Seize the Fire (19 page)

Olympia landed on one of the thugs. A gasp whooshed out of him and his black headgear rolled away to reveal a turban and a familiar bearded face. She sobbed for air through the gag, trying to grab at his slithering shape beneath her. But something lifted her bodily from behind, hauling her aside. Sheridan dropped her as if she were a puppy and threw himself after the assassin.

He missed. She heard him hit the pavement and swear at the darkness. "Bloody—bunglers!" He panted hoarsely. His boots scraped on the stone quay and his shape rose above her. "By God—those jokers were trying to
kill
me!"

Olympia squeaked behind her gag and managed to rise to her knees. She stumbled into him and leaned against his leg, wilting with shock and suffocation.

His hand went around her head. He hissed, and she felt him drop down beside her. "Bastards!" He tore at the gag. "Those stupid bastards! I didn't—I never meant—" He bit off the words and pulled the gag free. "Hell. Jesus Christ. Are you all right?"

She gulped in air. "It was the—Jewish men!" Her voice came out a pathetic little whistle. "Not Jewish—I mean—the disguise—on the ship—you know!"

His hands froze on her shoulders. He looked down at her, and back into the darkness where their attackers had fled. "Jewish?"

"No…no. Disguised…their—hats! They were—on the ship—and tonight…on the dock. They've been following you!"

He ran his hand through his hair. "On the ship? That's impossible."

"Their hats!" she insisted. "I fell on one, and his hat came—off." She drew a desperate breath. "He had on a turban!"

Sheridan looked at her sharply. In the very faint light, she could see his expression change as understanding dawned on him.
"Oh, God,"
he groaned, and felt his throat.
"Who'd have thought it?"

"You saw the—signs." She still didn't have her breath back. "We should have—taken them more—seriously. Come on, I think we should go instantly—"

A new voice, heavily accented, interrupted her. "Trouble, senhor?" There were footsteps coming toward them from the dark. "You need help?" Sir Sheridan stiffened as if someone had struck him. For a long instant he stared in the direction of the sound.

"Senhor?" It was a second voice. "We see you and the senhora go this direction. It is not safe."

Olympia turned. The newcomers were close, but still almost lost in the darkness. She thought there were several, from the sound of their boots.

Sheridan brushed his palm across her hair. "Here's help," he said. "Just sit and rest, and I'll have them bring the palanquin."

He rose and moved away before she could protest, his dark outline blurring into the night with the others.

"Bajeed,"
one of the new strangers said in a conversational tone.
"Tombako ka lo."

Olympia finally gave in to despair and grief at four a.m. and let them carry her home from the search.

Sheridan Sheridan Sheridan—

She closed her eyes on hysterical tears, leaning her face into her hand. She could not believe it. Not killed, not Sheridan, not strangled by those horrifying savages…

"My dear," Mrs. Stothard murmured, putting her arm around Olympia.

"Wait until dawn," Mr. Stothard said more heartily. "Don't underestimate your brother, Miss Drake. He's come out of worse scrapes than this."

But he knew. They all knew. They'd all heard the truth from Sheridan's own lips: the thugs killed and vanished with their victim, mangling and burying the body with ritual and guile.

Hope was vain. Waiting was futile. If Sheridan had escaped, he would be here with her now.

But he'd blended into the dark on the quay, and she'd heard the fatal command and a peculiar shuffle and then nothing. By the time she had scrambled to her feet and lurched in the direction of the noise, he was gone.

They were all gone, those faceless voices. Vanished into night and silence. The search by torchlight had found nothing but his hat.

"You must try to sleep." Mrs. Stothard's hand was trembling as she drew Olympia toward her bedroom. "I've had Cook make a tisane."

In a bleak haze, Olympia drank the herbed tea and submitted to the maid who helped her undress. Then she sat on the bed and stared into the dark.

Sheridan, Sheridan…

It seemed so impossible, so sudden and unreal. One moment warm and close, his voice a welcome comfort in the darkness, and then…

Not there. Vanished. Gone.

Dead.

She remembered his description of what the thugs did to their strangled victims before burial, the gashes and disfigurement in the name of Kankali, the Man-Eater. Olympia's breathing grew quick and shallow and her head reeled.

Someone scratched at the door. It opened slowly and a voice whispered,
"Ismahiili,
ma'am. Excuse me. Excuse me."

She recognized Mustafa's high-pitched voice and took a deep breath, trying to clear her head. "Come in," she mumbled through the blur.

He slipped through, shielding his candle and bowing with every step. He sank to his knees, a huddle of white cotton galabiyya and red fez, and touched his forehead to the floor at her feet.
"Emiriyyiti
—my princess—" He lifted his head, his brown face tracked with glistening tears and misery. "It is true?"

She bit her lip. Her throat closed. She nodded and then squeezed her eyes shut, rocking from side to side.

Mustafa made a little whimper. He caught her ankles and pressed his face against her slippered feet. A groan of anguish burst from him, swelling into a wail that seemed to fill the room with grief. It echoed off the walls, died away and was taken up again, strangely beautiful and haunting in Mustafa's sweet soprano voice.

She listened. The lament was like wind from an empty desert, lonely and stark. Tears slid down and flooded her mouth. She felt as if the desert were inside her, dark and still and lifeless forever. Mustafa's mournful voice cracked and faded away on a sob. She bent and touched his shoulder. He raised his face, leaning his cheek against her knee like a child begging for comfort.
"Emiriyyiti,
what will we do?"

"I don't know," she whispered.

"I was not there. Allah took him, and I was not there. O my. master, forgive me, I was lazy and sleeping, I am a sloth and a dog, the son of swine, an eater of pork;
ya allaah,
I should have been there!"

She shook her head. "It wouldn't have made any difference. You couldn't have done anything."

"I should have been there! He saved my life and the life of the Great Sultan, and the Sultan gave me to him and told me to keep him safe and well. Twenty years I have followed him." His voice rose, quivering hysterically. "I am lost! I will kill myself."

"Mustafa! Don't be silly." She gave him a shake.

His small frame trembled. "You did not know him, O Beloved. He was a great man; the Sultan loved him like a brother. If we were in Stamboul, Mahmoud the Everlasting, the Sultan of All the World, would strangle us both for failing to keep him safe."

She took a shuddering breath, feeling empty and stupid with crying, too battered to really care what Mustafa said.

"Sheridan Pasha," Mustafa moaned, his face crumpled in grief. "My pasha! Oh, if you could have seen him when he was the Sultan's slave—when he was only a half-grown boy, wild as a Bedouin warrior and beautiful as a woman, and they beat him every day for impertinence."

Olympia finally focused on Mustafa's words. "A slave," she whispered dully. "He was slave to a sultan?"

The little servant jerked his head up, as if he had just recalled she was there. He looked frightened. "O Beloved, I am a liar! Never listen to me."

Olympia looked at him in bleak question.

He bowed his head. "But it does not matter now."

She stared unblinking down at the small Egyptian. "No," she said slowly, "not now."

They sat together, Mustafa weeping quietly against her knee. After a time, he said, "I cannot even bury him, my pasha." He straightened. "We should speak of him, then. So that Allah may know he is not abandoned and forgotten."

She closed her eyes. It was hard to bear, when all she wanted was to be alone, but she tried to remember that Mustafa had been with him far longer than she.

"He was a brave man,
Emiriyyiti,"
Mustafa said in a hushed voice. "You saw him die. Will you tell me how he met his end, so I will know? So that I may send to the Sultan a tale of my pasha's courage?"

"I don't know how he died," she said through her fingers. "It was dark."

"But he was like a lion?" Mustafa said plaintively.

"Yes." She wiped at her tears with the back of her hand. "I'm sure he was."

"Like a lion. Like a fierce black djinn, he cut them down, but they were too many against one, cowardly dogs! His sword was quicksilver—two he killed, and then five, but more sprang up to overwhelm him—"

"He didn't have a sword." A surge of brooding anger flared within Olympia's grief. She twisted her nightgown in her fists. "He wasn't even armed!"

"Animals. Barbarian filth! The Sultan of All the Earth will visit his revenge upon them; they cannot hide. Tell me what they looked like,
Emiriyyiti,
and I will set the Sultan's wrath on the foul pigs."

"I don't know," she cried. "I don't know!" With her forehead bowed in her hand, she described what had happened, how the two in their Jewish disguise had struck first and run away, and then Sheridan had walked in trust to meet the others in the dark.

"He went to strangers?" Mustafa looked uncertain. "After he had been attacked?"

"Yes. He thought they were going to help us."

"But he had no weapon, O Beloved." She shook her head.

Mustafa sat back on his heels. "That was unwise."

"It's my fault. I should have stopped him. I should have insisted we go back to safety as soon as he said he'd seen the signs of
sthaga."

The servant's eyes widened. He cocked his head like a small brown sparrow. "My princess, do you mean that Sheridan Pasha had warning of this?"

"He told me he'd seen signs. Just this evening. He wanted me to go to Captain Fitzhugh if something should—something should ha-ha-happen—" Her voice dissolved into a whimper. "What difference does it make? If only I could go back and change it!"

Mustafa hesitated, his smooth-shaven brow wrinkled beneath his fez.
"Shidi heelik, Erniriyyiti.
Be strong. Allah has willed." He stroked her hand and kissed it. "I myself will go to the Sultan. Sheridan Pasha will not be unrevenged, I swear it. O Beloved, do not weep so! We will go together. We will take the best of your jewels, the jewels of a princess, and make a gift to the Sultan, so he will know our pasha was the greatest pasha—"

"I can't even do that!" She pulled her hand away. "They're gone. He had them all with him."

"No, no, do not fear that. He gave them to me to keep safe."

"He had them this evening," she said dully. "He was going to find out which of them would buy us passage to Rome."

Mustafa shook his head decisively. "No; you are mistaken,
Emiriyyiti.
He said nothing of that to me, and only I know where they are hidden." He felt at his breast to where he always wore the golden crescent and star amid the voluminous white folds of cotton.

Olympia covered her eyes, desperate to be alone, fighting irrational annoyance and the urge to push him away. "Never mind! I assure you he had them. He gave me the heliotrope sapphire to wear. I even showed it to a naturalist aboard Captain Fitzhugh's ship."

Mustafa made a strange noise and looked down so sharply that his fez almost slid off, his mouth growing round as he gazed at the white front of his galabiyya. For a stunned moment he stared at Olympia and then scrambled to his feet, disappearing silently out the door.

Olympia felt instantly guilty for her sharp words. She gazed after him in misery. Just as she was about to follow and beg him to pardon her unkindness, he reappeared at the door.

He stood there an instant, his brown face flushed, his small body shaking so hard that his deep sleeves fluttered. The sound that came out of him was like the hissing of a mad cat.

"Christian pig!" he shrieked. "Jackal! Brother of vile and unspeakable things!
He is not dead!"
Mustafa tore his fingers down his face, leaving fiery marks. "Foul offspring of snakes and crocodiles!" He flung himself against the wall and pounded it; leapt up and down, stomping his bare feet in a furious dance. "He has left us! I throw his entrails to the dogs! I abandon him in the desert! I stab him and spit in his face!" His voice reached a shrill of passion as he clutched his head. "He has left!
He has left us!"

Olympia had sprung to her feet. "He's not dead?"

Mustafa shrieked, "I'll kill him with my own hands!"

She grabbed for the gyrating figure. "Mustafa!" He slipped out of her grasp, but she managed to trap the loose sleeves of his galabiyya.
"Mustafa!"

He was so light and small she could almost lift him off his feet, but the instant she had him bound, he turned and embraced her, sliding down her legs until he was kissing her slippers again. "Take me with you! I'll track him down for you. Like a cur. Like a traitor. I'll strangle him with his own sash! I'll bring his head and lay it before you, his skull stuffed with straw instead of brains!"

"How do you know?" she cried amid his piercing vows of violent slaughter. "How do you know he's alive?"

Mustafa beat his forehead on the floor. "It was a trick, a trick, a trick! O Beloved, forgive me; pardon me that I was too dull and stupid to see it. Foul dog, lying snake, he has taken the jewels and tried to fool us with a sham! This attack, these
sthaga,
it is all a trick, a wicked device to let him steal away! I know my pasha. Never—
never
would he disregard a warning on his life. Never would he go to strangers in the dark. And look,
Emiriyyiti."
He slipped the fez off his shaved head. A lumpy leather bag fell from inside. He poured the contents into his trembling hand.

It was nothing but a tangled collection of cheap paste jewelry and pebbles.

"They were here this afternoon. And the
hilaal,
the precious
teskeri
of the Sultan—it was here—hidden safe around my neck as my pasha commanded, so that he does not suffer the dreams it brings him when someone sees him wear it!" He prostrated himself, scattering trash and rocks with a metallic tinkle. "But I fell asleep—" He interrupted his own words and said quickly, "Drugged, O Beloved! He gave me a sleeping draught in my coffee! I know it! Why else should I lie like one dead, like a lazy donkey sleeping in the day?"