by Lara Adrian
It sustained for a while, that steely marshaling of her directives, her determined adherence to the code of her clan. But the space around her was alive with memories of her time with Sebastian--moments they had shared, places where they had loved--vivid memories that edged their way into her meditations like a tender sapling slowly cleaving the granite core of a stone. She would never forget him. May Allah forgive her, but she would never stop loving him.
Before the room's many memories and thoughts of her days there with Sebastian could form a wider fissure in her resolve, Zahirah returned her dagger to its sheath and hid it beneath her pantalets, then she quit the small chamber and headed for the roof terrace to put herself closer to God, where she would use the remaining few hours to prepare and wait until the time to act drew near.
Chapter 26
“Well, what do you think, my friend?”
“It's poisoned all right,” Sebastian answered, tossing the putrid contents of his cup into the sand below the well. “Just like the last two towns we've been through today. Just like the Templars' spies reported in their meetings with the king.” He raked a hand through his hair, slanting Logan a look of frustration. “I've no doubt we're going to find the same thing at every well from here to Jaffa.”
It was well past noon, but they were just a few leagues out of Ascalon, not yet halfway finished with their mission for the king--a mission that was seeming oddly more and more a boondoggle with each village they investigated. Richard could be frivolous where his whims took him, but it was not like him to squander his resources, be they horses and supplies or men, and the idea that the king had chosen him specifically to head up the trip had niggled at Sebastian's mind since they left the palace that morning.
He wondered if the scouting mission was intended as some form of chastisement, a way for the king to show his displeasure with something Sebastian might have done. His thoughts returned to the night of the feast in the Darum camp, when he had bloodied Garrett of Fallonmour's nose. It would certainly be like the whining earl to appeal to Richard for some form of reparation, but Sebastian knew the king's indifference toward the man and he rather doubted he would trifle with coming to Fallonmour's defense. Certainly not with a pointless exercise of this nature.
No, this was something else.
Against his will, he considered the king's interest in Zahirah. He had taken note of it in Darum and again upon their return to Ascalon. It concerned him, Lionheart's lascivious eye, and it concerned him that he was now some distance from the palace, on a superfluous mission where he was unable to watch over Zahirah and keep her safe from Richard's lustful attentions.
But where his confidence wavered in his king, he had to trust his lady. She was savvy; she would not put herself in the king's company if she felt him any sort of threat. He soothed his anxiety further with the fact that the king had been reported ill that morning. Richard was still in his bedclothes when he watched from his balcony as the party rode out. If he was ill, he would likely remain in his chambers all day. If they were quick about their business with the testing of the area wells, Sebastian and his men could be back in Ascalon come the morrow. His concerns were likely unwarranted.
But still his mind churned on, sick himself, with the feeling that he was being played.
“I've seen enough here. Tell those two we're heading out,” he said to Logan, pointing with his chin toward the knights who had accompanied them from Ascalon. They were young and lazy, avoiding the heat of the sun by volunteering to tend the horses. They had all four mounts standing in the shade of a cluster of palm trees, watering them from their own supply and brushing them down from the day's ride. A bunch of naked village children crowded around them, trying to touch the huge warhorses and jabbering in Arabic while they begged for food and money. Logan put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, waving the knights over with a sweep of his arm and a shout to bring the horses.
Sebastian took a handful of coins from his purse and gave them to the town's gnarled elder, thanking him for his cooperation and instructing him on where he could get clean water for his village. “Peace be upon you,” he said, granting the old man leave as the two soldiers loped toward them with the mounts.
“I trust you lasses are rested enough to move on?” Logan drawled to their youthful companions, smirking as he took his destrier's reins from one of them and swung up into the saddle.
Sebastian grinned at the jest, but his thoughts were still on Ascalon. “The next town is about an hour's ride,” he said. “I want to make it in less that, so let's get moving.”
The four of them rode out onto the dusty path that was the road and spurred their horses into a brisk canter. When they had gone some way, Sebastian pulled his water canteen from its strap on his saddle and took a long drink. He passed it over to Logan, who rode beside him on the narrow track.
The Scot and the other two men had been talking most of the time since they had headed out from the last town, comparing stories and discussing the trials of warring in so foreign and forbidding a land. One of the young knights had been on the march with Richard in Darum. He launched into a rather detailed account of the various plagues that beset them: intolerable heat and sunburn, stinging flies that ate the men raw, and rotted foodstuffs that left most of the army sick with dysentery for weeks. “Not the king, however,” said the knight, his voice edged with awe. “He seemed to take every setback in stride. Some of the men say he's another Roland.”
Logan grunted, and threw a sage look at Sebastian. “Well, hero of legend or nay, I reckon those days on the march are catching up to him, lad. Lionheart was sequestered in his chambers when we left; no doubt he will still be abed when we return.”
From behind them, the Darum knight chuckled as he uncorked his wineskin with a pop. “In bed mayhap,” he sniggered, “but not sick today. And not alone, as I hear it.”
The other man shot him a quick, quelling look, his lips flattened, eyes widened in warning. The youth raised his hands, seeming unaware of how he offended, but he snapped his mouth closed at once. It was a brief, surreptitious exchange, but Sebastian had turned in time to see it all. His mouth went instantly dry.
“How's that, sergeant?”
A beat of uneasy silence answered his question while the two knights traded uncertain glances. The young man who had made the jest glanced down quickly, shaking his head, his previous jocularity gone at once. “Beg pardon, sir. I-I spoke out of turn. I am obviously mistaken.”
Something cold and heavy settled in Sebastian's gut at that feeble denial. He felt the blood rushing in his temples, felt his skin begin to prickle with apprehension. He brought his mount to a halt on the road. “Tell me, sergeant,” he growled, looking from the sheepish soldier to the one who had sought to hush his tongue. And when neither man would respond or meet his gaze, he said it again, barking the command with all the fury that was now drumming like a black tempest in his head. “Tell me, goddamn it!”
The two knights jumped, rightly startled. The second youth looked up, eyes darting and frightened, his face the bloodless color of fish meat. His news, evidently, was bad indeed. “Apologies, my lord, but d-do you know John Bradford, sir?” The name registered vaguely in Sebastian's mind: one of the king's handful of personal guards. He gave the young knight an impatient glower. “Aye, well, my lord . . . we're friends, John and I. He told me how he was there yesterday, when the king met with the Templars and some other noblemen. And, well, sir, you see, John was there afterward, too . . . “
“Afterward,” Sebastian prompted, having no patience for a nervous, fumbling explanation. “Spit it out, man.”
It was a feat that seemed to take some doing. The knight swallowed, glancing helplessly to his companion before dropping his gaze once more. Finally, he blurted the whole of it out in one gulp. “He was there after the meeting adjourned, when the king made plans of an intimate nature with a lady he encountered in the hallway.”
“A lady?” Sebastian's voice was wooden.
“Aye, sir. The Saracen woman.” He swallowed hard. “Your lady, my lord.”
The knight from the Darum company gasped at this news, evidently unaware of the connection until now. Logan let out a bark of incredulous laughter, no doubt to cover for Sebastian's sudden lengthening silence. “That's impossible. Tell your man Bradford to check his eyesight. He's got it wrong.”
But as disbelieving as Sebastian wanted to be, he could not join his friend in challenging the soldier's tale. It hit too close to what he feared, to what he was beginning to suspect in his heart. He drew back as if physically struck, but his instinct warned to absorb the information with prudence and logic. “What else did he tell you?”
“Not much, my lord. Just that the king had dismissed him and the other chamber guards.”
“Dismissed them. Why?”
The knight gave a weak shrug, his gaze meek and edged with something that looked sickeningly like pity. “He said he would be taking to bed early this evening . . . that he wished to have privacy. 'Tis my understanding she--your lady--wanted it that way.”
“No guards,” he said, his gaze sliding to Logan in sinking alarm.
His mind spun, disbelieving, calling back the weeks they had spent together at the palace--everything, from her appearance in the souk and her request for his protection, to the ambush she had saved him from, and nights they had shared in each other's arms. He thought about Zahirah's behavior over the last day, her quiet withdrawal; her strange comment that she wanted to remember him as he was the night before, when they had made love in the bathhouse; her quiet acceptance of his unexpected orders to head up the scouting party that morning, as if it came as no surprise to her. And then there was her association with Halim, a proven assassin. She had claimed he was her brother, only to admit later that she had lied.
She had too many secrets; how many of them were lies? How many had he believed--worse, still hoped to believe, despite what his gut was telling him now?
“I have to stop her,” Sebastian said. He jerked his reins and wheeled his mount around, the stamping hooves stirring up a low fog of dust on the road. “We have to go back to Ascalon. Now.”
Logan was staring at him, a look of dawning realization darkening his eyes. “Oh, Jesus. You don't suppose . . . “
Numb with the weight of his suspicions, Sebastian shook off the hand that came to rest in sympathy on his shoulder. “Let's get out of here,” he ordered, his voice quiet but deadly steady as the Scot brought his destrier around on the road. “Let's go, Logan, and pray to God I'm wrong.”
* * *
Zahirah let out a deep sigh as the sun dipped below the horizon. She was almost relieved to see the fiery red orb begin to sink into slumber. Her waiting was nigh at an end. Dusk was coming quickly, and, with it, the task she was solidly resolved to carry out.
The king would be taking his supper now. Less than an hour separated her from the deadly ruse that would lead her into his private chambers. Less than an hour between this next breath and what was sure to be her last. She felt oddly detached from the notion now, having at last come to peace with the idea that through the king's death--indeed, inevitably, through her own--Sebastian would live.
She had to believe that. In these final moments of reflection and meditation, it was all she had left, all that mattered to her now.
Clinging to that singular purpose, she knelt on the hard tiles of the roof terrace and bowed deeply in one last prayer.
* * *
It was dusk when Sebastian and Logan galloped their exhausted horses through the opening gates of the Ascalon palace. Sebastian threw his reins off and leapt down from his saddle. He crossed the twilit courtyard in a handful of urgent strides, skidding around the column of the adjacent colonnade. His chamber was down the connecting corridor; he ran for it in a haze of dread, hoping beyond hope that he would find Zahirah there waiting for him. That he would feel more the fool for doubting her now than he did to think she might have been betraying him all along.
When he reached his apartments, he found the door slightly ajar. He threw the heel of his hand against it and knocked it open, letting it crash against the hind wall like a clap of thunder. “Zahirah!” he called, lunging over the threshold, his voice echoing in the stillness of the vacant space.
He made a hasty search of the antechambers, knowing in his gut that despite his hope, he was not going to find her there. As he passed back into the main room, one of the curtains that framed the balcony caught on the sleeve of his mail. He tore the wisp of silk from the rod and flung it away, enraged.
The flimsy streamer fluttered down onto the small table beside him, draping the shatranj board that sat atop the pedestal. Sebastian's eye was drawn to that board suddenly, snagged by the neat rows of pieces beneath their silken shroud. He pulled the scrap of fabric away and saw the white king lying in the center of the board. It was a symbolic death. The piece had been placed there deliberately, signaling the forfeit of the game to the black player.
“No,” he growled. “God, Zahirah. No. Not you.”
He felt like a man drugged and beaten, his surroundings shifting out of focus, stretching into a twisted blur of light and sound, as indistinguishable and elusive as vapor. But he had never seen more clearly. Pivoting, his every muscle clenched with urgent dread, he crashed into the hallway. “The king!” he shouted to a loitering knight as he passed him in the corridor. “The king, damn it! Where is he?”
“Taking his sup last I knew,” answered the soldier.
“Where?”
“His chamber, sir. What is it? What's going on?”
Sebastian impatiently waved him off; he had no time to answer. His spurs biting into the polished marble floor of the corridor, he bolted for the king's quarters on the other side of the palace.
Dear God, he prayed, do not let me be too late.
Chapter 27
Zahirah hesitated outside the door of the king's chamber, her heart pounding against her ribs like a caged bird. She had waited until it was fully dark outside before she climbed down from the roof terrace, wanting to be certain the king would be alone. Standing there now, she had no doubt of that fact. There was no guard posted in the hallway. One subtle squeeze and a click of the cold iron latch in her hand told her the door was unbarred from within. Lionheart was waiting, and it seemed he had met her conditions just as he had agreed.
She exhaled deeply, willing her last remaining shreds of doubt to be expelled along with her spent breath. Cleansed and steady, she gripped the latch and pushed open the door.
A single oil lamp burned in a marble alcove in the far right of the room, providing meager light for the large, lavishly appointed chamber. It limned the wide carpet on the floor, and cast a fiery glow on the solitary figure clothed in a hooded white gown and standing at the open window of the balcony.
“My lord,” Zahirah said quietly, announcing herself as she entered, her gaze sweeping the corners of the apartment, searching to make sure no guards secreted in the corners before she focused once more on the king's broad back. She pulled the door closed behind her and took a step farther into the room. “I hope I have not kept you waiting overlong, my lord.”
He grunted, and for a moment she tensed, wondering if she had irritated him with her delay, for there was a dark undercurrent to his tone, an air of restrained anger in the growl that seemed to answer from deep within his chest more than off his tongue. But then he raised his hand out to his side and beckoned her forward, and that particular anxiety ebbed.
She moved on silent feet, the soles of her sandals not so much as whispering on the thick weave of the rugs beneath them. She could steal up behind him in a heartbeat and have done with it, she realized, weathering a giddy sense of relief to think her task would be so easy, so quick. Slowly, she gathered the hem of her tunic and slipped her hand up to her waist, feeling for the handle of her dagger. She took care not to rush, knowing he could turn around at any moment and discover her purpose.
A
s if just then sensing something amiss behind him, he lifted his head and pivoted his chin over his shoulder. Listening? she wondered. Zahirah froze where she stood, letting her tunic fall back around her legs. “W-would you care for wine, my lord?” she asked, spying a carafe and goblet on a table near the divan.
He slowly dipped his head, a wordless nod of agreement. Cautiously, Zahirah walked over to the table and poured him a cup of the strongly aromatic wine, watching with satisfaction as he returned his gaze to the moonlit courtyard outside. She had no intention of seducing the king this night, and so long as he remained where he was, his back conveniently turned to her as she prepared to steal up behind him, she was mere moments away from completing her odious task.
With one hand wrapped around the carafe as she poured, Zahirah used the other to efficiently retrieve her blade from its sheath, the soft hush of the steel clearing the leather sleeve swallowed up by the gurgle of the flowing wine. She held the dagger close to her belly, the king's drink steady in her left hand, and carefully crossed the space of floor to the balcony where he waited, unsuspecting.
He seemed somehow larger in the moment she neared him, not more than an arm's length between them. This close, he seemed more substantial, his shoulders wider, standing perhaps taller, certainly more dangerous, even without the benefit of his leonine countenance turned on her in ferocious confrontation. He held himself still, but he seemed to crackle with power, leashed and restrained, but, given its head, lethal.