Dreams Made Flesh

can have anything you want."
    "You," she said softly. "I want you."
    Her words warmed every part of him. Warmed one part in particular.
    He nibbled on her ear and whispered, "Are you going to let me fuss over you tonight?"
    She pulled back. Her eyes danced with laughter as she bared her teeth and snarled at him.
    His laughter filled the room. He scooped her up and spun her around. When he finally set her on her feet again, she clutched his jacket and swore at him.
    He grinned at her as the people around them laughed and applauded. "That's my feisty hearth witch."
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    Zuulaman
A story from Saetan's past
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    1
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    Saetan set aside the latest letter from the Zuulaman ambassador, leaned back in the chair behind his blackwood desk, and rubbed his eyes. A half dozen meetings with the man and nothing had changed. The same complaints filled this letter as had filled the last three. He understood the concerns, even sympathized with them up to a point. But he wouldn't order Dhemlan merchants to buy coral and pearls exclusively from Zuulaman traders at a higher price than other Territories offered to sell sea gems of the same quality. He'd already checked on the complaints that Dhemlan ships were encroaching on the fishing grounds that belonged to the Zuulaman Islands. Hayllian ships were certainly plying the same waters and competing for catches, but the Queens who ruled the fishing towns in Dhemlan were quick to penalize any boat that fished beyond the Territory's established waters…just as they were quick to send the Warlord Princes who served them out to confiscate the catch of any boat that encroached on Dhemlan's fishing grounds.
    Of course, he hadn't heard so much as a whisper of complaint about Hayll. Not yet, anyway. Sooner or later, the Zuulaman Queens would become less enamored with Hayll's Hundred Families…the aristo families that heavily influenced the Hayllian courts if they didn't rule them outright. He might be Hayllian by birth, might have lived his early years in the slums of Draega, Hayll's capital, but, thank the Darkness, he'd shed himself of that self-centered race centuries ago. For the most part. He had no interest in the Hundred Families, except to keep a watchful eye on their intrigues to be sure the people he ruled came to no harm because of them.
    But that still left him with the problem of dealing with Zuulaman. He was certainly willing to sell them surplus grains, meat, and produce for a reasonable price that wouldn't beggar Zuulaman's people, but he wasn't willing to cut prices to the point that his own people suffered, especially when the islands still had enough arable land to feed their population, despite the fact that they made little effort to care for the land. Which was part of the problem. They overfished their waters, overplanted their farmland, pushed the islands' resources to the breaking point. Then the Zuulaman Queens complained that they couldn't sell their surplus, which rightly should have gone to feed their own people…or they complained that they had no surplus, and the pottery and other art forms that were distinct to their people didn't sell at the prices they wanted. Which wasn't surprising. No one but aristos with surplus income, or debts enough to ruin their families, could afford the asking price for most of what Zuulaman tried to sell.
    Still, as the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan, it was his responsibility to deal with the Queens who ruled the other Territories in Terreille, so he would meet with the Zuulaman ambassador once more and hope that, this time, there would be some glimmer of understanding in the man's eyes when he explained why the trade agreements the Zuulaman Queens wanted were not acceptable.
    As he reached for the letter to review its contents again, the door of his study opened, and his wife, Hekatah, hurried into the room as quickly as a woman three weeks away from childbirth could move.
    "Saetan," Hekatah said as she lowered herself into the chair in front of his desk. "I just had the most distressing news from home."
    This is home. But he bit back the words since it was as useless to think them as it would be to say them. Hekatah was a Red-Jeweled Priestess from one of Hayll's Hundred Families, and she looked at the Territory of Dhemlan in much the same way that she looked at her family's country estates…as