Golden Age (The Shifting Tides, #1)(78)

She nodded. ‘I can make you the tea. But you will need to sweeten it yourself with honey and lemon. It will use up most of my stock, and there are few of the tulips I need in the city.’

‘The taste will not concern me.’ He waved a hand, then was pensive for a moment. ‘I am pleased with you, girl. And you have proven yourself trustworthy. While I am gone you may continue to go to the bazaar to find the things you need. I will make sure your bodyguard has silver.’

Chloe bowed.

The sun king dismissed her with a nod and the guard escorted her back to the women’s quarters. As Chloe reflected on Princess Yasmina’s fate she sat on her bed and asked Tomarys to fetch the materials she needed: hot water, silk, and several jugs.

With the sound of marching soldiers filling the city outside the palace, Chloe thought about Tomarys and wondered if she could somehow immobilize her bodyguard and escape. She even considered somehow making him drink some of the tea, but discarded the idea. Not only would he be a difficult man to incapacitate, but she didn’t like the thought of hurting him. He had saved her life, twice over if she added the fact that he’d helped her obtain more soma flowers to appease the sun king. He was her only friend in this terrible place.

Continuing to grind, Chloe considered making the tea too strong, but she knew that if Solon fell into a deathly slumber after drinking the liquid her head would roll.

She needed Solon to live. And she hoped he regained his gold.




Hours passed, and the heat of the day slipped into warm evening and then the cool stillness of night.

Chloe had delivered her medicine. The sun king was gone and his soldiers with him. The ensuing silence was almost eerie in comparison.

Sleeping on his side on his mat near her pallet, Tomarys’s eyes slowly opened. ‘It is late. You should sleep.’

Chloe sat cross-legged, staring at the murals on the wall; she hadn’t even tried to sleep. Dark images swept through her mind: the knife pressed to her throat and the bloody fight . . . Princess Yasmina’s horrific fate. The girl had done nothing wrong, but she had been given one of the worst deaths imaginable just to send her family a message. One moment she had been a young girl living in a strange version of captivity, the next moment men were holding her down and cutting out her eyes, slicing off her ears and nose. Chloe felt ill just imagining it.

Again her thoughts mingled and shifted like a flurry of leaves under a tree. She touched her fingers to her throat and imagined the knife going in, cutting into her windpipe and jugular vein. She wondered what it must feel like to know that with the agonizing pain would come certain death. Loss of breath. Inability to speak. Lifeblood gushing out onto the dust. Darkness closing in.

‘Lady?’ Tomarys said. He sat up. ‘What is wrong?’

‘Tomarys,’ Chloe said, speaking softly, turning to gaze at him intently. ‘Solon is gone for a time. Will you help me escape?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Regretfully, I cannot. I have family who would be made to suffer.’

‘What if we could escape with them too?’

‘My mother is sick.’ He hung his head. ‘She would never survive a difficult journey.’

‘I understand,’ Chloe said. She knew she couldn’t ask so much of him. ‘But . . .’ She took a breath, releasing it in a long sigh. ‘Would you help me in another way?’

‘What is it?’

She clenched her fists as she thought about her helplessness, looking at each of her hands in turn. ‘We haven’t spoken about it since, but back in the alley I was almost killed.’

Chloe once more looked directly into his dark eyes.

‘I grew up with soldiers. I used to watch them at practice, and the captain of my father’s guard is a friend. When I saw you the other day . . . I have never seen another move like you.’ She swallowed. ‘Tomarys, I want you to teach me to fight.’

He frowned, his expression more puzzled than anything. ‘But you are a woman.’

Chloe set her jaw with determination. ‘Then they won’t expect me to fight back.’





34


A week passed with no further sightings of Chloe, while Dion spent his days building ships with Roxana at the harbor. Anoush came to him at the end of every day and gave him a report. Meanwhile Algar demanded more money. Dion’s supply of coin dwindled until he had just a handful of coppers left.

Despite the boy’s promise, Dion knew Anoush couldn’t watch the palace all the time. Dion contributed where he could, watching the streets near the palace until late into the evening. He knew that Chloe was inside, and that Solon had taken his army to Shadria and would be gone for weeks. There would never be a better time to free her.

But there was the issue of the huge warrior by her side. Dion knew he would have to kill the intimidating guard who was her escort. Once the man was dead and Chloe freed, he would take her to the Calypso – he had checked: the boat was still safely hidden outside the walls – and flee.

But then duty called. Reports came in that a wildran, a giant this time, had emerged from the mountains high above the village of Nara on the island of Amphi. It had killed a goatherd and his family, devouring its victims one by one.

Captain Roxana summoned the crew of the Anoraxis.

Dion knew it would be at least another week before he returned to Lamara.