He said nothing, but gestured to her robe. He watched her slip loose the knot from the satin belt.
“Have it your way,” she said, as she shrugged the robe open just enough to tempt him into getting on with it.
“I’d like… I’d like you to enjoy it, too.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Darling, don’t you worry about me. I’ll enjoy it just fine. You’ll no doubt thrill me. But you’re the one who paid for it. Let’s just worry about your pleasure.”
He liked to hear the tempered thread of sarcasm in her voice. She cloaked it well with a breathy tone, and others might have missed it, but he had been listening for it.
Carefully, slowly, one at a time, he placed four small gold coins on the washstand beside her. It was ten times what Silas Latherton, downstairs, charged for his women’s company, and probably thirty times what he gave her for each man. She watched the coins as he withdrew his hand, as if counting them to herself to make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing. It was a great deal of money.
She gave him a questioning look.
He liked the twitch of confusion in her eyes. Women like this weren’t often confused by money, but she was young, and probably never had a man bestow such largess on her before. He liked it that it impressed her. He knew that few things would.
“I’d like you to enjoy yourself. I’m willing to pay to see you enjoying yourself.”
“Darling, for that much, you’ll remember my screams until you’re an old man.”
Of that, he was sure.
She smiled her best smile, and slipped off the robe. Gazing at him with her big, sky-blue eyes, she blindly hung the robe on a peg in the back of the door.
She stroked his chest and then circled her arms around his waist. Gently but deliberately, she squashed her firm breasts against him.
“So what is it you want, darling? Some nice claw marks down your back to make your young lady jealous?”
“No,” he said. “No, I just want to see you enjoying it. You’re so fair of face and figure. I think that if you’re paid well enough, you’ll enjoy your part, that’s all. I want to know that you’re enjoying yourself.”
She eyed the coins and then smiled up at him. “Oh, I will, darling. I promise. I’m a very talented whore.”
“That was what I was hoping.”
“I want you to be so pleased with my charms that you will want to return to my bed.”
“You seem to be reading my mind.”
“My name is Rose,” she whispered in her breathy voice.
“A name as beautiful as you are.” And as unoriginal.
“And yours? What should I call you when you call on me regularly, as I’m already aching for you to do?”
“I like the name you’ve already given me. I like the sound of it on your lips.”
She licked her lips for him. “Glad to meet you, darling.”
He slipped a finger under the waist of her panties.
“Can I have these?”
She ran her fingers down his belly, performing a moan at the feel of him.
“It’s the end of a long day. These aren’t exactly… clean. I have some clean ones in my trunk. For what you’ve paid, you can have as many of them as you wish. Darling, you can have them all, if you wish.”
“These will do fine. I only need these.”
She smirked up at him. “I see. Like that, is it?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why don’t you take them off me,” she teased. “Take your prize.”
“I’d like to watch you do it.”
Without hesitation, she slipped them down her legs as dramatically as she could. She pressed herself up against him again and, looking into his eyes, stroked his cheek with her panties. She smiled wickedly and then pushed them into his hand.
“Here you go. Just for you, darling. Just the way you like them—with the scent of Rose.”
He worked them in his fingers, feeling the warmth of her still in them. She stretched up to kiss him. If he hadn’t known better, known what she was, he might have thought she wanted him more than anything else in life. But he would please her.
“What do you want me to do for you?” she whispered. “Name it, and it’s yours—and I don’t make that offer to my other men. But I want you so badly. Anything. Just tell me.”
He could smell the sweat of the other men on her. He could smell the stink of their lust on her.
“Let’s just see how things work out, shall we, Rose?”
“Anything you say, darling.” She smiled dreamily. “Anything.”
She winked at him as she swept the four gold coins from the washstand. She swayed provocatively as she went to the small trunk. She squatted down before it. He had been wondering if she would squat, or bend at the waist. He was satisfied at the detail, at the remnant of a demure past.
As she pushed the coins under some of her clothes in the chest, he saw atop her things a small pillow decorated with a dash of red. Such a detail intrigued him. It seemed out of place.
“What’s that?” he asked, knowing that the money had earned her indulgence.
She held it up for him to see. It was small pillow, an item of decoration, a frivolity. It had a red rose embroidered on it.
“I made it, when I was younger. I stuffed it with cedar shaving, so it would smell nice.” She glided her fingers lovingly over the rose. “My namesake—a rose. For Rosa. My father named me. He was from Nicobarese. Rosa means ‘rose’ in his language. He always called me his little Rosa, and said that I grew in the garden of his heart.”
The detail astonished him. He was thrilled to know something so intimate about her. He felt as if he already possessed her. The pleasure of knowing such a small, seemingly insignificant thing pounded through his veins.
As he watched her replace the little packet of her past into her trunk, he wondered at her father, wondered if he knew where she was, or if perhaps he had sent her away in revulsion, his rose wilted in his heart. He imagined an angry scene. He wondered at her mother—if her mother understood her choice in life, or cried at a daughter lost.
Now he, too, was playing a part in who she was, in her life.
“May I call you Rosa?” he asked, as she closed the lid of her trunk. “It’s such a lovely name.”
She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes watched his fingers working her underpants into a tight ball.
She returned to him, smiling as she came. “You’re my special man, now. I’ve never told another man my true name. It would give me pleasure to hear my given name on your lips.”
His heart pounded, and he swayed on his feet with his need. “Thank you, Rosa,” he whispered, and he truly meant it. “I want so much to please you.”
“Your hands are trembling.”
They always did, until he started. Then, they were rock steady. Once he started, he would be steady. It was just the anticipation.
“I’m sorry.”
A throaty, lusty laugh came from deep in her throat. “Don’t be. It excites me that you would be nervous.”
He wasn’t nervous, not in the least, but he was excited.
Her hands found that he was. “I want to taste you.” She licked his ear. “I have no one else tonight. We have all the time we want to enjoy this.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “That’s why I wanted to be last.”
“Yes,” she teased, “I want it to last, too. Can you make it last, darling?”
“I can, and I will,” he promised. “A long time.”
She let out a purr of satisfaction at his promise, and turned in his arms, pressing her bottom against him. She arched her back and rocked her head against his chest as she moaned again. He kept the smirk from his face as he looked down into her sky-blue eyes.
Yes, she was a talented whore.
He slid his hand down her lower spine, counting her vertebrae, fingering the spaces between them. She moaned urgently at his touch.
Because of the way she swa
yed her bottom, he missed the spot he wanted.
She staggered.
The second time he slammed the knife into her lower back, he hit the right spot, between the vertebrae, severing her spinal cord.
He swept an arm around her middle to hold her up. The shocked, grunting moan was real, this time. Anyone in the other rooms wouldn’t think it any different from the sounds she regularly made for men. Others didn’t notice such details.
He did, and savored the difference.
As her mouth widened to scream, he stuffed it full with the wadded ball of her dirty panties. He timed it just right, so only the cry of the gasp sounded, before the pitch rose. He yanked the silk tie from her robe on the peg beside him and whirled it around her head four times to hold the gag in her mouth. With one hand, and the aid of his teeth, he drew it tight and knotted it.
He would have liked to have listened to her heartfelt screams, but that would bring a premature end to their pleasure. He loved the screams, the cries. They were always sincere.
He pressed his mouth against the side of her head. He could smell the sweat of men in her hair.
“Oh, Rosa, you are going to please me so. You are going to give me more pleasure than you’ve ever given any man before. I want you to enjoy it, too. I know this is what you always wanted. I’m the man you’ve been waiting for. I’ve come at last.”
He let her slip to the floor. Her legs were useless, now. She wasn’t going anywhere.
She tried to punch him between his legs. He caught her dainty little fist in his hand. He watched her wide, sky-blue eyes as he pressed open her fist. He held her palm between his thumb and a finger, and bent it down until the bones in her wrist snapped.
He used the arms of her robe to bind her hands, so that she couldn’t pull the gag from her mouth. His heart hammered as he listened to her muffled wails. He couldn’t understand the words against the gag, but they heightened his excitement because he could feel their pain.
A storm of emotion rampaged through his mind. At least the voices were silent, for now, leaving him to his lust. He wasn’t sure what the voices were, but he was sure that he was only able to hear them because of his singular intellect; he was able to seine such evanescent messages from the ethers because of his incomparable perception, and because he minded the details.
Tears flooded down her face. Her perfectly plucked brows bunched together, lifting in the middle, furrowing the skin on her forehead into neat rows. He counted them, because he was special.
With wide, anguished, sky-blue eyes, she watched as he removed his clothes and set them aside. It wouldn’t do to have them soaked in blood.
The knife was rock steady in his hand now. He stood above her, naked and erect, to show her what a good job she was doing for him, so far.
And then he began.
25
Kahlan, with Cara following behind, came to the door of the small room Richard used as an office at the same time as a young woman with short, black hair arrived carrying a small silver tray with hot tea. Raina, standing guard beside the door along with Ulic and Egan, yawned.
“Richard ask for tea, Sarah?”
The young woman curtsied, as best she could holding the tray. “Yes, Mother Confessor.”
Kahlan lifted the tray from the woman’s hands. “That’s all right, Sarah. I’m going in—I’ll take it in to him.”
Sahara blushed, trying to hold on to the tray. “But, Mother Confessor, you shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m perfectly capable of carrying a tray for ten feet.”
Kahlan backed away a step, gaining full possession of the tray. Sarah didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she bowed.
“Yes, Mother Confessor,” she said before departing. Rather than being pleased to have been relieved of a small task, she looked as if she had just been ambushed and robbed. Sarah, like most of the staff, was fiercely vigilant about her duties.
“Has he been up long?” Kahlan asked Raina.
Raina gave her a sullen look. “Yes. All night. I finally left a squad of guards and went to bed. He had Berdine up with him all night, too.”
The reason, no doubt, for the sullen look.
“I’m sure it was important, but I’ll see if I can’t get him to stop at night for some sleep, or at least let Berdine get hers.”
“I would appreciate it,” Cara muttered. “Raina gets grumpy when Berdine doesn’t come to bed.”
“Berdine needs her sleep,” Raina said defensively.
“I’m sure it was important, Raina, but you’re right; if people don’t get enough sleep, they won’t be any good to him. I’ll remind him—he sometimes gets lost in what he’s doing and forgets about what other people need.”
Raina’s dark eyes brightened. “Thank you, Mother Confessor.”
Kahlan balanced the tray in one hand as she opened the door. Cara took up station beside Raina, peering after Kahlan, to make sure she didn’t have any trouble with the tray, and then closed the door.
Richard had his back to her as he stared out the window. A low fire in the hearth did a poor job banishing the chill from the room.
Kahlan smirked to herself. She would put the lie to his boast. Before she had a chance to set the tray on the table, and let the cup ping against the pot to catch his attention and make him think it was the serving woman, Richard spoke without turning.
“Kahlan, good, I’m glad you came.”
Frowning, she set down the tray.
“You have your back to the door. How could you know it was me, and not the woman bringing the tea you ordered?”
Richard turned around with a puzzled look. “Why would I think it was the woman with the tea, when it was you bringing it in?” He truly looked bewildered by her question.
“I swear, Richard, sometimes you give me the shivers.”
She decided that he had to have seen her reflection in the window.
He lifted her chin with a finger and kissed her. “I’m glad to see you. It’s been lonely without you.”
“Sleep well?”
“Sleep? I… I guess not. But at least the riots seem to have ceased. I don’t know what we would have done if the moon had risen red again. I can’t believe people would go wild simply because of something like that.”
“You have to admit that it was odd… frightening.”
“I do, but that didn’t make me want to run screaming through the streets breaking windows and setting fires.”
“That’s because you’re Lord Rahl, and you have more sense.”
“I’ll have some order, too. I’ll not have people doing that kind of damage, to say nothing of injuring innocent people. The next time it happens I’m going to have the soldiers put it down immediately, rather than wait, hoping people will be suddenly stricken with reason. I have more important matters to worry about than childish reactions to superstition.”
Kahlan could tell by his smoldering tone that he was on the verge of losing his temper.
His eyes were bleary. She knew that if a person didn’t get enough sleep, forbearance could quickly evaporate. One night was one thing, but three in a row was quite another. She hoped it wasn’t affecting his judgment.
“More important matters. You mean your work with Berdine?”
He nodded. Kahlan poured a cup of tea and held it out to him. He stared at the cup a moment before taking it.
“Richard, you have to let the poor woman get more sleep. She’ll be no good to you if you don’t let her have enough sleep.”
He took a sip. “I know.” He turned to the window and yawned. “I had to send her over to my room to take a nap. She was making mistakes.”
“Richard, you need to get some sleep, too.”
He stared out the window toward the massive stone walls of the Wizard’s Keep up on the mountain. “I think I may have found out what the red moon meant.”
The somber quality in his voice gave her pause.
“What?” she finally asked.
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He turned to the table and set down the cup. “I had Berdine looking for places where Kolo used the word moss, or maybe mentioned a red moon, hoping that we might find something to help us.”
He flipped open the journal on the table. He had found the journal up in the Keep, where it had been sealed in for three thousand years, along with the man who had written it. Kolo had been keeping watch over the sliph, the strange creature that could take some people great distances, when the towers separating the Old and New Worlds were completed. When the towers were activated, Kolo had been sealed in, trapped, and had died there.
The journal had already proven an invaluable source of information, but it was written in High D’Haran, which complicated matters. Berdine understood High D’Haran, but not such an ancient form of it. They had to use another book written in almost the same ancient form of High D’Haran to aid them. Richard’s childhood memory of that book’s story helped Berdine to translate words, which they used as a cross reference in order to work out the translation of the journal.
As they went along, Richard was learning much of both the vernacular High D’Haran and also the much older, argot form, but it was still frustratingly slow going.
After Richard had brought Kahlan back to Aydindril, he told her how he had used the information in the book to find a way to rescue her. He said that sometimes he could seem to read with ease, but then at other places he and Berdine became bogged down. He said that at times he was able to unravel a page in a few hours, and then they would spend a whole day trying to translate one sentence.
“Moss? You said you had her checking for the word moss. What’s that mean?”
He took a sip of tea and set the cup back down. “Moss? Oh, it means ‘wind’ in High D’Haran.” He opened the pages to a marker. “Since it was taking so much time to translate the journal, we’ve just been looking for key words, and then concentrating on those passages, hoping to get lucky.”
“I thought you said that you were translating it in order, to better understand the way Kolo uses the language.”
He sighed in annoyance. “Kahlan, I don’t have the time for that. We had to change our tactics.”