David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

While Hera’s Guide held her prisoner in her rooms, Zeus would sneak from the palace to visit his paramours.

Yet Zeus always returned. Lord Felph had given Hera a special beauty that had always drawn Zeus back no matter how many times he loved other women. Perhaps it was her beauty. Perhaps his Guide had made him return. Hera wanted to believe he would have come back to her in any event.

I should test him , Hera thought. This stranger, my husband. Now that he does not wear a Guide, I should test him.

Hera got up from her vanity, turned her back so that Zeus would not see her face, and stood looking out the high, arched window. Brightstar sailed over the deep valleys, falling like an enormous diamond through sapphire skies. Hera’s tower looked down seven hundred meters to a lower level of the palace and the fields beyond.

She opened the window. Secreted in terrace gardens two hundred meters below were beds that teemed with roses and orchids, Japanese plum and lavender. A gust of cool wind brought the fragrance to her window.

Hera tasted the scent of flowers on the wind. Smiled. This is a fertile place in the desert, she thought. Fertile lands, fertile minds plotting about how to be more fertile. She did not have to reflect to discern the source of Zeus’s anxiousness. “You looked … irresistible, tonight.”

He shot her a brief but fetching smile in the mirror, used his toes to push his shoes off his feet.

“You did not need to impress me. Was it Maggie you were after?”

“You know I love only you,” Zeus protested. He stood before the mirror, naked now, and began cleaning off his own makeup. “Maggie … sounds too much like maggot. Who would want to make love to a maggot? Besides, she is pregnant.” Hera knew he wanted Maggie by the way he heaped on insults.

“I don’t know,” Hera demurred. “She has red hair. No one else on Ruin has red hair.…That would be enchanting, and she is only a few months along. Not overly large yet. Do not think of her as pregnant, think of her as fertile, a ripe melon full of sweet fruit, ready to burst. Perhaps she is lusty, too, a woman of passion. She is not from this world. Who can guess what secrets she knows for pleasing a man?”

“Yes, well apparently she pleases one man,” Zeus said.

“What of him?”

“A husband is but a nuisance. Perhaps while you divert yourself with Maggie, he would be entertained by me?” Zeus knew Hera had never hungered for another man, not so long as she’d worn her Guide, so she was quick to add, “Gallen seems very bold, and handsome.”

Zeus turned, raised his right brow. “Do I hear lust in your voice?” He affected concern, but his voice hinted at eagerness, as if she would agree to a swap.

Tonight, he was saying, perhaps we could put off our long feud, our petty rivalries? Tonight, perhaps, you will let me enjoy my decadence?

Of course, Hera could not agree to that. It was a game to him, chasing other women. He, Hera, and Arachne all played the “Great and Dreadful Game,” a contest where points were awarded for various feats of manipulation. Zeus’s philandering was part of the Game to him.

But it was not a game to Hera. It seemed a matter of life and death. If Zeus bedded a woman, for a moment he would be able to celebrate the points he scored. But if Hera blocked his tryst, she not only robbed him of his damnable points, she won a reprieve from the ache his infidelities caused.

I can’t let him enjoy his decadence, but at least I can feign to do so , she thought. Tonight I’ll unbalance Zeus . “Perhaps, now that we no longer wear our Guides, we will be free to put aside our jealousies?” she said with a hint of petulance. Zeus’s expression of pleasant surprise gratified her to no end, encouraged her a bit more. After all, if he was a stranger to her now, she was as much one to him. Hera affected a breathless, pleading tone. “You’ve sported with enough women; certainly you cannot object if I choose a man?”

Zeus put a hand on his hip, suddenly tense. He was possessive and would not like the idea of her sleeping with another. Yet the idea of truce tempted him. “So, you want to sleep with this Milk?” He snorted the term “Milk” in derision, as locals often did when speaking of people from the Milky Way. “That … would be your affair,” he said, turning away, feigning disinterest. “I would not come between you. In fact, it could be entertaining to see if you can lure him to your bed.”

Hera laughed. “If? You wonder if I can do so? I have my attractions.” He watched her in the mirror. She smiled at him, pulling at the vee in the neck of her low-cut evening gown. Hera was beautiful. How could she not be? The greatest body sculptors in the universe had designed her.

“Seduction is an art”-Zeus shrugged-”one you have not bothered to acquire.”

His condescending tone hurt her. You lout, she thought. You have no idea how I play you! How many times have I had to draw you back into my arms?

“Then you don’t mind if I bed the Lord Protector?” she said flatly.

“Ah, you don’t have to be hurt,” Zeus soothed. “I mean no disrespect. You’re lovely beyond all women, Hera. How could this cretin not be allured by your”-he waved toward her chest-”obvious charms?” He added, “Besides, if you have difficulty attracting the prey, I can advise you.”

“Thank you. I’m sure I don’t need a coach.”

Zeus glanced at her, a puzzled expression. “Sport with him if you like, but don’t become attached. Skills are so … easily learned. If he does something you like, you will, of course, teach me?”

“As surely as you have taught me the things you’ve learned abroad,” Hera responded. She went to the window, gazed out. She did not want Zeus to see her face, red with anger. She wanted him to imagine she was anxious for the escapades to begin. She’d known all along that Zeus would, try to seduce Maggie. It really did not matter whether Maggie was married or not, pretty or not, pregnant or not-Zeus collected lovers the way settlers on Ruin collected spirit masks from dead Qualeewoohs.

For years now, Hera had suffered humiliation at Zeus’s hands. Seldom had she been able to take much vengeance. Now Zeus would pay. He could not suspect the humiliation she would heap on him. Hera almost felt sorry for Zeus, so handsome, with eyes smoldering from his desire. Almost she felt sorry.

Ten weeks after he’d confirmed Maggie’s scent to Lord Karthenor, Thomas’s captors roused him from sleep and hustled him outside. He stood blinking in the cool morning sunlight. The day looked different than he remembered, the skies too purple. Such was the atmosphere of Fale. Thomas felt surprise at his surroundings-palm trees and groves of strange fruits. Bright parrots squawked among the green shadows. Nothing like the landscape where he’d been abducted months before. Nothing like home.

Lord Karthenor was nowhere to be seen, but two of his men had prepared airbikes and packs out behind the house, in a green glade. Three bikes sat by, slick silver things with winglike stabilizers front and back.

Thomas wanted to run, struggled to run, but the Guide affixed to the base of his skull kept him in place. Still, he was relieved when his captors removed his shackles and handcuffs. They did not speak to him. They treated him as a thing to be prodded and moved about, much as any other piece of equipment.

Lord Karthenor appeared from a door at the back of the house. He and his men wore dark robes of brown, faces hidden by the golden masks of Fale, which gave off their own dim light. Karthenor addressed Thomas, “Greetings. The sunlight should do you some good, don’t you think? You’re looking rather pale after months in the basement.”