When the Empress Danced

It is said, still after all these years, by those who knew her, that she was the most beautiful woman they'd ever met. Even allowing for the way time alters perceptions so we only remember the golden times, it is still something remarkable.

Of course, history has a way of choosing who it wants to remember and who it wants to forget. History has decided to keep Empress Shilah as one of its own, while her husband is left for the dust of time to cover over.

This suits me.

Even back then, I merged into the background, becoming the forgotten Emperor, while Shilah became the symbol and the beloved of the empire.

Of course, that was not the whole story. As my wise old teacher, the philosopher Hedden, said to me once, 'while everyone is watching the dancer, no-one sees what goes on in the shadows.'

I liked to live, and – yes – rule, in those shadows, letting Shilah dance for everyone. She liked the attention, she liked the gold, the rich fabrics, the obsequious attendants, servants and slaves. She loved the fawning ambassadors and the politicians all eager to lick the dust from her feet, if her whim so commanded it.

They all thought that winning her favour would aid them in whatever way they thought would further their desires. Little did they know that while they plotted and schemed behind their smiles, while they manoeuvred and plotted to gain her favour or merely lusted after her, I was there in the shadows behind them listening and learning.

Of course, the stories and tales tell of all her lovers and her desires. But Shilah was not like that. Like all beautiful women who spurn men's – and women's – advances the stories grew more lewd and lurid the more of them she turned down and turned away from. She always, every night, came to my bed to listen to the stories I told her of what I'd learnt from the shadows while the court danced its attention on her.

She had no other lovers.

Except for that lover that crept out of the darkness of the East, out of the shadows where even I feared to tread. The lover that came from the plague- scarred lands and stole her from me with his fatal kiss.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]