The Champion (5 page)

A small
click
sounded from the door.

He paused, his breathing turned shallow as he caught the muffled sounds of movement in the hallway. Faint whispers…fabric hissing softly over marble…then nothing.

Rising from his crouch along the floor, he crossed the room, placing his ear to the gilded doorframe. He heard no voices, no rustling, no evidence that someone stood on the other side. Carefully, he turned the knob. It was unlocked. The door creaked open to an empty corridor, the glow of oil lamps set low, providing convenient shadows.

No attendants. No guards. Jacob closed the door and sunk back into the darkness of the room, knowing exactly what that meant.

The Sultan, it seemed, had enemies in his own court.

Nadira drew a harsh breath, drowning in the stillness of her own dressing chamber. The tools of her exalted reign lay on the table before her, shining jars of colored oils and powders, ash clay and tubes of kohl, all waiting to be reapplied with miniature brushes while the night still offered some protection from curious eyes.

She put her fingers to her lips, as if she could preserve the warmth of the thief’s kiss on her skin. He was everything she’d imagined, everything and more, and she’d stood like a fool before him, startled and unable to tell him the most important of all things.

I didn’t kill Osman. I didn’t kill him, but I waited for him to die, knowing that I would not allow his fate to determine my own, would not allow myself to be imprisoned, used or killed by the next sultan, that I would slip the signet ring from his finger and survive.

She tilted her gaze toward the ceiling, its arches glittering with gold-flecked lapis and gilded scrollwork, its crowns painted with swirling stars. For a thousand years, the great bloodline of Ruman had been unbroken, its treasures filling room after room, coffer after coffer, its campaigns and cruelties etched into every desert landmark. So noble a house, so bold, yet it took a slave girl, furious and insane, to finance the railroad with royal gold, to lower taxes out of spite, to open the trade routes to foreigners. It had taken a woman no one knew, no one cared about, to bring some small measure of stability to the people the great sultans never seemed to see.

Once the machine protected them, she would change even more, until the world that held her prisoner was wiped away. The people would choose their own ministers. It had been done this way before, many times in other places, and it could be done here, but only by a woman hiding behind a Sultan’s robe, a woman with nothing to lose.

An abomination, a concubine, a slave…

She dropped her gaze, her teeth clenched. There had been no derision in the thief’s whisper against her ear, no acknowledgement of lesser status. If anything, there had been greater concern, a gentler touch.

My seductions only involve ‘willing participants’, remember?

Impossible to forget.

All the nights she could have lost her nerve, surrendered to panic, his image had been there, a foreigner that defied all odds, a man who taunted guards before disappearing from window ledges and balconies, a man who knew the deep desert as if he was born to it, and was rumored to live in a hidden crusader fortress filled with treasure.

Her lips parted, her breath warming her fingertips. No longer a dream, no longer a shadowy construct of legends and legal complaints, a furtive whisper from the dark…Letoures had assumed color before her eyes, the hold of his arms filling her up, a night breeze billowing a patchwork sail.

What emotion is this? How does the freedom of the mind take the heart captive, mend its jigsaw pieces, draw the truth from its silence?

“I have thought about you,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “In all these years, only about you.”

T
he Sultan’s retinue formed a dark line beyond the Palace Gate, fifteen hundred horsemen clad in Osman’s colors, five hundred armed foot soldiers, and twenty pack groups carrying tents, food and supplies. Jacob had been given a glossy black stallion, its bridle fitted with silver pieces and bright tassels, its polished hooves prancing lightly on the sand, as if it were about to buck for freedom and gallop alone into the white glare of the desert.

“Whoa,” Jacob murmured, trying to keep the stubborn animal in his appointed place under the Sultan’s golden canopy, a fabric shade sewn with patterns of colored thread and bursts of metallic beads, so long that it had to be supported by eight riders on each side.

The Sultan kept an easy trot ahead, seated on a snow white horse and dressed in heavy robes of cream and gold, his face partially hidden under a sheer wrap that draped from his turban to his shoulders. He hadn’t acknowledged Jacob, or anyone in the retinue, his attention focused squarely on the dry horizon, the crystal blue sky.

Jacob narrowed his gaze.
What did you do when she told you that I accepted your offer? Did you feel gratified thinking that your plan worked, that I used her? Did you dismiss her like she was nothing? Or did you do something worse?

Not knowing distracted him, made him restless when he couldn’t afford to be. He found himself looking for her, for some sign of a consort’s litter, but the line provided no view in either direction. There was just the endless line of soldiers, the choking haze of horses, dust and leather, the excited faces of the crowds as they cheered from doorways, tossed flowers in the path of their delicate ruler.

Where are you, sweetheart? What has he done with you?

Harsh sunlight glinted through rippling folds in the canopy, the bright fabric snapping in the wind as they marched into the open desert. The Sultan adjusted his wrap whenever it fluttered, seeming anxious to secure it so that it shielded his face. He sat rigid in the saddle, his small shoulders held tight, his gloved fingers fisted on the reins.

“You see the result of the poison,” the Grand Vizier said, his chubby face red from the heat, his large body swaying in the saddle of a lazy gray mare. “His Majesty still suffers, especially in bright light.”

“Suffers?” Jacob asked, watching the man keep pace beside him, tears of sweat leaking from under his turban.

“He cannot stand it.”

“It causes pain?”

“He’s never been the same. The poisoning was years ago now, something placed in the food, a traitor we never found. His Majesty suffered for seven days. The doctors and the holy men thought he would die. His breathing was very fast, his skin darkened to the color of rubies. He could eat nothing. It was only through the will of God that he survived.”

“You saw him?”

“I was permitted to visit once a day, to know his wishes while he was in the throes of his great suffering. It was most miraculous, to see him alive after the seventh, and worst, night. All could see that he was heavily afflicted, his face so much thinner, but shining with God’s favor, a vision of beauty in its fragility.”

“Beauty?”

“A man reborn, his eyes brighter, his skin glowing with life.”

Jacob held the Vizier’s gaze. “What kind of a poison does that?”

The fat man frowned, his lips pursed to a pudgy bud.

“You handle all of His Majesty’s affairs?” Jacob asked.

“I have the honor of ensuring that his wishes are carried out.”

“Was it his wish that I be chained in a cell, or yours?”

The Vizier’s eyes narrowed to slits, his chest heaving under an iridescent vest and heavy strands of pearls. “You are a dangerous criminal. It was done with His Majesty’s safety in mind.”

“Because God only knows what a dangerous criminal would do inside the Palace, if allowed to roam free.”

“It is my duty to protect the Sultan and his property.”

Jacob leaned closer, allowing a half smile to cross his lips. “Does that mean the cell door would have remained locked the whole night through, or just till a quarter past midnight?”

The Grand Vizier scowled, casting his gaze quickly across the desert.

“You truly are inexplicable.”

Jacob nodded, supposing that was true.

“After all,” the fat man added, his tone edged with menace. “What kind of disinherited brigand, what kind of thief, would ignore an open door in the midnight hour, in a palace full of priceless treasures?”

Jacob watched him for a moment, aware that he’d just been threatened by a man who knew far more about Robert Letoures than he should have.

“A careful one,” he replied.

Nadira lifted her gaze, catching sight of the sacred cliff statues of Abu Quardan as they appeared from the rose colored twilight, gods and goddesses of the ancient world standing over sixty meters tall, their arms crossed over their chests as immortal pillars of the sky. They were the guardians of the Red Desert, a place of temples, shrines and lost religions, the last sanctuary for true paganism in Ruman.

The pilgrims who flocked to these holy sites were the sole preservers of the old faith, their women dressed in beautiful tribal clothing, permitted to openly laugh and dance in worship, and talk freely among men. They were her people, people of the endless desert, whose lives were so harsh that they grasped at every opportunity for laughter, found meaning in every change of the breeze, and believed that the sun and moon were lovers forever separated by astral tides of fate.

She set her gaze ahead and forced a neutral expression, resisting the urge to look back and find the thief in her retinue, the short distance between them seeming as vast as any field of stars. She had done all she could to forget, painted her lips with clay, paled them, hidden them, but the memory of his warmth refused to disappear. No one kissed a slave the way he had kissed her, with the protective caress of his hand on her cheek, his body held strong, patient…waiting.

And now she’d turned it over in her mind for too long, no longer frightened by it, sometimes lost in the yearning for another taste of it. Was he past the experience already, thinking of his coming reward as he rode under the Sultan’s golden canopy, or was there some small thought spared for the woman he’d held and so gently let go?

He has to know…too much at stake, if the machine fails.
She pressed her lips together, knowing that she had to face him again, as Nadira, to say the words that had refused to come…
I didn’t kill him. I took his place…And now there is only one way out, only one way to change everything…

“The scholars have prepared for us, Your Majesty,” the voice of the Grand Vizier rose above the dusty braying of horses behind her.

Scanning across the valley below, she could see that they had, the enormous gates of the temple complex open wide, its cauldrons sparkling with fire, hundreds of robed scholars lining the stone path between the libraries and the Star Tower.

“Tell the soldiers to construct their camps here,” Nadira said, affecting a sharper accent, a quicker tone to mimic Osman. “Only my personal security will enter the university gates.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“And send a rider ahead to arrange my apartments. The journey has weakened me. I will retire immediately, not to be disturbed. Tell Isban that I expect to observe his first test in the morning.”

“Of course, Majesty. I’m sure he will be grateful to have a few hours to prepare. His last report was not encouraging.”

“We have the proper diamond now. The machine will work.”

“Of course, Majesty.”

She frowned, seeking the tranquil faces of the guardian statues once again before they slipped out of sight. The desert had fallen into shadow around them, its red canyons leached to purple as stars appeared on the horizon, pilgrim campfires casting a dancing light among the cliff shrines and cave shelters.

“It will work,” she whispered, feeling her own destiny hanging on the words. “It has to work.”

Jacob stood on one of the library terraces, gazing at the arrangement of old structures in the square below. Fires blazed between the colonnades, light flickering over statues and fountains, the sprawling complex of great halls and temples shadowed under the moon.

The soldiers were camped just outside the walls, which would make his task easier, even if it was done in broad daylight. The Sultan would die during the first test of the weapon, when both the man, and the machine, were in exactly the same place. It would be quick, allowing no time for the guards to react. Then an escape along the roof, to the southern wall.

You’re not really a criminal at all, are you?

He hesitated at the memory of her voice, that tentative stroke of her fingers on his lips.

In truth, I have thought about you this way.

Of course, she’d meant Letoures, the drunken idiot who would have taken everything she offered, accepted her as a gift. It set his teeth on edge, to think of that. The gift, for a man patient enough to wait for it, would be her passion, not just her consent.

Jacob swore under his breath, trying to bring himself back to the moment, free himself of the dangerous distraction she had become.
Let her go. She was born to this world and she knows how to survive in it. Rid her of the man who presumes to be her master. Set her free and don’t look back.

He was certainly capable of that, but it also felt like he was—like he should be—capable of more. He glared into the dark horizon.
Where are you, sweetheart? What happened to you?

“Mr. Letoures?”

He turned to see her standing behind him, her face half-hidden under the hood of a thick desert cloak. He found himself searching for any sign of injury, noting the garment’s hem had been torn at her ankles. She was, once again, without an escort of any kind, nervous and out of breath.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And where is your hidden door this time?”

“It was a window, this time.”

He stared at her, unsure of whether to believe that or not.

Her expression grew pained. “I must talk with you. There are things I could not say, before…but we cannot speak here.”

Jacob flicked his gaze to the glowing corridors of the library behind her. Scholars sat bent over their desks, busy copying decayed scrolls to typesetting sheets, a grand process of modernization. No one seemed to notice that there was a terrace, much less that two people now stood on it. Still, he nodded, following as she led him down the steps to the square.

They crossed the stone courtyard, passing briefly in and out of the firelight before entering one of the small temples by the gate, its corners marked by heavy marble obelisks. Brass oil lamps hung from the walls inside, casting gold light over elaborately painted pillars and walls. At the center of the compact hall, the statue of a naked female god with wings rose almost to the ceiling, her sightless eyes tilted toward Heaven.

Nadira paused at the entrance, her gaze narrowed on the walkways outside, searching for shadows in the darkness. “Most of the retinue is feasting beyond the gates, enjoying the freedom of this place, but…”

He glanced between the pillars, finding no other doors or entryways, solid stone at every turn. The sound of the soldiers in the distance, their clapping and singing, would mask whatever was whispered here.

“The Sultan didn’t send you this time?” he asked.

“He didn’t send me last time.” She stepped down from the entrance and pulled back her hood, her thick hair loose and unadorned, her eyes glowing gold in the lamplight.

It took him a moment to adjust, the beauty of the woman eclipsing even his memory of her, which had been vivid enough. She turned away, unable to meet his eyes as she fought with whatever it was that she’d come to say. After years of being alone, he marveled at how time seemed to slow in the company of a woman, become something softer, more significant.
Who are you, Nadira? A slave who meets in secret to plead the cause of her master? A woman of the court, without guards, without rules? What could be so bad that you cannot even put it into words?