She seemed neither surprised nor dismayed. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” he replied with only partial untruth. Emilio’s true death had come before their meeting in the tower. “But he is dead, and I have brought you the necklace you want.”
“And what do you wish in return?” Her voice was suddenly warm honey, and her arm holding the strip of blue had lowered until pink nipples peered at him, seeming nestled in the silk. He did not think it an accident.
Smiling inside, Conan replied, “Emilio spoke of one hundred pieces of gold.”
“Gold.” Her tinkling laughter dismissed gold as trivial. Rounded hips swaying, she moved closer. Then, suddenly, she was pressed tightly against his chest. In some fashion the silk had disappeared. “There are many things of more interest to a man like you than gold,” she breathed, snaking an arm around his neck. “Of much more interest.”
“What of he who turns the fan?” he asked.
“He has no tongue to tell what he hears,” she murmured. “And no one will enter without being commanded, except Renda, my tirewoman, who is faithful to me.”
“Mundara Khan?”
“Is far from the city for two nights. Can you only ask questions, barbarian?”
She tried to pull his head down for a kiss, but he lifted her, kissing her instead of being kissed. When she moaned softly deep in her throat, he let her drop.
“What,” she began as her heels thudded to the floor, but he spun her about, and his hard palm flattened her buttocks. With a shrill squeal she tumbled head over heels among the cushions, long, bare legs windmilling in the air.
“The gold first, Davinia,” he laughed.
Struggling to her knees, she threw a cushion at his head. “Gold?” she spat. “I’ll summon the guards and—”
“—And never see the necklace again,” he finished for her. She frowned fretfully. “Either I will escape, taking it with me, or the guards will take me, and the necklace, to Mundara Khan. He will be interested to find his leman is receiving jewelry from such as me. You did say he was suspicious, did you not?”
“Erlik blast your eyes!” Her eyes were blue fire, but he met them coolly.
“The gold, Davinia.”
She glared at him a time longer, then, muttering to herself, crawled over the cushions. Carefully keeping her back to him she lifted a tile set in the floor and rummaged beneath.
She need not have bothered, he thought. With the view he had as she knelt there, he would not have looked away to survey the treasure rooms of King Yildiz.
Finally she replaced the tile and turned to toss a bulging purse before him. It clanked heavily when it hit the floor. “There,” she snarled. “Leave the necklace and go.”
That was an end to it. Or almost, he thought. He had the gold—the amount did not matter—the tellings of Sharak’s star-charts had been fulfilled. But the woman had thought to use him, as she had tried to use Emilio. She had threatened him. The pride that only a young man knows drove him now.
“Count it,” he demanded. She stared at him in disbelief, but he thrust a finger at the purse. “Count it. It would pain me, and you, to discover you’d given me short weight.”
“May the worms consume your manhood,” she cried, but she made her way to the purse and emptied it, rondels of gold ringing and spinning on the white tiles. “One. Two. Three … .” As she counted each coin she thrust it back into the small sack, as viciously as though each coin was a dagger that she was driving into his heart. Her acid eyes remained on his face. “ … .One hundred,” she said at last. Tying the cords at the mouth of the purse, she hurled it at him.
He caught the gold-filled bag easily in one hand, and tossed the necklace to her. She clutched it to her breasts and backed away, still on her knees, eying him warily.
He saw no shimmers of magic when she touched the necklace, but by all the gods she was a bit of flesh to dry a man’s mouth and thicken his throat.
He weighed the purse in his hand. “To feel this,” he said, “no one would suspect that you counted five coins twice.”
“It is … possible I made an error,” she said, still moving away. “An it is so, I’ll give you the five gold pieces more.”
Conan dropped the purse on the floor, unbuckled his sword belt and let it fall atop the gold.
“What are you doing?” she asked doubtfully.
“’Tis a heavy price to pay for a wench,” he replied, “but as you do not want to pay what you agreed, I’ll take the rest in your stock in trade.”
A strangled squawk rose from her throat, and she tried to scramble away. He caught her easily, scooping her up in his muscular arms. She attempted to fend him off, but he pulled her to him as easily as if she had not tried at all. Her hands were caught inside the circle of his arms, her full breasts flattened against his broad chest.