Free BOOK II OF III: The Reign of the Sultan by J. Eric Booker Page B

Sultaness?”
    “Jamar, I am going to need one my father’s
old bedrooms completely remodeled, so that it can house my husband
and I. Specifically, I’d like you to create a curtain that will
completely block out all sunlight that can possibly come in from
the balcony and windows during the day…”
    After taking a deep breath through her nose,
she added, “It is very important that not even one ounce of
sunlight ever enter our bedroom, not even by the most tumultuous of
winds, unless of course we manually open those curtains so that we
can step onto the balcony. As for everything else, I will leave
that up to your clever imagination. Do you understand, Jamar?”
    Jamar replied without hesitation or doubt,
“Not only do I completely understand about the
sunlight-impenetrable curtains, my Sultaness, yet I even have a
perfect picture in mind for your new royal bedchambers.”
    “Excellent,” Brishava answered, “I know Jamar
that you are the perfect man for the task…thank you very much! That
is all. ”
    “Yes, my Sultaness,” Jamar said with a smile,
just before he delivered one final bow, and left the room.
    While Brishava spent the next hour tending to
other political affairs, Jamar spent the next hour in the royal
bedchambers itself, creating the new designs and measurements for
the curtains and the room. Once the blueprints were drawn up, he
hired three different teams to work around the clock in order to
complete this project as soon as possible.
    The first team consisted of a dozen master
seamstresses who would produce three very beautiful curtains made
from thick wool.
    The second team consisted of a dozen master
blacksmiths who would forge a large number of massive shiny balls,
both ten and twenty-five pounds.
    It was in Jamar’s blueprints that once the
curtains and the balls were complete, the ten-pound balls would
become interwoven into the tops of all three curtains, while the
twenty-five pound balls into the bottom—thus making the three
curtains one very thick and solid curtain.
    The third and final team consisted of a dozen
master engineers who would remodel the entire room into an
octagonal shape. Once that project was complete, they were then to
create an ingrained slider within the ceiling that the ten-pound
balls could fit within, and thus, the guards could slide open and
shut the curtain, though it would take more than a dozen guards to
do so.
    With all these protective measure, not even
the fiercest of the desert winds would make these curtains move a
single inch. Late that afternoon, he finally delivered the report
to the Sultaness that it would take approximately two-to-three
months to complete everything, and cost a little more than four
hundred thousand parsecs. Immediately after the report was
complete, Brishava agreed, and Jamar left to oversee the entire
process.
    As for the Sultaness, she spent the rest of
her busy day diplomatically tending to an ambassador from the
Province of Pastra who had just arrived by ship. After the
afternoon-long meeting was over, just before sunset that evening,
she entered their temporary bedchambers in the old harem room, and
placed her head gently upon her husband’s breathing stomach.
    When Baltor awoke, perhaps ten minutes later
when the sun had set, he was happy to see his wife lovingly and
tenderly gazing up into his eyes.
    “Good evening my husband,” she greeted,
before giving him an ever-so-sweet smile.
    “Good evening to you, my wife,” he greeted
back, returning a crooked smile.
    She sat up in bed, before asking, “So are you
ready for dinner—I’m starving!”
    “I’m not starving, but I am hungry. What’s
for dinner?”
    “Filet mignons, the spiced potatoes you love
so much, and a nice garden salad,” Brishava answered with a sweet
smile. “Oh, and a nice bottle of wine that the Ambassador to Pastra
gave to us as a parting gift. He apologized for not staying longer,
but had to leave for Thorium right away on some urgent business