Seize the Fire (55 page)

Sheridan plunged forward. He could see Mustafa working for them, striking with his whip to clear a path, and somehow the crowd was helping, pushing Olympia and the horses together—while behind, at the cathedral door, everything was struggling chaos. Hands rose above the mass, shoving her onto the horse, and she clung, reaching back toward him, her face white and frightened. She was crying something—his name, he thought, but he couldn't reach her. The crowd surged backward, sucking him like a wave as the tumult rose to a new shrill. He saw her look up, beyond him, toward the door, and amid the turmoil her eyes seemed to fix on the scene—her lips parted and something terrible came into her expression. He turned, trying to see what she saw, but at his level there was only the uncontrolled crush and shove of people.

He turned again, and she was farther away, the crowd and Mustafa carrying her along the street. Her face appalled him—she'd seen something; he knew that ghastly look and what it took to bring it. He lunged forward, thrusting with his shoulders and knees and wounded arm, using all his strength and balance to keep upright and moving in the surging crowd.

He had to stay with her. She would need him. When the shock evaporated and the specter of whatever she'd witnessed was still there, she'd need someone by her who knew that kind of nightmare.

"I don't want it!" Olympia's voice was sharp, irritated. Before Sheridan could move with his unwounded arm to stop her, she swept her hand at the chocolate, and the cup went clattering off the table.

Mustafa caught it with a quick duck before it hit the floor. Dark liquid splashed his loose trousers, but he only bowed and murmured, "
Emiriyyiti
," in a passive voice.

Sheridan glanced at the neatly dressed woman who'd given them shelter from the coming night and the icy mountain drizzle at her farmhouse-inn. He wanted to apologize, but she didn't speak French and explanations in Italian or German or whatever language prevailed here were beyond him—he'd only managed to convey their need for food and rest with a show of his purse. The woman had been kind—she'd taken one look at Olympia, bedraggled and blank-faced, and waved the gold aside, insisting they come inside instantly.

From this elevation, they could still see smoke from the fires in the main city on the far side of the pass. God knew what their hostess thought. While binding up the sword cut on his arm, she'd asked Sheridan a few anxious questions, but he had no idea if his mimed explanations reached her. Then other refugees had begun to straggle by, and Sheridan caught the important news. "Claude Nicolas!" came the excited word. "
Morto! Morto
, signora!"

Dead. He relaxed back into his chair. Pursuit would not be very hot in that case.

The Signora, with the natural canniness of a border innkeeper, kept Sheridan's party out of sight of these passersby. He had a notion that what was left of Olympia's rich gown and his dress uniform told its own story. It was probable that the proprietress had guessed the identity of the princess—which was a danger, but one that could hardly be avoided. He listened to the way she dealt with the other travelers, the natural chatter she used to draw information from them and pass it on in sign and drawings to Sheridan, the Gallic shrugs with which she shook her head and sent the others on their way instead of filling her rooms—and he knew they'd been lucky and found a friend.

Olympia sat at the table, her hands twisting in her lap. Her face still held that dull glassiness, and when he could get her to speak at all, it was only in angry, childlike responses—refusing food, refusing dry clothes, refusing to be touched at all.

He wanted to hold her. He looked at her pinched and bloodless face and wanted to cradle her and rock her and soothe her until the pain went away. But he did not try, not yet. Best to get through to safety while she was still in this stunned and defensive state.

"Olympia," he said, kneeling beside her chair, "I want you to eat something and change out of that dress. You have to rest."

She frowned at him. He'd already exchanged his own uniform for a nondescript coat and breeches.

"Where are we?" she asked in that biting, half-frantic voice.

"We're on the way home."

"No. I have to go back."

He took her hand. She pulled it away.

"I have to go back," she repeated. "I have to stop it."

He broke a piece of bread from the loaf on the table, laid cheese on it and handed it to her. "Eat this."

"My uncle—"

"Claude Nicolas is dead," he said. "Eat this."

She stared at the bread and then looked at him. Her eyes were haunted.

"Do you understand?" He touched her hand, stroked it lightly and then took his away before she could pull back. "You don't need to be afraid of him anymore."

"I'm not afraid of him," she said.

"Do you understand that he's dead?"

"Yes." She blinked and stared. "And my grandfather. And the others."

Sheridan looked at her sharply. "Your grandfather?"

"Leave me alone." She pushed at the bread. "I'm not hungry."

He summoned patience. In a little while, perhaps, he could cajole her into eating. Mostly he wanted her out of the damp wedding gown and in bed. He rose and went into the kitchen to confer with Mustafa and the Signora and see if there was any laudanum to be had.

When he returned a few minutes later, Olympia was gone.

He swore, yelling for Mustafa. The stableyard door was open, letting in gusts of chilly breeze. Sheridan strode outside into the mud, swore again at the inky darkness beyond the farmhouse light and ran into Mustafa as he turned back for a lantern.

He didn't dare call her name. Armed with lights, the two of them split—Sheridan took the barn and Mustafa the yard. The horses were both there, their damp backs steaming gently in the chilly air. He met Mustafa at the stable door, alone. New panic began to rise in his chest.

"Check the road." He gestured. "That way." Then he turned down the steep, slippery track in the other direction. Mountain mist swept around him, clinging to his coat and hair, driving chill into his muscles. His heart was pounding and his wounded arm ached like the devil. Every step was treacherous in the rutted mud and rock.

A hundred feet down the hill, he finally caught sight of her, a white blur in the dark. He gripped the lantern and moved faster, skidding dangerously on loose stone, jarring his arm with each rattling slide downward.

She made no move to wait for him, though she must have seen the light gaining on her. He hissed her name, but she only caught at another tree trunk at the edge of the road for balance and kept moving blindly downward from stone to stone.

He grabbed her arm. "Where the blazes are you going?"

She turned her head toward him. Mist had plastered her hair to her face. She looked like a white corpse in the lantern light. "Oriens."

"Well, you're headed in the bloody wrong direction." He pulled her toward him, setting his jaw against the sharp pain in his arm. "Unless you're going by way of Calcutta."

She jerked away. "This is the right direction," she snapped. "Just leave me alone."

He caught her again, bracing himself with one knee against the muddy slope as she tried to struggle away. "All right, Marco Polo—maybe it is. But let's wait till daylight before we go falling off mountainsides on our way back to the revolution, shall we?"

Between the lantern and his injured arm, she didn't have to fight very hard to free herself. He lost his hold and she started away. "You don't need to come," she said cuttingly. "I don't want you."

He pushed his knee out of the mud and caught her again. This time he didn't bother to argue, just transferred the lantern to his bad arm and took her around the waist with his good one, hauling her with him up the slope.

She fought. He felt her slipping, tightened his hold and scrambled another step before she got free. He fell on his wounded arm with a grunt. The lantern rolled and went out.

He still had hold of her dress. Treating the air to a rush of nautically enlightened swearing, he hauled her back. She fell into his lap and they skidded together downslope a few feet. Once they stopped, Sheridan just sat there, with his arm firmly around her and his back against the mountain, feeling the mud soak into his clothes.

His arm was agony. The sword had caught him high, near the shoulder, intersecting the healed scratch he'd taken at Aden. This one was much more serious—it needed stitching, and he could feel fresh blood now beneath his shirt. But he held onto Olympia, listening to her tell him in no uncertain terms how unwanted he was.

"You've bloody well got me, wanted or not," he muttered.

"I just want to be alone!" She moved jerkily, desperately. "Go back to your sultan. Why did you come? Why won't you let me alone?"

He didn't answer. He put his face to her nape and rocked her gently.

She kept trying, kept struggling and condemning him, until they wore each other out. Sheridan won, through nothing but inertial strength, and they sat there in the mud and mist and dark. Finally, after a length of time he couldn't even count, the gleam of a lantern fell on them, and Mustafa's soft voice came out of the gloom above.

With light for guidance, Sheridan resumed his mission. She was too tired to struggle now, but she gave him no help: he had to carry her, stumbling upward a few feet, resting, nursing his throbbing arm and starting again. Mustafa picked out the easiest route, but still it was four hours after she'd disappeared before Sheridan staggered through the farmhouse door with her.

He let her go. She suddenly found the strength to stand on her own two feet and used it to glare at him as he leaned back against the door, holding his arm. There was a deep shivering growing somewhere low in his chest. The light in the room seemed too bright.

"Go to bed," he ordered. "Or I'll take you there and tie you down."

She was a pathetic figure, standing straight in the muddy remains of her wedding gown, with hate and desolation vying for control of her features. He tried to reconcile himself to that—he understood she needed anger now to protect herself from whatever reality she'd seen from atop that horse in the mob. But it was hard. He found himself wishing things had gone as he'd planned, so that he'd be alone and on the run, but knowing at least that she was safe—instead of floundering here, not sure what to do for her, trying to offer his futile comfort.

He knew what she was suffering, he recognized the signs of horror that went beyond a soul's ability to withstand, but he didn't know how to help; he'd never known how to help himself, except to close his heart to everything but death: to be a machine that fought and survived.

He didn't want that to happen to her. He would not allow it. Somehow, he would prevent it.

But he didn't know how.

"I mean it," he said, taking a step toward her as she stood frozen. "I'll tie you down."

She stepped back. "I hate you," she said, very cold and very sane. And then she turned and went up the stairs.

He sent Mustafa after her, with orders not to leave her for an instant. When they were gone, he turned to the Signora.

She gestured at his arm. He shook his head and sat down heavily at the table. She had new information from Oriens since they'd been gone. On the table was a paper with the word
morto
at the top. Beneath it were names and numbers. Fifty-two was the highest count, and the name of Olympia's grandfather had a question mark beside it.

He wondered if that was what she'd seen from the horse. She'd never really known the old man, but it would be a shock to witness his murder amid all the other turmoil.

He sat at the table, his forehead in his hand, staring down at the body count. His head ached. His arm burned. His own demons hovered, flashing in and out of his mind with disturbing vividness.

He sneezed into his muddy sleeve and waited with the silent Signora for more news.

By morning he was thoroughly ill, feverish and confused at waking from a fitful sleep to find his head on a wooden table and his arm in agony. The first thing he saw was a face he thought he ought to know: roguish and smiling—and then he thought of ordering tea and seeing the Sultan and how he needed to take a sextant reading if the weather had cleared, but he hurt, and he couldn't seem to find the will to lift his head.

Foreign voices spun around him. A strong hand dragged him back and he made a sound of anguish, breathing hard and trying to hold his arm still.

"Tallyho," a male voice said. "You'd best fall in bed until the doctor comes, old fellow."

Sheridan hauled his eyelids open. He stared into the face that confronted him.

"
Yállah
," the other said, not unkindly.

Sheridan's brain flashed him a sudden spark of reason, and he pulled his head up. "You," he said, and fumbled for his dagger.

"Here, now." The dark-eyed man caught Sheridan's good arm, showing a familiar, charming grin. "Don't be rude to an old friend. I've got nothing against you—even if you did let Claude Nicolas down and keep your mouth shut at the wedding. I got paid for my part. But that's ancient history, eh? Goodbye and good riddance and long live the revolution, that's what I say. If you're on your way back to Turkey, I'll be damned if it looks like you'll get there without my help."

Sheridan frowned through a haze. Laboriously, he tried to think. He felt as if he were on the edge of a cliff and falling. This man—trustworthy?—no, not that, but…predictable. Looking for advantage. Reward. Not likely to be welcome in Oriens now, having lately been in Claude Nicolas's pay. Knew the language; but smart…too bloody smart…

"Name?" he grunted.

"Randall Frederick Raban. Count of Beaufontein. Your servant, sir."

Sheridan tried to lift his right hand, but he could not do it. He spread his left on the table. "You have…funds?"

Raban nodded. "Certainly. You needn't worry I'll make off with yours. I look forward to a long and satisfying friendship between us, and that's no way to start." He grinned. "The lady of the house guards your purse like Cerberus at the gates of Hell, in any case."