Golden Daughter Read Free Page A

thousand warriors throughout his subterranean labyrinth extending twenty miles on each side. But his brother hired one Crouching Shadow. Only one. Within a week, all ten thousand warriors and Lord Dae-Ho himself lay dead in a grave of their own making.”
    “Light of the Lordly Sun!” the ambassador whispered. He wiped his sweating brow, smearing paint. “And you have summoned one of those devils here?”
    “Indeed,” said Princess Safiya. “To exact excruciating vengeance upon my faithless lover. At the banquet, within an hour, this Crouching Shadow will place gold leaf into your tea. You will be expected to suffer mightily of inexplicable stomach pains, expiring at last by the week’s end, thus restoring my honor and ensuring the Crouching Shadow’s completed payment. Unless, of course, the stories you have heard of the Golden Daughters prove true.”
    Princess Safiya continued down the walkway from her pavilion, enjoying both the scents of the sumptuous garden around her and the muttered curses of her companion. This was the one part of the entire process she always found enjoyable: watching the groveling monkey-men squirm.
    “But the girls . . . the esteemed Daughters,” the ambassador said, nearly forgetting his fawning language in the midst of near-panic. “They know, do they not? They know to watch for the Crouching Shadow?”
    “Certainly not!” Princess Safiya replied, feigning surprise. “What would that prove to your honored Prince Amithnal? That I can provide him with a bride who, so long as she is told everything in advance, might save him from assassination? Do you think such a bride would be worth the price Prince Amithnal has committed to pay?”
    “So you mean—”
    “Yes, I do mean exactly that, Ambassador,” Princess Safiya said. “To the principal players, this little theater to which we even now wend our way is no act, but real to the very direst extreme. And you will see how the Golden Daughters perform their parts. When the curtain falls, you yourself will choose the bride of your prince, and you will know that in the choice, you may well be saving his life.”
    Here Princess Safiya turned and fixed the little man with a stare of surprising intensity from behind the elegant blue and red paint rimming her eyes. “My Daughters do not fail.”
    With those words, she withdrew from the depths of her voluminous sleeve a certain document written in red characters to look like blood. She held it up for the ambassador’s inspection. “We can take no chances. Sign here, if you please, indicating that you have heard and understood the parameters of the test in which you are about to take part.”
    The ambassador swore again. But he had come too far to back out now. Besides, if he returned to his master with neither the bride-price nor the bride, his head would be forfeit. Prince Amithnal was not a forgiving patron.
    “Gold leaf, you say?” the ambassador whispered as he signed his name and watched Princess Safiya tuck the document back into her sleeve. “Is that not . . . is that not a painful way to go?”
    “Have no fear,” Princess Safiya said, continuing along the path. The rooftops of the eastern quarter of Manusbau Palace came into sight, and she spied the silk-covered litters borne by strong slaves coming up the path toward them. It would be unseemly, after all, for her or the ambassador to arrive at the banquet on foot. “Have no fear. The poison will never cross your lips.”

    Little lion dogs—probably no more than half a dozen but making themselves seem like a hundred strong—ran barking underfoot as slaves carried honored guests into the Butterfly Hall where the banquet was laid. Every new guest was considered an intruder and possible threat, and the lion dogs protested in high yips and low snorts as the slaves stepped carefully around them.
    The Radiant Reflection of Hulan’s Countenance, Empress Timiran, royal mother of all Noorhitam, sat in serene boredom at a separate