There was a frown that marred the beautifully smooth forehead. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen years old, Mirana thought, so very young to have pride in being a man’s whore. She felt no compassion, just sharp dislike.
“Once he did. I was sharp-tongued like you. I realized quickly enough that he enjoys that, but not all that much of it. It is simply difficult to judge when he is wearied of mockery and audacity. His moods change quickly, but that only makes me love him more. He did not strike me hard.”
Mirana shook her head, sending her hair into a thick sweep about her shoulders. She laughed a little. “You have learned a lot about him in a very short time. Perhaps you will last longer than those before you, though I doubt it. That or you will become like the other women, submissive and silent and afraid.”
“What do you mean ‘those before you’? Surely you can’t compare me to those two.”
Mirana simply shrugged and smiled up at the girl. “You heard what I said. Do you believe my brother a virgin, mayhap? You don’t believe he took women before the two he now beds only occasionally? At least that is what you say.” She laughed more, then shoved herself upright in her box bed. The girl stepped back a step, and that pleased Mirana. Perhaps the girl believed her to be like her brother, perhaps she feared her a bit as well. She gave her another smile, a vicious smile, and it had some effect as well, for the girl took another step away from her.
“Einar also told me you might dislike me and might try to whip me. I know he won’t allow it, so I warn you, keep away from me.”
Mirana pulled her hair over her right shoulder and began to comb her fingers through it. She appeared bored, but she was thinking furiously. So the girl expected cruelty from her, and she feared it. She said easily, “I will warn you, for what reason, I don’t know. Perhaps because I find you pathetic. Or perhaps because you are so very young. When Einar is bored with his women, he isn’t necessarily kind to them. In the past he has occasionally dismissed them in rather violent ways. You see his other two women—you call them silly sheep. That is because they are afraid to say anything in his hearing for fear he will be displeased. And then he will hurt them. He enjoys hurting those he beds.”
To her surprise, the girl smiled, her whole body radiating confidence, and said, “Ah, but I am different, very different from his other women. I knew you were a fool and now I’ve proved it to myself. I am not pathetic, ’t
is you who are. Now I will prove it to you, and your blindness, ugly witch.”
Then the girl giggled. She stood by Mirana’s bed, straight and tall and giggling. Without another word, she stripped off her tunic. Then slowly, she turned her back to Mirana. The gown followed, then the soft linen shift and leather slippers. Mirana saw a tall girl with a straight back and long legs lightly furred with golden hair. Her buttocks were small, too small, and there was something strange here, something . . .
The giggles turned to laughter as she turned to face her again. “Behold, Mirana.”
A boy stood in front of her. A beautiful boy with golden hair that brushed his shoulder blades. His flesh was smooth and tinged with an olive tint. There was little hair on him, only at his groin and on his legs, lightly sprinkled. His rod was soft against him. He was slender as a girl and as supple. But there was strength there as well, Mirana could see it. And a very strong will. And a vanity that went too deep, a vanity born of too few years.
“I told you I was different. Am I not beautiful?” The boy did a turn, raising his arms, preening. “What I do to Einar gives him great pleasure, more pleasure than those two stupid women ever give him. He will sell both of them, he told me he was going to. Also he will sell them because I have asked him to sell them. Their stupid faces and their witless sighs annoy me. Their breasts hang on them like cows’ udders, ugly and bloated. Nay, he won’t ever dismiss me. Mayhap he’ll hit me, but only because of his uncertain tempers. He would never mark me, at least not overly much, or send me away.”
Mirana could only stare at the boy. Memories flooded into her mind and she knew now that there had been other boys before this one, but she hadn’t realized, hadn’t guessed, that her brother had used them as he would use a woman. Did Gunleik know? Did his warriors know? How could they? But of course they did. Ingolf had known and laughed about it and Einar killed him for it. She closed her eyes a moment against the knowledge. But there had been women as well, many women, some kind to her, others frightened, yet others certain their beauty and endowments would hold his attention. None ever had for very long, male or female. She remembered the boy she’d tried to protect. Einar had whipped her for her interference and the boy had died. Was he one of Einar’s lovers as well?
“Look at me, damn you! I am more beautiful than you could hope to be. Look at me! Aye, none of you white-fleshed bitches can approach my beauty. As for that slut, Sira, mayhap Einar will plow her belly once or twice, but it is to me he will return, always to me. It is only her hair that charms him, nothing else about her.”
“What is your name?”
The lad smiled. “You may call me Lella. Einar is pleased to dress me in a woman’s name and in a woman’s clothes. It amuses him. It tweaks his men’s noses, for they too are forced to call me Lella. They despise me, but it matters not. Once Einar even had me flirt with old Svein Forkbeard. I thought the old sot would faint when I touched his shriveled rod. Aye, the men must smile or look the other way, for I am the lord’s favorite and they must mind their tongues.
“But you, Mirana, I had believed you would be different. Aye, I had feared you, for there is something dark in Einar, something that confuses me, and I thought it was you there, in the shadows of him, lurking and hidden from sight, holding him from me. But now that I see you, I can laugh and be certain of myself again. You are nothing save a possession to be used to gain him more power, more wealth. You are no part of his darkness, no specter to obscure what he is to me. He merely praises you to make me jealous. He speaks of you with affection because he knows it will but make me love him more. And soon you will be gone.
“I had to see you alone, see your face close to mine. Now that I have looked my fill of you, I will return to Einar’s bed and I will know that I have nothing to fear from you.”
The boy Lella laughed again, dressed quickly, and walked to the doorway of Mirana’s small sleeping chamber. He turned to face her, but she forestalled him, saying in a lazy, taunting voice, “You think not, boy? Now that I am returned, you will learn the meaning of true fear. Forget not, Einar is my brother. Think you we are so different from each other? You don’t yet know the meaning of fear, little man.”
He paled, she saw it clearly, but then he laughed, an uncertain laugh, turned on his heel and was gone, no more words spoken. She heard him singing in a voice high and pure as a woman’s.
Mirana lay back, her heart pounding in loud, slow thuds. She’d come home to a nightmare. No, not home. Hawkfell Island was home. Mirana shook her head. She would probably never see Hawkfell Island again. Or Rorik. There was no home for her, not now.
She lay back, closing her eyes. The boy Lella was there again in front of her, laughing, then looking fearful. She’d perhaps won that small exchange, but it was she who feared him, deep down, she feared him for he’d shown her just how little she’d really known her half-brother. She laughed then, softly, because she realized the boy was nothing. It was Einar to be feared, no one else.
She wondered again, as she had so many times before, if Rorik believed her dead.
Rorik and Kron stood alone in the shadows of the king’s fortress in Dublin. Hafter, Aslak, and Raki were hidden some thirty yards away.
Kron said quietly, “Yon is the private entrance to the king’s chambers. As I told you, Rorik, there are three guards, berserkers all of them, very dangerous.”
“Aye, we must kill them and it must be done quickly and quietly. Are there others we must worry about?”
“Early each evening a woman is brought to the king. If she fails to stir his rod, then she is sent away and Aylla is brought to him, always Aylla. She is the woman who sleeps with him, cradles him like a babe, his wrinkled old face against her breasts. She is the one who feeds him a nightly potion, prepared by Hormuze.”
Rorik made a sound of disgust.
“Aye, ’tis true,” Kron said. “I discovered all this from one of the women’s slaves. She said that whilst the king sleeps, this Aylla recites an incantation over and over again, one to renew the king’s vigor, to push away the demons that age him and shrivel his rod.”