The Atkoi War, Volume 2: Slave Girl of Ziandakush by Sparrowhawk Henry

Author:Sparrowhawk, Henry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Greyhound Press
Published: 2014-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

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RT IV: In the seraglio of the Kzam

20

: WELCOME TO MY WORLD

Two hundred and eighty-five light years from Akkadis, at the court of the Kzam of All the Atkoi on Ziandakush, Kyra Welbeck and Millicent Roche were about to be presented to His Dread Lordship, the Great Kzam Rurik the Third.

A few short months earlier, Kyra had been a bride-to-be, happily voyaging to Nenuphar to join her future husband, and Millie had been emigrating with her parents. Now they were kneeling fearfully before the throne of a barbarian tyrant with their foreheads pressed to the floor. They were pressed close together as if for safety in this strange, alien place. In their bright clothes they formed a tiny huddle of colour on the grey floor of the huge chamber.

Both girls were terrified. They had not dared so much as to look at the Kzam, but they knew of his brutal reputation and they understood that they were to be given to him as gifts.

The court of the Great Kzam was a bustle of activity. The Kzam’s fortieth birthday celebrations were approaching and ambassadors and officials were converging on Ziandakush, the capital world of the Kzamate, many bringing gifts and all wanting something.

A delegation from Athabasca Bis had arrived, petitioning for land taxes to be reduced. It was unlikely to be successful. The Kzam required all the revenues he could muster to keep the Kzamate ready for a major war, and Athabasca was not in a position to negotiate any special arrangement.

A special envoy from the Empire, an Archpriest named Scamander, was due to meet the Kzam for a private conference. Military officers were much in evidence, as they always were since Rurik had seized Ziandakush and made his capital here, ten years earlier. Governors, legislators and civil servants hurried from one meeting to the next. The large hall known as the Throne Room teemed with those supplicants who had been allowed within its doors. Outside, in the courtyard open to all visitors, many more waited.

These visitors could only imagine what lay beyond the government buildings and departments of state, beyond even the private quarters of the Kzam himself, behind the impenetrably high walls of the seraglio. To attempt to scale those walls would have meant certain impalement, both for the intruder and for any of the Kzam’s concubines or slave girls who willingly associated with him.

There was one dignitary in particular who had not been required to wait especially long before being ushered into the presence of the Kzam. Rurik was interested in what the ambassador from Akkadis had to say. Relations with Akkadis were of particular interest to the Kzam.

Akkadis was a fiercely independent world, though it was wedged uncomfortably between two powerful neighbours: the Empire and the Kzamate. It was located in a strategically vital region of space. It lay directly between the Kzamate and several important Imperial planets, most notably Tolon, the only known viable source of the precious metal cinerium, essential for faster than light space travel.

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