The Night Bird by Catharine Asaro

Allegra is a mage and a citizen of Aronsdale. Actually, she isn't a mage yet, but she can do certain kinds of spells. Her magics run the spectrum from Red to Yellow, and the most magic she has ever done is to make herself feel better with a Yellow Spell or sing people to sleep with Red Magic. She is currently on her way to Crofts Vale, to enter the school of magic there and learn to really control her powers. But on her way, she is kidnapped by men of the T'Ambera tribe of Jazid, who steal her away to become a pleasure slave and sell her at market.

But unlike her captors want her to be, Allegra isn't going to just lie down and take being enslaved meekly. She tries to escape at every juncture, and can't stop herself from mouthing off to her captors in every way. But she escapes being harmed because they don't want her damaged before they sell her. But when they bring her before the two men who are competing to buy her, Prince Regent Markus Onyx and his most accomplished general, Dusk Yargazon, she mouths back to them and even throws a drink in Markus's face when he demands she serve them. Both men seem enraged, and have her taken out of the tent, and she is sure she will be killed. But better that than be a slave, right?

She is entirely surprised to find that her attitude and actions have driven her price up, and she is sold to Markus for what amounts to an insane amount of money. The T'Ambera men give her a drink which she finds out is poison... but not in a high enough dose to kill her. Instead, it will just make her skin and senses extremely sensitive, and since she is still a virgin, ease her way into her first time with a man.

She expects to be beaten by Markus when they enter his camp, just like the soldier caught stealing a dagger to send to his son, but instead, he only pretends to hit her, except for two blows with a belt on her buttocks. She is startled at this unusual display of kindness, and when Markus confesses to her that he is unable to sleep, and hasn't slept in days, she finds a round shape and sings him to sleep. She knows she should flee, but is so shaky she is unable to, so she wraps herself up in a soft rug and goes to sleep herself. She wakes up from a dream of being made love to by her best friend when she was growing up, but it is Markus making love to her.

She continues to talk back to him and tell him when he is acting like a pig, but she is also doing spells much more powerful than she ever thought possible. Markus is a Prince Regent for a young Boy named Ozi, who is heir to the throne of Jazid. But the country was conquered by Cobalt, Emperor of the Misted Cliffs. Ozi is Emperor in exile, and there is a price on the head of both Markus and Dusk Yazagon, the general who was also bidding on Allegra. And Allegra has seen the General's thoughts towards her, and they frighten her. While in Markus she finds a tender, gentle interior beneath a hard mask, with Dusk Yagazon, he wants to hurt her and make her submit to him.

When Markus takes her to meet Ozi, she sees her chance. After their marriage, Markus commands her to sing for the others, and she uses enough power in the spell to put everyone in the tent to sleep, including herself for a short while. When she awakes, she steals Ozi away and leaves, headed for Aronsdale. But Dusk has only been shamming, and he attacks her, trying to beat her and choke her. She fights back and knocks him out, then ties him up with the same chains he would have used on her, and makes her escape.

Ozi, when he awakes, is remarkably sanguine about the whole thing, and accompanies her to Aronsdale, where she returns to the Mage school at Crofts and then must find some way to confess what she has done and what happened to her. But can she find the strength before both Markus and Emperor Cobalt show up and precipitate a war? And when Dusk declares war on the Empire of Taka Mal, can she find a solution to bring peace before all the settled lands end up embroiled in a war that no one can win?

I liked this book, aside from her mouthiness, the heroine acted in a manner which was realistic and consistent throughout the book. Though she couldn't stop talking back to the hero, in her defense, she was being kidnapped and imprisoned in a country whose customs and laws were almost completely opposite her own. And which offended her deeply in the bargain. Being relegated to the status of a thing would not sit well on any woman raised in freedom.

Markus comes off as more of a cipher. Raised in a country where most women are considered closer to objects than people, and in which they are disenfranchised from any sort of autonomy over their own persons, Markus is less dogmatic than most of the Jazidian men, presumably because his own mother was put away for failing to have any other children besides himself, and he made himself promise that he would never do the same to any woman he married I'm not sure that I entirely accept this "single incident" as having such a profound influence on his character, but at the same time, it's not that much of a stretch.

The story bogs down a bit after Markus comes after Allegra in Aronsdale, because a lot of the discussion becomes about politics, and that's not all that interesting in a Romance novel. This does provide a chance for Asaro to bring back in characters from previous stories, including Cobalt, Emperor of the Misted Cliffs, who is a pretty scary character to most of the characters, being as he has conquered or subsumed by marriage most of the lands on the Lost Continent. But even though Allegra percieves him to be frightening, she stands up to him.

I've enjoyed this series a lot, and this book is a worthy successor, with intrigue, danger and many hot love scenes. It almost enough to make you forget that you are reading a romance novel.