Seize the Fire (46 page)

Salaa'ideen considered. "No. I think not."

"We were supposed to meet other British warships here. Have they come and gone?"

His face darkened. "Yes. It is unfortunate I had business in another place then. They demanded water, but we have none to spare. Ships must go to Mocha for water." He waved his hand. "The sultan here is a simpleminded fool; he might have brought water from Mocha and made a good profit, but instead he becomes like a timid gazelle when the English threaten, and he gives them all we have. Ha! I shall have to make myself sultan, all praise to God, but it is a confounded nuisance."

Olympia bit her lip, feeling a half-hysterical giggle well up at this pirate with his jeweled scimitar and exotic robes dismissing the desk job as a confounded nuisance.

"When his body is skinned and hanging at the gates, we will have no more bowing to infidels," Salaa'ideen added casually, which brought Olympia out of wondering where he'd learned his English and back to the reality of his character in an instant. "He has a wizard who protects him, but I have no fear of the meager demons that one can summon. And now I have the sign—II-Magnuún has come to me. That is proof enough. I have only to send word of it and the sultan flees me like a sheep." He looked at Olympia. "But we must pacify these English, or they will bombard the city and the people will lose their proper respect for me."

She stared at him, and finally let the dreamlike quality of everything submerge the protests of reason. She did not argue with this preposterous mixture of superstition and Machiavellian politics, but only said, "You'll have to convince Captain Fitzhugh it was all a mistake, then."

Salaa'ideen nodded. "Tell me what I must do."

"Well—" She chewed her lip. "I think if you are very humble, and say that you were warned by the other ships that a French warship might come in disguise to take the port…say that you were only trying to defend yourselves…"

"And give him gifts," Salaa'idcen suggested. "We will give them the freedom of the city and have the officers to the palace as guests. We will abase ourselves. We are sorry. We meant to drive off the French. The English are welcome; blessed is the hour of their coming." He shook his head. "It is a pity they would not like to own slaves—I have a very good lot from a Dutch brig out of Zanzibar, which I would be willing to sacrifice in this cause."

"Do not offer them slaves," Olympia said.

"No. I have an understanding of the English. They do not care for slaves." He gave her his sly smile. "The Sultan Mahmoud, who fancies himself ruler of all the earth—he is a different matter. He will be pleased with you, my fresh white dove."

Olympia sold for fifteen thousand gold piasters. She knew, because Sheridan told her. He himself had cost a Turkish pasha twice that, Salaa'ideen being not only a pirate but a shrewd businessman who made sure the merchandise was sold in the direction it would be most appreciated. He bypassed the poor and rebellious Wahhabi Arabs in disgust and conveyed Olympia and Sheridan by a fleet of dhows to Jidda, where they were bought by a female slave trader who sent them by merchant caravan to a Persian at Basra who planned to turn a profit by persuading a lieutenant of the caliph to take them to Baghdad, where word of the prize had already begun to spread to the Great Sultan's minions.

It was a strange and wondrous progression, luxurious by one turn and grueling to the point of heartbreak by another. Olympia tried to fathom the idea that she was being bought and sold like a prize mare, but it was not at all what she would have expected. Lost in a world so different it seemed utterly implausible, surrounded by an unknown language, by dazzling brightness in the robes and the sea and the flaming desert, she found it hard to believe anything was real at all.

It was hard, too, to find any degradation in the manner in which they were treated. For merchandise, they received royal consideration, lodged in rich houses in rooms that overlooked gardens, transported on swift white Syrian dromedaries, guarded by armed and mounted Bedouin warriors, protected by bribes from the bandit-tribesmen who ruled the desert routes.

But all the guards in the world could not protect them from the desert itself. In the day it was hot, hot—searing hot inside the caparisoned tents, and frigid at night when they traveled. She was thirsty all the time, though even the water she drank smelled of camels. Food was rice with rancid butter and fried camel meat coated in grease, cooked by Abyssinian servant girls with exceedingly dirty fingers.

Amid the dust and rock, her tent was a colorful green blossom with a gilt crescent at the peak. When they traveled, she rode closed in a litter with scarlet and brass trappings, slung between two dromedaries. It was airless and cramped and swayed like
Terrier
in a heavy sea.

She complained of it to Sheridan when they brought him to her tent, which had been pitched just as the morning heat was rising on the third day of caravan. They always kept him near her, his guards escorting him reverently to the opening of the tent and backing quickly away, bowing with each step. He said little about it, except to remark dryly that there was a certain advantage to becoming somebody's tame madman. But even with no other interpreter Olympia could tell that superstition was building around him daily. The way a rumor would ferment at home in an English village, so Sheridan's reputation as a fighter and a prophet was growing without encouragement as they passed from hand to hand.

In brief answer to her complaints about the litter, he simply said, "Then get out and ride a camel."

She'd really only been trying to draw him into conversation. He'd walled himself up again, saying nothing to her beyond what was necessary, though he spoke Arabic and even laughed with the others congenially enough.

"They wouldn't allow that, would they?" Tugging self-consciously at the
sarwal
—the dark silken trousers she'd been given to wear beneath a light tunic—she curled her feet under her on the soft divan. The months of confinement aboard
Terrier
had filled out her figure to plumpness again, in spite of Francis's strictures. "Don't women have to stay hidden?"

"Respectable women. I'm sure you'd prefer to be eliminated from that category."

"Thank you," she said tartly, and turned away from him to sip at the tea the servant girl had brought, trying to hide the way her eyes burned from the casual cruelty of the remark.

After a few moments of heavy silence, he muttered a fired curse and said, "I didn't mean it that way."

She bit her lip, staring down into the tea. They were like strangers now; he came to the tent and lay down on the far side and slept without touching her, without speaking if she didn't put a question to him. It was worse even than the long months of polite pleasantries; they were thrown together in mutual isolation in this strange land, and she wanted to turn to him as she had on the island, in companionship and love—but she knew without trying that any move to reach out would be furiously rebuffed.

She needed him. She needed to talk to him. Questions and fears and regrets tumbled together on her tongue—
Is there danger? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Why can't I find you anymore? Do you hate me?…Do you love me?
But even the least of them seemed beyond her courage to voice.

If only she were Julia.

"I meant," he said suddenly, "that if you act like a slave and a woman, they'll treat you like one. If you want to ride outside, just do it." His mouth curled a little and he drew on the chibouk the servant had lit for him, blowing fragrant smoke. "Bravado is everything here."

"I see," she said shortly.

She didn't bother to pursue the subject, though she would have liked to learn more of what he knew. But there was no hope of that now that the pipe had come. She sipped tea and watched him in bleak frustration, knowing that soon the tension would fade from his face under the influence of the sweet fumes. The wall she so badly wished to break down would dissolve and he would smile at her, his dark lashes would relax and lower…and he would ignore everything she said with benign patience, until she felt like a gnat trying to annoy a sleepy elephant.

She stared at the long-necked chibouk as he drew deeply on it. She hated the pipe, hated that it could bring to his face the same expression of peace and pleasure he'd always worn after loving her.

She looked at him wistfully. In the green-and-gold light that filtered through the tent, he sat cross-legged in desert robes, his hair dark and tousled where he'd pulled the flowing red
kufiyah
off his head. The tasseled scarf lay like a pool of dark blood on the rug beside him.

She thought of other days, another place, when it had been different between them.

"Sheridan…" she whispered. "Oh, Sheridan…I wish we'd never left our island."

The spell of the smoke had not quite taken him. His eyes met hers. "Princess." He sounded so tired. Defeated. "Don't. Please don't."

Suddenly her throat closed and her eyes went blurry. The silent tears spilled down her cheeks. Through the haze she saw Sheridan watching her. He slowly bent his face into his hands and stayed there, hidden, his feelings and his thoughts a mystery.

In late afternoon, the servants struck the tents. As usual, the Abyssinian girl covered Olympia from head to toe in a swath of dark cotton, with a white
yashmak
drawn across her face. The camels and litter awaited her.

Through the slit in her headdress she looked around at the caravan. Behind and ahead of her the Bedouins and traders milled, a barbaric splendor of colorful rags and glinting armor. Some of the horse-mounted warriors tilted at one another, wheeling and evading playfully, while hundreds of camels moaned and grunted under their renewed loads. All around, long afternoon shadows moved in alien shapes.

She squinted at Sheridan. He was waiting a few yards off, mounted on a camel and looking quite as wild as the Bedouins in his white robes and cloak and drifting crimson
kufiyah
, with a silver-handled dagger in a sash at his waist and a sword and a matchlock slung behind his back. In the desert, even a madman and prophet-slave was armed against bandit attack. No one worried much about attempted escape, apparently—the desert itself was wall and bar enough. He did not glance toward her, but talked casually to two of the contingent of fierce-looking tribesmen who seemed to be their particular guards.

Olympia watched him a moment. He'd not said another word to her in the tent, but lay back and closed his eyes and drank the smoke until she knew he had forgotten her and the guards and the desert—forgotten everything, until the pain passed from his face and he contemplated her with dreamy disinterest, his eyes unfocused and his hands relaxed on the silken divan.

It made her angry to recall it. How could she fight that? How could she ever hope to reach him when he could retreat behind that smoky stupor whenever he was with her? And now that he was awake and alert, here was this silly litter waiting to coop her up like a mummy in the few hours of coolness before they stopped again at midnight.

Julia wouldn't have stood for it.

One of the Bedouins waited with a servant by the litter. He spoke sharply to Olympia, gesturing toward the open door. Seized by a sudden passion, she flung up her chin in negation and strode over the rocky ground to the nearest camel.

She reached up to pull off the
yashmak
, shook out her hair over her shoulders and glared up at the shocked man on the dromedary.

"Get down," she ordered in English, and pointed to the ground.

"
Allaah!"
he muttered, staring at her.

Olympia heard a sudden quiet descend around them. She quelled her tremor with a vision of Julia facing down a bellicose groom in the stable at home. Instead of arguing, she grabbed the single rope rein attached to the camel's halter and yanked downward.
"Nak'h! Nak'h!"
She managed a decent rendition of the guttural command she'd heard the merchants use.

The camel gave a pathetic moan and went down to its knees with the Bedouin aboard. The man emitted a shriek of objection and kicked at the dromedary's shoulder. The camel hefted its hindquarters again, but before it could rise, she reached up and grabbed the pommel, got a foot on the beast's neck and let the momentum of the upward pitch put power behind the shove she gave the rider.

More from shock than from actual force, he slipped off balance. With Olympia hanging onto the rope, the camel made a swift, sharp turn, and suddenly the Bedouin was on the ground and she was clinging to the caparisoned saddle. Without much grace, she scrambled over the pommel, settled into the saddle, crossed her legs, readjusted her
yashmak
to protect her face from the sun and turned toward Sheridan.

"Well?" she asked.

There was dead silence, except for the low moans of the camels and the sound of a distant quarrel in the rear of the caravan.

One of the Bedouins began to laugh.

No one else did—but then, no one came to pull her off the camel, either. The dismounted Arab glared at her as if the mere heat of his look could make her wither to ashes and disappear. She inclined her head politely and said,
"La mu'axsa"
—no resentment, I hope—which was a phrase she'd learned from Salaa'ideen.

The man looked around at his impassive companions as if he thought they ought to do something. No one moved. He took a step toward her, looked around again and stepped back. After a moment, he lifted his head and muttered,
"Magh'liss,"
and then stalked off toward the horses.

"Excellent choice," Sheridan said. He guided his mount up beside her as the straggling group began to move. To her surprise, he was grinning. "They all think the fellow's gotten above himself ever since he robbed the Damascus caravan and made off with an emir's camel."

She looked down at the animal's braided and tasseled harness and realized belatedly that it was far richer than any of the others. As the camel took up its rolling gait, jerking her painfully backward against the high cantle, she had a feeling that she might regret commandeering an open-air seat. But Sheridan rode beside her, the air was dry and sweet and pure, the sun was just setting behind a range of mountains across the vast, empty distance of blue-and-purple hues—and for the moment, though her heart was hammering with belated reaction, she was glad to be alive and where she was.