Knight's Fork

Dorchester Publishing

Chapter One

A party to murder ... 'Rhett's dark, lawyerly sense of humor dueled with his conscience. I am, in the legal sense. I watched. Nine of us came here to entrap, pass judgment on, and execute old Prince Django-Ra, if he gave us reasonable cause.

He did. One of us wasted him. We'll never know for sure whether it was Martia-Djulia, Tarrant-Arragon, Djetth, or my father who struck the fatal blow.

Justice had been served, roughly speaking, All was right with the Worlds. Or should be. There was nothing left to do, no fires to put out, no metaphorical dragons to slay. Yet, 'Rhett's deplorably immoral relatives were still partying, as if taking out a villain had left them too excited to go to bed.

'Rhett took a moderate swig of whiskey-colored liquid from a booze glass. The cold drink was no more intoxicating than green tea, and he'd smuggled a bottle of it into the "party" for his exclusive use under the pretext of fetching and carrying for the shocked, elderly Empresses.

Being a little more sober than everyone else seemed a good idea. Mischief and murder were potent aphrodisiacs. Trouble was brewing. From which quarter would it come?

Six of his Great Djinn seven senses were as acute as one might expect to find, if it were possible to crossbreed sand tiger sharks and werewolves. He'd never missed the seventh sense.

He took stock.

Ah! Aunt Tarra sensed something, too. Her beautifully made-up, cold-steel eyes were heavy lidded with weariness, yet she had an expectant air about her. She'd folded her restless, expressive hands. Normally, they were busy shuffling or turning over tarot cards. Aunt Tarra created so much visual interest above the waist that most visitors failed to notice that she sat in an antiquated wheelchair.

The gamy scent of her terror-of Django, while he was alive-had almost been displaced by the ambient fragrances of the incense candle-lit, fortune-telling parlor.

Madam Tarra's parlor seemed intimate, cluttered, and comfortable, assuming that Aunt Tarra's guests were the type of persons who could be at ease in the shadow of statues of nude, alien gods.

Appearances were deceptive. Fortune-telling was a transparent front for an exclusive brothel, which in turn was a front for the Saurian Dragon's interstellar covert operations.

Tarra was a Saurian master spy, and this was her interrogation room. A visitor might assume that its deeply folded, subtle-colored curtains hung in front of solid walls. He'd be wrong. This was a room within a room, like a busy courtyard in the center of a cloistered quadrangle.

The threadbare, green client's chair was booby-trapped with tiny quills in the stuffing that might prick a client and deliver a dose of the truth serum, Loquacity.

Bracketed to the underside of the dark, velvet-draped table and pointing at clients' groins was a blunderbuss.

Django-Ra had leaped up from this chair to his death.

'Rhett leaned his hip on its thick backrest and wondered which of his eight Royal relatives would be the first to retire for the night. Although they were family-mostly-they did observe an unspoken protocol. 'Rhett, being the youngest, could not go to bed first.

He also got the least comfy chair, if he wanted to sit.

Djetth had the rank and seniority to leave first if he wanted to do so. Tarrant-Arragon had just made Djetth the Emperor Djetthro-Jason of An'Koor. 'Rhett eyed his eldest half-brother speculatively.

Thrusting a long knife into an old enemy seemed to have had a powerful romantic effect on Djetth, who appeared to be running through all the permutations of assuring Princess Martia-Djulia that he loved her and was ready and willing to mate.

Why don't you stop whispering and get on with it, Djetth? You're as good as married. Take yourselves off to bed.

It was no use willing Djetth to do anything. The only acknowledged mind reader in the family was 'Rhett's half-sister Djinni-vera, and she was aboard the Ark Imperial warming Tarrant-Arragon's bed.

'Rhett glanced at his dangerous brother-in-law. You, too, Tarrant-Arragon. Go home to bed, preferably as far away as possible.

'Rhett cocked his head as he watched the aristocratically bony, exiled Empress Helispeta sip a sweet liqueur, holding a glass in a now-steady hand. Small, new, violet bruises dappled her neck where the late Django-Ra's fingers had dug in and had almost succeeded in their lethal purpose.

How about you, Grandmama?

"Grandmama Hell" inclined her impeccably formal, bewigged head and raised her glass, almost as if acknowledging his unspoken wish, and denying him.

In emotional terms, she'd been as constant as a Cepheid variable when he and Djinni-vera had been growing up together on Earth with Djetth and the twins. However, Grandmama had supported them with a fortune won at gambling. She had a mind like a minefield and was still a beauty, although in Earth-years she'd be a nonagenarian.

Hey, Father-he glanced at the seven-foot-tall Saurian Dragon-you're in a brothel, for heaven's sake! Why don't you call it a night? Are you afraid that you'll miss something if you leave? That your character will be assassinated if you go upstairs?

'Rhett's gaze dropped to some scattered, mismatched tarot cards on the thickly carpeted floor.

Someone should pick those up.

The killing of Django had been tidier than the cleanup. The cards had been knocked from a table by a contingent of Tarrant-Arragon's Star Forces as they otherwise efficiently removed Prince Django-Ra's corpse into the gaudily lit, everlasting night on the Dark Side of Eurydyce's Pleasure Moon.

Having set aside his glass of something-like-tea, 'Rhett sighed and went down on one knee. Leave it to the male Cinderella of the family to clean up!

The first upturned card was prominently labeled the lovers. Many of Aunt Tarra's tarot decks depicted a nude male and a female entwined with a large, phallic snake, suggesting an Adam and an Eve.

This Lovers card wasn't like that. The lone male was fully clothed, as if Prince Paris of Troy might have been hunting when the three scantily clad goddesses waylaid him and insisted that he should judge their charms-and weigh the attractions of their bribes-and award a golden apple to the loveliest of the most powerful and vindictive goddesses in the pantheon. It must have been the most depraved beauty contest of human Greco-Roman mythology.

What is it about this version of the Lovers card that infuriates me? 'Rhett's lips tightened in disapproval; his pulse sped up.

Although his three half brothers jeeringly called him a killjoy and a cold-heart, he wasn't the type to go into a sexually repressed lather over a vision of a female flaunting her considerable charms. What pushed his buttons was that the myth behind this particular card glamorized the vices he found most abhorrent. Bribery. Corruption. Adultery. Sexual exploitation. Irresponsible sex ...

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Tarrant-Arragon flash a glance at him, then look away.

The beribboned Goddess of Love was holding out the promise of her body-which she'd no intention of delivering-to inflame the judge's lust so that he'd give her what she wanted.

I can't stand females who try that! It reminds me of Electra-Djerroldina. Damn. I didn't mean to think about her!

He was too much of a gentle male and a diplomat to dwell on Electra's shocking indiscretion not four months ago. Since that time he'd never mentioned her or her grossly insulting proposition. Until seeing this card, he'd never thought of her. Not deliberately, anyhow.

The goddess looked like Electra. Not that 'Rhett wanted to see Electra ever again, let alone wearing no more than a wickedly knowing smile and rumpled ribbons fluttering between her legs and around her perfect breasts.

Disquieting memories flashed under his guard.

"Prince Djarrhett, you ..." Electra had cooed at the aborted Mating Banquet, the first time they'd come within speaking range of each other. Her bee-stung lower lip pouted as if she were blowing kisses on the oooh sounds.

She'd spoken for his ears alone, but her smoky gaze had been directed out across the banqueting throng. Anyone watching might have supposed that she was mouthing a silent greeting to someone else.

Damnable female! She'd asked him to knock her up, and she hadn't had the decency to look at him. How insulting was that!

"You ... are discretion itself."

She'd left her mouth open an instant too long on the L of itself, letting him glimpse the glistening pink underside of her tongue as it touched the back of her teeth.

It's high time someone taught Electra a lesson. Being a Queen, she seems to imagine that she can drive a male nuts and get away with it. One day-or one night-she'll push the wrong male too far.

He couldn't recall what he'd said at that point. His reply would have been discreet and noncommittal. As a diplomatic spy, he could hardly demur and say that her secrets were not safe with him.

Beneath the high table, her long, slim fingers had brushed the inside of his thigh. Apparently, he hadn't been sufficiently noncommittal.

"You are at least part Djinn."

She was correct. He'd neither confirmed nor denied her allegation, and wouldn't have done so even if he had not been stifling a groan at that moment.

If his guess about her age was correct, Electra ought to have been one of the last, rare products of the Island School for Princesses. Her curriculum would have included Diplomatic Dissimulation, Lineage and Genealogy, Mother craft, Masturbation, Art of Conversation, the Science of Pleasuring, Concubinage, and Sexual Anatomy.

She must have excelled in at least some of her studies.

"I require a sperm donor," she'd said.

I'm outraged. Shocked, he'd thought at the time. Shocked rigid!

Back then, the part of him that was shocked most rigid of all bounced with eagerness to pleasure her. He'd thudded hard against the back of her hand, and she'd stretched her arched, narrow eyebrows as if amused by his susceptibility and her own wickedness.

He'd been appalled at himself for being intrigued, but his reply had been a diplomatic repetition of her last word, to establish whether or not he had misheard her. "A donor?"

"Do you expect to be paid?" she'd asked stiffly, slowly withdrawing her hand.

"No."

How dared she use her touch as simple blackmail and bribe! He was furious that she'd touched him, furious that having started, she'd stopped.

She'd exhaled in a breathy ejaculation of premature triumph. Her flighty hand alighted on his leg again. "Thank you."

"You misunderstand, Princess," he'd retorted through anger-gritted teeth. "My answer is no."

Glancing up from The Lovers, 'Rhett noticed that Tarrant-Arragon was looking his way with a thoughtful expression on his saturnine, sardonically handsome face. Tarrant-Arragon saw too much.

It's a good thing you can't read minds!

'Rhett glanced at the card in his left hand. He did not relish the teasing he'd get if he were caught staring at The Lovers. With guilty haste, 'Rhett scooped up the rest of the cards, slid the seventy-eighth card safely into the middle of the deck, and began to mix them.

I wonder ..., 'Rhett mused as he shuffled. Did Tarrant-Arragon's sexy sister find someone else to do the dirty deed?

"Have you asked the cards something, Djarrhett?" Tarrant-Arragon's deep, deceptively lazy voice drawled.

Damn!

'Rhett realized that Tarrant-Arragon had waited to spring the trap until there was no denying that he'd shuffled the cards.

Everyone was looking triumphant, as if this was what they'd all been waiting for. He was surrounded by gods and World Leaders, and romantic, interfering Empresses, all of whom-with the exception of Martia-Djulia-wanted to know the youngest rogue Djinn's secrets. They all wanted to manipulate and control him, or else-as in the case of his twin half-brothers-to bring him down.

'Rhett considered a lie. He'd steadfastly refused a Reading every time that Aunt Tarra had offered one. To be trapped into it like this was intolerable.

"Haven't we had enough excitement for one night?" He tried to yawn it off.

Yawns were said to be infectious.

"Nonsense, boy!" His father, the Saurian Dragon, most powerful ruler of the free Worlds, bared his teeth in an alpha-wolf smile.

"How can we have had enough excitement, when we all want to know about The Lovers in your future?" Tarrant-Arragon said with treacherous innocence. "It's destiny, 'Rhett. You can't cheat it."

"The tarot does not predict destiny." Aunt Tarra's words corrected his High-and-Mightiness, but her body language sent a different message. She wheeled her chair to her usual place at the fortune-teller's table. "Only tendencies."

"Ahhh! How disappointing." Tarrant-Arragon refused to be diverted. "I thought that I'd caught 'Rhett contemplating The Lovers. Finding a lover for 'Rhett would be an amusing challenge."

"You stay out of it!" An unexpected ally, Martia-Djulia, came to his aid. "We don't want any more of your high-handed matchmaking!"

Tarrant-Arragon made a gesture of surrender, but only a fool would have believed that he had given up. "I'm at a loss to think of a worthy mate to force on 'Rhett in any case."

"The Lovers does not necessarily mean that Djarrhett has taken a lover-"

Thank you, Grandmama! I think.

"Nor does it mean that he will do so in the near future, although he might do so," Grandmama Hell continued, taking a prime spot at the fortune-telling table by Aunt Tarra's right shoulder.

I "might" take a lover, might I? If I do, I'll take her without family interference!

"He may face a choice between love and a career."

"Indeed, he might," the Dragon concurred, nodding as if this was precisely what he'd wanted to hear confirmed.

'Rhett avoided his father's smile by taking another sip of tea. Nepotism was not a propitious start to a good god's career. Nor was defying the Saurian Dragon in public.

"A choice?" Tarrant-Arragon sneered. "What an unusual interpretation of The Lovers! Now, I could understand it if 'Rhett's dilemma turned out to be a choice between lovers." "When 'forked,' a chess player usually has a choice, but it's between two losing propositions!" 'Rhett retorted.

His current options were as unenviable as a chess Knight's fork, where the Knight moved into a position to take either the opponent's Queen or King's Rook. Tarrant-Arragon had simultaneously threatened him with a fortune-telling or a discussion of his lovers. Only one of the two could be avoided.

In chess, the smartest course sometimes is to move into greater peril in order to escape immediate danger. All things considered, a Reading was the less-embarrassing sacrifice.

A Reading was hardly likely to reveal that he was almost twenty-eight and had never been kissed, let alone loved. There wasn't a tarot card that predicted a sperm donation, nor yet any kind of choice pertaining to semen and infertile Queens.

'Rhett fanned the seventy-eight cards facedown on the velvet-draped table. It was far easier to go along with it and have everyone forget The Lovers in the excitement of the cards he would now choose.

Resigned, he unbuckled his sword from his sword belt and leant it against one lumpy, rolled arm of the green, client's armchair. As he lowered himself into the hot seat, taking care to avoid sitting down hard where the truth serum might prick him, relatives old and new gathered around like eager hyenas.

"What did you ask the cards?" Tarrant-Arragon demanded with the casual innocence of a trial lawyer trying to introduce something inadmissible into evidence.

"You know I don't have to reveal that, Your Imperial Highness." 'Rhett smiled. With an outer insouciance, he extracted six cards at random. A seventh card came out with the sixth, as if stuck.

"Remember the sixth and the seventh," Aunt Tarra murmured. "If a card sticks to another, both should be read together."

"Six and seven. Check!" Without looking down, he picked out three consecutive cards and added them to the top of the pile. He'd seen Aunt Tarra show Grandmama how to lay out a Spread many times over the past few weeks, so he didn't bother to stack his ten cards and hand them over.

For one thing, had he done so, he would have had to choose between Grandmama Hell and Aunt Tarra as his Reader. Grandmama seemed to have a true gift, but she was still learning. Aunt Tarra had had a lifetime of practice, but still consulted a rubric. He'd rather not offend either of them.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry Copyright © 2008 by Rowena Cherry. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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