The Children of Anthi by Deborah Chester

Author:Deborah Chester [Chester, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626815919
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Hihuan pushed aside his ty-boy in sudden boredom and left the silken cushions. Throwing on a crimson robe, he crossed the room to lean against a fluted column and stare at the leisured courtiers strolling by the fountains that splashed on the colonnade below his balcony. Their muted conversations and laughter floated gently up to him, accompanied by strains of bailanke music, as mournful and delicate as a sisen’s call across the wild lakes. He frowned, pain rippling through him at the remembered beauty of…home. His fingers dug into the tracery carved in the stone of the column. What had dredged up that old memory?

“Leiil?” The ty-boy’s voice called, throaty softness mingled with pleading.

Hihuan turned his head, but even as he glanced at the slim Henan youth, golden-skinned and perfect as he lay upon the purple silk of the cushions, crimson and turquoise smoke curling over him with caresses of costly incense, his heart hardened. He was bored with desire and too restless for passion. Almost absently he cooled the practiced emotions stirring his blood and averted his cold eyes from the boy’s smoking gaze. It did not matter that he had raised the boy to the fifth level, which if unfulfilled would soon plunge his hireling into agony. Even the most costly pleasures meant nothing as long as Picyt coursed the Outerlands like a mad chaka.

Hihuan’s supple hand clenched and abruptly he whirled away from the balcony to gesture at the boy.

“Wine would please me,” he snapped. “Rise and fill my goblet.”

“My Leiil.” With a gasp at this unexpected show of temper, the ty-boy slid off the cushions with sinuous grace and moved to a small, triangular table where a silver ewer and jewel-encrusted goblets waited. His slim hands trembled slightly as he poured, making the tiny silver bells tied to a silken cord about his wrist tinkle in tremors of sound. Several times his glowing scarlet eyes shifted to Hihuan, who stood again upon the balcony in a brooding stance.

“Hurry!” said Hihuan with a snap of his fingers, and with a bow the boy glided to him.

Taking the proffered goblet, Hihuan glared at him, contemptuous of the mingled expressions of fear and longing on that delicate mixed-blood face and pleased with the headiness of holding absolute power over this small creature of pleasure. That was as it should be, absolute control over every being that inhabited Ruantl. Hihuan lifted the goblet to his lips and tipped back his head, drinking down the heavy rich wine thirstily. But his power was challenged as long as Picyt ran unchecked, spreading his disease of rebellion and revolt throughout the Outerlands. Hihuan’s eyes blazed, and he threw the emptied goblet at the boy, who caught it and stood quivering and pale, his naked body drawing up as if he expected to be struck.

“Please, my Leiil,” he said, his trained voice still soft and persuasive despite the distress that had drained his face until the bones stood out sharply under his skin. “If thou would permit a tye-maid to join me, I am certain we could please thee greatly.

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