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cup down beside her. She was simply making conversation, for she couldn’t trouble herself with every discussion that her son had with the reinvented Tariq.
    ‘I don’t know, Valide,’ Salmeo admitted. ‘I thought you might,’ the eunuch enquired, always inquisitive.
    ‘Boaz doesn’t include me in his decisions any more—certainly not in recent times. He looks like a man now. Thinks like one too,’ she said, and he heard the not so well disguised sorrow.
    ‘Then he’ll be acting like one soon,’ Salmeo replied and knew the Valide missed nothing of the innuendo in those words.
    ‘He’ll choose her first,’ she warned.
    It was not something the Grand Master Eunuch needed to be told. ‘We can’t stop that.’
    ‘She’s dangerous, Salmeo. I made a mistake in selecting Ana. I should have let Lazar have his little girl,’ she snarled.
    ‘I’m not sure anything used to simmer in Lazar for anyone,’ he commented, always glad to be reminded of the Spur’s demise.
    ‘If you were a woman you’d understand,’ she replied caustically. ‘He didn’t just simmer for her, he was feverish, but he arrogantly thought he hid it. From me!’ She shook her mane of hair that had lost none of its black glossiness, even though she was now past her third decade. ‘I’ll never understand why he ever brought her through those palace gates if he was so infatuated with the child.’
    Salmeo understood instantly that none of the Valide’s own fiery infatuation with the long-dead Spur had cooled.
    It surprised him that even after all this time she burned so fiercely for the soldier, or at least the memory of him. She had not mentioned Lazar’s name to him since the day his ‘murderer’, Horz, had been executed—accused of poisoning the whip used to flog and ultimately kill the Spur. Horz was dead and forgotten, but not so Spur Lazar—it seemed his memory would never die, and certainly not for the Valide. He stored the thought away.
    The Valide was not an enemy but she could be. That accepted, Salmeo had long ago realised that his fate was tied up with Herezah. Therewould never be any opportunity to ingratiate himself with the new Zar—it was all too obvious what the young ruler felt towards his keeper of the harem, but as distant as Boaz might have made himself from his mother, he was still of her blood and would see no wrong done by her.
    If I can remain her ally, Salmeo thought, I might buy my own protection should the truth of my involvement in Lazar’s death come out. He didn’t think it could. Having successfully blackmailed Horz into taking the blame and with Horz’s corpse long since rotted on the impaling post outside the palace, his secret felt safe. But Salmeo knew in his heart that the Zar believed that he was at the root of the mysterious death of the Spur, so the royal’s suspicious nature where Salmeo was concerned could never be discounted. Boaz would be looking for anything that might connect Salmeo with wrongdoing, so staying close to the Valide, pandering to her needs and making himself indispensable to her machinations might be that extra insurance he needed. He deeply regretted that rare moment of spite when he had impulsively allowed his anger to overtake his sense. Poisoning the whip that would ultimately flog the Spur was effective but ultimately perilous. Yes, it killed the proud, arrogant soldier who had become such a thorn for Salmeo’s plans to dominate Odalisque Ana, but was death really necessary? No, he thought, it was stupidly reckless, and although blame had been laid through someswift manipulations of his own, it had almost found him and wrapped itself about his own shoulders. The Zar surely wanted him to wear that mantle and it was only a stroke of genius that he had found the weakness of Horz, the one brave person he could count on to be the victim and go to death with courage, knowing his family was preserved from persecution. He suddenly realised the Valide had been watching him