Uriel

Chapter 11 Part 1

By the time the emperor's entire entourage came ashore, daylight was fading under the cloak of dusk. Since men were not permitted inside the temple after dark, the novices escorted the emperor and his men to the small village, which had come alive in the last few hours. Everyone wanted to catch a sight of the emperor in all his splendor—well, almost everyone. Neither the Arbiter nor the sisters made the effort to greet him upon his arrival, their absence speaking louder than any words. An intentional slight, Sam suspected, and a clear play for power. The Convent of the Sun answered to a higher authority than a mere mortal. And the Arbiter waited for no one.

Sam returned to the temple with the sisters and the dozen or so women in the emperor's party. It was hard not to stare; the women wore diaphanous silk gowns that teased at transparency, though technically, not a single inch of bare skin was exposed below the chin. Where the silk ended, gold chains and jewels began, dripping down their slender arms and coiled around their necks. Their age was indeterminate underneath their face paint, their eyes elongated with kohl that extended all the way to their precisely plucked eyebrows, the eyelid in between a startling shade of green. As they moved, bells jingled from their ankles. Every so often, they would look at each other and giggle behind their hands. Sam found them rather intimidating.

Later, once the novices had returned from the village, Sam asked Kameko about the women. "Why are they here?"

Kameko was quietly amused. "They are here for the emperor's pleasure."

It took Sam a moment to grasp her cousin's meaning. "All of them?" she sputtered. "But he's only a boy!"

Kameko shrugged. "He's the emperor," she said, as though that explained everything. "Women have been crawling into his bed from the minute he left the cradle."

She shouldn't be so shocked. King Eldric of Thule was infamous for his lusty appetites, even among gently bred circles. His marriage five summers ago had done little to put a damper on it. He must've slept with a hundred women since then—a wonder since when Sam had been introduced, she'd found him repulsive. In the last year, he'd gone so far as to install his favorite courtesan in her own rooms in the castle, right under the queen's nose. The gossip that ensued even reached the Uriel.

That was the difference between the Thulian king and the Rhean emperor. The king's indiscretions were affairs—accepted but frowned upon—whereas the emperor paraded his harem out in the open without censure.

To Sam's surprise, the sisters did not try to sweep her presence under the rug while the emperor danced attendance on the temple. In fact, since Kameko was called away to run some silly errand for one of the emperor's ministers, she could roam the convent freely, though there were always eyes on her. The temple was swarming with people; everywhere she turned there was another one of the emperor's men underfoot. Assuming she was just another novice—after all, she was dressed like one, though she eschewed the balaclava—they paid her no mind. And though they glanced her way when she passed, for the most part neither did the sisters, distracted by their male guests for one reason or another. Sam could walk down the temple halls without the weight of their hate-filled stares following her. She felt a thousand pounds lighter.

I could just slip away, Sam thought, sorely tempted. It would be so easy to disappear out through the gardens and then never return. And then what? She wouldn't get very far without a horse or a boat. And traveling alone in a strange country without a weapon was plain suicidal. Besides, she had no idea where to go. Maybe she was better off staying here, where Braeden would know how to find her.

If he was in a position to find her. Sam seemed to be the only one who remembered that when Braeden escaped, he hadn't escaped by himself. Where were the rogue sisters that fled with him? Had they let him go, or did he remain a prisoner with different jailors?