Had she paid the messenger enough to reach Galamzar? Would he answer?

The plan had worked before, but what about this time?

How mad would he be?

An explosion rocked the palace. Its rumble shook the lamp bowls on the nightstand.

The guards shouted outside her door in clear panic.

‘Finally!’ Throwing her feet to the side of the bed, Linettye sat up and adjusted the rectangle of silk fastened across her chest by golden chains over her neck and the midpoint of her back, which dug, until certain she would not fall out. She slid off the mattress and yanked the silver dagger from its ornate scabbard, stuffing the latter into her sash.

She took hold of the chamber door’s gold-and-pearl handle and wrenched it open, exiting into the white hall that encircled His Lord Majesty and Herald to the High One’s solarium. As expected, none of the guards held their posts, drawn to the clamour from somewhere deeper in the palace. She dashed down the western corridor, her slippered feet quiet on the warm white marble. Meeting the juncture that led to another harem chamber on the left and the glass doors to the solarium on her right, Linettye decided on the solarium.

Nine concubines clad in less than her gauzy shift and puffy silk bottoms cowered on the sun-washed patio bordered with exotic plants too green for the desert around the city. Dressed in an attempt to appear so unenticing it had kept His Lord Majesty—or ‘Lecher’ as the other girls called him—and his groping hands away, her sudden appearance startled them. The pair of eunuchs assigned to corral the whimpering, crying girls turned in her direction.

One of them, a head taller than the wideset brute next to him, raised a curved scimitar gilt in gold. ‘There she is!’

Linettye flipped the knife she held into an icepick grip as she retreated into the hall, meeting them at the intersection as they gave chase. The first fool she dodged past, slicing his neck open when he overextended his downward stroke. The second died cutting where she wasn’t, her steel in his heart after an expert riposte.

A second boom rocked the palace to its foundations. Dust shaken from the decorative blue-and-white tiled ceilings fell on the polished floors.

‘Closer than expected,’ she whispered as she took up one of the dead eunuch’s scimitars.

She strode back into the solarium, the sun warm on her dark olive face and shoulders. The concubines backed away in shock, each of them aware of the steel in her hand.

‘Not a single one of you move,’ Linettye said.

‘I told you! I told you there was something about her,’ one of them shouted, an immortal dharva with long, sharp ears and a tear-drop nose. Linettye had taken an instant disliking to this one when she had first infiltrated the Lecher’s inner circle of pleasure women, posing as a courtesan of excellence in exchange for a residency, though she had let the rumour also spread she had been kidnapped.

Information gleaned from her sources revealed two fascinating details:

First, while the Lecher often made time for his concubines, the ones he liked best were gifted with gemstones cut and shaped in the exacting form of a flower. There were four in make.

Second, these four magnificent jewels were to always be worn by the girls who served those fancies. Under the careful watch of the eunuchs, they could lay about in their bought splendour, waiting for their liege to show up and exert his short, brief, quick passions—as they had told her.

‘I hope I don’t have to be blunt about what I want,’ Linettye said, pointing at the gleaming, glistening, glittering… she grunted to herself, hungered by such wealth. Waving the scimitar in small circles, she cleared her throat. ‘First, would one of you kindly strip a pillow of its casing and throw it to my feet? Please notice I said my feet, not my face. You won’t like what happens if you try that.’

One of the girls without a jewel took the pillow she clung to, stripped it, and tossed the case at Linettye’s feet. The reaction drew ire from the rest, their hisses and glares directed at the culprit.

Linettye stooped to retrieve it. ‘Those of you without a bauble can go after you take off all rings, earrings, bracelets, anklets, or anything else you have of value not fixed into your flesh. The rest of you with those pretty flowers can stay exactly where you are and perfectly still.’

One of them mustered some bravery, her heaving chest bejewelled by a large rose-shaped ruby wedged between her breasts. The red facets as delectably curved as her figure, she stood up in her sheer white gown, chin raised.

‘You will stop this right now,’ Red Rose said, talking down her nose. ‘Put down that sword or I’ll—’

Linettye shushed her as she came forward, touching the curve of steel to the ruby’s flat face. The concubine, frozen by the simple tap, broke into tears. She sank to her knees in a heap of silk and flesh.

‘And all for this?’ Linettye asked, waving her sword at the solarium with its polished glass panels and blooming flowers too delicate for the harsh heat. The playground, for all its pomp and pleasures, almost made her scoff for its inauthenticity. She casually chopped at the back of the Red Rose’s neck, snapping the white-gold clasp in two with a perfect cut that left the concubine unharmed.

The ruby slipped to the marble floor with a clack.

Linettye dropped the pillowcase in front of the simpering courtesan. ‘Hurry up,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be here soon and I’m not sharing. The quicker you move the quicker you all can go.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ the sobbing woman on the floor whispered. She shoved the ruby in the loot bag.

Linettye picked it up, happy with increased weight, when an idea formed. ‘All of you line up.’

They hesitated too long. Curious, she raised her sword slightly from where she held it, and like dogs to the whistle the concubines scurried into line. Allowed to take them in fully, as well as their ensembles, Linettye spotted three remaining jewels and the outfits assembled around them.

Hand on one hip, she rested the scimitar’s spine on her bare shoulder. ‘Like I said, those without a big honking stone can get out of here.’ She nudged Red Rose with her foot as she passed by. ‘You too.’

Those who had yet to be graced by the Lecher’s favour and a stone stripped themselves of what gold and jewels they had—some possessing surprisingly little, like the mouthy dharva, who was among the quickest to flee the solarium. Their treasures collected in the pillow case, Linettye approached the first girl of the three left, who wore a form-fitting shift of red that accentuated every curve and rise of her fit body, from its ankle-cuffs to the translucent red mask held around her gentle face by a band of pure gold. At its centre sprouted a white rose, its petals made of carved pearls and layers of opal.

‘No, no,’ Linettye said absently, studying the blonde northerner from another continent up and down. ‘It will take too long to take off, and I won’t need that much time to get him to that stage.’

‘What?’ the girl asked.

Grunting, Linettye pulled the crown from the courtesan’s head. ‘And look at this,’ she said, dangling the attached scarf that had covered the concubine’s mouth. ‘Why would any man want to cover your mouth if he plans on lying with you? Does he not want to gauge how well he’s doing?’

‘His Lord Majesty doesn’t pay us to speak,’ the White Rose answered, confused by the questions.

‘The ease at which you pointed that out should bother you more than it does me.’ Linettye nodded for her to leave, and the White Rose did not argue as she scampered out of the solarium in total nudity. Taking time to examine the outfit of the next girl, she shook her head at the blue baby doll dress, its shimmering necklace a chain of small orange poppy blooms crafted from carnelians that held up the scant, sheer bodice, she mumbled over the skirt’s embroidered edge which was too much for her taste.

‘Take that off and you can get out of here, too,’ she said to the wearer, winding her sword at the necklace around the girl’s throat. The golden-eyed concubine undid the clasp on command, letting her ensemble drop to the floor before she ran for the exit, naked like the first and not a care for it.

The palace trembled under a third explosion, rattling the glass panes in the solarium’s dome.

The last girl remaining, gilded only in a gown of yellow gossamer that could best be described as having the lustre of butter against her dark flesh, almost started her escape when a quick glare from Linettye stopped her. Her lingerie, brought together at the sternum below her bountiful breasts and above a smooth belly, was bound together by a girdle made of white gold fixed at the centre with a jewel that finally—finally—caught Linettye’s full attention.

Adorned at the clasp by a brooch-buckle the size of a teacake, a pink peony made from the smallest slivers of beryl and garnet blossomed like a dawn-kissed bud unwrapping from the night’s chill.

‘Now we’re talking,’ Linettye whispered. Turning her own body against the concubine’s, she considered the dress for a moment before nodding. ‘Alright, off with that and off with you. Or at least as far as you can get.’

She went to dump the little poppies and the white rose in her loot-bag when she noticed Miss Peony failing her instructions. Dark and with green eyes from the Arbikkean deserts, the girl stared blankly at Linettye.

‘What’s the hold up?’ Linettye asked.

Miss Peony swallowed hard. ‘May I ask you something?’

Depositing the rest of the jewels into the pillowcase, Linettye tossed the sword to the floor. ‘If it gets you out of that and me into it faster.’

Hesitant at first, the concubine twisted the flower brooch, which loosed the mechanized boning in the girdle. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Linettye held up the bag of treasure and a deadpan expression. ‘Really?’

‘But you snuck in here, promising to fulfil his every wish, every whim, and there’s no way you would have made it out alive if you tried escaping.’ Miss Peony shook her head as she tossed the belt onto one of the cotton sunbeds that, until that moment, she had consigned herself to spend the rest of her days. She slid the shoulders of her gown off her collar bone, letting its long length slip to the floor. Naked, short, but of an athletic frame and tight proportions, she did not shy against Linettye’s curious, somewhat tantalized gaze.

‘You could be dead right now and nobody would care,’ the concubine said, clearing her throat in annoyance.

‘But I have something you girls don’t,’ Linettye said, bringing her eyes back up.

‘What’s that?’

‘The best escape plan out there.’ Linettye smiled at the little fool. ‘You were made worthy by that lecher’s attention, his gifts, not anything real beyond the fantasy you gave him and the one you made up in your head to think it’ll last forever. And that’s only worth something to him when he wants it. Otherwise you had nothing to begin with and have nothing now.’

‘Oh?’ Miss Peony put both hands on her bare hips. ‘And what makes you think you’re so much better off, thief?’

The palace heaved as two explosions only a few halls away scorched the air in the solarium, flooding it with heat. The rumble died as men screamed in the distance, voices rising with a clash of swords before they went silent. By some honest miracle the glass of the solarium trembled, but not a single pane cracked.

‘Because I know no matter how deep I get into it, Galamzar of The Marble Tower will come to my aid,’ said Linettye with superior satisfaction. ‘He’s also been my escape strategy for the last six heists. I don’t know why I didn’t think about using a sorcerer to get things done beforehand, but here we are.’

Miss Peony stood breathless. ‘You brought one man against His Lord Majes—’

‘A sorcerer of excellent quality, and don’t sit here and act like he just showed up and did everything,’ she said, holding up her loot bag one more time. ‘Someone had to come up with the plan to steal into the castle so he would have to rescue me.’ She also held up the underwear. ‘Also, you’re standing there naked and I’m not.’

‘You’re a madwoman!’

‘Best of us are,’ said Linettye. ‘Now get out of here before I pick that sword back up and he breaks that glass.’

Miss Peony did not waste time with another question, running from the solarium.

‘At last!’ Linettye said with a heavy, relieved sigh as she occupied the bright space all by herself. Reaching back, she undid the knot holding up her top and unhooked the golden chains that had dug into her back. She pushed down her puffed silk pants, standing nude in the sunshine.

Suddenly aware of where she was, where she stood, Linettye thought for a moment on her enormous luck. Retrieving the butter-yellow lingerie the concubine had left behind, she struggled to get her arms through the soft but restrictive sleeve holes, the bottom portion flowing out. She couldn’t get it to lay right on her stomach, giving it an unsightly roll.

‘Linettye?’ Galamzar called from the hallway. ‘Linettye, are you in there?’

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she hissed to herself.

Hurrying, she worked the metal coil around her body. When she set the metal hooks in the corresponding eyes there came a whirring sound. Gears hidden in the girdle closed the garment immaculately around her torso, smoothing the robe as the horizontal boning shaped perfectly to her contours, neither digging nor prodding. Hiding the fallen scimitar and the other discarded clothes in the bushes, she quickened to one of the sunbeds as Galamzar’s boots pounded, echoing in the marble hallway.

Linettye tossed her auburn hair out, hoping it was not too tangled, and tried to strike the most alluring pose she could think of, leaned on one side with her legs crossed to conceal the fact that she wore nothing below.

‘Linettye,’ he called again.

‘Gal-am-zar,’ she said in a playful singsong, ‘I’m in here!’

Galamzar appeared in the shadows of the hall beyond the solarium’s eastern eave. Tall and wide in the shoulders, he cut a heroic figure as he strode into the glassed garden, the sun gleaming off his curved steel sword and the gilded breastplate he wore over formal green robes. Misted in a light sweat from battle, sparks of flicking red swirled around his head and hands like drops of suspended gold, meagre hints of the power he commanded. He pulled back his hood, freeing his ebon mane of hair that made his bright eyes spark in the way she loved so much.

‘My hero!’ Linettye opened her arms in welcome in gossamered welcome.

His expression fell in an instant. ‘This is another heist, isn’t it?’

She rose up on the bed, posed on both knees to reveal her present. ‘Now, dear—’

Galamzar dropped the curved sword, letting it vanish in a winking flash as he palmed his mouth. He sighed deep.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m fine, you’re fine, and we have more than enough to get back to Burq-Tinnin in time for the conference and a trip afterward. And nobody got hurt.’

‘What about the dead guards in the hallway or the people I slew on the way here?’

‘Okay, some people got hurt,’ Linettye replied with a light shrug. ‘But is anyone coming to get us now?’

‘No,’ Galamzar said. ‘I’m pretty sure I cleared this section of the city on the second or third explosion.’

‘The entire section?’ she asked. ‘How did you—no, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re here, I’m here, it’s safe, and it’s a perfectly beautiful day to lay naked in the sun.’ She batted her lashes at him, brushing her fingers down the centre of her chest and onto the edge of the shining girdle. ‘Plus, I have a gadget we can play with. Don’t you want to come play with me, Galamzar?’

She left the question to linger while she leaned back on her cotton berth, hoping the sun revealed the points of light on the peony, the sheen on her skin. Open in invitation, she grinned at him when his eyes trailed from her face down and past the jewel.

As she hoped, the sorcerer grinned back.