Charming Lies chapter 1

Here’s the first chapter of Charming Lies, the historical fantasy currently in need of beta-readers! Comment below if you’re interested.

The bare branches of the oaks striped Elena’s hands with shadow as she cast the rings.

“Who will be betrothed, herself?” She called.

“She will be betrothed!” The girls of Gyulovo gave the response. Some of them were older than Elena. Elena should be part of this year’s crop of maidens, not presiding over them like some sort of witch queen.

What a tempting prospect. A corner of Elena’s mouth tightened as she looked down. Wooden, oiled to gleaming, and incised with the notches and grooves of Elena’s craft, the rings bobbed around her hooked fingertips.

“Blood sausage on the shelf,” Elena recited. “Who is mine? Who will I marry this year?”

“A swineherd!”

Elena managed to hook a ring with her little finger, careful not to touch the edges. Sodden with water, the grooves carved into its surface didn’t have the same compelling power as when dry, but one didn’t become a witch by taking foolish chances with art.

The owner of the first ring didn’t seem to mind her smelly fate, nor did she take proper care when she plucked the ring from Elena’s finger.

“Don’t touch the carved parts,” whispered Elena. “They’re ensensed,” but the girl grasped the ring and shivered in pleasure and terror.

Fools. They shy away from my fingers, but play with the amulets I carve for them as if they were just wood and metal.

Elena watched the girl unconsciously run her fingers over the ring again, layering compulsion into her minds. I could make her do anything. Kill herself. Kill her betrothed. Grind him into blood sausage.

The other girls were watching her. Elena looked down at the little wooden rings bobbing helplessly in the silver water. She gave them a splash and fished out the second one. “A tit knocks at the mill,” went the second verse of the Casting of the Rings. “Who is mine?”

“A miller!”

And so on.

The next girl managed to retrieve her ring without accidentally casting a spell on herself.

“Sparks fly in the fireplace. Who is mine?”

“A blacksmith.”

“A crouched dog on a white stone. Who is mine?” Elena sang. Response: “A shepherd!”

She fished for the next ring and tried to remember the next verse. Ah, yes. “Through the hollows he runs, tightening his sandals. Who is mine?”

“A bandit!” sang the other girls, but their giggles choked off when the ring’s owner stepped out from between her bodyguards and put out a slender hand to claim her fortune.

“A bandit?” Selime hissed as she reached for her ring.

“Don’t blame me,” said Elena. “You’re the one who wanted to sample our quaint Bulgarian customs.”

“Be that as it may, there was no cause for you to betroth me to a villainous outlaw.”

“Your ring just came to my fingers,” said Elena. “Like fate.”

Selime’s expression as she took the ring was faintly amused, but the Turkish lady’s agitation showed in the way she tugged at her rich vest and skirt, straightened the plate-sized silver clasps on her belt. Shadows and light chased across those gleaming surfaces, catching the eye, ensnaring the mind.

Heed me, the charm commanded, far more powerfully than anything in the village girls’ costumes, respect me. Bow your head when I approach.

“Make sure to flash those ornaments at your bandit husband when you meet him,” she said, her backbone reinforced. “You should begin things as you mean to go on. And if he somehow manages to get within striking distance…”

She plucked the last ring, her own, out of the water and slid it onto the third finger of her right hand. “Touch this pattern to your man’s skin and he will desire you.” She turned her hand. “Touch this pattern to his skin, and he will fear you. You can control him with a slap, or,” she mimed the motion, “a caress.”

“A most…efficient addition to the ritual.” Selime spoke Bulgarian with little accent, heavily laced with high-sounding Turkish words. “But it comes to my attention that you have not sung the verse for your own ring, Elena-m.”

“Oh.” Elena searched her memory as the other girls giggled. “The one about not marrying?”

“No,” said the carter’s daughter, the one fated to marry a swineherd. “That’s the next verse.”

There was some discussion about what that verse should be until the answer emerged: “Yours is ‘Quiet water over stones. Who is mine?'”

“A gentle man,” Elena blinked. “Well, if I manage to find one, I won’t have much need of this ring, will I?”

“As if such were ever necessary for you, canım,” said Selime. “My dear friend and witch, you make the poor boys’ hearts burst with a twitch of your fingers.”

“A habit I’m trying to cure,” said Elena. “Bad for repeat business. Speaking of which…” She held her be-ringed hand out for the others to see. “The amulet will only work as long as he’s touching it. Unless you want to strap the ring to him, you will need more effort to pass through the door its charm opens.”

But the girls weren’t listening. They nodded and smiled and drifted off in twos and threes out of the forest and onto the road that led back into town.

“Damn,” said Selime. “It’s my presence that is making them uncomfortable.”

“No, it’s mine.” Elena clenched her fingers around her ring. Feel fear. “They don’t want to learn charm. They’d rather be helpless and small, unnoticed.” Now more than ever.

Elena wished she had thought to ensense those rings with more compulsion than simply fear and pleasure. What if she had added something to the inner surface? Stand up for yourself. Or even just listen to Elena.

Selime cleared her throat. “We should also be returning.” She reached up to touch her two grinning guards. “Take me home, boys. Eve.”

“Eve,” they echoed, and lurched into motion.

Elena watched the two un-men, wishing she didn’t have to follow them. Wishing she could turn east instead of west and travel to some village where she wasn’t the stepdaughter of the enfumist or under shadow the of the Kadii and his plans. She rubbed the outer edge of her ring.

Feel fear.

Elena had vowed at last year’s Casting of the Rings to leave this rose-scented backwater. But then her mother had died. The priest had vanished from his little chapel. The tension between Selime’s father and her step-father had turned ugly. A lot had turned ugly. And there was nobody with the power to solve the problem who wasn’t part of it.

The Kadii might yank the chains of the sultan’s legal and holy authority, but Kostadin the enfumist, whispered in the ears of every shepherd and farmer. And when whispers didn’t work, there were always his perfumes.

“It’s just an old drinking horn you father had dug out of the mound in old Misho’s field,” Elena said with as much dismissal as she could fake. She’d never seen the artifact, but she knew it slit the mind up the middle. Anyone could slide a hand into that gap and operate the meat of the body like a puppet. An automaton.

“You don’t know what my father does with it?” Selime’s eyes darted to first one, then the other of her grinning guards. They had stopped when she did, and now stared into space, expressions of ecstatic pleasure on their faces.

Elena decided to employ honesty. “I want to understand why the charm doesn’t wear off. These men,” she waved at them, “these un-men—”

“Otomatlar is the technical word,” said Selime. “Automatons.”

“These automatons,” said Elena, “fine. They’re out here and the drinking horn is in your father’s treasury.”

“And there it will stay.”

“Yes. It will stay there.” Elena held her arms out to her friend. “I promise, Selime—”

A leather-clad arm snapped down in front of her. “Do not get too close to the hanım. You are too close to the hanım.”

“Peace,” said Selime in Turkish, “peace, you useless, lumbering impediments. Eve! We are going home, remember?”

She stepped down the embankment and the automatons jerked into motion behind her. “Can’t we speak about something pleasant while we walk home, Elena-m?”

Like how my step-father is planning to overthrow your father? Thought Elena, and whether I stop him or help him, half the people in town will be killed. Beginning with the two of us?

She had to tell Selime. She couldn’t tell Selime. Elena could only gather as much power as possible and hope that when the time came it would be enough. “I swear to God above that the Rhyton will not leave the treasury,” she said. “I just want to look at it.”

“You just want to steal its power.”

“You can’t steal power from an amulet,” she said.

“Copy it then,” said Selime. “You want to copy the curse of the Thracian Rhyton. You want its power. You’re always,” Selime stuck out her hands, fingers curled into claws, “grasping for more power.”

Selime’s foot sunk into a puddle and she swore. “You, there. Guard One. Carry me to the road. Carry me.”

The automaton blinked at her smiling for a few moments before awkwardly bending at the waist and holding out his arms. Selime climbed into his embrace as if into a cart. “Go,” she ordered, and the automatons went.

Elena followed her friend keeping well away from the body-guards. What compelled them to ignore their own interests in favor of their mistress’s orders? And what might she do with such servitors herself? She needed that Rhyton.

Elena was formulating her next argument when her ears pricked.

“I see someone coming,” said Selime from the road. “A large party, too. They must either be very early merchants on their way to Sofia or…Ah.” Selime put her hand to her mouth. “Those must be the new levies my father ordered.”

Elena backed further away from the road into the shadows. “New levies.” She said the words in Bulgarian, but Selime had used Turkish: yeni çeriler.

Muskets clattering, sabers rattling in the rhythm of their marching song, the janissaries closed on them. They wore their field uniforms, with their brass spoons sticking up like feathers from the brims of their folded-over felt hats, knee-length caftan-coats, and baggy savlar pants billowing out of their woolen leggings, which were in turn stuffed into iron-heeled ankle boots. Their faces, dark and light, wide and narrow, long-nosed and short, bearded, mustachioed, or clean-shaven, all bore identical, grim expressions. Their eyes stared blankly ahead, lost in the charm of their marching song.

At the head of the column marched the captain, chanting in one-two rhythm and leading a mule carrying a large, bearded man in the robe of a cleric. The captain saw Selime and raised his hand as he slowed his pace. “Merhaba, hanım-effendi,” followed by something too fast and formal for Elena to understand. She caught the word Konak, though, and figured the janissary had offered to escort the Kadii’s daughter back to his residence. These men were not simply passing through.

Janissaries. New soldiers that the Kadii had ordered? What was he planning to do with them? What was he planning to do with them and the Thracian Rhyton in his treasury? The cursed relic which turned healthy, strong young men into mindless and obedient servants?

They hadn’t seen her yet. She could stay here in the woods until the soldiers passed and…what? Go to her step-father and let him whip the village into bloody revolt? Or let yet more tools fall into the hands of the Kadii.

Elena looked back into the forest, where scrawny saplings twisted in their attempts to dodge the shadows cast by the larger trees. If one of them should fall, there will be more light for the new trees. She breathed in the spring air, complex and alive with the smells of growth. If only I can get my hands on the right axe.

“Selime, wait for me.” Elena strode out of the shadows to take control of the situation.

She was brought up short by a wall of blue wool.

The janissary captain was very tall. His heavy eyebrows lowered over large, dark eyes and his hand tightened around the hilt of his saber. Under the straight black lines of mustache, his lips formed an O as if to whistle in approval.

Timurhan bin Metin glared into the face of the village girl, hand ready to draw his saber, lips ready to enchant her. “Who are you? A servitor of the lady?”

“Elena sam,” she said, and Timurhan found his sword arm pressed against his body by a soft mass of female flesh.

Hold still.

Timurhan tried to step back, to clear his sword, to whistle an enchantment, anything, but his body was no longer his to command. The girl fitted herself more snuggly against him.

Focus on this sensation.

Her body heated his through the layers of their clothing, but her fingers were cool as they traced down his right arm toward the bare skin of his sword-hand. Cool and firm and very nice.

Feel pleasure and be compelled.

His vision swam.

See the imposing janissary captain, marching into the teeth of a trap. See a man in a Kadii’s robes, holding forth a drinking horn of ancient design.

Timurhan could not push her away. He could not even try. She felt so good.

See the captain drinking, and all is black. See the captain turn away, blank-eyed and grinning.

The compulsion of her body immobilized his arm. Hallucinations filled his eyes. But with a shove of will, Timurhan managed to purse his lips. To breathe.

The whistle wavered, found its note, steadied itself, and became music. A simple, sweet tune, sure to catch the ear and burrow inside. Sure to carry Timurhan’s compulsion past the defenses of whatever minds were so unfortunate as to be within earshot.

Hold still, he enchanted them. Listen to the music. Be compelled. Now step away from me.

The hallucination evaporated and Timurhan could once again see the witch who had ensensed him. She was backing away from him, along with his men and the lady Selime. He could not compel his men to seize the ensensoress, she would gain control over them as soon as they touched her. A suicide enchantment would affect everyone in earshot. He could compel his audience to stone the witch, or he could simply run her through with his saber. He ought to. The witch had dared to ensense him. And yet…

What had she done, but warn him?

Timurhan tore through the fading memory of her skin on his and forced his body to move. He bowed.

“My apologies, servant, for enchanting you. But you know you should never accidentally stumble into a janissary. Someone might think you were trying to use compulsion on me.”

Her brows furrowed. She looked down at her hands, up at the half dozen now very suspicious soldiers staring at her.

Timurhan wondered if she even understood his words. “We are not enemies,” he said. “Yes? We are friends. We are servants of the Sultan.” Hand on the hilt of his saber, he leaned toward her, dropping his voice. “We kill enemies of the sultan.”

She fiddled with a wooden ring on her right hand and looked back up into his eyes. Her face was sharp and rather narrow, with a long, pointed nose and narrow lips. She did not look particularly intimidated. Nor, indeed grateful. “Da ne bi da si krotak mazh?”

“What did you say?”

There was a genteel cough from the lady. “Krotak means ‘tender or gentle, mazh means ‘man’ Selime raised an eyebrow ‘or husband.'”

“I…see.” With some effort, Timurhan broke eye contact with the native and addressed her mistress. “Do I have the honor of addressing the daughter of the magistrate of this village?”

She nodded. “I am Selime, daughter of his honor Ali. May I ask your name, sir?”

“Captain Timurhan, my lady.” There was no need to lie about his name this far from Istanbul, only his mission. “Sent here to lend my service to your father.”

“Of course you are.” She nodded, sunlight flashing on her earrings and necklaces.

Respect me.

Every article of clothing, from Selime’s headscarf to her slippers, compelled the viewer to step back, stay away, keep hands off. That was entirely natural for a respectable daughter of wealth in Istanbul. Here, however, on this pimple on the armpit of the Ottoman Empire, such elaborate armor struck a suspicious note. And then of course there were her automatic bodyguards.

Timurhan recognized the men. Or the men they had once been.

As if the witch’s warning weren’t enough. We have certainly come to the right place.

“So,” Timurhan said to the girl whose father he had been sent all this way to execute, “how may we be of service?”

“You may escort me to the mansion,” Selime turned, flanked by her automatons.

Elena turned as well, but looked back over her shoulder at Timurhan, dark eyes flashing.

The corners of Timurhan’s mouth twitched.

“God is great,” Mustafa Sokollu, enscriptor and most skilled of the masters of arms of the Hagia Irene, leaned across his mule and spoke in a voice too low for the women to hear. “She’s looking at you the way you examine a new bow. Wondering about your range, perhaps or your pull?”

“Come along,” ordered the lady Selime. Timurhan remembered his role and nodded smartly, raising his hand and whistling.

The tune he chose was a simple one. A marching song, of course, about a lovers separated by siege. And what would happen when the walls broke. The men loved it, and their minds and bodies became his to control.

“What happened back there?”

Mustafa bent toward Timurhan and nearly overbalanced his poor mule. The experimental artisan was a hazard to horses. And to himself if he needed to pass under a low doorway. Mustafa was enormous, with a red beard that had led one Istanbul wag to compare him to a hill in autumn. Mustafa had written out that witticism in a calligraphic enscription that compelled the reader to pick his nose and belch. Timurhan couldn’t remember the poet’s retaliation. Probably something equally disgusting.

“Well?”

“You saw it,” said Timurhan, his hand still humming with memory of her touch. “She slipped and fell against me.”

“She ensenssed you.”

“She did not compel me to do anything.”

“I saw your pupils dilate,” Mustafa said.

Timurhan glanced sidelong at his friend. “She compelled me to see a vision. Tried to warn me about this town and its magistrate.”

They paused to let pass a flock of sheep, only slightly more shaggy and disreputable-looking than their shepherd.

“All the same,” said Mustafa. “She ensensed you and you let her just walk.”

“I did not think it necessary to kill the woman.”

“The fact that she is a woman makes no difference,” said Mustafa. “The most potent weapons are carried in the mind and do not need a soldier’s burly arm to wield. Remember that ensensoress in Shiraz?”

Timurhan smiled. “The one with the foot massage? I always thought it an ingenious mode of assassination. That witch could not defeat me, and nor will this one.”

“The witch in Shiraz did not have breasts like pomegranates, thighs like a camel, or calves like two ivory columns.”

Timurhan watched Elena’s back. “It’s lines like that that make me wonder if the Persian poets ever actually felt a pomegranate or saw a camel.”

“Or a woman, for that matter.”

The village, once they reached it, was really nothing more than a bend in the river. The Magistrate’s administrative center and a few merchant’s houses looked barely more luxurious than the peasant shacks. Chickens, dogs, and stray children joined the sheep and goats in their efforts to slow Timurhan’s platoon and coat his boots with offal.

“There isn’t even a mosque,” said Mustafa. “One presumes the local magistrate simply leans out of his balcony every morning and yells wake up at his subjects.”

“And we’re expected to dine with this man before we kill him?”

“I’m rather looking forward to it.”

Timurhan grimaced. A stitch was forming up his left lower back. “I doubt we can expect scintillating dinner conversation from him. He’s been driven mad by the curse of a Thracian tomb.”

“Preposterous,” said Mustafa. “We can make a man angry or covetous, as long as he holds the right ensensed amulets. We can automatize him—stuff a logic tree into his head and hope it’s big enough to allow him to navigate a room unaided. We can take up his strings and operate him like a marionette, but even at the Irene Workshop, the best and most advanced workshop in the world, we can’t change one man into another.” He snorted. “Not from beyond the grave, certainly.”

No doubt Mustafa was right, and the magistrate was just corrupt and treasonous, not the pawn in a game of undead eldritch powers. All of which made Timurhan wonder why he was going through so much trouble. He smoothed his hands down the buttons of his jacket, feeling all his borrowed janissary uniform’s deficiencies and deformities. A good old cavalier’s cloak would sweep impressively behind him. And his real helmet had a plume in it, not this stupid brass spoon he had strapped to his janissary’s hat. Spoons! Honestly, what was wrong with the Conscript Corps? And his boots were just disgusting.

Timurhan looked with hot envy at the gleaming footwear of Mustafa, perched smugly atop his mule. “There’s no reason we had to come here on false pretenses,” he said again. “Just ride into town, kill everyone who needs killing, and leave. It’s always worked for me before.”

“This time won’t be like before,” said Mustafa, also not for the first time. “I have reason to believe the magistrate here has got his hands on something truly powerful. And he has the education to make use of it.”

After his vision, Timurhan couldn’t exactly argue.

“So this vision she showed you,” Mustafa pressed. “Did it tell us anything we didn’t already know?”

“The nature of the charm that they use to automatize men,” said Timurhan. “It’s an artifact. A golden drinking horn shaped like a sheep’s head.”

“Sounds Thracian,” Mustafa stroked his beard. “Perhaps they dug it out of a tomb.”

“It’s nice to know we’ve already completed the first task of our mission,” said Timurhan.

“As if we required any further proof that this is the center of the recent disturbances. Thefts, raids, mysterious travelers, lights on the burial mounds at night. Taxes paid suspiciously on time.”

“Missing soldiers,” said Timurhan. Gyulovo had swallowed up two platoons of irregular troops already, two of whom had become the grinning guards of the lady Selime. Timurhan hoped her death would not be necessary. Nor that of her serving girl.

Timurhan considered the witch. Elena. The thick braids of black hair swinging under her dark green shawl. Her skirts were more or less the same color, as was the vest. Her breasts, as Timurhan vividly recalled, were proud and generous, and deliciously soft under confines of the vest and billowy undershirt. There was none of her mistress’s charmal armor. Nothing to stop him from freeing that magnificent bust from the cruel confines of her clothing.

Timurhan would do just that. After he’d killed the renegade magistrate and brought down his evil schemes, of course. With Timurhan’s special talents, his new saber, and Mustafa’s support, he should be done with the mission by evening. And with her cruel oppressors dead, Elena should feel grateful indeed.

“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you?”

Timurhan turned a frown on his friend. Maybe he could start this mission by rescuing the mule from Mustafa’s oppressive buttocks. “Merciful God, man. Sit up and try to sway with the mule. You look like you’re punishing it for not being a bed.”

“Bed!” Mustafa groaned and shifted his weight. The mule groaned, too. “The very word has become foreign to me. Do you think the magistrate will let us take a nap before—”

“He tries to murder us?”

“I was going to say, ‘before dinner.’ And he won’t try to kill us, he’ll try to enslave our wills to his.”

Timurhan watched Selime’s automatons. Their movements were smoother than any such creature he’d seen in Istanbul, but their face bore the most disturbing expression.

“I’d say a man with no will of his own is dead,” he decided, “even if he’s up and walking around.”

“A nice philosophical point,” said Mustafa, “but consider what binds your will now. Would you be in this damp backwater if our sultan hadn’t ordered it?”

“That’s the whole point of loyalty,” said Timurhan. “If I was compelled to come here, my actions would be meaningless.”

“For you if not for the one who compelled you.” A thought seemed to strike Mustafa. “But consider: what if the one who compelled you was himself compelled? What if everyone were compelled to compel others in turn? An empire of automatons.”

Timurhan drew his lips back in disgust. “An empire of the walking dead.”

“Well, one may be cured of automatization,” said Mustafa. “Not so much death.”

“Cured in theory,” said Timurhan. “But if you command automatic troops, what’s the first thing you throw at a real soldier when he shows up?” Timurhan spread his hand over his own chest. “Automatization is a death sentence. At least when I am in the area.”