Regan laughed. “Protect her from whom, God?” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back.
Sirena stared into her husband’s eyes. “There’s a special affinity between that hawk and our daughter, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that he will protect her with his life. By the time the Java Queen reaches Java, those two fledglings in that nest up there will be fully grown. And I like those odds, Regan, I like them very much. I feel much better now, knowing that Fury sails with an escort of four. And as for God, He will have to take His chances the way the rest of us do.”
Regan nuzzled his cheek against his wife’s glossy black hair, knowing better than to debate the matter further. “Let’s walk through the garden, Sirena, before it gets too hot. We are creatures of leisure today. A cooling bath, a short nap, and if you feel in the right frame of mind, a little lovemaking before we sail.”
Sirena laughed, the sound tinkling about the garden. She was more than pleased that her husband of so many years still found her desirable at the oddest times.
Overhead, Pilar’s wings flapped once at the sound of Sirena’s laughter and then stilled. Her diamond-bright eyes never left the strolling couple.
Chapter Two
Saianha, South Africa
The justice was old, his footsteps heavy and unsure as he climbed from the carriage. He cursed his age, the dry, dusty road, and the fact that he was here at all. He’d wanted nothing more than to disregard Amalie Suub’s petition, but honest man that he was, he knew he had to at least consider her request.
Sudam Muab looked up at the three-tiered house that had once been Chaezar Alvarez’s castle—or kingdom, as Alvarez preferred to call it—before his untimely demise years ago. He’d never forget that day as long as he lived. The servants had carried in the self-appointed king’s body, his manhood carved from his loins by a wicked-looking woman wielding a rapier and cutlass—or so said the wide-eyed servants.
The small town had buried the body at sea, but he couldn’t remember why. Along with everything else these days, his memory was failing him. This would be his last major decision before turning the reins over to a younger man.
Rotted jungle vegetation all but obscured the fairy-tale house that was once a kingdom for the crafty Spaniard who had built it to his specifications. Muab supposed that if someone had enough money and the inclination, the jungle could be hacked away and the house restored. He’d been the one who had insisted on having the property posted, believing that at some point in the future, Alvarez’s heirs would arrive to claim it. But they hadn’t. From time to time he’d come out to check on the place, never sure why.
He remembered the day Amalie Suub had walked into his cramped offices, one year ago. She’d said she was daughter and legal heir to Chaezar Alvarez and that she wanted to claim what was hers by the time she reached her twenty-first birthday, which was now a few days away. To support her allegation, she’d presented a marriage contract legalizing Alvarez’s union with Amalie’s mother. Muab suspected it was a forgery. In any case, he wasn’t sure it mattered anymore. The house and holdings, which consisted of furnishings that were full of mildew and rot and two ships that should have been sunk years before, along with a small grove of nutmeg trees, were all that Alvarez had left behind.
Muab mopped his perspiring brow. No one would chastise him if he made a decision in favor of Amalie. If there was a way for her to restore the house to its original splendor, she would make a fitting queen.
The old justice laughed. Amalie Suub, daughter of a king and a slave woman. His rheumy gaze fell on a round shield dangling haphazardly from a tree. It was rusted and pitted from the elements, but the old man knew that if he were to throw a rock at it, it would clang, and the sound would reverberate for miles. He’d heard stories that the shield was always hung to herald a guest’s arrival.
Well, he’d come here for a reason, and he’d best get to it so he could return to the relative comfort of his offices. All he needed was one thing, one piece of paper with Chaezar Alvarez’s signature. Amalie had suggested he look here. There was no reason in the world to suspect he would find anything in the house after all these years; on the other hand, there just might be something . . . courtesy of Amalie Suub. For example, there would undoubtedly be something in the house to verify Amalie’s copy of her mother’s marriage contract. The girl was no fool; that much he’d decided after their first meeting.
The justice cleared the sweat from his eyes as he tramped through the choking vines and flowers that obscured what was once a decorative stone walkway. The huge teakwood door was closed tight, possibly locked, and he could not budge it.
“Warped,” he mumbled as he picked his way through the rotting vegetation to the back of the house. This door yielded to his touch. He entered a huge, sunny kitchen with an open fireplace that took up one entire wall. Huge chopping blocks and tables were scattered about, testament that at one time there were many guests to cook for. But even here the jungle had crept in. Vines twisted up the walls near the windows. Bright red and purple flowers hung from shelves as though designed that way. Reedy shoots, various forms of underbrush, forced their way up through cracks in the tile floor, and he thought he saw a snake slither away.
Farther into the house, rotting vegetation made him gasp for breath. He tried to breathe through his mouth, walking from room to room until he came to Alvarez’s study.
It was once an impressive compartment, the private sanctuary of a successful man. Now it was full of worms and rotting leaves and flowers. The books lining the shelves would probably crumble to the touch. Everywhere he looked there were thick black patches of mildew. His eyes strayed to the desk and the six long drawers that Amalie told him held Alvarez’s papers. One paper with one signature was all he needed. Just one paper. . . .
The moment he found it, he backed out of the room. It had been far too easy, but he didn’t care. The law was the law; if the signatures matched, then this property and anything else Alvarez owned would go to Amalie, his legal daughter.
Muab matched up the signatures in the murky light that struggled through the stained-glass windows Alvarez had brought all the way from Spain. Satisfied, the old justice deposited both pieces of parchment into the cloth bag he carried. All that remained was to affix his signature to several documents and write a letter to Alvarez’s superiors in Spain, which they would probably ignore the way they’d ignored his other three letters asking them to forward the Spaniard’s belongings. As he made his way to the carriage, Muab had already determined that the beautiful Malayan was now the owner of all that Alvarez possessed. In the Spaniard’s life it had been a kingdom of untold riches. In death it was nothing but rotting timbers and stone. What Alvarez’s daughter would do with it he had no idea, and he didn’t care. All he cared about right now was returning to his cool offices by the harbor.
Amalie Suub stepped onto the same trampled vines and flowers Justice Muab had trampled. It was all hers now, she thought happily. Not that it was much, but it was better than the shack she’d lived in with her mother until her death.
She walked around the estate, her eyes calculating the cost of refurbishing the mansion her father had lived in with her mother, who had been little more than a slave to his whims. All she needed was money, lots of it. And short of selling her body, there was little chance of laying her hands on the kind of money she would need to restore this magnificent house and grounds. The ships, of course, would require even more to make them seaworthy.
Amalie sat down on the steps leading to the wide double teak doors, her long, tawny legs stretched in front of her. She hiked up her thin, worn dress well above her knees. Men liked her legs, white men especially. Some had even fought over her charms, and she’d been elated, knowing she was desired in their eyes. One of her favorite pastimes was dreaming about the day she would own a pair of shoes with heels so she could walk in front of a man the way the grand ladies did who attended her father’s fancy balls.
It was beastly hot now. She knew she could go inside where it was cool, but the house wasn’t really hers yet. Oh, yes, she’d sneaked inside after her mother’s death just to look around. She’d found her father’s journal the first time, but it had meant nothing to her then because she couldn’t read or write. Thanks to the missionary who’d taken her under his wing, she could now do both. In fact, she was so adept, she helped the missionary with the younger children.
Father Renaldo was the reason she was sitting here now, the reason she’d had the nerve to appeal to the justice for aid. And thanks to him, she owned something at last—and that’s what she had to remember. No slave owned anything, even the clothes on his back. She alone was the exception.
From the moment she’d created the forged marriage contract she’d stolen from Father Renaldo, she’d never thought about the deed again, only its outcome. True, she was Chaezar Alvarez’s daughter, but only an illegitimate one with no rights at all. Her expert forgery had changed everything; now she was respectable, not that it was going to do her any good. Unless . . . She laughed, an eerie sound that echoed in the jungle surrounding her. She looked up as the birds in the branches took wing at the sound. Cat’s eyes, yellow in the golden sun, watched them circle higher overhead, then lowered to stare sightlessly at the foliage.
Over the past years, before Father Renaldo’s tutelage, she’d been an expert thief. Twice she’d been hauled before the burgher, only to be let go when her eyes promised things old men only dreamed of. The day Father Renaldo rescued her, at the age of seventeen, he’d made her promise not to steal again. And, as a show of good faith, she’d turned over the six diamonds she’d found in her mother’s possession at her death—jewels stolen from her father at his death. Perhaps it was time to reclaim those diamonds as her rightful inheritance.
Amalie smiled. The world, she reflected lazily, was made up mostly of the weak and downtrodden, people like Father Renaldo and her mother. And then there were the others, greedy people like herself who dared to take a chance.
Amalie’s eyes sparkled dangerously. She needed money, more than even the town burghers had, and the only way she could get it was to steal from those who had it. But how?
She brushed impatiently at the long black hair falling over her eyes. One thing she’d learned: When you stole from someone you had to be quick and fast. Proof of that simple fact was in her father’s journal, written in his own hand. A master thief himself, he’d met his match, according to several entries, in a scantily clad, long-legged woman who roamed the seas pillaging and plundering any ship that crossed her path. Amalie had devoured the words until she knew the entire journal by heart. And at the back she’d found a dozen drawings of the long-legged woman, all done in fine detail. While knowing little of art in any form, she’d realized the sketches had been done by a man obsessed. Every conceivable pose the artist could imagine had been rendered in fine India ink, right down to a wicked scar on the woman’s arm.
It was this same woman, named the Sea Siren in the journals, who, according to her mother, had carved the manhood from her father’s body. A witness to the event, her mother had regaled her with tales of how she and the other servants had silently applauded the deed. And the moment she’d known Alvarez was dead, her mother had raced to his room to steal those few small diamonds.
Amalie herself knew little of jewels, but there was no reason to suspect her father would have anything less than flawless stones. If Father Renaldo could be persuaded that they really belonged to her after all . . . and if she could convince him to sell them to the right person, she might have enough money to either refurbish the plantation or have one of the ships restored. She promised herself that she would decide later in the day when the evening meal at the mission was over and her time was her own.
Amalie Suub was beautiful, and more than one head turned as she picked her way through the small mission. She was as tall as most men, with a long, loose-legged stride, and her thin chemise did little to hide her shapely body. Perhaps her most startling features were her wide, white smile and her cat’s eyes, a yellowish-brown that seemed to see everything at a glance. She knew the others envied her light skin and that if she lived in a different place, she could pass as a Spaniard. It was a fact that pleased her to no end—more so once she’d read her father’s journal.
Father Renaldo watched Amalie as she ladled out dinner to the children. His spectacles were almost useless these days now that the white film had started to grow over his eyes. He could barely make out her features, but he could certainly smell her sharp, earthy scent. God, he told himself, had chosen to strengthen his sense of smell when He took his eyesight. Give and take.
He was worried about Amalie, afraid she would do something . . . terrible. The justice had been to see him three days in a row in his efforts to come to a decision. Renaldo had known for some time that his wayward charge had stolen a marriage contract from his satchel. But he’d said nothing. He understood how important it was for her to be more than just a slave’s illegitimate daughter. When the justice had examined the marriage contract, he’d held his breath and waited . . . God forgive him. Then he’d heard the man’s sigh of resignation, and at that moment he’d known that the plantation, as well as the name Alvarez, would be bequeathed to Amalie.
He could smell her now as she swished back and forth among the plank tables. For the first time he realized that he didn’t like the smell, that he didn’t really like Amalie. He felt sinful and bowed his head at his wicked acknowledgment. Amalie was a child of God, as were all children. No, not this one, whispered a voice deep inside him. This one is a child of . . . the devil. The old priest started to shake and tremble as his fingers fumbled for the rosary tied around his waist.
Amalie came up behind him, her bare feet soundless in the loamy earth. “Would you like me to read to you for a little while, Father?” she asked quietly.
The old priest felt his neck and face grow hot. “Not this evening, Amalie. I want to say my rosary.”
“Father, I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . Can I have those stones I gave you?”
“Why?” he asked sharply.
“Well, they did belong to my father—and now, like everything else of his, they’re mine. Or they should be. I was going to ask you to sell them for me, but I think the trip into town might be too much for you. I’m going to need the money to ... for whatever I decide to do. Of course I will give some of it to you for the children. God would want me to be generous.”
The priest flinched as though she’d struck a blow to his body. “Your mother stole the stones, Amalie. They won’t bring you any peace. Still,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Amalie, “I suppose the diamonds do belong to you. In the morning will be soon enough. Go along, child, read the Bible until it’s time for sleep.”
Amalie laughed, a deep, sensuous sound, and slipped away silently. Renaldo breathed deeply and almost choked on her animal scent. He heard her laugh again as she moved off, this time to her pallet. Involuntarily, he shivered and crossed himself.
Amalie Suub Alvarez was evil; he could feel it in every pore of his body. The old priest’s hands worked feverishly on the beads in his hands. Over and over he said the familiar prayers. Always before they had comforted him, but not this evening—and perhaps never again.
Amalie awoke to a slow, sleepy dawn. As yet the birds were still cradled in their nests, their shrill early-morning cries minutes away. The others were asleep, the mission quiet and peaceful. Soon she wouldn’t have to sleep under the stars with hundreds of others pressed close for warmth during the chilly nights. Soon she would be free of this damnable mission.
She closed her eyes and tried to picture the plantation alive with people and music. Her father had wanted to be a king, to live in grand splendor with the infamous Sea Siren as his queen. Instead, she’d killed him and sailed away, probably to her own death. If she, Amalie, were careful and planned every single detail, she could become a queen and resurrect
the Sea Siren from her watery grave. It was an exciting thought. There would be obstacles, many of them, and primary among them was that she knew nothing about ships and had never been on one in her entire life.
Amalie sat up and hugged her knees. There were hundreds of books in her father’s office, most of them about sailing. She’d looked through some of them, but they were full of rot and mildew, their pages either sticking together or crumbling in her fingers. At least her father’s navigational charts were intact in their oilskin pouches, that much she knew.
A bright beam of sun shafted downward through the glossy leaves overhead, bathing Amalie in an eerie yellow glow. She moved out of the sun, muttering to herself as she left the room to prepare the morning meal.
First there would be the endless prayers, then breakfast, then cleaning up, then lessons. She hated it, but she’d gone on pretending because she needed this place and what it offered. After today, however, she wouldn’t need this mission or Father Renaldo. Oh, she would stay on for a while longer—but only long enough to learn what was needed and to put her plan into operation.
Amalie’s eyes flew to the priest’s quarters as she padded down the hallway. It was possible the old man would die in the meantime. If he didn’t . . . such things were simple to arrange. She smiled. At last her life was on a steady course.
After breakfast, Father Renaldo announced his intention to accompany Amalie into town. Instantly her suspicions were aroused; fear tightened like a vise in her chest as she scrutinized the old man. Why did he want to come with her? What was in his mind? Did he intend to thwart her plans somehow—perhaps even refuse to give her the diamonds?
Her yellow eyes narrowed. She didn’t want him with her, but she had no choice. If he tried to get in her way, she would simply have to cut him down. They were adversaries now.
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