still really rough
Jan. 18th, 2006 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maderrBut bloody hell I was not going to let this day pass without producing something. Pardon the overall shoddiness, I think I shall have to harass ki-chan over the weekend to help me fix it up. But here is Beynum, and b/c I feel bad it's not up to snuff I give what I have of the next harem boy as well.
G'night all. Bloody hell, Thursday has got to be better, eh?
Beynum
“Majesty,” the guards greeted as they released their prisoner.
The King and guards alike were surprised when the prisoner dropped to his knees on his own, rather than having to be forced. And though has hands were bowed behind his back, he managed to move with the inherent grace of a wild cat.
Shah arched an eyebrow, instantly intrigued by the seemingly complacent prisoner. By the fact they’d brought a prisoner directly to him at all. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked idly, hand reluctantly sliding from Nanda’s hair.
“Majesty,” one of the guards repeated. “A pirate, one of three dozen recently captured.”
“Then should he not be with his fellows for sentencing?”
The guards nodded. “Yes, Majesty. But this one has something that we thought would be of interest to you.”
“And what is that?”
Nodding again, the men forced the prisoner to his feet and turned him roughly around.
“My, my,” Shah said, and heard Nandakumar’s gasp of surprise and pleasure. Across the prisoner’s back in black ink was Shah’s sunburst crest. Not the sword and falcon royal crest, but Shah’s personal emblem. It spread from the top of his shoulders and neck down to the small of his back, done in a level of detail to match the work of royal artists. Beautiful. “I do not recall giving you leave to use my symbol, prisoner.” Shah motioned for his guards to exit, leaving him and Nanda alone with the captured pirate. “So why do you wear it?”
“Wear it?” the prisoner asked, grinning. “You make it sound, Majesty, like the tattoo is a piece of clothing. It’s been inked into my flesh from the moment I could afford to have it done. I don’t wear it.”
Shah fought back a smile, taken with the audacity that he should by all rights beat out of the man. “Why do you bear my mark then?”
A smile instead of a grin, tinged with sadness – or perhaps nostalgia “I doubt your Majesty remembers the incident at all. But when I was ten, I was playing with some friends and fell into the Green River.”
“You can’t be…” Shah stared. “I remember the incident quite clearly.” His voice was dry as he continued. “I was made quite the hero while in public, but once in private I was beaten quite soundly for so foolishly jumping in the river to save a mere peasant.” He shook his head.
“The mere peasant appreciated the effort, Majesty.”
Shahjahan didn’t quite succeed in hiding his smile that time. “What is your name, mere peasant?”
Teeth, surprisingly white for a peasant-turned-pirate, flashed in a pleased grin. “Beynum.”
This one, Shahjahan thought, was going to be an interesting addition. “Nanda,” he said softly, turning his head to glimpse the man behind and to the right of his throne.
Nandakumar moved forward and knelt on a pillow beside the king. He watched Beynum, who returned the thorough perusal. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“I thought you would approve,” Shah said, and let his satisfied smile show. “Beynum,” he tasted the name. “A strange name for a man who grew up in the mountains.”
Beynum shrugged, looking suddenly less amused. “My father was a sailor. How he met my mother, I don’t know. But he left again. My name is – or was, perhaps – his. Maybe she thought I’d be the Beynum that stayed with her.”
“But you didn’t.”
A shrug. “No, I didn’t. For many reasons – the largest being that I can see why my father left.”
“A hard fact for a son to face; the failings of his parents.”
Beynum shrugged again. “I told her I would return, and I did – but in my absence she packed up and vanished. Where she is now, I don’t know. I returned to the sea.”
“Are you especially fond of the sea?” Shah sat back, relaxing. “Nanda, cut him loose.”
Nanda rose smoothly to his feet. His floor-length hair, loosely bound today, waved like rippling silk as he approached Beynum. From the folds of his skirt he drew a small knife and cut the ropes that bound Beynum’s arms. He returned to Shah’s side.
“Not especially – I enjoy her company, but she does not call to me.”
Beynum had all the grace of the wild jungle cats Shah had seen when he was young, traveling every inch of the kingdom that would someday be his. He also had their size – from a distance they did not seem so large; but once close the cats made a man feel quite small and fragile. He did not doubt Beynum was also taller.
Shah bit back an amused smirk; the council would not like this addition at all. Even less than they had liked his selection of Nanda. He wondered sometimes what he’d wind up with if the council was responsible for choosing his harem.
“So you would not miss it if you were moved further inland?”
“…No, Majesty.” Beynum looked at him in confusion, sensing that the conversation was more than the curiosity of the King.
“What, precisely, are your crimes?”
Beynum’s grin returned. “Stealing; selling stolen goods. I think the captain wished I’d been a bit more bloodthirsty, but I find knocking a man out is healthier for me than killing him.”
Shah heard Nanda make a noise that was a mix of amusement and exasperation. It would be entertaining to see how the ever-serious Nanda got along with the more carefree Beynum. “So no family, no great crimes to dismiss…any other attachments, Beynum?”
Beynum shook his head slowly, as if unsure he wanted to give that response. “None, Majesty.”
“Excellent. My father quite enjoyed the fights into which his own harem often got. I think he liked how much they fought for his attention. I do not hold with such things.” He stood up and walked toward Beynum. “Nanda is my only so far; you will be the second. I expect you to be a team. Is that clear?”
“H—“ Beynum shook his head, blindly standing up as Shah bid, and never got to finish his sentence as the King leaned up to kiss him – hard, possessively, and not knowing how to back away from a challenge Beynum was returning it before he had a chance to comprehend anything beyond that he was being kissed.
Shah broke the kiss and stepped away, holding out a hand and bringing forward Nanda. “This is Nandakumar. I expect you to get along.”
Beynum shook his head, then looked at Nanda, examining him as thoroughly the second time as he had the first. “Get along how?”
This time Shah laughed, and he could see that Nanda was smiling. “Do you object, Beynum my pirate, to joining my harem?”
“No…” Beynum looked at Shah. “I think you’re crazy, Majesty. But you won’t find me objecting.”
“Palace is going to be filled to the brim. People will be spilling out of their rooms.” Beynum leaned on the balcony ledge, watching the crowd herding through the wide front courtyard and into the palace.
Long, thin fingers traced the edge of his tattoo, and then Nanda was leaning over his shoulder, humming idly in thought. “Shah will have no free time while they’re all here. We’ll have to see if we can hide him from time to time.”
Bey laughed. “That shouldn’t be too hard.” He shifted his gaze from the crowd to where the King stood watching everything, arms folded across his chest, mouth turned down in pensive frown as he listened to the men talking and arguing around him. “So what precisely happened?”
Nanda moved to stand next to him, folding his arms on the ledge and leaning over to get a better look. “A storm. That close to the coast, it was bound to happen eventually. Though if I recall correctly, this is the first one of such magnitude in some years.”
More than a few of the people who happened to glance up continued to stare as long as they could, eager to get a good look at the men on the balcony who could only be members of the King’s harem. “Guess we’ll be bloated for a bit, then. But at least it looks like a good number of them survived it.”
“Maybe half, or so the early estimates are reporting.”
Bey grimaced. “I stand corrected. Poor Shah.”
“Poor everyone,” Nanda said dryly. “Give it a week and this place will be thick with hostility.”
Bey clapped him on the back. “Then I guess you’d better brush off a few of your happier tunes and keep them too busy dancing to fight.”
“And what are you going to be doing then?” Nanda demanded, stepping out of range.
“Laugh at you of cou…” Bey drifted off and leaned further over the balcony. “It couldn’t be.” He shook his head. “I think I’m seeing things.”
Nanda just looked at him.
“I would have sworn I saw my mother.”
“Possible, I suppose.” Nanda smirked. “But personally I think Aik just got you good this morning.”
Bey smirked, incident forgotten. “How would you know? You stay in bed longer than a court woman out all night with a man she isn’t married to.”
“At least I was never the man they snuck off to see,” Nanda replied tartly, abandoning the balcony to return to the cooler air inside, the long tail of his hair swinging back and forth behind him, secured by a series of dark red ribbons.
Laughing loudly enough to draw the attention of several from the crowd below, Bey followed Nanda back inside. “Do you want me to bring up the rumors about you?”
“Try and see what happens to you.”
Bey just grinned.
“Beynum! Is that you? Beynum!”
Bey froze in the middle of the intersecting hallways as the sharp, biting voice washed over him. He looked down the hallway packed with villagers still waiting for rooms to be made available, stunned to see the small, thin woman shoving through the crowd toward him. Her eyes were still as sharp as a fine dagger.
“It is you. And just look at you!” She said it like he was fifteen again, good clothes covered in sand torn to shreds after he’d gotten into a fight with the village chief’s son. Or at least they’d always let her think it had only been fighting.
He drew back as she reached out to touch him. “Mother,” he said again, voice level. “It’s good to see you’re doing well.”
“Pah! No thanks to you.” She folded her arms across her flat chest and glared at him. “Told me you’d come back, and now I find you living the fancy life here in the palace. Ever spare me a thought?”
“I did return home, mother.” Bey mimicked her stance. “Imagine my surprise to learn that you’d run off with the sheep herder.”
“Because I was tired of being abandoned! First my useless husband, and then my equally useless son.”
Bey rolled his eyes. There was no point in arguing with her. He’d learned that long ago.
“But I guess you wouldn’t be too interested in your poor old mother when you’ve got all this. How’d you manage it?” The expression made her opinion on the matter quite clear.
Honestly. Bey rolled his eyes again. “It’s good to see you’re doing well, mother. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy.”
“That’s all you have to say? Get back here! Right now!”
“I’m not the one who ran away, am I mother? I promised I’d return home. When I did, I came with gold, silk and those cinnamon nuts you like so much.” Bey looked over his shoulder. “And you weren’t there. Goodbye, Mother.” Bey walked away.
“What put a frown on your face?” Aik asked as Beynum joined him in the garden.
Beynum began helping himself to Aik’s lunch. “I’m hungry, that’s what.”
“I see. Have you heard about tonight?”
“No,” Bey replied. “I was keeping the Queen company while she was outside. Only returned just now.”
Aik moved his food out of Bey’s reach. “Call for your own food.”
“I want your food.” Bey leaned up and stretched across the table, snatched the plate away and set it in front of him.
Aik made a face. “Pirate.”
“Monk.”
“Funny,” Aik said with a grin that still had a shred of his old shyness in it, though not much of it. “I don’t think monks are allowed to do what I was doing to Witcher last night.”
Bey sucked thoughtfully on a piece of dark red fruit, the juice staining his lips. He contemplated Aik. “Oh? And just what did you do?”
“Should I tell you or show you?”
Shoving the plate aside, Bey licked his lips. “How much time before we do whatever you still have to tell me about?”
“Not until dinner.”
“Then show and tell me. I’m a pirate; we can be slow about these things.”
Aik smirked and pushed the table out of the way. “I’ll go very very slowly.”
Dinner normally was held in the grand hall. To welcome and comfort the displaced villagers taking refuge in their palace, Shah and his Queen had arranged for a massive banquet, complete with all the entertainment they could muster.
Dressed in fine silk dyed a pure, rich black, decorated with gleaming gold, the royal harems drew more eyes than even the royal couple. The King, Queen and the seven men and women of their harems were around the main table, sitting around it in disordered, casual fashion.
Bey laughed as he teased back and forth with a member of the Queen’s harem. The table erupted in laughter and he reached for more wine.
But the laughter faded as he looked up and his eyes landed on a woman in the crowd. One who was starting straight at him, waiting in stony silence. Showing no reaction, Bey merely sipped his wine and then leaned into Shah, beside whom he sat, and murmured in his ear. “The small woman, staring.”
Shah showed no reaction, merely sipped the wine that Bey held up for him. But he gave a minute nod.
“Have her escorted away. She’ll cause trouble.”
Bey drew the shallow wine dish back to his own lips as Shah finished, and drank from the same spot, finishing the wine. Beside him, Shah motioned for a guard and spoke quietly. His fingers drifted up and down Bey’s spine.
Minutes later the banquet hall went quiet as a woman began to shout and snarl and fight the guards that were trying to quietly drag her away. Shah frowned and motioned, and the guards ceased trying to be nice. One clapped a hand over her mouth, and secured her arms, dragging her out with another to assist as she kicked and fought.
“That’s going to be an interesting story,” Shah murmured quietly.
Bey laughed and poured more wine.
“So, Beynum my pirate.” Shah folded his arms across his chest and stared at Bey with mild amusement. “Should I ask what you did to anger her so?”
“So quick to assume I did something,” Bey made a face. “That was my mother if you must know.”
Shah’s amusement faded and he let his arms drop as he closed the space between them. His hands landed on Bey’s waist, fingers and thumb stroking tight muscle. He looked up, frowning. “Why were you so concerned?”
“My mother is a shrew. She wasn’t too pleased to me sitting pretty here, when she saw me in the hall earlier, and her still just a peasant.” A grin. “I didn’t think she’d kick up a fuss until I saw her glaring at me. To be honest, I thought she’d find a way to get drunk long before the banquet.”
Shah shook his head and leaned up to give Bey a quick, hard kiss. “You should have said something sooner. That incident could have been far worse than it was.”
Bey nodded, burying his fingers in Shah’s thick short hair to hold his head in place as he kissed his King deeply. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think much on it.”
“You didn’t think much on your mother?” Nanda asked from the corner where he was allowing Aik to help bind his hair for sleeping. “After you’ve not seen her in all this time?”
Shrugging, Bey released Shah’s head to hold him in a loose embrace. “I don’t think much on the past. It doesn’t interest me. She was my present and future for a long time. Then it was the ship. Now it’s here, so that’s all I think on. She chose to give up on me, for no good reason, and ran off with the first man she could sucker. Doesn’t interest me anymore. I should have realized sooner she could be a problem, but that’s as far as my concern in regards to her goes.”
Moving behind him, Shah traced the lines of the tattoo spread across Bey’s back.
“No regrets to keep you up at night, pirate?” Witcher asked lazily from where he was stretched out on Shah’s low bed.
Bey grinned. “None. I make my decisions and don’t look back. Too much in front of me to waste time with what’s behind me.” He started laughing. “Well, some things behind me are worth looking back for.” Spinning around he captured Shah, pinning the chuckling King to the wall.
“Feisty for someone who should be in trouble.”
“Ah, but pirates never got out of trouble by being complacent when they were in it.”
“How long did it take them to ink this?” Nanda asked, fingers delicately exploring the tattoo across Beynum’s back.
“Hours. Days. Lots of money. The sort only seen by nobles and criminals.” Beynum rolled his shoulders, send the muscles in his back rippling.
“It’s beautiful.” Nanda said. “Though I’m surprised you were able to find someone willing to do it.”
Beynum laughed and turned, catching Nanda’s exploring hand in a light grasp. “Where there’s a want, there is someone willing to fill it.” His skin was darker, deepened by the sun where Nanda spent most of his days indoors. Hands calloused in different places, a rough edge to his movements and words, a willingness to grin and laugh.
“Indeed,” Nanda murmured, fingertips just teasing beneath the fabric of the new pants and skirt in which Beynum had been dressed. He leaned up, breathing in the scent of fragrant soap that still clung to him, but the smell of the sea and sand still clung, a rough edge clashing with the smooth the palace was already trying to give him.
Fingers threaded through Nanda’s long hair. “So it’s okay if I touch you too, then?”
“I should be sad if you didn’t,” Shah said from the entryway. “I do believe I mentioned wanting the two of you to get along.” He ran a hand up Beynum’s arm as the two men reached him. “I’m surprised you’re not pierced,” he said thoughtfully, fingers tracing Beynum’s ear. “I saw some of your former comrades; holes everywhere.”
Beynum grinned. “Mostly in their brains, trust me. If they’d listened to me in the first place, they might still all be at sea.”
“Is that where you want to be, Beynum my pirate?”
“It was something to do, Majesty.” Beynum captured the hand playing with his hair and leaned in to steal a kiss, making Shah smile. “Nothing interesting enough to keep looking back on. Do you know what my ‘former comrades’ called me?”
Shah shook his head.
“Arrogant?” Nanda murmured softly.
“That,” Beynum said with a wink. “But they also called me ‘King’s Man’ – mostly as a joke, but there was always more truth there than they realized.” He shrugged again, muscles built by a life at sea rippling under his sun-darkened skin. “This wasn’t quite what I always figured, but I think I’ll more than enjoy it while it lasts. Then who knows – maybe I’ll go back to being a pirate.”
“Hmm,” Shah said thoughtfully. “I think, my pirate, that you will last longer here than you think. But enough serious -- I think I walked in to hear something about fulfilling wants. Let us further that discussion.”
Aikhadour
Aik was grateful to be finally dismissed from court. It should have been a simple matter – make his request, submit the recommendation from the Master…then the king had only to say yes or no.
Instead King Shahjahan had asked him question after question. Why anything about him and his studies had interested the King, Aik could not fathom. Perhaps he’d been bored.
Which couldn’t be possible. Not with the two men who had been beside him. If he kept concubines like that, Aikhadour really didn’t see being bored as a possibility. Even if he was stuck in court all morning.
Aik shook his head and bent to filling out the papers that would grant him access to certain private sections of the royal library. An hour later, ready to fall over after traveling for days, barraged by sights and sounds not seen since he was fifteen, hours stuck in the King’s Court, another hour of paperwork…when a palace servant suddenly appeared and all but hauled him away, Aik could did not think of anything except following.
But several minutes later, he sat up in the way too comfortable bed, not quite willing to let go of a particularly soft pillow, and realized there had been some mistake.
The room was far too luxurious for a simple monk; especially one who was still in training. Aik absently toyed with the dark beads around his neck; made from wood, stained a rich, dark brown. Three more levels and they’d be all but true black; the beads of a master. Ten more years, eight if he worked really hard.
And didn’t that make him feel even more horribly guilty about enjoying such a sumptuous room. At his level, he should be beyond such things. A plain room with a simple bed mat was all he required.
But the pillow really was soft, and so were the others, and surely after seventeen years in a barren monk’s cell, it would not hurt to sleep here until someone realized the mistake and he had to leave.
Though, speaking of nice things, he ought to get a bath before the pillows seduced him further.
Because water was a precious commodity, public bathhouses were the normal way of doing things. But in this particular wing of the palace, Aik quickly realized that there was a separate bath for every set of eight rooms. Affording, if not privacy, then a degree of space to which he wasn’t accustomed. And such fine, hot water. If there was one thing he would enjoy to its fullest and with little guilt, it was not having to bath in the cold mountain river.
It was little wonder the Master was so reticent about sending monks out. Such temptation, even in something so minor as a bath. Aik laughed to himself. If only his brother monks could see him now – ‘unmovable as stone’ and he was being done in by hot water.
And perhaps a stray thought or two.
“How does a man look both humble and extremely smug at the same time?” Bey made a face.
Aik bowed from the waist, hiding a grin. The last of his hair, just past his shoulders in length, fell free of the thong that had been getting looser and looser during the sparring match. He knelt to retrieve the fallen strip of leather, but did not restore it, merely shoved the loose strands of thick, dark hair from his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bey.” He bowed again. “Thank you, my better, for being so kind as too—“
“Oh, shut up.” Bey interrupted with a grin. “You’re not fooling anyone, decadent monk.”
“A decadent man can not be a monk, and a monk cannot be a decadent man.” Aik said patiently, as though instructing a temple initiate.
Bey threw his head back and laughed. “You’re on a roll today.”
“I guess I’m feeling rather playful after neatly trouncing you,” Aik replied, then immediately turned and fled, chased by Bey’s roar of outrage.
“You did not trounce me, monk!”
Aik bolted out of the training ground and into the King’s private garden, both of which were only accessible from the King’s chambers. Looking over his shoulder as he darted through the doors, Aik heard too late the shouted curse, turned – and crashed right into Nandakumar.
“Uh-oh,” Bey said, trying to draw air and laugh at the same time and winding up coughing instead. “You’re in trouble.”
“Sorry!” Aik said, immediately contrite as he scrambled to his feet and then helped Nanda up. “Didn’t think you’d be awake yet.”
“So you were just going to wake me up with your monkey antics?” Nanda snapped. His normally neat hair was bound but messy, disheveled while he slept. And until Aik had crashed into him, he had only just barely been awake.
Bey snickered. “If the councilors saw Nanda at this hour, they would cease to wonder how Shah can be so fearless about everything.”
“It’s far too early in the morning for bloodshed,” Nanda said slowly, levelly. “But don’t think that will stop me.”
Aik elbowed Bey in the stomach, then took one of Nanda’s hands and led him to the table. “Breakfast should be arriving in a half hour or so, Nanda.”
“So don’t kill us,” Bey inserted, cheerfully disregarding the warning look Aik shot him.
Nanda looked up from glaring at the table, a glint in his eyes. “If I asked prettily, Aik, would you beat him up for me?”
“How prettily?” Aik asked.
“Hey!” Bey protested. “He’s the one who knocked you over.”
Ignoring him, Nanda ran a hand up Aik’s leg, fingers used to playing complicated music moving with familiar ease over all the rights spots. “Very prettily.”
“Then consider it done, Nanda.”
“Thank you, Aik.”
Bey turned and ran.
G'night all. Bloody hell, Thursday has got to be better, eh?
Beynum
“Majesty,” the guards greeted as they released their prisoner.
The King and guards alike were surprised when the prisoner dropped to his knees on his own, rather than having to be forced. And though has hands were bowed behind his back, he managed to move with the inherent grace of a wild cat.
Shah arched an eyebrow, instantly intrigued by the seemingly complacent prisoner. By the fact they’d brought a prisoner directly to him at all. “What is the meaning of this?” he asked idly, hand reluctantly sliding from Nanda’s hair.
“Majesty,” one of the guards repeated. “A pirate, one of three dozen recently captured.”
“Then should he not be with his fellows for sentencing?”
The guards nodded. “Yes, Majesty. But this one has something that we thought would be of interest to you.”
“And what is that?”
Nodding again, the men forced the prisoner to his feet and turned him roughly around.
“My, my,” Shah said, and heard Nandakumar’s gasp of surprise and pleasure. Across the prisoner’s back in black ink was Shah’s sunburst crest. Not the sword and falcon royal crest, but Shah’s personal emblem. It spread from the top of his shoulders and neck down to the small of his back, done in a level of detail to match the work of royal artists. Beautiful. “I do not recall giving you leave to use my symbol, prisoner.” Shah motioned for his guards to exit, leaving him and Nanda alone with the captured pirate. “So why do you wear it?”
“Wear it?” the prisoner asked, grinning. “You make it sound, Majesty, like the tattoo is a piece of clothing. It’s been inked into my flesh from the moment I could afford to have it done. I don’t wear it.”
Shah fought back a smile, taken with the audacity that he should by all rights beat out of the man. “Why do you bear my mark then?”
A smile instead of a grin, tinged with sadness – or perhaps nostalgia “I doubt your Majesty remembers the incident at all. But when I was ten, I was playing with some friends and fell into the Green River.”
“You can’t be…” Shah stared. “I remember the incident quite clearly.” His voice was dry as he continued. “I was made quite the hero while in public, but once in private I was beaten quite soundly for so foolishly jumping in the river to save a mere peasant.” He shook his head.
“The mere peasant appreciated the effort, Majesty.”
Shahjahan didn’t quite succeed in hiding his smile that time. “What is your name, mere peasant?”
Teeth, surprisingly white for a peasant-turned-pirate, flashed in a pleased grin. “Beynum.”
This one, Shahjahan thought, was going to be an interesting addition. “Nanda,” he said softly, turning his head to glimpse the man behind and to the right of his throne.
Nandakumar moved forward and knelt on a pillow beside the king. He watched Beynum, who returned the thorough perusal. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“I thought you would approve,” Shah said, and let his satisfied smile show. “Beynum,” he tasted the name. “A strange name for a man who grew up in the mountains.”
Beynum shrugged, looking suddenly less amused. “My father was a sailor. How he met my mother, I don’t know. But he left again. My name is – or was, perhaps – his. Maybe she thought I’d be the Beynum that stayed with her.”
“But you didn’t.”
A shrug. “No, I didn’t. For many reasons – the largest being that I can see why my father left.”
“A hard fact for a son to face; the failings of his parents.”
Beynum shrugged again. “I told her I would return, and I did – but in my absence she packed up and vanished. Where she is now, I don’t know. I returned to the sea.”
“Are you especially fond of the sea?” Shah sat back, relaxing. “Nanda, cut him loose.”
Nanda rose smoothly to his feet. His floor-length hair, loosely bound today, waved like rippling silk as he approached Beynum. From the folds of his skirt he drew a small knife and cut the ropes that bound Beynum’s arms. He returned to Shah’s side.
“Not especially – I enjoy her company, but she does not call to me.”
Beynum had all the grace of the wild jungle cats Shah had seen when he was young, traveling every inch of the kingdom that would someday be his. He also had their size – from a distance they did not seem so large; but once close the cats made a man feel quite small and fragile. He did not doubt Beynum was also taller.
Shah bit back an amused smirk; the council would not like this addition at all. Even less than they had liked his selection of Nanda. He wondered sometimes what he’d wind up with if the council was responsible for choosing his harem.
“So you would not miss it if you were moved further inland?”
“…No, Majesty.” Beynum looked at him in confusion, sensing that the conversation was more than the curiosity of the King.
“What, precisely, are your crimes?”
Beynum’s grin returned. “Stealing; selling stolen goods. I think the captain wished I’d been a bit more bloodthirsty, but I find knocking a man out is healthier for me than killing him.”
Shah heard Nanda make a noise that was a mix of amusement and exasperation. It would be entertaining to see how the ever-serious Nanda got along with the more carefree Beynum. “So no family, no great crimes to dismiss…any other attachments, Beynum?”
Beynum shook his head slowly, as if unsure he wanted to give that response. “None, Majesty.”
“Excellent. My father quite enjoyed the fights into which his own harem often got. I think he liked how much they fought for his attention. I do not hold with such things.” He stood up and walked toward Beynum. “Nanda is my only so far; you will be the second. I expect you to be a team. Is that clear?”
“H—“ Beynum shook his head, blindly standing up as Shah bid, and never got to finish his sentence as the King leaned up to kiss him – hard, possessively, and not knowing how to back away from a challenge Beynum was returning it before he had a chance to comprehend anything beyond that he was being kissed.
Shah broke the kiss and stepped away, holding out a hand and bringing forward Nanda. “This is Nandakumar. I expect you to get along.”
Beynum shook his head, then looked at Nanda, examining him as thoroughly the second time as he had the first. “Get along how?”
This time Shah laughed, and he could see that Nanda was smiling. “Do you object, Beynum my pirate, to joining my harem?”
“No…” Beynum looked at Shah. “I think you’re crazy, Majesty. But you won’t find me objecting.”
“Palace is going to be filled to the brim. People will be spilling out of their rooms.” Beynum leaned on the balcony ledge, watching the crowd herding through the wide front courtyard and into the palace.
Long, thin fingers traced the edge of his tattoo, and then Nanda was leaning over his shoulder, humming idly in thought. “Shah will have no free time while they’re all here. We’ll have to see if we can hide him from time to time.”
Bey laughed. “That shouldn’t be too hard.” He shifted his gaze from the crowd to where the King stood watching everything, arms folded across his chest, mouth turned down in pensive frown as he listened to the men talking and arguing around him. “So what precisely happened?”
Nanda moved to stand next to him, folding his arms on the ledge and leaning over to get a better look. “A storm. That close to the coast, it was bound to happen eventually. Though if I recall correctly, this is the first one of such magnitude in some years.”
More than a few of the people who happened to glance up continued to stare as long as they could, eager to get a good look at the men on the balcony who could only be members of the King’s harem. “Guess we’ll be bloated for a bit, then. But at least it looks like a good number of them survived it.”
“Maybe half, or so the early estimates are reporting.”
Bey grimaced. “I stand corrected. Poor Shah.”
“Poor everyone,” Nanda said dryly. “Give it a week and this place will be thick with hostility.”
Bey clapped him on the back. “Then I guess you’d better brush off a few of your happier tunes and keep them too busy dancing to fight.”
“And what are you going to be doing then?” Nanda demanded, stepping out of range.
“Laugh at you of cou…” Bey drifted off and leaned further over the balcony. “It couldn’t be.” He shook his head. “I think I’m seeing things.”
Nanda just looked at him.
“I would have sworn I saw my mother.”
“Possible, I suppose.” Nanda smirked. “But personally I think Aik just got you good this morning.”
Bey smirked, incident forgotten. “How would you know? You stay in bed longer than a court woman out all night with a man she isn’t married to.”
“At least I was never the man they snuck off to see,” Nanda replied tartly, abandoning the balcony to return to the cooler air inside, the long tail of his hair swinging back and forth behind him, secured by a series of dark red ribbons.
Laughing loudly enough to draw the attention of several from the crowd below, Bey followed Nanda back inside. “Do you want me to bring up the rumors about you?”
“Try and see what happens to you.”
Bey just grinned.
“Beynum! Is that you? Beynum!”
Bey froze in the middle of the intersecting hallways as the sharp, biting voice washed over him. He looked down the hallway packed with villagers still waiting for rooms to be made available, stunned to see the small, thin woman shoving through the crowd toward him. Her eyes were still as sharp as a fine dagger.
“It is you. And just look at you!” She said it like he was fifteen again, good clothes covered in sand torn to shreds after he’d gotten into a fight with the village chief’s son. Or at least they’d always let her think it had only been fighting.
He drew back as she reached out to touch him. “Mother,” he said again, voice level. “It’s good to see you’re doing well.”
“Pah! No thanks to you.” She folded her arms across her flat chest and glared at him. “Told me you’d come back, and now I find you living the fancy life here in the palace. Ever spare me a thought?”
“I did return home, mother.” Bey mimicked her stance. “Imagine my surprise to learn that you’d run off with the sheep herder.”
“Because I was tired of being abandoned! First my useless husband, and then my equally useless son.”
Bey rolled his eyes. There was no point in arguing with her. He’d learned that long ago.
“But I guess you wouldn’t be too interested in your poor old mother when you’ve got all this. How’d you manage it?” The expression made her opinion on the matter quite clear.
Honestly. Bey rolled his eyes again. “It’s good to see you’re doing well, mother. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy.”
“That’s all you have to say? Get back here! Right now!”
“I’m not the one who ran away, am I mother? I promised I’d return home. When I did, I came with gold, silk and those cinnamon nuts you like so much.” Bey looked over his shoulder. “And you weren’t there. Goodbye, Mother.” Bey walked away.
“What put a frown on your face?” Aik asked as Beynum joined him in the garden.
Beynum began helping himself to Aik’s lunch. “I’m hungry, that’s what.”
“I see. Have you heard about tonight?”
“No,” Bey replied. “I was keeping the Queen company while she was outside. Only returned just now.”
Aik moved his food out of Bey’s reach. “Call for your own food.”
“I want your food.” Bey leaned up and stretched across the table, snatched the plate away and set it in front of him.
Aik made a face. “Pirate.”
“Monk.”
“Funny,” Aik said with a grin that still had a shred of his old shyness in it, though not much of it. “I don’t think monks are allowed to do what I was doing to Witcher last night.”
Bey sucked thoughtfully on a piece of dark red fruit, the juice staining his lips. He contemplated Aik. “Oh? And just what did you do?”
“Should I tell you or show you?”
Shoving the plate aside, Bey licked his lips. “How much time before we do whatever you still have to tell me about?”
“Not until dinner.”
“Then show and tell me. I’m a pirate; we can be slow about these things.”
Aik smirked and pushed the table out of the way. “I’ll go very very slowly.”
Dinner normally was held in the grand hall. To welcome and comfort the displaced villagers taking refuge in their palace, Shah and his Queen had arranged for a massive banquet, complete with all the entertainment they could muster.
Dressed in fine silk dyed a pure, rich black, decorated with gleaming gold, the royal harems drew more eyes than even the royal couple. The King, Queen and the seven men and women of their harems were around the main table, sitting around it in disordered, casual fashion.
Bey laughed as he teased back and forth with a member of the Queen’s harem. The table erupted in laughter and he reached for more wine.
But the laughter faded as he looked up and his eyes landed on a woman in the crowd. One who was starting straight at him, waiting in stony silence. Showing no reaction, Bey merely sipped his wine and then leaned into Shah, beside whom he sat, and murmured in his ear. “The small woman, staring.”
Shah showed no reaction, merely sipped the wine that Bey held up for him. But he gave a minute nod.
“Have her escorted away. She’ll cause trouble.”
Bey drew the shallow wine dish back to his own lips as Shah finished, and drank from the same spot, finishing the wine. Beside him, Shah motioned for a guard and spoke quietly. His fingers drifted up and down Bey’s spine.
Minutes later the banquet hall went quiet as a woman began to shout and snarl and fight the guards that were trying to quietly drag her away. Shah frowned and motioned, and the guards ceased trying to be nice. One clapped a hand over her mouth, and secured her arms, dragging her out with another to assist as she kicked and fought.
“That’s going to be an interesting story,” Shah murmured quietly.
Bey laughed and poured more wine.
“So, Beynum my pirate.” Shah folded his arms across his chest and stared at Bey with mild amusement. “Should I ask what you did to anger her so?”
“So quick to assume I did something,” Bey made a face. “That was my mother if you must know.”
Shah’s amusement faded and he let his arms drop as he closed the space between them. His hands landed on Bey’s waist, fingers and thumb stroking tight muscle. He looked up, frowning. “Why were you so concerned?”
“My mother is a shrew. She wasn’t too pleased to me sitting pretty here, when she saw me in the hall earlier, and her still just a peasant.” A grin. “I didn’t think she’d kick up a fuss until I saw her glaring at me. To be honest, I thought she’d find a way to get drunk long before the banquet.”
Shah shook his head and leaned up to give Bey a quick, hard kiss. “You should have said something sooner. That incident could have been far worse than it was.”
Bey nodded, burying his fingers in Shah’s thick short hair to hold his head in place as he kissed his King deeply. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think much on it.”
“You didn’t think much on your mother?” Nanda asked from the corner where he was allowing Aik to help bind his hair for sleeping. “After you’ve not seen her in all this time?”
Shrugging, Bey released Shah’s head to hold him in a loose embrace. “I don’t think much on the past. It doesn’t interest me. She was my present and future for a long time. Then it was the ship. Now it’s here, so that’s all I think on. She chose to give up on me, for no good reason, and ran off with the first man she could sucker. Doesn’t interest me anymore. I should have realized sooner she could be a problem, but that’s as far as my concern in regards to her goes.”
Moving behind him, Shah traced the lines of the tattoo spread across Bey’s back.
“No regrets to keep you up at night, pirate?” Witcher asked lazily from where he was stretched out on Shah’s low bed.
Bey grinned. “None. I make my decisions and don’t look back. Too much in front of me to waste time with what’s behind me.” He started laughing. “Well, some things behind me are worth looking back for.” Spinning around he captured Shah, pinning the chuckling King to the wall.
“Feisty for someone who should be in trouble.”
“Ah, but pirates never got out of trouble by being complacent when they were in it.”
“How long did it take them to ink this?” Nanda asked, fingers delicately exploring the tattoo across Beynum’s back.
“Hours. Days. Lots of money. The sort only seen by nobles and criminals.” Beynum rolled his shoulders, send the muscles in his back rippling.
“It’s beautiful.” Nanda said. “Though I’m surprised you were able to find someone willing to do it.”
Beynum laughed and turned, catching Nanda’s exploring hand in a light grasp. “Where there’s a want, there is someone willing to fill it.” His skin was darker, deepened by the sun where Nanda spent most of his days indoors. Hands calloused in different places, a rough edge to his movements and words, a willingness to grin and laugh.
“Indeed,” Nanda murmured, fingertips just teasing beneath the fabric of the new pants and skirt in which Beynum had been dressed. He leaned up, breathing in the scent of fragrant soap that still clung to him, but the smell of the sea and sand still clung, a rough edge clashing with the smooth the palace was already trying to give him.
Fingers threaded through Nanda’s long hair. “So it’s okay if I touch you too, then?”
“I should be sad if you didn’t,” Shah said from the entryway. “I do believe I mentioned wanting the two of you to get along.” He ran a hand up Beynum’s arm as the two men reached him. “I’m surprised you’re not pierced,” he said thoughtfully, fingers tracing Beynum’s ear. “I saw some of your former comrades; holes everywhere.”
Beynum grinned. “Mostly in their brains, trust me. If they’d listened to me in the first place, they might still all be at sea.”
“Is that where you want to be, Beynum my pirate?”
“It was something to do, Majesty.” Beynum captured the hand playing with his hair and leaned in to steal a kiss, making Shah smile. “Nothing interesting enough to keep looking back on. Do you know what my ‘former comrades’ called me?”
Shah shook his head.
“Arrogant?” Nanda murmured softly.
“That,” Beynum said with a wink. “But they also called me ‘King’s Man’ – mostly as a joke, but there was always more truth there than they realized.” He shrugged again, muscles built by a life at sea rippling under his sun-darkened skin. “This wasn’t quite what I always figured, but I think I’ll more than enjoy it while it lasts. Then who knows – maybe I’ll go back to being a pirate.”
“Hmm,” Shah said thoughtfully. “I think, my pirate, that you will last longer here than you think. But enough serious -- I think I walked in to hear something about fulfilling wants. Let us further that discussion.”
Aikhadour
Aik was grateful to be finally dismissed from court. It should have been a simple matter – make his request, submit the recommendation from the Master…then the king had only to say yes or no.
Instead King Shahjahan had asked him question after question. Why anything about him and his studies had interested the King, Aik could not fathom. Perhaps he’d been bored.
Which couldn’t be possible. Not with the two men who had been beside him. If he kept concubines like that, Aikhadour really didn’t see being bored as a possibility. Even if he was stuck in court all morning.
Aik shook his head and bent to filling out the papers that would grant him access to certain private sections of the royal library. An hour later, ready to fall over after traveling for days, barraged by sights and sounds not seen since he was fifteen, hours stuck in the King’s Court, another hour of paperwork…when a palace servant suddenly appeared and all but hauled him away, Aik could did not think of anything except following.
But several minutes later, he sat up in the way too comfortable bed, not quite willing to let go of a particularly soft pillow, and realized there had been some mistake.
The room was far too luxurious for a simple monk; especially one who was still in training. Aik absently toyed with the dark beads around his neck; made from wood, stained a rich, dark brown. Three more levels and they’d be all but true black; the beads of a master. Ten more years, eight if he worked really hard.
And didn’t that make him feel even more horribly guilty about enjoying such a sumptuous room. At his level, he should be beyond such things. A plain room with a simple bed mat was all he required.
But the pillow really was soft, and so were the others, and surely after seventeen years in a barren monk’s cell, it would not hurt to sleep here until someone realized the mistake and he had to leave.
Though, speaking of nice things, he ought to get a bath before the pillows seduced him further.
Because water was a precious commodity, public bathhouses were the normal way of doing things. But in this particular wing of the palace, Aik quickly realized that there was a separate bath for every set of eight rooms. Affording, if not privacy, then a degree of space to which he wasn’t accustomed. And such fine, hot water. If there was one thing he would enjoy to its fullest and with little guilt, it was not having to bath in the cold mountain river.
It was little wonder the Master was so reticent about sending monks out. Such temptation, even in something so minor as a bath. Aik laughed to himself. If only his brother monks could see him now – ‘unmovable as stone’ and he was being done in by hot water.
And perhaps a stray thought or two.
“How does a man look both humble and extremely smug at the same time?” Bey made a face.
Aik bowed from the waist, hiding a grin. The last of his hair, just past his shoulders in length, fell free of the thong that had been getting looser and looser during the sparring match. He knelt to retrieve the fallen strip of leather, but did not restore it, merely shoved the loose strands of thick, dark hair from his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Bey.” He bowed again. “Thank you, my better, for being so kind as too—“
“Oh, shut up.” Bey interrupted with a grin. “You’re not fooling anyone, decadent monk.”
“A decadent man can not be a monk, and a monk cannot be a decadent man.” Aik said patiently, as though instructing a temple initiate.
Bey threw his head back and laughed. “You’re on a roll today.”
“I guess I’m feeling rather playful after neatly trouncing you,” Aik replied, then immediately turned and fled, chased by Bey’s roar of outrage.
“You did not trounce me, monk!”
Aik bolted out of the training ground and into the King’s private garden, both of which were only accessible from the King’s chambers. Looking over his shoulder as he darted through the doors, Aik heard too late the shouted curse, turned – and crashed right into Nandakumar.
“Uh-oh,” Bey said, trying to draw air and laugh at the same time and winding up coughing instead. “You’re in trouble.”
“Sorry!” Aik said, immediately contrite as he scrambled to his feet and then helped Nanda up. “Didn’t think you’d be awake yet.”
“So you were just going to wake me up with your monkey antics?” Nanda snapped. His normally neat hair was bound but messy, disheveled while he slept. And until Aik had crashed into him, he had only just barely been awake.
Bey snickered. “If the councilors saw Nanda at this hour, they would cease to wonder how Shah can be so fearless about everything.”
“It’s far too early in the morning for bloodshed,” Nanda said slowly, levelly. “But don’t think that will stop me.”
Aik elbowed Bey in the stomach, then took one of Nanda’s hands and led him to the table. “Breakfast should be arriving in a half hour or so, Nanda.”
“So don’t kill us,” Bey inserted, cheerfully disregarding the warning look Aik shot him.
Nanda looked up from glaring at the table, a glint in his eyes. “If I asked prettily, Aik, would you beat him up for me?”
“How prettily?” Aik asked.
“Hey!” Bey protested. “He’s the one who knocked you over.”
Ignoring him, Nanda ran a hand up Aik’s leg, fingers used to playing complicated music moving with familiar ease over all the rights spots. “Very prettily.”
“Then consider it done, Nanda.”
“Thank you, Aik.”
Bey turned and ran.
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:16 am (UTC)Damn you, I will now have unrelenting fantasies about Nanda's fingers. *has a slight obsession with pretty hands*
I <3 Beynum. He's cocky and sarcastic, befitting an ex-pirate, but also real, with real worries and real issues. And real insecurities. He shoves the past from his mind because it's difficult for him to deal with. That one trait compliments his cockiness perfectly.
Fantastic, I can't wait to read the rest of Aik's story. And of course hear more about the mysterious character of Witcher. ^__^
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:17 am (UTC)*back to drawing*
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Date: 2006-01-19 04:27 am (UTC)Fortunately, you being you, you've managed to chase away the bad memories and make good ones instead. ^.^
*tackle glomps*
Date: 2006-01-19 03:53 am (UTC)Gyah! They're so damned cute! *hearts*
Gyah!! I could read these boys for hours. ^_____^
And Aik sounds absolutely adorable. *squeals and pinches his cheeks*
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Date: 2006-01-19 10:34 am (UTC)Bey's bit is GREAT, content-wise. I wasn't reading to beta, so I'm not sure on that front. Nothing major though, I'm sure, or I probably would've noticed already.
Aik's bit I'd already seen, so it wasn't shocking or anything. But just so you know, THEY STILL MAKE ME COO LIKE AN IDIOT. XD XD XD XD
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Date: 2006-01-19 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:22 pm (UTC)But my twins'll be prettier! Ha!^_^no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 10:59 pm (UTC)GIVE TWINS NOW H0R
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Date: 2006-01-19 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 03:03 pm (UTC)*loves Maderr muchly*
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Date: 2006-01-19 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 11:00 pm (UTC)I'm going to chain you to your keyboard until you write the rest of that!
Fabulous!
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Date: 2006-01-20 03:39 am (UTC)Oh, I loved the visual of Shah jumping into the river to save Bey. And that they met when they were young... such romance. King's Man, indeed. The added details on the tattoo were nice, made it real and beautiful in my mind.
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Date: 2006-01-20 02:11 pm (UTC)(I'll give you story soon, I haven't worked on Voodoo--the crazyboy story soon, but I got distracted with a short. e_e )
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Date: 2006-01-21 06:23 pm (UTC)"his"? And somehow "bowed" sounds a bit odd there. Maybe "tied" or "bound" or "secured"?
A smile instead of a grin, tinged with sadness – or perhaps nostalgia[.] “I doubt your Majesty remembers the incident at all. But when I was ten, I was playing with some friends and fell into the Green River.”
Missing fullstop.
Shahjahan didn’t quite succeed in hiding his smile that time. “What is your name, mere peasant?”
Before this point I think you consistently use "Shah".
And then I think you switched back to "Shah" again.
The first flashback does seem a bit fast-paced... I mean, in that one moment Shah's already decided on bringing Beynum into his harem.
“Palace is going to be filled to the brim. People will be spilling out of their rooms.” Beynum leaned on the balcony ledge, watching the crowd herding through the wide front courtyard and into the palace.
"being herded" maybe?
“I would have sworn I saw my mother.”
Should that be "could"?
Bey and Aik = Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
But the laughter faded as he looked up and his eyes landed on a woman in the crowd. One who was starting straight at him, waiting in stony silence.
It feels like they stopped laughing when he saw her, which they didn't, did they? I think you meant to imply that the laughter faded from his attention? So, um, you might want to make it more explicit?
“My mother is a shrew. She wasn’t too pleased to [see] me sitting pretty here, when she saw me in the hall earlier, and her still just a peasant.”
Missed the "see", and maybe instead of "sitting pretty" you might consider using "see me living comfortably here" or something? And you don't need the comma before "when", I think, but it might be a better idea to get Sammie to check that out.
She chose to give up on me, for no good reason, and ran off with the first man she could sucker.
"sucker" feels weird used like that? It might be a slang thing... I mean, I know what you mean, but still, just so you know...
“Hours. Days. Lots of money. The sort only seen by nobles and criminals.” Beynum rolled his shoulders, send the muscles in his back rippling.
"sending"?
“I should be sad if you didn’t,” Shah said from the entryway. “I do believe I mentioned wanting the two of you to get along.”
Personally I'd use "would" instead of "should" there.
“Hmm,” Shah said thoughtfully. “I think, my pirate, that you will last longer here than you think. But enough serious -- I think I walked in to hear something about fulfilling wants. Let us further that discussion.”
That phrase is slang, I'm fairly sure. It doesn't click with the rest of how Shah speaks, which is why I was commenting so much on Kiah's too.
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Date: 2006-01-21 07:11 pm (UTC)And though has hands were bowed
I wonder, how exatly do hands get bowed? BOUND was what I wanted. Bowed hands sounds damned painful.
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Date: 2006-01-21 07:18 pm (UTC)Eh. Bey was sort of his 'impulse,' or that's what I always figured. Hmmm...
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Date: 2006-01-22 08:25 am (UTC)