well what you like and that you will pay those pretty prices he so enjoys. All he has to do is send you an invitation to the auction when he knows the right tidbit has come along.”
“You said there was a question,” Majum grumbled irritably.
“He’s made a great deal of gem off of you over the years, Wheyn. Inviting you guarantees him a sale. He knew you’d come and you’d buy. So why would he extend an invitation to your bitterest enemy?”
The Baron frowned as he pondered that for a moment. “It was a public auction. She needed no invite.”
“Fair enough,” Sozo agreed, “but Drakoulous hasn’t been seen at an auction since she bought her last confection. Now, how do you suppose she knew she would want exactly what was at this auction at this precise time?”
“Because she’s a spying little whore who needs to have her head hung from the High City walls!” the Baron hissed. “Gods! What I wouldn’t give to get that woman in my dungeons!”
“She isn’t your type,” Sozo reminded him dryly.
“Oh, she’s exactly my type. She can feel pain, can’t she? After that, the rest is details.”
Captain Sozo watched the Baron’s aristocratic features very carefully as the acting Master of House Majum took a seat in his chair, stretching out his athletic frame a moment before kicking up his feet. Sozo had been protector and companion to the Baron for the better part of fifteen summers now, and he knew just about every expression the man had and knew exactly what it meant. Right now, it meant Majum was plotting something. That was the only