**********

 

10. The Swordsman and The Dancer

 

**********

 

(Mid-Winter, 1179)

 

Abana watched Maliq sleep.

The tavern was affordable, only 10 silverlings per person per night. All they needed was one night. Eleven days had elapsed since they first left Iblyd... which meant that King Qattullah was only nine days shy of Tehraq. Though they still had some time left... there was not much of it. Even so, he wanted Maliq to enjoy a comfortable bed and good food for a change. Riding through the night and sleeping through the day took its toll over time. It was more Abana's idea than Maliq's, and there was a decided risk to it considering what they had done, but the older man seemed to enjoy it more. The food was good (seasoned mince and flatbread – as good as it smelt on that day) and the bed was feathered.

The dancer slipped out from the covers, naked and sweat-soaked from lovemaking, as his companion slept. He padded over to a window girded with Kushwari-style latticework and beyond the glass he bore witness to the headman's household. Unlike two years ago it flew only one flag – the Winged Lion of the Tehraqi Kings. Save for that... Tangrys was unchanged from when last Abana was there.

('Keep your wits about you') Its streets were calm that night. No brigands. No drunks. No barking dogs. Just a typical borderland village. Was it not admirable? Was it not... fit for a reward? (`The Kushwari are a mountain people, pale-skinned and acclimated to the cold. Why do you think those black-skinned Jafaris sell for a higher price at market?') Abana supposed, in the more playful sense of his vengeance, that such disciplined village life should be acknowledged. That was why he sent the headman of Tangrys a lovely bottle of date wine to enjoy for the night. (`Bypassing Qasr Ghazna means going without water for at least three days. How many of your slaves will survive that?')

Abana's increasingly cold eyes wandered beyond the household to the Pushan Mountains looming darky over the village. In three days, someone would sound the town bells and word would spread like wildfire through Tangrys that its headsman was dead, joining his good friend Hakkan the Slaver in the grave – but it mattered not. By then he and Maliq would have already crossed over those mountains into his cold homeland, Kushwar.

For now?

He was content to watch Maliq sleep.

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

Abana watched Maliq fall. His armour clanked beneath his weight as he toppled into the dust with Rahab's ignited sword still jammed into his chest. The flames ebbed away as the blood began to spurt and the swordsman fell still. Abana, heartbroken, dropped to his knees.

"...He is... gone..."

His lover. His friend. His protector. His Maliq.

"...Gone..."

Just like that.

His murderer, Rahab of Mahmun, finally caught his breath. Blood drenched the back of his cassock whilst his vomitus befouled the front. The magical flames around his fist grew paler and less intense. Only then did he notice the ceiling above him. It was ready to burst. The cracks above grew longer with each moment as the tiles fell and the frescos broke off in shattered fragments. Thickets of black smoke rolled across the ground and the fires had spread to each hallway bearing east of the central chamber.

Rahab climbed to his feet.

"My palace is in ruins... all my research reduced to ash... nothing remains to mourn," he clutched a weak fist. "...All that is left to me... is the bounty of Yahvat Yahva..."

You. Will. Never. See. It. Rahab. Of. Mahmun.

The sorcerer froze.

"...My god," he uttered. "My god..."

Raging light exploded into the mausoleum like thunder from the heavens. The light was so bright it singed the crypt stones as it flooded the corridors and each of its chambers. Not even Rahab could see through it – not until it slowly receded to its source.

...Maliq.

Both Abana and Rahab gazed dumbfounded as the golden-white magical energies swelled down and reverted into his fallen body. The blood drenching his breastplate oozed backwards into the flesh whence it came. Maliq's fingers twitched as those swirling magical energies gently pulled Rahab's sword out of his chest and hurled it across the chamber.

His eyes opened.

And a blood-eyed white shadow charred the dust beneath it as it materialized behind Maliq's back.

"Kafnak..." Rahab dropped to his knees. There was no fight left in him after that. "...oh god. Oh lord my god. Why? Why have you forsaken me...?"

Maliq, silent and fierce-eyed, opened his gauntleted hand and Jahanshah flew into it. Rahab did not move to stop him as the Jamaran man climbed back onto his feet and closed the gap between them with a few quiet steps.

Maliq raised Jahanshah...

...and Abana watched him decapitate Rahab with it. The sorcerer's torso fell into the dust as his woollen-jawed head rolled away into the piling rubble.

"...Maliq...?" Abana quivered. "...My love...?"

Kafnak's blood-eyed shadow seared behind him as he opened his hand and summoned something into it – the Tome of the Ancients. Its cover opened of its own accord and its pages flipped to a simple spell he incanted in a tone and tongue beyond the realms of the known.

And then everything stopped.

The rumbles stopped. The fires stopped. The smoke stopped. The rubble stopped falling and the dust stopped swirling, the urns stopped breaking and the walls stopped shaking.

Everything stopped.

Abana watched everything around him pause in an instant – as if the tides of time themselves had frozen over. He glanced across the silenced chaos of that half-destroyed mausoleum to his beloved Khamali Maliq Moromaya... and knew in his heart...

(`This is all my fault...')

"Abana, you were right..." said Maliq regretfully, Jahanshah in one hand and the Tome of Ancients in the other. "...There was just... no other way."

(`No! Maliq!')

Time restarted.

The rumbles resumed. The fires raged. The smoke bloomed. The debris streamed like snowfall. The last thing Abana of Hafiz saw (and the last thing he remembered) was Kafnak's evil shadow enveloping the man he loved as the ground beneath his feet liquefied and sank through it. Arcane powers pulled Abana through a maelstrom of time and motion until the binds of space and matter caught up to them – and shunted his body back into the throes of the empirical. Abana landed inside Baelik's haycart in the sweltering streets of Tehraq, barely 300 paces shy of the raging inferno demolishing the Elephant Palace. He would not wake for another eight hours.

And he dreamt of love.

 

**********

 

(Mid-Winter, 1179)

 

Little had changed. Those were the thoughts of Abana of Hafiz as he laid eyes upon the goat farm once again. It was two and some years ago since he was first lured away from it amid a dusky gloom and almost nothing had changed. That makeshift mule stable still leaked from its thatched roof. The slapdash paddock where once they reared half-a-hundred mountain goats was empty and overridden with weeds from lack of grazing. The charred ruins of the main house (which burned to cinders in his formative years) still sat in a blackened rubble of ironwood and stone. And its servant quarters? That tiny mudbrick house that a young boy named Abana ibn Tawab once called home? It too remained. Lack of maintenance cracked its yellow walls and left its broken roofing smattered with rain sludge and bird shit. Rainfall transformed turned its footpath into a muddy sludge. But... extraordinarily little had changed.

Abana's restless mare whickered beneath him as he observed it all – the young girl was not used to the cold. Maliq was saddled beside him upon his own horse.

"Abana," he said. "Are you sure you want to do this? There is no shame in turning back – we only have six days left to beat Qattullah to Tehraq."

The dancer dreamt of coming back... almost every day since he left. Some nights he dreamt of simply waking up in his pallet and skipping out into the garden to see a whole field of goats ready for them to herd. Sometimes he returned to see his home in flames, defiled by the screams of the dying. Sometimes he simply dreamt that he never left. But coming back...

`Nothing has changed...' he thought. "You know my heart better than anyone, my love. Do you think I could live with myself knowing that I came this far, this close... to not even knock the door?"

Maliq sighed.

"No," he said. "I do not think you would."

Abana dismounted. Maliq followed suit and pulled Lion's Claw free from his mare's harness. They tied their horse's reins to a nearby cedar stump and walked across the pebble-strewn grass to the property. Maliq banged the door with his fist and stepped back.

Abana took a deep breath as he overheard footsteps from within. The creaking plank-wood door unbolted and swung open and there he was: hunched over and haggard, balding yet unshaven. Dirt crusted his skin in patches of brown and black, his eyes sunken into their sockets and encircled by darkened flesh. Those tired eyes brightened with shock as Abana removed his hood.

"A-Abana...?" An empty water bucket fell from the hands of Tawab ibn Shahab and clattered to the ground. His son eyed him darkly, but the father did not notice. He was too stunned. Tawab (mouth agape) reached out to touch him, as if to prove to himself that the man he now saw was real, and Abana slapped his hand away.

"Abana...?"

Maliq shoved Tawab inside the homestead. The old Kushwari stumbled backwards on a lame leg and tripped over the bucket he dropped. An expressionless Abana slammed the door shut and locked it. Tawab fell onto his ribs with an ugly thud and begged Abana to "wait!" as the boy unspooled a leather whip from his cloak folds. It was a stolen gift from the man his father sold him to whilst he scrambled to coral his men at the Ziggurat of Mnenomon. It was stained with slave's blood.

Abana shrieked with fury as he lashed his father with it. Strike after strike rained down upon his body, each crack cutting open his robes and flesh. Blood smattered the straw-covered ground as a yelping Tawab scrambled to cover up his head.

"I had no choice!" Blood slipped out his mouth as he whimpered. "I had no choice...!"

"Liar..." Abana thrashed his ankles this time. Maliq winced as a scrap of flesh tore from the bone. "LIAR! You always had a choice! Where is my mother? WHERE IS SHE!?"

Tawab yelled for the boy to stop.

Abana only stopped lashing him when his whip arm was too tired to continue. He caught his breath, eyes and nostrils flaring, as he watched Tawab shiver, bloody and battered, in a foetal position. His clothes were in tatters. Abana eyed him with disgust – this was not the fearsome pater of his childhood and his nightmares. This was not the man who froze his spine when he sharpened his eyes or raised his voice. The Tawab ibn Shahab who sold him to slavers was not the one cowering on the ground today. This Tawab just... cried.

Abana cracked the whip again.

"Where is she...?" He said.

Tawab pointed a shaky finger at the pantry. Abana dropped the whip and stormed through its curtain door into the derelict kitchen. The cooking pit's coals were dead. Tin pots and wooden spoons still hung from its walls. The spice jars were cracked and empty. But no Paja.

The yard door was ajar though.

Abana shoved it open and stepped outside into the fenced clearing where past rainfalls had washed away the pasture and transformed it into a pebbly mud-land. And there, at the foot of his father's leafless butchering tree, rested his mother's gravestone.

 

Paja bint Fouzan

(1136 – 1178)

Rendered unto the gods

 

It was a misshapen slab with its inscription crudely carved in old Kushwari lettering. Tawab probably went to the cheapest stonemason in Hafiz for it. Even in death he had no respect for her.

"Mother..." Abana wept. "...I came home."

As the skies darkened above, he thumbed the tears out of his eyes and said a prayer. Not for himself (for the gods never seemed to hear his prayers) but for his mother. He prayed for the safety of her soul and hoped that the underworld was a kinder place than the overworld.

When he returned to the hovel, he found Tawab sat upon his haunches, bleeding and bruised. Maliq kept a wary hand upon Lion's Claw but there was no need. Abana saw that now. Tawab was a broken man. He had no fight left in him. He had nothing left... except Jahanshah. The dancer eyed his grandfather's glittering sword still rested on the mantlepiece. He lost everything any sane man could want; his household, his herd, his child, and his wife... but not that sword. Not that last gilded emblem of a forgotten greatness.

Abana knelt to meet him at eye-level. "...Did she know? Was she part of it?"

Tawab shook his head no. "I told her after I came home that morning... and she never forgave me."

"...How did she die?"

"...In her sleep. Peacefully."

That was a lie. Abana could not say how he knew it, but he knew it. There were no peaceful ends in this world, particularly not for the quiet and the virtuous. The dancer envisioned a Tawab too deep in his cups to govern his fists one day. Perhaps Paja spoke out of turn? Or perhaps she fought back? Either way the result was the same. Abana imagined the bastard telling himself little lies to justify it... that it was an accident or that she pushed him to it. Yet still he would not sell the sword – not even to give her a proper burial.

Abana hated his father.

But as he looked at him now, withered and broken, he took no pleasure from the sight. Only loathing. The world overflowed with bastards like Tawab ibn Shahab and its was always women like Paja or children like Abana who suffered for it. A kinder person might see the scene unfolding in that wretched little hovel and implore him to stay his hand, tell him that Tawab was already beaten, that it was for the gods to punish him now. But kind people are idiots and some people deserve to die.

"I used to dream of this day," Tawab stilled as his son drew his kidney spike from its sheath, "...and of all the self-righteous speeches I would say before I ended you... Failed man. Failed husband. Failed father. But you are not worth one more word or breath."

Abana cut his throat.

No screams. No tears. No regrets.

The son watched with unfazed eyes as the father slowly and torturously choked to death on his own blood.

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

When Abana opened his eyes, he saw a familiar sight – a row of paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling beams of his quarters at the Sanguine Vigil. He was home – not that he remembered the journey back. Baelik, Lady Yahya's Tehraqi inside man, wheeled him across the city from the flaming ruins of the Elephant Palace to his stables on the other side of the Kazara River. His head was still woozy from the smoke fumes so he remembered little of being smuggled out of the city, just brief flashes of memory – stumbling out of the haycart down a footpath, sloshing around in the murky waters of a sewer, Baelik helping him climb out of a crack in a large wall, and watching the desert sands idle away from a camel hump. That was all he recalled of his escape... and then he woke up here.

Abana (gingerly) leaned upright. Someone treated the whip wounds across his back whilst he slept, first washing then binding them in fresh cotton dressings. They still hurt him but not as badly as before... the pain was more of a dull throb. Whoever treated him also applied herbal healing balms to the bruises on his thighs, and lit jars of incense to help relax his muscles.

Lady Yahya sat upon the edge of his bed.

"You are awakened," she said. "This is good."

Abana said nothing.

"...You have been asleep for nearly three days. Do you realize that?" She asked.

Abana looked away and said nothing.

The governess frowned. "The Elephant Palace is a smoking ruin. Tehraq is in lockdown and I cannot help but notice that Maliq is nowhere to be seen. You must tell me what happened."

He asked for some water first.

Lady Yahya had her attendant (a Xianese foundling named Liang) pour him a cup from a nearby ewer. Abana thanked her and drank it slowly. It did not go down well. His throat remained sore and chalky from the smoke.

"...I lied to you," admitted Abana. He handed the cup back to Liang, who then excused herself. "When Maliq and I left for Tehraq it was not merely to kill Rahab."

Lady Yahya frowned. "I know. You did not go directly to Qazyr to await Dhabr as I ordered... you went to the Ziggurat of Mnenomon whose head slave tamer is now dead... rumour has it from poison. Then next you went to the border town of Tangrys whose headman is now dead... rumour has it from poison. Then after some detour across the Kushwari border you returned to carry out my instructions and convene with Dhabr, who is now dead... rumour has it from poison. And need I mention Governor Ganu? Dead... rumour has it from poison."

`She had us followed?' Abana thought ruefully. `Why am I surprised? "...I will not apologize."

"Apologies are wind," said the governess. "I want the truth, Abana. All of it."

With that he gave it to her. All of it. He told her about Hakkan the Slaver, the headman of Tangrys, Tawab ibn Shabab, and Dhabr the Merchant and why he killed them. He explained the governor's plot to smuggle him into the Elephant Palace in the place of a Kushwari dancer for the King's banquet. He explained how he met up with Maliq inside the palace before they were intercepted by guards – that Rahab's god Kafnak proposed a bargain that he refused – a bargain that Maliq accepted in his place.

"You say that Maliq... made truck with Kafnak? And what obsession would he have for that creature to feed upon?"

"...Who knows?" The despondency in Abana's voice was like a stone sinking into dark waters. "Protecting me, perhaps? Revenge against the king? I... do not know. What of Tehraq?"

At that Lady Yahya chuckled ruefully. But Abana asked the question largely for her benefit. He could care less if the entire damn city burned to cinders.

"With two dead governors and the Elephant Palace destroyed, Tehraq's gates were sealed on King Qattullah's orders. He's also summoned to the remaining governors to the Sun Court, a gathering which I will have to attend. Fortunately for us this whole debacle is being viewed as some sort of power dispute between Rahab and Ganu... and neither are alive to tell the tale. The expedition to Yahvat Yahva is moot. History's course has been steered in a better direction."

`And for what?' Abana thought. Rahab was dead. Tawab was too. Hakkan, Dhabr, Ganu and the headman of Tangrys all gone. But what victory was there to enjoy without Maliq there by his side? What was the worth of settling the debts of the past if he lost the man with whom he sought to build his future?

Lady Yahya placed a book on the bed. It was the Tome of the Ancients.

"W-what is this doing here?" He asked.

"Baelik found it in his haycart," said the governess. "If Maliq used Kafnak's magic to save you from the fire... perhaps he sent this book with you so that you could use it to save him."

(`Maliq...')

"I owe Maliq much. If this is the only tool at our disposal to save him then you have my permission to use it. But magic is not something to be trifled with, Abana. If either of you are consumed by dark powers... you become as much my enemy as Rahab of Mahmun was. Do you understand?"

Her eyes were grey as steel. It was no bluff. Though nothing Lady Yahya said surprised Abana, it still bothered him to hear her state it so coldly. Maliq was right about her (as he was about many a thing). Honour and generosity aside she was a Tehraqi to her core.

"I understand," said the dancer.

Lady Yahya nodded. "...Very well. I leave it to you to decide if you wish to use it. Take this time to rest... but before you do... one last gift."

The Governess of Jawwaz clapped her hands. Abana's chamber door opened in response and a cloaked figure walked into his rooms awash with the scent of jasmine. Abana eyed the stranger cynically... until she lowered her hood.

"...How cold your eyes grow, Abana..." She said softly. "Just as you return my smile to me."

The boy gasped. "...Hamami!"

 

**********

 

(Mid-Winter, 1179)

 

Abana of Hafiz took Jahanshah with him to pray for his mother one last time. He laid their ancestral sword before her misshapen gravestone beneath the black shade of the butchering tree then sat and closed his eyes. And when he did, he pictured Paja as she once was – dignified, kind and resilient. The sun had peaked when Maliq came to check on him. He must have lost track of time at some point.

The Jamaran came to sit behind the Kushwari and protectively wove his arms around him. Abana melted into the embrace. Tear tracks soured his dimples.

"My mother was one of the few people who ever treated me with real kindness," whispered Abana. "When I was a slave, I made myself forget about this place... because thinking about it was just too painful. Was I wrong?"

"No," said Maliq.

"What would she make of me now, I wonder? Her son turned plaything of the Tehraqi nobility? Assassin?"

"Look at me," Maliq took Abana's chin between his thumb and forefinger. "I believe she would see what I see – a survivor. You have avenged her. Perhaps now her soul can rest in peace."

The tears welled in Abana's eyes again. Not because of Maliq (never because of him) but because he knew he would never come back here again. Though he loathed to leave her buried so ignobly, there was nothing further he could do for his mother except pray for the gods to deliver her deserving soul to a happier plane.

Abana nuzzled his face into Maliq's neck like a kitten and smiled to himself about what the future might hold for him and man within whose arms he dwelt.

"Take the sword," said Abana.

Maliq eyed Jahanshah's golden presence. "You told me that sword is the pride of your family."

"You are my family," said Abana. "Take it."

His other sword Lion's Claw sat hung heavily from his desert mare's saddle alongside the roped and blanketed corpse of Tawab ibn Shahab (who they would leave for the crows on their way back through the Pushan Mountains), but he would not refuse. Maliq took Jahanshah by its glittering scabbard and brought it to his side. Only two were left to die – Dhabr the Slaver and Rahab of Mahmun. Once they were gone...

"Just a few more days," said Maliq.

Abana smiled. "...And then our life begins."

 

**********

 

(Early Spring, 1180)

 

This time around Steedmaster Yuza chose a hardier horse for Abana of Hafiz; a powerful russet-maned beast named Hauras. He then had his apprentice outfit Hauras with his custom designed saddle and harnesses. It was a placid creature (gelded and well-trained) and despite Abana not having much opportunity to ride it, Yuza assured him it would get him to where he wanted to go safely. Reliability rather than speed was of the essence for in truth he had no idea how long this would take – all he had to go by was faith and all he had to go with was a sturdy, loyal steed.

Hauras was waiting for him in the stables of the Sanguine Vigil. Abana fed it with an apple before loading the saddlebags with his provisions – enough food for three days as well as two waterskins, an extra cloak and robes, a spool of rope, medicinal herbs, and ointments. Hidden within the folds of his gold-trimmed black doublet was a new kidney spike produced by the forgemaster. He had the blade made just a ¼ of a cubit long, with a sleeker grip and no quillion – assuring a faster thrust. Abana opened his cloak and withdrew it, unsheathing the blade. It was so sharp and clean he could see his own reflection in it. It was a fine piece of work.

It would probably save his life one day.

Abana hid it within his doublet again.

Then, as the oasis town of Iblyd slumbered beneath the lunar rays of Mut, the Kushwari boy took Hauras by the reins and led him out of the stables where he found Lady Yahya waiting for him. She stood beneath one of the swaying fronds of the palm trees bulwarking the footpath from the stables to the Vigil's gates. There were no guards with her – which meant that she was here to talk.

"My lady," Abana sighed. "Have you come to dissuade me?"

She shook her head.

"All who are under my helm are my family, Abana, including you and Maliq. That is why I grant you my resources. Never forget that."

`And yet if I fail, you'll have us both killed,' thought Abana cynically. "I will not. I thank you."

The Governess frowned. "Will you not say goodbye to your friends at least?"

Nothing about the chaos at the Elephant Palace concerned him save for Rahab's death... and the safe deliverance of the Silk Court. When Hamami came to visit Abana during his recovery she explained how Maliq freed her and the others before he set the fires around the palace. They escaped into the tunnels beneath the mausoleum and re-emerged in the streets of Tehraq alongside Yahya's man, Baelik, whose contacts smuggled them out of the city and escorted them to Iblyd. In the intervening weeks, the governess had put them into her employ – Hamami and Zanza were her new court performers, Li her personal attendant and Roswyn her new herbalist. They were free women now.

But Abana could not bear to see them again.

"I missed them," he said. Hauras whickered against its reins. It was restless at the sight of the moon, as it was trained to be. It wanted to leave – as did Abana. "But every time I look into their eyes, I am spirited back to that time... I yearn for the day I can look upon my sisters and not be reminded of what was done to us... but that day has not yet arrived."

Lady Yahya nodded. "Well, rest assured they are safe under my charge. Where will you go?"

"Back to Tehraq," With a single leap Abana heaved himself up onto the saddle, his cloak whipping about his shoulders. Hauras neighed beneath him. "Kafnak feeds on obsession, which Maliq will have to indulge. With me safe I can only suspect he will pursue King Qattullah – revenge for his queen, Hamra lo'a Daiira."

Lady Yahya frowned. "...A well-deserved death no doubt... but assassinating the king could destabilize the entire High East..."

"I know," Abana said. "But it will not come to that. I will save him... and I will do it my way."

The Tome of the Ancients sat inside one of the saddlebags. Lady Yahya blinked as Abana respectfully returned it to her. "Here."

"You will not use it?"

Abana shook his head. "The man I love is out there somewhere in thrall to the dark forces that a madman once unleashed with that book. I will not allow myself to become what Rahab of Mahmun was... neither myself not Maliq. No more magic."

The governess pulled a slow smile. She understood that he had to do this his own way. He would not travel with a guard nor employ any sorcerous skulduggery. He would save the man he loved and bring an end to it – and seize that distant life they always dreamed of.

"I wish you luck," she said.

Abana smiled back softly. "Thank you, my lady, and keep safe. We will return to you. Safely."

 

**********

 

(Late Winter, 1179)

 

The Tehraqis had a crude term for copulation. They called it riding the camel – predictably garish for a city-state of stargazers, merchants, and cutthroats. The Kushwaris on the other hand, at least those of a certain breeding and social stock, they knew it by a much more elegant name – the Dance of Flesh.

How many years had Abana of Hafiz danced? How many partners had he danced with? It galled him to admit that he lost count many, many dances ago. He barely even remembered their names – but he remembered their faces. The mole-eyed boy and the jowly spearman; the fat merchant and the pale-skinned guildsman; the nervous bookkeeper and the gold-toothed baker; the lord's minstrel and the exiled chieftain. The drunk charioteer. The one-armed executioner. The governor's sons. All had had their turn in countless times and contexts. He hated them. And he would never forget any of them. Maybe their names... but never their faces.

Cruel men made Abana dance before he even knew what dancing was. Cruel men tempered him like steel to cater to their ilk, to crave their touch, to covet spilt seed like some precious reward – and the cruellest man of all nearly succeeded.

Abana learned to hate the dance.

The pain of it, the shame of it, the sweat and the smells, the moans, and the growls; the unwanted ecstasy you clung to like flotsam to moor you through it. Abana thought he might always hate the dance... if not for the man he danced with now.

Maliq.

It was as though the gods sculpted a man from finest marble and brought him to life by the breath of their essence – solely for Abana's sake. The boy adored every inch of the man; his hair like thick ebon whorls, his deep jade eyes and smooth bronze skin, those broad shoulders and muscular frame... and his unflinchingly kind heart.

Yes, Abana had no idea how wonderful the Dance of Flesh could truly be until he chose Maliq as his partner. And he was so lost in the dance that lusty night (in one of the many cushioned tents of Dhabr's caravan) that he almost missed the little spy peeling back the curtain door and poking an inquisitive eye inside. Abana watched the spy as the spy watched him bounce up and down off Maliq's thick hips and all eight inches of his girth. And then Abana smiled at him.

The boy blushed and ran away.

So far as anyone knew Maliq was only his guard, and until they reached Tehraq, that was the way it had to remain. `I'm going to have to kill you, little one,' thought Abana. `But not until I finish my dance...'

 

**********

 

END

 

**********

 

* Hi, thanks for reading! Comments and constructive criticisms always welcome, please e-mail me at stephenwormwood@mail.com . If you enjoyed this, please read my other stories on Nifty = Wulf's Blut, The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice and The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi) and The Cornishman (gay, historical).