by Nancy Holder
Then he saw her.
In a barred but exposed cell, Maria Angelina sat on a pile of straw, her face a mottle of bruises, her gay party dress stained.
“Maria,” he said.
She looked up at him, cried out. hid her face. “Don’t look at me.”
“Maria.”
“He forced me. He told me he would kill me when I discovered he was an Immortal.”
He said nothing. His heart was cold, where once it had hoped, so vainly, to love.
“I was the Doge’s secret mistress for years. My husband never knew.”
“But if his job was to kill me on the carnival craft, why did you inflame him by pleasuring me?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know it would be him! Machiavelli was never certain when you would try to leave the island, so we couldn’t plan for everything. It made sense to me that the gondolier would hide his identity for fear of reprisal. I never dreamed it was my own husband, the duke. I saw him so rarely.” She smiled bitterly. “I can only assume Machiavelli wished me dead, and sent my husband the letter. Using our plot to ensnare you to ensnare my husband and me as well. I’m sure he assumed d’Fabrizi would murder me after he took care of you.”
“Why did you try to seduce me? What was the purpose of all of this? He could have tried a dozen simpler ways to rid himself of me.”
“Rid himself?” She shook her head. “It was his hope that you would join him. He wanted you to become dependent upon him. He wanted to isolate you from anyone who called you friend. That was why they put you on the galley today. So that you could never return to Algiers.”
“But why?”
“Don’t you know? He wants you to be his right hand. To go through the centuries together, lording it over mortal and Immortal alike. Ruffio thinks he is to be the one, but since Machiavelli met you, Ruffio has paled in Machiavelli’s sights. Though of course, the brute knows it not.” She laughed bitterly. “My front teeth are loose. Soon I truly will be an ugly hag.”
“No,” he said softly, unable to harden his heart completely against her. He told himself that she was getting what she deserved, but she was paying a terrible price.
“Machiavelli’s going to rescue you. I guess he already has.” She knelt on her knees and crawled to the bars, stretching out her arms and arching her chest. “If you did love me, thrust that sword into my heart and end my life. I beg you.”
He stared at her.
She held out her arms. “For the love of the Virgin, I beg you. They are going to kill me slowly. Carlo—the Doge—has promised me hours of agony for my faithlessness. You must know his wife is delighted at the prospect.”
The hair rose on the back of his head. Should he do it? Uncertainly, he said, “I will not kill a woman.”
“You hide behind that?” she screeched. “You want me to suffer. You want me to die.”
“I canna,” he said softly. He turned his back.
“Don’t let them torture me!”
Clenching his fists, he walked away, into the stink, and filth and the screams.
“Check!” MacLeod heard the single word at the same moment that he felt the presence. Machiavelli’s voice, Machiavelli’s Immortality. He knew he had been detected as well, and hefted the broadsword. The old scimitar was a better weapon. He was sorry to have lost it.
To his left, a jail cell opened. Dressed in his black robe, Machiavelli leaned against the jamb and crossed his legs at the ankles. “Buona sera, young Duncan. I’m about to checkmate your friend. You can play next.”
“Shut the door and fight me, you bastard,” MacLeod challenged. He held the sword with both hands and bent his legs.
Machiavelli tilted his head. “Why would I rescue you if I wanted to fight you?”
MacLeod lunged just as Ali appeared in the doorway. He was dressed in fine European clothes, his gray hair loose and his beard trimmed. He smiled and cried, “Duncan!”
“Get back inside, Ali,” MacLeod urged, though he was relieved to see him. “This is a private matter.”
The general crossed his arms. “This man has been most civil to me.”
“I’ll kill him and then we’ll escape.” MacLeod made tiny circles with his sword point, a ploy to distract his opponent.
“I think not,” Ali replied.
MacLeod’s eyes widened and he glanced at his friend. Machiavelli feinted; MacLeod shifted his attention back to him.
“What are you saying?”
“There’s going to be a war. Peace is hopeless. The food here is good, and they’ll move me to Signor Machiavelli’s farm if I’m not quickly ransomed. He’s been hoping you would join us there.”
MacLeod couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Whatever he told you, it’s a lie. There’s no war. There’s no need for one. This country is finished. The sultan can get whatever he wants through trade.”
Ali shrugged. “I’ve developed a liking for noodles. And Venetian virgins. It will do me no harm to wait and see.”
“You’ll be dead whenever he decides you should be.”
“Like his son?” Machiavelli cut in, smiling evilly. “His only child?”
“What?” Ali came out of the cell. “Whose child?”
Machiavelli whirled around and crab-walked sideways, covering MacLeod and the general with his weapon.
“Ask MacLeod. Ask him what happened to Hassan.”
“Duncan?” Ali’s voice shook. He faced MacLeod and clenched his fists. “Duncan?”
MacLeod hung his head. “He’s dead. It’s my fault,” he said softly. “I took a ship to sea, and I fought him.”
The general was silent. Then with a wail of fury he ran to Machiavelli and grabbed his sword. Machiavelli allowed it, smiling at MacLeod. MacLeod lowered his sword and waited. For this, he was willing to die.
“Murdering infidel!” Ali shrieked. “Son of a thousand jackals!”
Like lightning, Ali spun and thrust his sword into Machiavelli’s chest. The Italian’s mouth dropped open; he was utterly astonished. He grabbed at the blood streaming from his body, fell backward, and died.
The general’s sword clattered on the stone. “My son,” he keened, constricting into a ball. “Tell me that it is a lie. Tell me he lives.”
“I canna.” MacLeod adjusted the back of his robe, exposing the back of his neck. “A life for a life. Is it not written in the Holy Book?”
Ali composed himself. “You would not kill him. This one would. The page is written. The book is shut. I know all that I need to know.”
MacLeod opened his mouth to speak. Ali held up his hand to silence him.
“My mourning must wait. We must go quickly. He expected you. We were waiting for you. I feigned my cowardice to lull him into complacency. I’m concerned that it appeared to work so well.” Ali savagely kicked Machiavelli. “There will be guards.” He bent down. “We’ll hold him as hostage.”
“He’s dead,” MacLeod said quickly. He didn’t want Ali to see Machiavelli’s resurrection.
“They don’t know that.” The great warrior hefted the inert form over his shoulder. “Go behind and cover me.”
“Hold!” shouted a voice. Down a narrow passageway to their right, six armed men approached, soldiers of the dungeon. “Put him down.”
“He breathes,” Ali told them.
“I’ll slit his throat,” MacLeod announced. “I’ll cut off his head in front of you.”
The men hesitated. MacLeod took the advantage and gestured to the left. “This way.”
“No,” Ali said. “He told me the layout. We must go the same way they came.”
MacLeod’s smile was grim. “Are you ready, then?”
“The fury of heaven rides through me. I will avenge my son.”
They rushed the men, MacLeod taking the first one by surprise. Ali held on to his burden, managing swordplay nevertheless, and cutting off the arm of the man who lunged at him.
Attack.
Parry. Riposte.
Parry. Counterpar
ry.
Parry. Counterparry.
Lunge.
Another went down. Blood sprayed MacLeod’s chest and face.
Another.
One slipped and scrabbled to his knees. Hands extended, he begged, “Mercy, in the name of God!”
MacLeod lowered his sword just as Ali darted forward and skewered the man. “In the name of God, no mercy. I would never pray to a God who could excuse a father’s not avenging his son.”
The fifth man proved more skilled than the others, or perhaps it was because MacLeod was tired. They fought for several minutes while Ali, dropping Machiavelli unceremoniously to the floor, battled the sixth.
“Why aren’t more coming?” Ali asked MacLeod.
“I was to be rescued,” he said dully, “so that I could be his prisoner.”
Another Immortal loomed nearby. He felt the tremor, strong and close.
Perhaps more than one.
Reinforcements of a far more lethal kind.
“We have company,” he said. MacLeod’s adversary turned his head to see, and in that moment, MacLeod killed him.
Ali finished off the sixth.
MacLeod scrutinized the passageway. Though the presence of Immortals was unmistakable, he could see no one. Laying his sword against Machiavelli’s neck, he bellowed, “If you let us go, you have my word I’ll not take his head. I’ll let him live. If you try to take us, I’ll finish him first.”
Ruffio stepped forward. Behind him, perhaps a dozen Beauties were grouped. Jean-Pierre was among them. Ruffio glanced anxiously at Machiavelli and glared at MacLeod. “We don’t care what you do to him.”
“He hasn’t yet taught you to lie well,” MacLeod said contemptuously. “Go. We’ll let him live if you do.”
Ruffio shook his head. “Doing that’s too stupid even for you.”
“On my honor, I won’t take his head.”
Jean-Pierre cleared his throat. “He is much concerned with his honor, Ruffio. MacLeod, do you swear here and now that for all time, you will never take his head?”
“That’s foolish,” Ali said to MacLeod. “You know they won’t rest until you’re dead.”
“I swear it on my honor,” MacLeod said darkly. It was the only way he could think of to save Ali.
He waited. Ruffio spit. “We go, then,” he said. He motioned to the group.
“Mais non!” Jean-Pierre protested. “This is foolish!”
Murmurs of disapproval rose to shouts. Ruffio barked, “What else can we do?”
Uneasily they retreated. MacLeod carried Machiavelli as they followed the Beauties down the passage, Ali watching the rear. Any second now, the man would awaken. MacLeod was ready to kill him again.
“We’ll need money. And a ship,” Ali said.
MacLeod nodded at Ruffio. “See to it.”
Ruffio’s reply was a murderous stare.
Chapter Eight
“The wise boldly pick up a truth as soon as they hear it. Don’t wait for a moment, or you’ll lose your head.”
—Hsüeh-Dou
“Tonight, one last victory celebration,” Ali said to MacLeod. “And then you must go before the sun rises, my friend. If anyone knew that the great traitor, Duncan MacLeod, rested here, the walls of my house would tumble and I would not be able to save you. I know what really happened to my beloved son on the Venetian ocean, but others do not. Many died unjustly that day. Your name is defamed throughout the empire, and you are hated beyond reason.”
“I’ll be sorry to go,” MacLeod said. They had arrived in Algiers only two days before. “Sorry to leave the company of a friend.”
“You will be missed, friend Duncan. Now that I have no son…” Ali sighed. “It would be good to have a young man in my household.”
“If it is the will of Allah, one of your wives will conceive.”
Ali brightened. “Yes, if that is His great will.”
They lounged in Ali’s pleasure garden, savoring the luxury only a very wealthy man could extend an honored guest. MacLeod wore a white robe that smelled of spice and soap. Dates and sweets at MacLeod’s right hand, an ornate thimble of mud-thick coffee at his left; water, blessed water, trickling from a fountain copied from a Moorish palace in Spain.
“You’re quiet. Where are your thoughts?”
He wondered if Maria Angelina was still alive. “It was so easy,” he said. “They just let us take him.”
“Perhaps he had outlived his usefulness.” Ali rested on his elbow and regarded his friend. He looked at him differently now that MacLeod had told him about Immortals. More cautiously, more curiously. MacLeod was sorry for that. “I wish I had your immortality,” Ali went on, as if he’d read his mind. “But I don’t envy him his.”
MacLeod held up a finger. “I promised not to kill him.”
“And so it shall not be.” Ali bowed his head low. “On my honor.”
A flute and a tambour picked up a steady, pulsing rhythm as Ali’s chief eunuch clapped his hands for the females to appear. Beneath the brilliant moon, the dancing girls fluttered past the two men. Unlike women in the streets and marketplaces, who modestly covered themselves as Allah decreed, these wore filmy gauze MacLeod could almost, but not quite, see through. Their graceful bodies glittered with jewels that rivaled the twinkling heavens above the canopy of palms.
Paradise, surely. A glimpse at the reward Allah promised all faithful Muslims. It was almost enough to make him convert, particularly as one lovely girl with hair to her knees gazed into his eyes and smiled through her veil.
“Take her if you want her,” Ali said, popping a date into his mouth.
“Och, no. She’s yours.”
“Don’t insult me, man. I have offered you a gift. I’m surprised your manhood hasn’t shriveled up and fallen off by now. You never use it.”
The girl continued to smile at him as she unfastened her veil.
“Well,” MacLeod ventured, and smiled back.
Hands seized him. A hood came down over his head. He shouted, and was cuffed for his noisiness.
“Where are you taking me?” Machiavelli demanded.
Thrown into a cart. Hours, traveling, and the world sizzled like an oven.
Another day, a night.
He was given no water.
He died, revived.
Was beaten.
Died again.
The cart stopped. He was pushed out onto fiery sand that raised welts everywhere it touched. He screamed.
“Be a man,” said the voice of Mustafa Ali. “You won’t die, although were it up to me, I’d take your head, pledge of honor or no.”
Machiavelli couldn’t stop screaming.
“Even before MacLeod rescued me, the Doge had been enlightened about your schemes to draw Venice into war with us. Our local agents in the Republic had already assured me that your Doge would have released me on the morrow, and beheaded you in the square for your treachery. But MacLeod, who is a man of honor, came for me before the Doge could act. It proved useful, for I may serve my sultan again someday in some secret capacity if I am required.”
Machiavelli’s hands were tied behind him. His ankles were trussed together. Still he screamed.
“The sultan has sent another envoy, and we will trade in peace. Know this: Venice is dangerous for you. Do not return there in this lifetime.”
Screaming as he was thrown in a pit.
“Your Court of Beauties has been disbanded, your people scattered. Word has reached us that two have been found beheaded. I presume they were discovered by more seasoned Immortals. Perhaps one of them will find you as well. Perhaps not.”
Fiery sand rushed over him, clogging his mouth. And still he screamed.
MacLeod, MacLeod, MacLeod, MacLeod.
For this, you shall lose your head in agony.
MIDDLEGAME:
Queening the Pawn
Chapter Nine
“Let go over a cliff, die completely, and then come back to life—after that you cannot be deceived.”
—Zen saying
P-K4.
At home in his loft, MacLeod shook his head and put the letter aside, still debating with himself over what to do about it. Act, don’t react. It was a lesson he had taught himself, hard learned, and one he often ignored to his own detriment. But what else was the bulk of an Immortal’s life, but reacting? To danger, aggression, to challenges. Even to the Quickening, which seized you and electrified you and transformed you into something you hadn’t been ten seconds before. Almost by definition, his existence was one defensive maneuver after another.
The phone rang. Fully expecting to hear Machiavelli’s voice on the other end, MacLeod calmly put down his coffee and lifted the receiver.
“MacLeod,” he said. Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. How proud he had been of his name and his heritage, back in his time. After he had been cast out, he had alternately despised them for the lies they were and clung to them because he had no one else to be. But over the centuries, he had come to realize he was Duncan MacLeod. His clan was the Clan MacLeod. He had defined himself, rather than be defined.
Act, don’t react.
“MacLeod,” he said again, flashing with irritation. He hated games.
“Sorry, Mac. I got distracted. It’s the puppy. You okay, boy? Mr. Ron? Oh, for God’s sake!”
MacLeod grinned and put his feet up on the table edge, settling back in his chair. “Baby-sitting not going too well, Joe?”
“Who said that?” The man chuckled ruefully. “Listen, if a hot-looking bass player asked you to take care of her dog while she was on tour, you’d do it, too.”
“Never.”
“Mr. Ron, stop that! What kind of name is Mr. Ron for a dog, anyway, for God’s sake. You would so, Mac, if you saw her. Well, she’s coming back tomorrow. Thank God for small favors. Listen, I heard from Woodrich, and he’s got your suite at the Capitol Hilton all set, but he wants you to know you’re more than welcome to stay at his place with us.”
“Naw, you two have got a lot of catching up to do.” MacLeod was pleased to be invited. He and Joe Dawson had a strange relationship, a friendship laced with a bit of tension. As MacLeod’s Watcher, Joe chronicled MacLeod’s every move. For the most part, MacLeod had gotten used to it.