Dreaming of Sin Ch. 01

Chapter 1 - Saliah Eater of Sins

Saliah inhaled the sweet smell of chaos. There was nothing else like it. A city aflame, the sands around her soaked in the blood, sweat, fear, and desperation of its vanquished defenders. It was a smell that caressed her body more pleasingly than her silk robes. It wormed its way from her petite nose down along a sharp jaw, thin, neck, and warmed her breasts and flat stomach as it found its home and set her aflame.

It was one of the few smells strong enough to drown out the hundred thousand horses of her army. Though the beasts were a necessary part of war, Saliah hated them still.

"Empress," Kubla dipped his knee into the sand beside her, staining the silk of his pants in the same heady mixture of victory and defeat that slowly seeped into Saliah's sandals. The sandals were woven from the hair of a slave girl. It was exquisite hair. Or it had been. It was almost a shame to ruin them so quickly, but consumption was the purpose of beauty. What had taken the woman years to grow and hundreds of hours to care for, was ruined in hours by Saliah's touch.

"Well?" Saliah asked, knowing the answer. Waggons had been weaving out of the remnants of the city for days now. They wobbled with plunder stacked as high as their horses could pull. Or they stunk of defeat from slaves jammed elbow to neck in iron cages. Not one party had sped from the city, eager for her praise.

"The jewels still elude us. I fear they are lost in the fires," the memory of Saliah's anger colored his voice. Kubla was a patient, and clever, man. He knew he was the favorite son of her husband. He knew that the empire would be his in time. He even knew that Saliah had no interest in stopping him from his inheritance. But her wrath had swept up countries in flame, and his petty life was nothing to her if he displeased her. His mind was as easy for her to read as the setting sun in the sky. Yet even now his eyes struggled to keep their place, tempted, always tempted, to let his desires open to her.

She was so near the end of her time with Temüjin, yet how would she ever find another man like her Khan? Kubla was as formidable a son as any father could ask for, but Temüjin was a stallion to Kubla's ox. "If they had tasted fire, we would know," she said.

Kubla nodded at that, he had long ago stopped asking questions when she gave those kinds of answers. "Then I will order the sorting stopped, the city searched again. I'll have every carriage of plunder unpacked and searched, then have the men search each other. I'll remind them that the Stones are for the Khan himself."

Kubla's problem was rigidity. He could never think of the creative way to accomplish a task when the diligent one was available. Great men were great because they wove flexibility, creativity, and luck. Her eyes never left the flames of the city. A million people had lived there once, an accomplishment for humanity that would shine out for centuries, and she had ended it on a rumor. Pity that the rumor seemed to be no more than that.

"No. The men are not at fault, and the sorting is too hot in their mouths."

Fire flashed in her eyes, the blaze that had been consuming the city's courts, and temples, and government offices all afternoon leapt into an inferno as it found the wooden tenements that had once housed a million souls. The slaves could watch their homes burn through the night, see that they had no city to go back to. Ghouls would grow fat on the banquet of despair she had set out for them.

Saliah turned. A thousand horsemen of her honor guard parted without a word to make a path for her. Flanking elements of a hundred heavy horse each, galloped ahead to reposition themselves for her entrance into the camp. Her Khan did fret about her safety. Twenty picked men, each one a warrior of acclaim, dismounted and formed a circle around her, keeping pace with her, yet none daring to move within a dozen paces of her. She could feel their eyes on her when they thought she wasn't looking. She could smell their conflict between duty, lust, and the knowledge of what would happen if they so much as touched her. Twenty men, warriors of acclaim, and not one had ever been bold enough to take his chance.

If one had the brave soul could find himself with more than he dreamed. Her time with Temüjin was so near its end, a mere warrior would be no replacement, but she would be so flush with victory a few months of easy feeding would make for a tempting dessert. Yet none were bold enough.

She was almost under her pergola before she could hear the musicians beside it. The laughter, and shouts, and angry debates of ten thousand men drowned out flutes and trumpeters. Her army's camp was order. Kubla's doing. A thousand felt tents for the men, mountains of feed and fodder for their horses, a dozen pens that each would have swallowed the colosseum, all in perfect uniform lines. Cookfires ringed the periphery, every man at supper also a lookout.

The Sorting though was her own delicious chaos. The boring part was already over. Of the ten thousand women captured from the city, four thousand had already had lead bracelets hammered about their left wrists. They'd been driven into a communal pen the size of an Olympic field. They were the old, the ugly, the damaged. They would be treated like any other plunder and those that survived the trip to a slave market would be sold off even more cheaply than the men.

Chaff removed, the army's real meal was beginning. Clothes were being torn off, breasts fondled by soot-stained hands, screams and cries and sobbing of women competed with the laughter and debates of men over questions of what made for a copper ass or a silver ass, or the state of a slave's teeth, or the softness of her skin. The Golden women rose quickly, like cream, from the chaos. Some were obvious at a glance. Others would be argued about.

There could be only a hundred Golden women, that was the law. The Khan's personal take, the best hundred from ten thousand, true beauties all.

Saliah let herself sink into a bed of cushions set up under her pergola and sipped at a cup of wine, to never be seen eating or drinking would cause far too many rumors.

There was, as usual, more than one fight among the men. Their personal tastes made for prickly egos, and criticism of a woman was often taken as an insult to the man who liked her. The sun dropped in the sky as quickly as the wine in a hundred barrels. Another hundred barrels were opened as the moon began to rise, and by the time the moon reached its apex it's light shone down onto the bare wood of empty barrel bottoms.

There were too many women to pay attention to all of them. Trying to would only reduce them to a forest, when each was a leaf worthy of its own examination.

Saliah most enjoyed selecting a border-line case to follow. One of the girls who might be golden or might be silver. She picked a brunette with large eyes and breasts. The woman was still in the flower of youth, she had seen twenty, perhaps twenty-two summers. She wore the rough woolen robes of a peasant, but her hair gave the disguise away. She had the hair of a merchant's daughter. It was sleek, and tied, and cared for. It was not the hair of a field hand, or kitchen wench who baked in front of a hearth or under the field noon sun.

She had begun the sorting trembling under her robes. But she had not protested when a drunken command ordered her to strip them away.

The transformation had been a thing of beauty. The first groping hands had gone to her breasts and ass. She was clearly among the most beautiful women, and as many men as could fit, surround her.

The Sorting's rules were not explained to the slaves, their understanding was unimportant. But if the girl had even half a brain she would have felt the rules within minutes. Hands squeezed breasts, butt, thighs, and cupped her sex. Yet none dared penetrate her with so much as a finger. They laughed at her gasps of pleasure as her nipples were toyed with. They drunkenly competed to see which could elicit the biggest moan as they rubbed her sex. The girl lost herself. Hour after hour, hundreds of sets of hands, a dozen crashing orgasms, eventually the men simply lay her down on a table, her legs no longer willing to hold her body upright.

Would they appreciate the value in that reaction? She was a beauty, though there were hundreds more beautiful, yet how many could lose themselves in such a way?

The sorting reached its end not so much by resolution of any of the age old disputes about the bodies of women, but rather with the heavy breathing of a drunken army, hard with anticipation, and teased to the verge of frenzy. Four thousand copper women had their bracelets affixed to their wrists. On Saliah's word the army would fall upon them like wolves. The difference at the slave markets between a copper women in perfect condition, and one bruised and swollen with child, had proven to be negligible.

But before that happened, nineteen hundred Silver women would be awarded as wives to men who had distinguished themselves in the campaign. Perhaps three hundred men would receive two, and the army's ten generals would each receive ten. But it was for Saliah to decide who received who.

She could hear the heavy, lusty, breathing of even her honor guard. They dared not look on her now, but every other eye in the camp silently fell on her, waiting. It was time. Dogs with morsels of steak balanced on their noses were more subtle with their desires.

A whispered word from Saliah, and one of her personal guard departed for the doe eyed brunette, a golden bracelet in hand.

Saliah stood, raising her hands, silk robes falling back off her forearms. The crowd fell silent, even the women, despite what they had been through, knew they needed to hear what came next. Ten thousand soldiers, another ten thousand slaves, and she had absolute dominion over them all. The smell of horses was a small price to pay.

The Khan's hundred Golden women were segregated from the rest. Any man who touched them tonight would be beheaded, yet a hundred of her honor guard were needed to ensure that edict was carried out. Over the wild hours that would follow, men would go mad with lust.

The most beautiful hundred of ten thousand. They looked it. Or perhaps they were the most beautiful hundred from the million who had lived in the city before Saliah had set her eyes upon it. Perhaps the most beautiful knew that their beauty would save their lives and that life as a wife was better than suicide. They all looked more resigned than anything else, as though they had understood for days that this was their future.

"You have fought bravely!" Saliah's voice boomed out louder than was natural for her slight frame. "You rode far, and fast, and your arrows flew true."

Kubla was too rigid. He couldn't feel the pulse of his men the way her Khan could, or the way she could. Kubla didn't understand that if he had called off the sorting not even the mares would have be safe that night. And he certainly didn't understand how to turn that lust to his purposes.

"But the Stones of Extor have not been found!" Those words rippled out of her and through the crowd with a visible wave. Fear. Was she about to stop their debauchery? Was she about to punish them? "Because of that the Silver women will not be given out tonight!" Loss. She had three heart beats to act before fear and loss exploded into a firestorm of rage.

"Instead, I will give you something better! The one hundred Golden women will go to the man who finds the stones!" She was going to add that the stones might have been secreted away inside the city, or that the carriages of loot ought to be searched again, or that perhaps one of the slaves had managed to conceal them. She didn't get the chance. Drunk on wine, worked into a frenzy by having spent a night arguing about women, and looking on at the hundred golden women with a covetousness that she could taste, ten thousand men understood her words and broke at a run.

"Should I put guards on the slaves to make sure the men do not start gutting them?" Khubla asked from her side. Perhaps she did not give the man enough credit. Few enough men could recognize the power of an idea so quickly. Though his foresight was helped along by the scent of greed in the air.

"I need the stones, not more slaves,' Saliah's voice soft.

She plucked a grape from an overflowing platter beside her and sheared off a quarter of the fruit into her mouth. It was as good a grape as she had ever tasted, but the juice was too simple to even draw her attention away from the chaos of the camp.

Chaos. Khubla despised chaos, but there was efficiency to it. A swarming feeding frenzy of sharks certainly feels chaotic and yet no whale could survive it. A fire is chaos and yet it consumes its fuel to the last molecule.

A flicker of her eye to the mountain of a man who was captain of her honor guard, "come", she said, and her twenty picked men formed up around her.

The procession moved into the camp, towards the clutch of Golden Women. Among the men the world felt small and bestial, Saliah loved it. Perhaps she had spent too long on the tops of hills with her Khan. One could certainly miss the forest for the trees, but it was an equal sin to miss the trees for the forest.

"Who might know?!" a soldier ahead screamed the words. He was a brute's brute. The dirt of weeks crusted him, and yet he wielded a golden short sword that gleamed in the camp's firelight. The brute had his other hand twisted around a clump of salting hair, the slave the hair was attached to trembled and pulled away trying to put some distance between his throat and the tip of the sword. He wasn't successful in the task.

"Make way for the Empress!" the captain of her guard shouted at the brute. Perhaps he was too focused on his plan, it was an impressive one in its own way. Don't torture the slaves to discover where the stones were, torture them to discover who was most likely to know where they were. It had probably used every brain cell in the brute's head because he didn't move to her guard's command.

Or perhaps he simply hadn't heard. A hundred wagons loaded high with golden cups, plates, chains, rings, and weapons were being dumped out as though the content were dung. The noise was beautiful and louder than an orchestra.

Saliah might have taken a step to her right. Her path was only just near the brute's. She didn't, and the captain of her guard didn't repeat himself. A slash of his sword and the Brute's head fell to the mud. She passed. The brute's friends waited only a moment until she was gone before she heard the Brute's question repeated by a new voice. A good idea was a good idea.

The hundred men guarding the Golden Women made a gap for Saliah as she approached and, alone, she walked into the pen that held them. A shiver of pleasure ran through her at their eyes. They loathed her. To them she was a traitor to the sisterhood of beautiful women. Some had certainly owned their own slaves - who they had mistreated. Yet true beauty brought its own status.

At least half the women were larger than Saliah, either by height or weight, and with her honor guard a dozen paces behind her some were undoubtedly imagining rushing her, swarming her, tearing skin and eyes with nails and teeth. Yet none did.

The doe eyed brunette was just starting to come back to the land of the living, but Saliah quickly moved her eyes off her. She looked at each woman in turn, searching their faces for a pair.

"You," she said, a razor sharp fingernail singling out one of the women, "here," she ordered and pointed to an empty patch of dirt at her feet. The woman Saliah had pointed to was blonde, breasts full and firm, nipples pink and hard from fear and the crisp breaths of night wind that snuck through the storm of fire and screams and chaos around them. The rest of her body was shapely, she was a woman who had been cared for, not some kitchen wench. But it was her face that caught Saliah's attention. It was a face that spoke of mischief and pleasure. It was the face of a woman who, when asked what her interests were, would reply "having fun," with utter sincerity - as though every person who had ever lived would not have said the same.

The blonde looked to the woman around her for help, none met her eyes, and she stepped forward. Saliah picked a second woman from the crowd with the same gesture and command. The two could have been sisters. Yes, the second woman's breasts were even larger. Yes, the second woman's nose was more petite, and her jaw sharper. The two did not even share the same eye color. But both had blonde hair, and both had the same look of mischief and pleasure on their faces.

"Do you know each other?" Saliah asked.

The two blondes looked at each other, then shook their heads. Their fear was a delight to smell. Rich and thick yet with a dash of hope that perhaps they had been singled out for something less horrible than the rest. They had spent their entire lives receiving special treatment for their beauty and a tiny voice in both their heads said that their luck would hold.

Saliah took one step towards them, and took both their necks in her hands, gently pushing the two closer to each other. "That is something we will be changing," she said, and the rest of the Golden Women gasped.

Saliah was always amazed that the eyes were human's primary sense. The two girls before her no doubt felt the chill of metal about their necks, they no doubt noticed the difference between Saliah's hands holding them close together and the quarter inch of yield her arms allowed them, and the absolutely unyielding chain that joined both their collars together. But they couldn't see it - not yet.

The other Golden Women could. They saw two seamless golden collars, each as thick as a thumb, suddenly materialize around both women's necks. They saw a heavy steel chain, eight inches long, and glistening fresh and seamless, join the two collars together.

"You two are paired now," Saliah said, and took away her hands. Both blondes went through the same steps of realization, Saliah had picked well. They both reached up to the golden collars around their necks, surprise at first. They both tried to pull away from the other only to discover they could not, and their hands went to the chain joining them. And then a dawning realization as their hands felt along their collars, and the chain, and then the other's collar, looking for some way that they might one day be released. There was none.

The chain was too short for them to stand shoulder to shoulder, not unless they put their arms around each other. But it was just long enough that either one could kiss her way down the other's body to the nipple.

Their eyes flared in horror, "oh dear girls," Saliah began, "do look on the bright side. Neither one of you has ever had someone in your lives you will be as close to. You can't keep secrets from each other, so you can be completely, utterly, open with your new sister."

If the stones were found, if the Golden Women were given to one of the men, Saliah was sure that her little intervention wouldn't be resented.

The ether vibrated. The ripples exploded in her mind like one of the Chinese fireworks in the night's sky. The waves of the vibration curved in towards her. It was unmistakable, though it had been eons since she had felt it. Who would dare try to attack her in her own realm?

Her honor guard gasped, shouted, one even wading into the group of Golden Women to look for her, when she blinked out of existence before their eyes. The ripples in the ether were as easy to follow as the waves in a lake, and she felt them coming from Karakorum, from home. It took ten seconds to travel a distance that had taken her army ten weeks by horse. But when she arrived she found her way blocked. Not with gates or guards or walls, but with a barrier in the ether. It extended out a dozen miles from the heart of the city, from her home. Temujin... What had he done?