by Lara Adrian
She could do this, she assured herself when doubt rose to seep insidiously into the steel of her resolve. God help her, she had to do this.
As by instinct, her training leapt to life like a fire in her soul, showing her the way. She inched closer to the king's unmoving bulk, her fingers flexing on the grip of her blade.
“Your drink, my lord,” she cooed in an easy, soothing voice, all warmth and promise. All deadly falsity. She stood behind him and reached around the thickness of his left shoulder with the goblet. He turned slightly, bringing his right arm across his chest to take it from her. His fingers brushed hers, a momentary, searing contact. She drew away from that unsettling touch with a gasp, and the instant his hand closed around the jeweled stem, Zahirah lashed out like a viper.
She raised her dagger up and brought it down in a savage arc at his back, thrusting the blade into the space between the wide slabs of his shoulders. She struck true and hard, but something was not right. The blade jarred in her hand, buckling. It skidded down with the force of her blow, renting the back of the king's pristine white robe. She grunted in surprise, jolted momentarily in utter astonishment. The king did not fall. He merely leaned forward slightly, shifting but a half pace forward from the contact.
Before he could move, before he could call for his guards, Zahirah shook off her dazedness with sheer force of will. He had to die. She had to finish this! Regrouped now, with a cry of animal fury, she lunged wildly and drove the dagger home once more.
Another strike, another grating skid.
Impossible!
She tried to blink away the madness before her eyes, but it was there, glinting in the lamplight, indisputable. She had hit metal, not flesh; hard steel links, not bone, not the heart of the English king.
And then, in the instant it took for the realization to set in, she began to understand the true depth of her mistake. For at that moment, between one breath and the next, the king turned to face her. Only it was not the king beneath that hooded white rag she had savaged.
It was Sebastian.
Staring at her, his nostrils flaring with every breath he sucked into his lungs, he took a single step forward. He flung the cup of wine at the wall; it crashed and clattered like a bell.
Zahirah stumbled backward. “No,” she whispered, putting her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. No.”
She shook her head, praying he was not real, desperate that the hate-filled face before her was but a trick of her mind. She prayed she would blink and find that this was just a cruel mirage. But God was not hearing her prayers now. Sebastian was real, as real as the enmity flashing in his eyes, as real as his roar of fury as he advanced toward her, making her cower before him, craven and shaking.
With a harsh oath, he gripped the front of the caftan and tore it off. His surcoat went with it, falling to the floor and leaving him standing before her in bare chain mail, a warrior honed of steel and cold hard purpose. “All along you've been planning this,” he accused, his voice deadly calm. “All along, Zahirah, from the day I first saw you in the market, you have played me for a fool.”
“No,” she said, rushing to deny it. She never thought him a fool, never intended to hurt him like this. “Sebastian, no. It wasn't like that. Not at any time--”
“Oh, no?” he fumed. He stepped forward, his boots trampling the tattered silk that lay beneath them. “Even now you prove it. Your very denial is an insult. A further betrayal.”
“Sebastian, please. You must believe me. I never wanted to betray you.” She choked on a sob. “I love you.”
He scoffed, and it scalded her like acid poison. “Don't say that. I won't be fed any more of your lies. We're well past that now, my lady.”
Zahirah backed up, fearing the look in his eye. Belatedly, she felt the dagger, still gripped in her fist. She heard her father's promise repeating in her head, his threat that Sebastian would die if she did not fulfill her mission. “The king,” she murmured numbly. “Sebastian, I need you to take me to him. I need you to tell me where he is--your life depends on it!”
He laughed at that. It was a terrible sound, bitter and contemptuous. “The king is safe, somewhere you'll never reach him.”
Zahirah shook her head. “I have to find him! Sebastian, you don't understand. I have to do this. He has to die, or else--”
“Or else?” he snarled. “What, will you kill me to get to him? Here. I'll make it easy for you.” He yanked at the neckline of his mail tunic, clearing the bare column of his throat. An open, easy target. She stared at him, appalled. “No?” he taunted viciously. “Mayhap you'd rather finish what you started all those weeks ago in camp. It was you, wasn't it? The whelp who nearly gutted me when I intercepted the attack on the king. It was you.”
“I had no choice, Sebastian. I was sworn. I am sworn. It's no different than you, pledged to fight this war for your king. I have taken the same pledge, made the same vow to my people and my God.”
“No,” he growled. “We are not the same, Zahirah. When I fight, I do it openly, with honor. I fight face-to-face and hand-to-hand with my enemies. Your kind would creep in under cover of night to stab yours in the back. Do not deign to compare us; we are not the same. Not in any way.” His jaw hardened, the muscles in his face stretching tight across the bone. “You and I were never the same.”
“Sebastian, please, hear me out. Let me explain.”
“I think your presence here explains everything plainly enough.”
“It is not the way it seems--”
“Hah! That is rich, Zahirah. Spare me your further contortions of the truth. I have heard enough of them.”
“No,” she said. “You must know the whole of it. It was me that night in the king's camp. I stabbed you, and if you had not stopped me, I would have killed your king. I didn't know you, Sebastian. All I knew was I had a mission to complete. I had made a pledge to my clan . . . to my father, the head of that clan.”
Sebastian's hard gaze narrowed in dawning comprehension; there was ice in his voice. “Rashid al-Din Sinan is your father? It was him--the Old Man of the Mountain--whom I found you speaking with in the street yesterday, wasn't it?”
Zahirah nodded, hating to admit that she shared Sinan's blood, shamed that this was one more lie between them. “Everything changed once I met you, Sebastian. I changed. I didn't want to deceive you. I knew that if it meant I would lose you, I could not go through with this task. I wasn't going to do it, but then my father was here in Ascalon. He knew I had weakened, and he knew that I had fallen in love with you. He threatened me, Sebastian. He said that if I did not fulfill my pledge, you would die. I could not let that happen.” In spite of her fear for the man who stood tense with fury before her now, Zahirah reached forth to touch him. “He will kill you, unless I kill Lionheart first.”
Sebastian stared at her, absorbing her revelation in judicious silence. She could see that he was uncertain he should trust her, perhaps he was unwilling to now. She had given him so little truth, how could she hope that he would believe her now? And even if he did believe her, would he care? He looked down to where her fingers rested on his arm, then jerked away from her touch. “Get out.”
Zahirah recoiled at the venom in his command, feeling his withdrawal from her as though he were slamming a door in her face, forcibly shutting her out. “Sebastian, please don't push me away. What I've told you is the truth. I swear it--”
“I said, get out.” His eyes blazed furious in the dim lamplight. He put his hand out, pointing to the open balcony. “Get out, Zahirah. Before I decide to throw you on the mercy of the king as you well deserve.”
It slowly registered to her that he was giving her freedom when he had every right to hate her, to hold her accountable and see her pay with her life for the crime she would have perpetrated this night--despite her reasons. Dimly, she recognized that there was feeling there, that the searing intensity of his gaze might hold more pain than contempt. Desperately, she clung to that hope.
“Come with m
e, then,” she said, her voice quaking for the uncertainty of what lay before her. “Come with me, Sebastian. Let's both go now, while we have the chance. We can leave this place. We can go somewhere new, and be together as we had planned.”
He stared hard at her, considering, she prayed. She flung aside her dagger--the hateful symbol of everything she was--and reached out to him, palms up, beseeching, nothing to hide. He looked to her hands, but he would not take them. And then he was stalking toward the bed in heavy silence. He threw off the coverlet and with one firm yank of his arm, tugged the sheet free. Twisting it into a rope, he tied one end to the balcony railing and kicked the length of it over the ledge.
“Go,” he ordered woodenly. “Take the rear gate. The guards don't yet know who, or what, you are. They'll let you pass.”
Zahirah shook her head slowly side to side, bringing her hands up to the place in her breast that felt as if it were being rent asunder. “Sebastian . . . don't. Don't make me go without you.”
He shut his eyes and turned his head away from her. He would not look at her. He would not listen. “Leave now, Zahirah. I never want to see you again.”
She hesitated, unable to move.
“Now, goddamn it!” he shouted, startling her into motion.
With tears burning her eyes, sorrow clogging her throat, Zahirah crossed the space of floor to the balcony overhang. She climbed over the railing and took hold of the knotted sheet, then shinnied down to the garden below and raced, headlong and heartbroken, into the bracing chill of the night.
Chapter 28
The king looked up with alarm when Sebastian was granted entry to the heavily-guarded chamber deep in the heart of the palace encampment. Richard had been seated on a cushioned divan, with a dozen attendants and bodyguards hanging about him like useless gargoyles. Now the king rose at the center of those watchdogs, standing tall with some effort on unusually shaky legs. His prolonged ill health from campaigning had weakened him, but Sebastian supposed it was this recent brush with death that had him pasty-faced and trembling beneath his voluminous purple robes.
He summoned Sebastian forward with a wave of his bejeweled hand. “Tell me,” he said. “It was as you suspected? An assassin?”
Sebastian gave a grim nod.
“The woman?” asked the king.
“It was she, my lord.”
Lionheart cleared his throat and glanced away from Sebastian's level gaze, chagrined, evidently, to have been caught so neatly in what might have proven a deadly indiscretion. Possibly, he was more humbled to have been warned of the danger by the very man he would have deceived. “Leave us,” he said to his guards and minions.
In an obedient shuffle of booted feet and shifting armor, the men filed out of the room and into an adjacent antechamber to provide a less immediate measure of security and await the king's further requirements. When they had gone and closed the door behind them, Richard let out a heavy sigh.
“Perhaps I owe you an apology for my recent dealings with the woman, Montborne--I am aware you had some fondness for her.” When Sebastian said nothing, merely inclined his head in acknowledgment, the king continued. “Be that as it may, I cannot help thinking that in some way this little discovery, unpleasant though it was, has in fact turned out to be a boon for us both. I am all the wiser for having escaped harm tonight, and you have been spared making an even graver mistake in letting yourself get any more attached to the treacherous chit.”
“Your logic is indisputable, my lord,” Sebastian replied, bowing his head and taking care to show none of his emotion where Zahirah was concerned. The king was right, after all. It was good that he learned of her duplicity now, before he made a greater fool of himself by asking for permission to take her back to England. Before he did the idiotic and costly thing of petitioning the king for special license to wed her.
He nearly laughed aloud at that thought. What a distant, ridiculous dream it was now. Nay, worse than a dream; it was a bloody farce, made all the more pitiful for the way he wanted to cling to it still. After everything she had done to him, after all the lies. Even after the events of this night, he wanted her still.
“You know,” said the king, “Ascalon was Samson's city, long ago. It was here that he met Delilah, where he slew a thousand men and met his ultimate destruction--all for the love of one treacherous woman who would shear him of his power and use him for her own designs. You were fortunate. All your Delilah took from you was your pride.” When Sebastian looked up, Lionheart was smiling. “But I warrant you will win that back soon enough. You'll have your revenge when she swings at the end of a rope for her crimes. Unless you've already taken the pleasure of cutting out her infidel heart.”
“No, sire.” Sebastian held the king's questioning gaze. “I did not kill her. I did not arrest her.”
“What are you saying?” There was a note of outrage percolating in the king's voice, his previous tremors of distress replaced with a sudden firming of his stance. His jaw rose along with his tawny brows. “Where is the woman now?”
“She is gone, sire. Once she was discovered, she threw down her weapon and she fled.”
Lionheart looked as if he might explode. He coughed instead, a deep hacking rattle. “She fled,” he slowly repeated once he had regained himself. Accusation began to darken his eyes. “Well, then. How disappointed you must have been at that. Let us pray she does not elude capture again.”
“Yes, my lord,” Sebastian replied, knowing that he should be fearing the king's certain reprimand, but instead calculating the time Zahirah would have had to make her escape from the palace grounds.
The king stared for a long moment, then he slammed his fist against the back of the divan. “Guards!” he shouted, his summons inciting a jumble of urgency in the other room. The lot of his armed attendants hustled in to heed his call. “There is a fugitive woman on the loose somewhere in this city--an assassin. Find her. I want her apprehended at once. Go to it. Now!”
The knights jumped into action, rushing past Sebastian and out the chamber door. They clopped like a pack of horses in the corridor as they ran to do their king's bidding. They had little hope of catching Zahirah; Sebastian had waited to bring the king his report of her escape until he had given her ample time to leave the palace grounds. By now, if she were as quick as she were clever, she would be well on her way out of Ascalon--hopefully heading deep into the craggy hills for cover.
Here in the lamp-lit room of the palace, with the echo of his soldiers' boot falls dying away in the hall, Richard clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace like a caged, agitated cat.
“Tonight marks the second occasion you have saved my life, Montborne. More, if I think back and count the number of times we've been stirrup-to-stirrup in battle. I am indebted, but I am also your king and commander. Letting that girl go, whatever your reasons, was an act of defiance against me. Against my orders.”
At the king's pause somewhere to the left of him, Sebastian said, “Yes, my lord.”
“It is not my preference to be beholden to any man, so I will give you a boon now and this debt between us will be done. In light of your past service, until we return home to England, I will refrain from considering further reprisals where your properties are concerned, however, effective immediately, you are relieved of your command here. Your rank shall be reduced to that of foot soldier, under the officer of my choosing.”
If he wanted Sebastian to plead for appeal, the king would get no such satisfaction tonight. Sebastian was in no mind to beg or bargain, not even if Montborne itself hung in the balance. He accepted the king's mercy--such as it was--with a respectful bow of his head. “As you wish, my lord. I thank you for your benevolence.”
Lionheart grunted. “Very well, then. Remove yourself from these chambers. You have my leave, sir.”
Sebastian pivoted on his heel and quit the king's temporary quarters, stalking past a duo of new knights who stood on post in the hall outside the door--common knights he had o
nce commanded, now, suddenly, his equal. He told himself that he did not care. He had thrown away much this night: his office, his pride, perhaps even his land and titles when all was said and done.
He had thrown it all away on a lady who was no lady. A Delilah, just as the king had said. Zahirah was every bit as conniving and dangerous as the villainess of that Bible tale, and he no less a fool than blind and broken Samson, shorn of his strength for trusting her, and mad to feel anything but enmity toward her as the world he once knew came crashing down like rubble around him.
* * *
Zahirah pitched and stumbled through the winding streets of Ascalon's lower city as though in a fog, her head swimming, feet sluggish beneath her as she ran. She was in the shabbier part of town now, where cobbled streets gave way to worn and narrow paths, where crumbling stone houses and dilapidated shacks lurched one against the other, their flat-topped roofs hairy with grass that had taken root in the sand and long gone to seed. Here, whores and drunkards loitered about in every dark corner like rats, slurring and jabbering their filthy talk to anyone who chanced to pass by. Zahirah knew little of this part of town, but she knew enough to guess that the fida'i might have friends here.
She had just one cogent goal as she fled the palace and Sebastian's rightful rage: she had to find her father. She had to find him, and beg him not to blame Sebastian for her failing to slay the English king. She did not know how she would convince him, but she was determined to bargain anything to spare Sebastian, even her own life, if Sinan's fury demanded it.
At the end of a crevice alleyway was a tucked-away tavern, the only source of light to be found in this shadowy underbelly domain. Zahirah headed toward the glow of the establishment's lanterns, stepping over a pair of outstretched legs that lay in her path. The vagabond at her feet roused to mutter something unintelligible as her sandals scuffed past him in the debris of the alley, then he slumped back into his doze.