Free Vlad: The Last Confession by C. C. Humphreys Page B

down Ilona’s belly to rest on her pubis. “He may wish to take you like a boy…here!” The finger moved on, pressed, and Ilona felt her guts twist. “He may want your tears, your laughter or one after the other. Are you prepared to give him anything he desires?”
    Fear came again now, the fear that the day’s slow preparations had distracted her from. Fear…and something else. “Do I have a choice?” she snapped.
    Tarub gasped at the outburst. Hibah raised a hand then lowered it, unwilling to mark the merchandise. “Stupid girl! Where do you think you are? Your only choice is in the reading of his desires!” She turned to Tarub. “Veil her!”
    Tarub went to the stand, bending to lift the headdress off it, such was the weight of the silver and bronze coins that dangled from its brow. It was an unusual request from Mehmet’s emissary, for coins were usually either dowry—or worn by prostitutes to show their wealth and thus their skill. Hibah had snickered that it was perhaps an indication of the role Ilona would be required to play—wife or whore. Perhaps both. The leather cap within had been fitted to Ilona’s head before and sat snugly now. The length of coins hung down, obscuring what was before her. Hibah was a shape, stepping back, appraising.
    “Good,” came her voice at last. “Go, Lama of the Dark Lips. Make us proud. May Allah bless you in your enterprise and reward you for your skill.”
    As she entered the main corridor of the house, sighs and whispers greeted her. She could only see glimpses through the swinging veil but she could hear and recognize the voices of the girls she’d lived with for these last four years. She’d never see them again. Tears started and she wrenched them back, reaching for the anger she’d felt a moment before. Her eyes were painted…and she must not spoil the merchandise, either. This was her fate, this day, the night to come. Written. Unalterable. She had no choice.
    And then she gave a little gasp. For she remembered what the day of activity had made her forget. Someone else talking of choice. Offering her what she had never been given before.
    As the door swung shut on whispered farewells, as she waited for the one that gave onto the Street of Nectar to open, she felt her surprising anger return. What right had this Dracula to raise any hope in her? What could he do? A hostage! Little better than a prisoner himself, one up from a slave. A slave was defined by having lost the right to choose. She would be borne in a palanquin to Mehmet’s saray . He would take her any way he wanted. She would break a vial of pigeon’s blood over him if she did not bleed enough. She would choose nothing for herself.
    The front door of the house of the concubines swung open. The chair was a squat shape before it, glimpsed through her swinging veil. Six men from the palace guard stood there, armed with halberds. Four others, bare-chested, huge, stood at the poles, coming in and out of her vision. She felt dizzy, swayed. Tarub’s hand clutched her elbow, steadying her, guiding her as she would every step of the way. Till the last.
    She took one now, descended the stairs. Then, halfway down them, something made her pause. She looked up, over the roof of the litter, across the narrow street, into the doorway opposite, half a dozen steps away. In it stood a man. Veiled, too, a scarf wound around his head, covering his face. Only his eyes showed. And though she had only seen him the once, through latticed wood and thus not clearly, she knew him.
    She turned her head sharply to try to see him better. The coins swung again, hid him. When they swung back, the doorway was empty. So she could remember him only in that one glance. Remember eyes as green as a spring hillside in Wallachia. Remember the look in them, the heat in them; the smile.
    She smiled herself, at herself. At her anger, snatched away like a pigeon snatched suddenly by a hawk.

– SEVEN –
     
    The Snatch
     
    He’d