The Conqueror Read Online Free PDF

down, ever so
slowly.
    “ Majesty. We have a
surprise guest attending this evening’s celebration. I give
you—literally, in this case, Lowren, King of the Lemni.”
    The handlers gave the chains a shake to
emphasize the point and Lowren glowered left and right.
    There was a hush and Taez thought he
was going to die of the suspense.
    She smiled, ever so sweetly, that pale
oval face turning from Lowren, looking angry and resentful and no
doubt wondering what they were saying about him and what his fate
might ultimately be.
    “ What? For me?” Her eyes
slid back to the tall stranger, shackled, chained and collared like
any common criminal.
    It really was a most extraordinary
sight.
    Her ladies-in-waiting, the most
prominent seated not far along the head table, gave a collective
gasp as if of one mind. All eyes turned to Taez, and more than one
heart fluttered in sympathetic tremors. He’d taken a fearful risk,
and some of them could see that.
    His heart sank further still, and Taez
wondered if this was the blunder that would send him to he
stocks—or the frontier, or maybe even the gallows. The chopping
block, he thought.
    “ No, really, Taez—you
shouldn’t have.”
    “ Yes, my Queen—” How his
knees knocked when he spoke those words. “It’s just that as soon as
I saw him—and I thought, what if some other noble citizen should
take him before you even had a chance…to see him?”
    He stopped right there.
    The Queen regarded Taez, eyes narrowed.
The Queen was a beautiful woman in profane terms. She was, within a
heartbeat, at her most forbidding, and yet that countenance could
also hide her true feelings.
    “ I cannot think, Majesty,
of any other sovereign, anywhere in the known world, who has
anything remotely comparable in their own collection.” His only
safety lay in buttering it on as thickly as he dared.
    She swung around to look at the big
barbarian again.
    “ He’s going to look
wonderful standing guard beside your throne, and providing his neck
as a footstool when you mount, or a bench, possibly…one for your
favorite dwarf to sit upon…”
    Titters and giggles broke out all
around and the man under scrutiny darkened, ears burning at the
humiliating sound of their laughter. His chin came down and he
watched her closely. The handlers braced themselves.
    Lowren stood very still, staring into
her eyes. She found herself torn.
    A barbarian king. Here. Now.
    A strange toxin of emotion went through
her. It could happen to any one of us, she thought.
    Eleanora was aware of the man, very
much so.
    He was like a cobra, coiled to spring
at anything that moved, and yet he had a brain, he knew what would
become of him if he made the least threat.
    She stared into those eyes for a long
moment.
    “ Perhaps one of our more
deserving—or perhaps one of the more honorable ladies-in-waiting
will require a husband. Your Majesty could simply have him sent
back to his own people as the best possible gift of state: the
restitution of their beloved king.”
    There were precedents for that last
option, and he had to think of her dignity in front of all these
people.
    The Queen took a long, hard look at
Taez. Foreign policy was not his arena and he’d best tread lightly
there, but displaced barbarian kings had it notoriously tough. Most
were executed on the battlefield. Some lived their lives in exile,
captive in another sovereign’s court, hidden in castles or dungeons
and never seeing the light of day. At the first sign of trouble,
they were quickly put to death on any mere suspicion. To escape was
almost worse. Their brothers, sons or nephews, having succeeded to
the throne, were rarely so eager to give it up—and yet the people
(and all of the world was people) saw it as a peace offering, a
gift of what was thought irreplaceable. It was good foreign
relations and even better foreign policy. That’s not to say Taez
had any ambitions in that regard, because he didn’t—it was just an
opportunity he could not