Chapter Thirty-Eight—Barbarian

As the sultan’s Scorpion Guards parted, Shiro glanced up at Darius and Jessamine as they sat on their thrones.

The sultan grinned ever so slightly, a pleased look that infuriated Shiro as Jessamine’s eyes widened for just a moment. Then her face went placid and unconcerned.

The throne room was quiet, save for the occasional whisper from the guests and performers, half of which were either drunk or naked, or both.

Shiro narrowed his eyes as Darius rose from his throne, a sword belt with a black ivory hilt protruding from his scabbard.

He sauntered down to Shiro and glanced at the heavy iron manacles and chains at his wrists. Darius then grabbed Shiro by the shoulder with a grip that made him wince, his bones there near to cracking.

When Darius thrust him around to face the rest of the chamber, Shiro almost cried out at the sharp pain that shot through him.

Using his other hand, he grabbed Shiro’s chains and lifted up his arms. The motion was fast, jerky, and painful.

“Do you see this?!” he called.

There was a pause as the guests, performers and Scorpion Guards watched with apt attention.

“This…” Darius went on with emphatic emphasis on the word. “This is a barbarian invader from across the sea—here to kill me! TO KILL YOUR SULTAN!”

The faces of the guards went from dour to murderous.

The guests, the ones who weren’t drunk or addled from smoke looked on with increasing hostility and curiosity.

“Look at him!”

Darius threw Shiro’s hands down, the chains rattling violently. Circling Shiro, he then grabbed him by the jaw so fast that Shiro thought he was under attack.

He grunted, unable to say anything for the vice holding him still. “Look at his face,” Darius said with contempt. “Look at his eyes!” Turning, he said, “Come,” and waved a man over. “Do you see that?”

The man, turbaned and bejeweled gaped at Shiro with wide eyes. “Barbarous indeed, my lord sultan. Like that of the Urutai Steppe barbarians.”

“I assure you,” Darius said loudly enough for his voice to carry, “he is far worse.”

The man turned. “Grotesque.”

A feeling of hot anger—not from Shiro—emanated from someone. It had to be Jessamine.

“And you!” Darius said, glancing at one of the others. “Come here.”

Chains rattled and Shiro realized it was Shai’na. “One of my own viziers,” he said. “In league with this foreign barbarian. An animal person.” The words were a slander in the Abassir Empire.

“Kill them!” a voice from the audience said.

Glancing up at Darius, Shiro saw his eyes narrow in on the speaker. “Who said that?”

A woman stood, a timidity to her movements and face. She was clearly fearful of the sultan and his quick response to her call.

But then he grinned. “You are only too right,” he said.

“Yes!” another voice called. “Kill them!”

“Kill them!”

“KILL THEM!”

The calls for Shiro’s death, along with that of his friends and allies quickly turned into a tumult.

After a time Darius raised his hand for silence. “They will die,” he said. “Here and now!”

The crowd cheered.

Shiro glanced about, wondering if this was to be his end. Jessamine’s anger flared, but she said nothing, conveyed nothing.

Perhaps she did not want Darius to hear her?

He didn’t know. All he knew was that the sultan was bonded to her, their connection a thousand times stronger than that of his and Jessamine’s.

“Clear the floor!” Darius called.

“Darius!” Jessamine hissed from behind. “What are you doing?”

He turned. “I am disposing of the empire’s enemies.”

“I will not allow this.”

“You will be silent.”

Shiro, still in the sultan’s iron grip, couldn’t turn to look at Jessamine, to see her face. But he didn’t have to. Not now, now when her feelings were evident. Shiro made eye contact with Ali and Razul. Both of them had worried looks in their eyes.

This is… not good.

As the guests moved toward the farther edges of the throne chamber, Darius let go of Shiro and pushed him, the force of his gesture like a physical blow that almost made him fall on his face, but the samurai kicked his feet and regained balance.

He then turned around to face Darius, his nostrils flaring and his face heating. He wanted to snarl, but these fools in the throne chamber already thought him a murderous barbarian.

Darius strode out into the middle and took off his jacket, letting it fall to the tiles. Turning to face Shiro, he then grasped his silk tunic and ripped it off, revealing a muscled form comparable to that of the statues in the palace.

“Give him a sword!”

The guests cries heightened.

“Kill him!”

“For the Abassir Empire!”

Shiro swallowed.

“Shiro!”

Someone had called him. He glanced toward Jessamine, but realizing it wasn’t her, he turned to his friends, said nothing. What could he say? He was about to get butchered by the sultan himself.

With his arms spread, Darius exulted himself in front of his guests. “This… is what we do to our enemies in the Abassir Empire, barbarian.”

One the Scorpion Guards came forward and unlocked his manacles and walked away as another pushed him forward. He unsheathed his scimitar and tossed it onto the floor. It landed heavily, bouncing metallically atop the tiles.

Gritting his teeth, Shiro stalked forward and removed his jacket and tunic, revealing his own muscular form, though unlike that of Darius, Shiro had a far smaller frame and slender build.

Looking on and grinning with a kind of gleeful contempt, Darius watched as Shiro bent his knees and grasped the hilt of his scimitar.

“This is where you die, barbarian,” he said, and took the black ivory hilt of the blade on his left hip. He pulled out the sword, revealing it to be a short scimitar with hardly a curve in the blade, the point of which was tapered enough to skewer a wild boar.

Shiro narrowed his eyes. “What kind of blade is this?”

With a smirk, Darius said, “Has that whore Jessamine not told you?”

Flinching, Shiro was taken aback and turned to glance at her.

He uses my blade, she conveyed.

Did I give you permission to convey your thoughts to him, whore?

And what will you do, kill me? Jessamine conveyed to him with contempt.

The sultan turned to regard his jinni. “No,” Darius said aloud. “I’m going to kill him!”

As he uttered the words, he raised his sword arm, pointing his blade at Shiro. He then swung his head toward the samurai, his eyes clinging first to his feet and traveling like poison centipedes up his body, and finally clinging murderously upon Shiro’s face.

The sultan smiled, but his eyes were dead.