WindDeceiver (13 page)

“If I didn’t know any better,” Thom remarked, “I’d swear we had docked in Tiji.”

“Diabolusia is cleaner than this pig sty,” Holm grumbled. His upper lip quirked at the condition of several of the Inner Kingdom dhows riding at anchor in the harbor. “I’ve seen better ships cracked up on barren reefs than what I see here.”

“The Rysalian’s are not people of the sea,” Serge told him. “Their slave ships, however, are kept shipshape.”

“Out of necessity,” Holm sneered. “You keep your transports sea worthy in order to make a profit!”

Meggie stared at the women passing by her in their long black gowns, their faces almost obscured by heavy veils. Only their eyes, heavily-lined with kohl, and ancient beyond their years, could be seen peering back at her with mild curiosity.

“You are perhaps the first Outlanderess they have seen,” Serge laughed. “They will be polite to you, Madame Ruck, but eventually one will come up to you and start to ask all manner of questions about your culture.” He shook his head. “They will bombard you with their curiosity.”

Meggie sniffed. “I don’t have to tell them heathens nothing!” she answered, but her face had taken on the typical glow all female faces acquire when gossiping might prove stimulating.

“If you wish,” Serge told her, “we can get you settled at the inn and then meet you after we’ve made some our inquiries about Conar.”

“I need a bath something fierce,” the old woman admitted. “The inn sounds like the right place for me.” She looked around and wondered where the Outer Kingdom woman had gotten herself off to.

“Her Grace is still on board,” Serge informed her. “She is donning the native garb, the better to blend in.” He frowned. “We dare not take chances with her. There are many Inner Kingdom sheiks who would dearly love to compromise her in order to win her hand.”

The old woman hadn’t thought of that. She, too, frowned. “If’n someone messes with my bonny boy’s lady, he’ll be doing more than compromising. He’ll be signing his death warrant!”

Rasheed Falkar stood in the shadows of a rug stall and peered out at the group of people who had disembarked the Anya Katrine. He recognized the men of the Wind Force, even the old woman who had come along with them. A slow, vicious smile appeared on the man’s thick lips and he backed away from the stall, blending in with the darker shadows of the marketplace.

“You are sure of this?” Prince Guil asked of him a short while later.

Rasheed nodded, grinning. “They have come to find their leader.”

Prince Guil stood up from his dinner table and paced the room. “A message must be sent immediately to Prince Jaleel.

“I took the liberty of already doing so, Your Grace,” Rasheed said with no little amount of humility.

Guil turned and glared at him. “To make up for letting McGregor get away from us.”

Rasheed spread his hands. “How could I know? How could any of us know the man would survive the desert?”

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“Not only survive the desert, fool!” Guil hissed at him, “but survive to organize a stronger resistance force than that simpleton Arbra could pull together! The infidel is wrecking havoc about the settlements, stealing slaves, snatching them up right before the noses of their masters!”

“I have a plan that might bring him to us, Your Grace,” Rasheed confided in a silky voice.

Guil glared at him. “And what may that be?”

Rasheed sidled closer to his master. “What would happen if we let it be known that the man they are calling the Khamsin had been captured and is being held prisoner at Prince Jaleel’s fortress at Abbadon?” His grin grew sly. “Do you think the men who have come to aid him would take the bait and ride to Abbadon?”

Prince Guil studied the face of his servant for a long moment and then smiled. “I believe they might.” He put his hands behind his back and grasped them as he slowly paced. “Of course should they do so, Jaleel would be forced to detain them in his donjon.” He stopped, turned his head and grinned nastily at Rasheed. “To insure their safety, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Rasheed agreed, cocking his head in admiration of his master’s insight.

The Rysalian Prince levered himself up on his toes and rocked up and down in contemplation. “I would think such news would reach the resistance in due course.”

“And would Conar McGregor go to Abbadon to rescue his old friends once he finds out they are being held captive there?”

“He is most loyal to those he calls his friends,” Guil acknowledged.

Rasheed folded his hands over his chest. “What is it you would have me do, Highness?”

A vicious smirk slowly formed on Guil’s oily face. “I would think letting McGregor’s allies know he is in danger would be helpful, don’t you think, Rasheed?”

Rasheed bowed his head.

Rachel found him sitting by himself at an oasis close by though far enough from the camp he wouldn’t be bothered. He was staring out across the desert as the scarlet ball of the sun slipped slowly behind the horizon. She dismounted and tethered her horse by side his and then quietly went to sit beside him at the flickering fire. Drawing her shawl tightly around her, she kept the silence between them, understanding that if he wanted to talk, he would open the conversation between them.

Overhead, the bright star in the West was already beginning to glow. The purple velvet of the skies unrolled its fabric and covered the heavens. A slight halo of ripening light gave direction to the moon and the cool of the desert night descended gently by degrees.

“I never knew how peaceful the desert could be,” he said softly, breaking the silence.

“The desert is a paradox my people have tried to solve for thousands of years,” she answered. She pulled her shawl tighter. “At one moment it can be hostile and forbidding, as hot as the nether regions of the sun, a place where no man wants to be; the next it can be still and welcoming, as cold as a mountain stream, a haven to those who need the solitude.”

He poked at the fire, stirring the embers, craning his neck to watch the sparks floating upward into the now-dark sky. “I wondered who they would send to talk to me,” he said.

“They drew lots,” she confirmed, “and Asher won.”

He turned to look at her. “Yet you were the one to come.”

Rachel shrugged. “Sometimes it is best to have someone to speak to who is impartial.” She looked down at the fire. “There is not a man in the camp who has not lost a friend or who has not been betrayed in one way or another by those they trusted.”

Conar let out a tired sigh. “Of all the men I suspected, Storm was least among them.”

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She smiled gently. “Is that not usually the case of those who break our confidences.” She glanced at his silent profile. “If we suspect them, we are on our guard to keep ourselves from being hurt.”

He crossed his legs, drawing his ankles up close to the juncture of his thighs. “And have you been hurt like that, milady?”

She watched him staring intently into the fire. “I have never been betrayed, but I have been hurt, Khamsin. Few people have not.”

Conar lifted his head and once more scrutinized the vast darkness of the desert. “Isn’t it odd that I would have to come four thousand miles to find that one of the men I trusted most was the very one who had helped nearly destroy me?” He turned to look at her. “That a man I had considered to be a loyal friend had borne me ill will for over twenty years and I had no notion that he did?” He searched her face. “What does that say of me, milady? Of my judgment?”

She fused her gaze with his. “That you are perhaps too willing to see the good in those around you; so much so that you overlook their faults.” She put her hand on his knee. “That is an honorable thing, milord Khamsin. There are far too many people in this world who are eager to find fault with everyone but themselves; you look for the good.”

“It’s a weakness,” he growled, looking away from her.

“I disagree,” she answered him. “It is most admirable.”

“Aye,” he said bitterly, throwing his head back to glare up at the stars twinkling overhead.

“So admirable it cost my baby daughter her young life!”

Rachel withdrew her hand from his thigh. “The man who died today,” she said, “begged for your forgiveness.” She looked over at him. “You gave it to him, but did you truly mean it?”

He lowered his head although he did not look at her. “I never say what I do not mean, lady,”

he told her.

“So your friend died with his sins forgiven. You do not hold him responsible for your daughter’s death.”

Conar shook his head. “It was a case of an eye for an eye.”

“How so?” she asked. She thought he was not going to answer, but at last he let out a long breath and began to speak.

“When I was a boy, there was a young girl named Joannie whose mother was the cook at our keep.”

“The woman of whom your friend spoke,” she stated.

He smiled sadly. “I had no sisters and I sort of adopted Joannie to fill that place.” He glanced over at Rachel. “I use to tease her unmercifully because that is the way I thought brothers should behave toward their sisters.”

Rachel smiled. “You weren’t mistaken in your belief.”

Conar shrugged. “I didn’t understand it at the time, but Joannie took that teasing as something else.” His face darkened in the glow of the camp fire. “She developed a crush on me.”

“I would imagine that happened a lot,” Rachel commented. When he looked at her with surprise, she lifted one shoulder. “You were the heir to the throne of Serenia. To the daughter of a servant, you would have been larger than life, the hero on a white charger come to rescue here from a life of drudgery and toil.”

He snorted, looking away. “I was an arrogant little snot who took it as his due every time a girl lifted her skirts for him.”

“That sounds like you,” she challenged.

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Conar ignored her quick retort. “I never laid a hand on Joannie.” He shook his head. “Not in that way. But I knew Teal du Mer had.”

Rachel’s brows drew together. “Who was he?”

“A boy I grew up with.” He cast a sidelong glance at Rachel then seemed to find something fascinating in the flames of the fire. “Teal had so many females chasing him he made me look like a monk.”

“Were you jealous?” she asked.

“Hell, no!” he spat. “If they were chasing him, they weren’t waylaying me.” He turned an angry face to her. “By the time I was sixteen years old, I had five children I knew for a fact were mine. By the time I married Liza, there were over twelve.”

Rachel stared at him. “Rather irresponsible, weren’t you?” she asked.

He growled, turning away from her. “I didn’t think so then, but now if I had it to do over, I’d have left every last one of their mothers alone!”

“We would all do things differently if we had the chance,” she said, nodding.

“Aye,” he ground out.

Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her and was somewhat surprised when he threw another stack of dried palm fronds on the fire.

“You knew the girl was seeing this du Mer?” she encouraged him.

“I knew they were doing more than playing hide ‘n seek in the forest beyond the keep,” he said bitterly. “I warned du Mer, but Teal isn’t known for having the ability to listen to the voice of reason.” He snorted again. “Or experience.”

“You did not want him to have babes scattered about the keep like you did,” she stated.

“No.”

“Yet the girl became pregnant.”

He nodded. “I was visiting my cousins in Virago when I learned one of the servants had committed suicide by jumping off the Bumsford Bridge.” His gaze narrowed with pain. “I didn’t know it was Joannie until I returned home.”

“She could not live with having conceived by another man,” Rachel said quietly and was startled when her companion pushed himself angrily to his feet and stood glaring out across the barren sands.

“I had this rule,” he explained, seething self-condemnation in his voice, “that once one of my light-‘o-loves got with child, I wouldn’t go to her again. Joannie knew that!”

Rachel stared up at him with puzzlement. “I don’t understand. If the child wasn’t yours--“

“I told myself,” he said, not hearing her interruption, “that it was because if that woman got pregnant by me a second time, there would be competition between the two offspring.” He snarled, plowing his hands through the thick gold of his hair. “I told myself it would be better for the child if he didn’t have to share my affection with another full-blooded sibling.” He turned his head and glowered at Rachel. “But that wasn’t the real reason. I just didn’t want the damned responsibility of having a woman have that much power over me! You can fuck up once and get a woman with child, call it what it is: a good time, but if you keep going to her bed, knowing it might happen again, you give her a hold on you that will be hard as hell to break!”

“And you wanted no ties to bind you to them,” she said gently.

“Hell, no, I didn’t!” he spat. “It was bad enough when they’d come to me and tell me they were pregnant!” He paced in front of the fire. “I took care of them; I saw to the children. They never lacked for anything!”

“Then why did the girl kill herself?”

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“She didn’t!” he groaned. He came back and sat down beside Rachel, turning so he faced her. “She loved me, Rachel,” he said with heartfelt guilt. “Or she thought she did. In her mind, she thought I’d take her as my mistress one day, that I’d marry her!”

“Surely she had to know that would never happen,” Rachel gasped.

He shook his head angrily. “I think she really thought it would.” Not even knowing he was doing so, he reached out and took Rachel’s hands in his own. “Don’t you see how it must have been? She was sleeping with Teal, probably pretending he was me, no doubt in her mind confusing him with me, and when she got pregnant, she realized he wouldn’t come to her again.” He lowered his head. “That I wouldn’t come to her again.”