Excerpt The Lion & the Swan
THE LION & THE SWAN
“What ails you, Black Mane?” his brother, the
Cheetah, asked as Asad pulled harder at his robe.
“My betrothal nears,” Asad said with a low
growl, “and I can see no way free of it.” He glanced back over his
shoulder at the women’s table and eyed the Fox, his intended, who
wore a gown of russet weave that pushed her fleshy breasts up to
almost spilling out of the tight, low-cut bodice. The last time he
had seen her, she had been a girl of ten and five who had liked her
sweets as much as she disliked the word no, and by the way she had
indulged in the honeyed dates that were the last of the
seven-course feast, she had not changed much in the three years
since.
“Duty and honor to family and kingdom,” Asad
said as much to himself as to his brother, “all require that I sit
here like a sacrificial goat and let myself be bound and
caged.”
“At least the Fox will be your first wife of
seven,” the Cheetah offered with his cursed calm.
Asad huffed and then cocked his head. There
was a rustling beyond the path that led from the stage of polished
sandstone into the dark shadows of the garden. The still air moved,
and he caught the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine. He sat
forward on his haunches as the Jackal, a thin, balding man with a
nervous twitch of a smile, stood from his stool at the king’s table
and held his cup high. The Jackal had threatened his household with
beatings if the secret of his dowry gift was revealed before this
evening, but Asad’s manservant, the Crab, knew every servant in
every palace of the Seven Tribes, and had the entire story before
sunset, though they had only arrived that noon.
The gift, the first and most valuable of
seven to be given, were two sisters from the far north called the
Swan and the Dove, whose pale, otherworldly beauty left the
menservants speechless, the maids jealous, and the women of the
household sour with envy, especially the Fox of the Swan.
The sisters had tried to escape twice
already, and had made it as far as the city’s third wall the first
time, and the stables the second, after which they had both been
thrown into hot holes. They had been sentenced to three days in the
deep pits dug into the ground and covered with tightly slatted palm
fronds that could sweat the water out of a full-grown man in five
days, but the Swan had become ill in two and the Jackal had been
forced to pull her out or lose her. Tonight, she would sing and
dance for the gathering, and her sister, the Dove, would play the
harp and sing. Then they would be given by the Jackal to the
Panther as dowry for the Fox’s betrothal to the Black Mane: eldest
son to eldest daughter, as was tradition.
“Welcome, friends,” the Jackal said, his
tongue darting out and sweeping across his thin lips. “Welcome to
my home on this Summer’s Eve.” Claps and loud murmurs broke out all
around the courtyard and the Jackal raised his cup higher. “I am
honored to host this, the hundredth gathering of the tribes. For
the next twenty and one days my home is yours.” His lips twitched
up and he licked them again before nodding to the Panther. “And
now, my honored guests, I bring to you the Swan and the Dove.”
A bare foot, as white as milk, arched out of
the garden’s shadows and stepped onto the torch-lit path, the trim
ankle turned just so, the calf long and leanly muscled, the knee as
well turned as the ankle. Asad sucked in his breath as shimmering
panels of white weave parted from a thigh as long and lean as an
alabaster column. He let his breath out slow and measured, watching
the graceful sway of shapely hips that nipped up to a slim waist
draped with a finely wrought gold chain. A sheer bodice gathered
beneath breasts as round and firm as pomegranates, and collarbones
of chiseled ivory winged out from the one-shouldered gown to arms
as long and lean as the legs they swung in time with.
A veil of hair as pale as moonlight framed
high, angular cheeks, and finely drawn brows, a darker shade of
pale, arched over eyes as big and round as mossy river rocks. Eyes
that met his and held, and studied him as keenly as he studied
her.