“The man is an animal,” said Aidan.
“We’re all animals,” said Rhino. “He’s just the king of the beasts.”
After an announcer sang their merits, the two men began circling each other cautiously, the wrestler remaining just out of reach. As the German studied his smaller opponent, the wrestler charged in, swooping low. The giant hooked a punch up from the ground. The Turk barely got his head out of the way, and that mallet of a fist struck his neck with a thump audible two dozen cubits away.
The crowd groaned sympathetically, and Aidan cringed, unable to keep from wondering what it would feel like to have that lump of gristle break his own bones.
The wrestler backed up, a bright red splotch marring his neck, a trickle of blood running from torn skin. The German’s fists were probably toughened with brine or some such agent. The bigger man grinned through his beard, and stalked his prey.
The wrestler took two steps back, then with eye-baffling speed pounced forward, arms wrapping the Germans legs. With strength it was difficult to credit, he heaved up, and the German went over his shoulder. The wrestler fell backward with him, so that they struck the ground together, the German just a moment sooner, so that the wrestler landed atop him.
Good move, Aidan thought. That will show the arrogant bastard that he can’t just walk in on his opponent. Now the German would judge his action more carefully, and reacting to that solid thump, probably even become a better, more dangerous—
But the German never had the four or five seconds that it might have taken him to recover. Lizard-quick, the wrestler crawled over him. The German got in several more punches, including one that would have broken the wrestler’s nose if it hadn’t already been a lump of gristle. But without his feet under him the German had nothing but arm strength, power insufficient to prevent the Turk from finally attaining an armlock, twisting and pulling with the strength of back and butt and legs until he produced a crack that chilled Aidan’s spine.
The German screamed in agonized humiliation.
The wrestler rolled away and came to his feet, mopping the blood from his face with little apparent concern as the bigger man thrashed on the ground, holding his shattered arm, howling as the guards came for him.
“Oh, shyte,” Aidan whispered, and meant it.
The Caliph promptly turned his back on the wounded ex-champion and strode to the Turk’s owner, a skeletally tall Somali.
“I would purchase this man,” said the Caliph. “Set your price.”
The Somali fawned. “Sayyid, I could not presume—”
“Quickly now, before I change my mind. Your price!”
“Say … twenty Alexanders?”
The Caliph spat in his palm. “Done.”
Riding in the rear of a horse-cart all the way back to the compound, Aidan’s mind was a fog of fear and confusion. He had been prepared for a powerful brawler-boxer, not a wrestler like the Turk. Everything he had practiced, every one of Babatunde’s visualizations, every tactic of Kai’s was based on the idea of defeating the German. Disastrously, no one had even considered that the giant might be beaten before Aidan even had his chance—let alone that he might be beaten by someone with an entirely different approach to combat. This was a complete balls-up, and Aidan had no idea at all what to do.
“What is wrong?” Rhino asked, observing him carefully. “You never seemed afraid before!”
“You don’t understand,” said Aidan, cradling his head in his hands. “You don’t understand.”
“What is it?” Rhino seemed genuinely confused and, somewhat to Aidan’s surprise, compassionate.
“Leave me. Please.” He managed to smile, but the curl of his lips was a fractured, pitiful thing.
Within the hour they arrived back at the compound. Rhino accompanied Aidan to his cell, respecting his need for solitude. He left the Irishman slumped against the wall, knees to chest, forehead sunk against crossed arms.
The door closed behind him. Aidan sat, staring into his callused, shaking hands. “Dear Jesus,” said Aidan, a bit surprised that that holy oath had emerged from his lips so easily. “What am I going to do?”
The door opened again. Aidan’s face was still locked in his hands.
“I said leave me alone!” he screamed into his hands.
“I’m sorry,” a woman said. “I thought you might be someone I knew.”
He slowly looked up, an oath frozen on his lips.
Her hair was golden, rouged with strawberry. The jaw was strong for a woman, but the generous mouth and sparkling eyes merely lent a deeper and more subtle sensibility. Around her neck she wore a tiny golden tree on a silver chain. He had not seen her for half a lifetime, and would have known her in an unlamped midnight. Aidan fumbled to his feet. “Nessa…?”
She blinked almost as if he had thrown water in her face. “It has been so long since I’ve heard that name,” she said. “I had almost forgotten its sound.”
“Oh, God … Nessa!” He rushed to her, and they embraced.
She sighed, and her eyes fluttered closed. “Aidan,” she murmured. “I never thought to see you again.”
He kissed each cheek, and then her closed eyes. “I swore I’d come for you.”
“For … me?” His six words seemed to shock her, take her utterly aback.
“For you.”
She stared at him, mouth pursed in surprise. Then she managed to say, “But … you’re a slave!”
He, in turn, managed a smile. “Things are not always as they seem. Trust me. I’ll tell you more when I can. But … tell me: is your name really Habiba now? And are you really in bin Jeffar’s home?”
Her eyes widened. “How do you know so much about me?” Then she raised her hand. “No. There is so little time. I bribed the guard to allow me an hour. This is not unusual—I suppose he thinks I want a fighter’s seed.” She traced his face with her fingertips. “Life has been hard for you. So little remains of the boy I knew.”
“None of that is of any consequence,” he said. “I survived. You survived. Nessa … what happened to you, after we were separated?”
“How shall I tell you of ten years gone?”
“Swiftly,” he said. “We shall have more time later. But I need to know …”
Nessa closed her eyes, as if searching in that ocular darkness for traces of the girl she had been, a lifetime before.
She remembered being hauled away from her mother and Aidan, on the docks of New Djibouti. “I wept for a week after I was taken from you, and Mother….” She paused. “Mother?”
Aidan shook his head sadly.
Nessa sighed. “She’s with Father then, and they dance together among the stars.”
She returned to her story. “I was taken to a slave market in New Alexandria, where I was sold again to the household of bin Jeffar. I was told he was an inventor, a diplomat, a warrior—a great, wealthy man, and that I should feel fortunate to be in his house….”
Despite her travails, with the passage of time the child Nessa grew into a healthy young woman who remembered the ways of her people, and found other slaves who also knew tales of King Conchobar, the siege of Druim Damhgaire, or the Ogam writings she had only begun to learn when Northmen tore her away from O’Dere Crannog. They met in secret, but they met, and that thread from her past kept her whole, and sane, and vital. That vitality was a double-edged sword: it protected her from the depression and illness crippling so many of the other slaves, but it also manifested itself in a full-bodied, strong-boned Irish beauty, sufficiently glorious to bring her to the attention of the overseers, one of whom forced himself upon her.
The overseer was a married man, however, and his own jealous wife betrayed him to bin Jeffar. Bin Jeffar had the man whipped and fired, and the other overseers left her alone.
“I’m so sorry,” Aidan said, not knowing what else to say.
“It was a long time ago,” his sister replied. “And from that time on, I had come to the admiral’s attention, and he did what he
could to make my life easier.”
Aidan looked at her a bit askance, uncomfortable with the obvious admiration and respect she displayed for her owner.
“His wife died of a fever five years ago,” she said.
“And he came to you?”
“No, little brother. It’s not that simple, and he’s not that kind of man. He was alone for two years. I saw the way he looked at me, but he is a gentleman, and would never have forced himself, or even made his desires known. In the end … I went to him.”
He was incredulous. “You seduced him?”
“We seduced each other.”
Aidan clenched his fists and hung his head. He wanted to scream at her, but how could he, after all he had seen and done? He knew the paucity of choices available to a white woman, had seen the things that slaves did to survive. What he himself had done. What his wife, Sophia, had done. He wept for the girl she had been, but could not bring himself to condemn her.
“He is a good man. He never lied to me, or promised what he could not offer.” She proffered the golden tree dangling on her neck. “He allows me to wear this, even though he considers it a pagan symbol.”
“Does he love you?”
That question seemed to evoke a deeper quiet from her, one from which she was reluctant to emerge. “In his way, I think.”
“So he would not say it, even when you are in bed.”
He regretted those words, for they stung his sister.
“In his way,” she repeated.
“They say that he took you to Egypt.”
Immediately, she brightened. “Yes! Oh, Aidan, it was wonderful. If only you could see the marvels of that land.”
“Did he present you at court?”
“Of course not. But I accompanied him almost everywhere else, and there was comment made, and he stood by me, Aidan. For a man in his position, that is no small thing.”
“Are there slaves there, as well?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But they find it easier to buy their way free. Some of them teach, and many of them live in their own homes, as some do here in New Alexandria. They owe a portion of their work to their masters, but not their lives, nor their children’s lives.”
“Do you imagine that Jeffar will free you?”
She turned her face away. Aidan took her chin, turned her face until their eyes locked.
“Do you think he’ll marry his saucy Irish girl, make little brown babies with her?”
She shook her head. “It would not be legal to marry me.” Nessa’s shoulders hunched as she cast her eyes down. “Aidan, do not judge me too harshly, I pray you. For years, every night I dreamed that you would come for me. And when at last my dreams began to fade, I made my peace with the world. Is that so terrible?”
A pause, then Aidan said, “No, Nessa. It is not.”
When she looked back up at him, her eyes were glazed with tears. It was clear that those five words meant the world to her.
“Nessa,” Aidan said. “You survived. I think that I have some idea what it cost you. Everything. It cost you everything. But you survived. How could I judge you without judging myself? I did so many things to try to stay alive, to remember Mother and Father. To keep my heart whole.”
“How did Mother die?” she asked reluctantly.
“She worked herself to death.” His voice was an awed hush. “She lasted little more than a year. Losing you broke her heart, and the only salve that eased the pain was work, until she was exhausted, until her hands bled. Work was her balm.”
“She swore to work herself to death if they would only keep us together.”
He nodded. “They broke their word to her, but she kept hers to them. Almost as if it were some point of honor to her. They never lashed her. They fed us, and sheltered us. But what they had taken was far, far more than she could give.”
Nessa hung her head. “She’s gone.”
“Not so long as we remember her.”
“Yes.” She leaned her head against him, sighing deeply. “But I would like to see where she is buried.”
“You will.”
In that moment, she seemed more than ever like his own image, glimpsed in a mirror. He knew that to be an illusion of the heart—the eternal verities of male and female had changed them far too much for any such resemblance. Still …
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“I went with bin Jeffar to an affair at Dosa’s estate,” she said. “I saw you. I knew you at once, Aidan. For all the change, all the time. I knew you in an instant.”
“Thank God,” he said, believing her utterly. He would have known her in a crowd of Irish redheads, let alone a sea of black faces with lamb’s wool for hair.
“What do we do now?”
“Now?” he asked. “Now I will find some way to finish what I began. You have contacts in the arenas?”
“Yes,” she said. “Servants are everywhere, and share knowledge.”
“Then wait until I fight the Turk. I will come to you that night. Be ready, Nessa. I will come for you.”
He took her by the shoulders, and forced confidence into his voice. “Don’t doubt me now, when we’re so close.”
She leaned her head against him. “Aidan, forgive me. But … you cannot do this thing. Where would we go?”
“I have a home, where free whites are building a world together.”
“But the fugitive slave laws—”
“You will have papers, and a new name, and we will be together. Have faith. Just a little longer.”
Then he sat her in the cell, and told her his plans. Holding his hands tightly, Nessa in return answered every question he had about the city streets, the Caliph’s estate, and bin Jeffar’s residence. Strangely, although he had come to rescue her, strength seemed to flow from her hands into his, as though she possessed a deeper reservoir of peace than all of Kai and Babatunde’s patient teaching had been able to impart.
And as he calmed, his own fear of the Turk transformed into something quiet, and cool …
And deadly.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
In all Aidan’s world nothing existed save pain.
Kai had said it: the deeper you are willing to venture into your pain and fear, the greater the reward.
There was no greater reward than that freedom he sought for Nessa. It impelled the deepest commitment to intimate knowledge of the limits of human flesh. Aidan drilled with one arm at a time tied behind his back, one leg at a time hobbled, hopping until his calves burned and his feet bled, working his balance. Every drill he could remember he performed, over and over again until muscle failed and his legs buckled. Then he stopped and breathed, finding that illusive meld of breath, posture, and motion that had been disrupted by his shock at the German’s destruction.
And despite his greatest fears, he was damned if he didn’t detect an increase in his calm and awareness, as well as improvement of his skills.
During one of his bouts of exhaustion, the door to his cell opened. “The match is set,” said Rhino. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Aidan’s voice was flat, with almost no inflection. He levered himself up from the straw, began to drill again, as if he had dismissed Rhino completely.
The big man watched him, his small, scar-tissue-ringed eyes intelligent and questing. “Why did you come here?” Rhino asked.
“To fight.”
Rhino wagged his head. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I see …”
“What?”
“Signs you’ve played hands with a royal. That kind of fighting is not slave fighting.”
Damn. Aidan dared not coarsen his movement—that would be too obvious. And besides, he would need every edge he could get. He shrugged. “Maybe I watched ’em sometimes. That’s it.”
Rhino studied him, and then laughed. “Well, every man has a right to his secrets. Good luck to you and yours, tomorrow.”
Rhino left, leaving Aidan alone with his thoughts. When the door closed, Aidan began to pra
ctice the moves that Kai and Babatunde had given him. Over and over and over again …
On and on, into the longest night of his life.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Crowded elbow to elbow on the wooden slat seats of the public arena, the common crowd was already swelling and yelling. Highborn men and women filled the lower, more expensive cushioned seats and boxes. Though they may have had more silver in their purses, their hearts were just as hardened to the suffering of their fellow men.
At the moment two gladiators in a chalked circle wreaked havoc on one another. They swung fists and tripped and threw, and the crowd roared with pleasure every time blood flew or a body smashed into the dirt. Finally, one could not rise anymore, and the victor raised his hand in triumph.
Attendants carried out the defeated man.
The announcer walked out. “Your attention, mahdûm and hȃtûn. For your entertainment this evening we have the Turk, a monster so formidable that he bested the invincible German in only two minutes! Against him we have the Irish, the newest acquisition of the illustrious Dar Dosa. Fighters to your corners!”
Aidan was led out of a hallway to the gate leading to the arena.
“Make me wealthy, Irish,” said Dosa, “and you’ll have your freedom in a year.”
Aidan nodded and came out, blinking his eyes against the light.
The Turk weighed only two sep more than Aidan, resembling a barrel with arms and legs. The Turk nodded in his direction, smiling as a man might smile at a plate of roast bison. He picked a handful of sand up from the floor and rubbed his hands with it. Then he planted himself, knees bent, feet wide, arms spread in welcome.
The drums rolled, and the action began.
Aidan tried to find the state that he reached during the djuru “marrying” ceremony, and managed to, to a degree. It was a dubious approach, but all he had to cling to.
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