“You should be her bodyguard.”
Slowly Dom let out his breath. He was one step closer.
Chapter Six
To the untutored eye, the hut appeared to be a laborer’s home on a country estate, slumbering under the chilly moon. If a man were cursed with criminal intention, the hut might seem an easy mark.
Dom knew better. Before he stepped foot on the rickety bridge over the ravine, he gave his mercenary band’s traditional signal—the call of a hunting hawk.
Although it was irrational, Dom shivered in the chill wind that had sprung up off the mountains and with a fine-drawn tension waited for the door to open. Brat was the sole surviving member of his original band. Dom didn’t fear a random felon. Brat might be the girl he’d grown up with, but she could easily take care of that type of trouble. But Dom and his mercenaries had made enemies, and now that only he and Brat remained, those enemies would love to seek them out and wipe them off the face of the earth.
More, Dom didn’t trust Marcel de Emmerich. He had told de Emmerich the band had been decimated, but de Emmerich had his spies, and if he found out about Brat and the child, he wouldn’t hesitate. He would do anything—kidnapping, torture, murder— to break Dom to his will.
Dom would break, for Brat was his comrade, his friend ... his heart’s sister.
In only a moment, the door swung wide.
She was not even a shadow in the darkness of the house. “Walk on the left.” Her voice carried as far as his ears and no further, for three other huts rested not far off the road that wound out of the city. The families had worked on this estate their whole lives, and they eyed their new neighbors with misgiving.
If they only knew, they would cower in their beds.
Dom ran lightly across the bridge and into the hut.
“What are you doing back here?” Brat shut the door behind him. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“I still can’t see you.” Standing still, he waited while she removed the layer of ash from the coals and blew them to life.
“How’s your hip?” she asked.
He rubbed the place where the jagged piece of shot had torn through his flesh. “Good. I only use the limp when it gives me an advantage.”
The glow of the rising flames gave form to the single room, and he saw her grin at him. Then as she laid the kindling he went to the wide bed, rumpled from her rising, and knelt at its side. Carefully he examined the child who slept there. Gently he touched the purple bump on her forehead. “She’s hurt.”
“She tripped and fell against the bedpost.”
He looked at Brat, dressed in a rough brown homespun gown. Mercenaries never wore bedclothes; one never knew when one would have to rise and flee. “Was she running again?”
“She’s always running.” Brat’s voice resounded with a mother’s boundless love. “She acts as if life will escape her unless she catches it now.”
It was so true, and he sifted the gold of Ruby’s hair through his fingers.
“She likes this place. We climb the hills into the forest. And the children in the meadow—they let her play with them.”
Dom frowned. “Are they trustworthy?”
“They’re fat peasants.” Now Brat sounded torn between contempt and jealousy. “They grow their own food, they fish and hunt, and they’ve not had a war here in generations. They don’t know about real life.”
“Don’t tell them. They’ll discover soon enough.”
Tucking her chin-length hair behind her ears, Brat settled the logs on the wavering flames. “It doesn’t seem right. Maybe I could just mention ...”
“No!” He came to his feet.
“Sh!” She stood, tall and thin, yet strong in ways most men couldn’t imagine, and gestured to the child.
He lowered his voice, but not his intensity. “Are you mad? We need this fee, and we won’t get it if we warn the populace. Anyway, we don’t know what de Emmerich is going to do after I get him the information.”
“Yes, we do. We don’t have to be in his confidence to figure that out.” Brat sounded just as intense, and she stepped close to stand nose to nose with him. “He’s going to try and gull us out of the money.”
“He doesn’t know about you or the child”—Dom hoped—“so it’s me, and if he’s stupid he’ll try to kill me.”
The fire illuminated her thin face and hollow eyes, testaments to the days of hunger they’d experienced since Greece. “If he succeeds, I can sell the bloody diamond, but—”
“Not just any bloody diamond,” Dom said, “the holy Pollardine diamond, attained at great risk to myself.”
“I know, I know.” She quivered with irritation at his flip attitude. “I can take the money and go to America. But it’s you I’m worried about.”
She was. He knew it. More than she would ever say. They’d grown up together, two children born to depravity and corruption. He’d protected her when he could. She’d nursed him when it was necessary. They had never been lovers. They weren’t related by blood, at least he didn’t think so, but by the bonds of common experience, and no one could change that.
Yet Ruby’s birth had changed Brat. The girl who had fought ruthlessly, who had sought pleasure heartlessly, had discovered compassion where formerly there had been none.
Worse, he understood. The child had brought his own hitherto unacknowledged protective instincts to the fore. He and Brat were like wild animals, tamed at the hand of a babe.
“If you’re worried about me,” he said, “then don’t warn the peasants and bring de Emmerich’s wrath down on us.”
“They’re just such”—she lifted her hands—“duffers.”
He heard the envy, and he understood. He and Brat had never been so innocent. “Don’t warn them.”
She turned away. “No, I suppose not. But I’ve been thinking. We could be happy in a place like this.”
He looked around. The dim light showed only rough stone walls, a dirt floor, and primitive wooden furniture. “Like this?”
“Yes. You know who we are. Two bastards put to work waiting on the whores when we could barely talk, put to work on a mattress as soon as we—”
“I remember.” He had spent his life trying to forget. She never had recounted those early humiliations before; bewildered and hostile, he wondered what had gotten into her now. “What has that to do with anything?”
“You saved me from the bordello. If it hadn’t been for you taking me away so quickly, I’d have died screaming mad from the pox.”
“Like my mother.” He could still taste the bitterness. “And yours.”
Brat struggled for composure, and she blinked away tears. That sentimentality had developed since Ruby’s birth, also, and he didn’t like it. On those occasions when his failure weighed on him, when the death of his warrior friends seemed too grievous, he lashed out, although sometimes his eyes swam with tears and he just wanted to tell them he was sorry. So sorry.
So when he shouted, he wanted someone to fight with, not someone who collapsed. Gritting his teeth, he waited until she controlled herself enough to speak.
“Sometimes we’ve lived like kings. We’ve had our fine clothes and our carriages, and we’ve dined with royalty.” Brat dabbed at her nose with her sleeve. “The rest of the time we’ve lived in forests or mountains, and maybe we’ve had enough to eat and maybe we haven’t. We’ve fought in wars and been wounded, and we’ve buried our dead.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Whatever you’re trying to say, just say it.”
“Compared to all the rest of our lives, this isn’t so bad. We could settle down here, raise Ruby like a normal child, I could grow fruit and sell it in the marketplace, you could—”
He erupted in incredulous rage. “You think we could stay here? Here? I know de Emmerich, and he has spies all over this country. One of those dullards you feel sorry for could be passing reports to him. One of those children you let Ruby play with could be selling us to him.”
“No. . .”
“Yes! You know it’s true. They are duffers, and they’ll betray strangers like us for a copper.” Running his hands through his hair, he muttered derisively, “Stay here.”
Brat didn’t put up with that kind of mockery. In a lightning-swift strike, she boxed his ear, and while it rang, she ranted into the other one. “As you say. Not here. But somewhere where we’re not making deals with the devil. Maybe we didn’t learn goodness at our mothers’ knees. Maybe we could claim ignorance when we fought in Baminia. But we know better now. We don’t have to make a deal with de Emmerich.”
“We already did!” Dom flung himself away, pacing across the room and back to face her. “I already did. I promised I would deliver Bertinierre’s secret into his hands. I’m a man of my word!”
“A man of your word! You have fought and killed for money, without care for right or wrong or the consequences war would bring to anyone. Most folks consider you the lowest form of life. You’re sneaking into the palace on false pretenses and pretending to be a friend of this Princess Laurentia so you can betray her. And you balk at lying? To de Emmerich?”
Brat was right. It didn’t make sense. He knew it didn’t, but on this one point he dared not yield. If he did, the cornerstone on which he had built his character would be gone. He’d be like the other old mercenaries—shifting sides on the turn of a coin until no one would hire him again and when he looked at himself in a mirror, he’d see a desperate, contemptible man without even the honor granted to thieves.
She waved her arm. “You don’t even trust de Emmerich enough to go collect the fee without a guarantee. How did you get Pollardine’s diamond?”
“I stole it.”
“So you’re a thief!”
“No, de Emmerich can have it back—when we’ve got our money and our lives. All we need is this one job, and we can quit forever.” He spread his hands, palms up, appealing to her to dream this one dream with him. “If we score this one, we can buy land, build a mansion, have our ice in the summer instead of the winter.”
“We don’t need those things.”
Carried away, he continued, “Ruby can learn to be a lady, not like you and me; we’re just playacting. But a real lady, where the hardest work she does is stitching, and she’ll marry a lord.” Brat still stood shaking her head. She didn’t care what he said. She didn’t understand. In desperation, he added, “She won’t ever be hungry again.”
Brat flinched. “I don’t want her to be hungry again, either, but there’s a difference between being hungry and sitting on your arse all the time, sewing a fine seam. Can you really imagine my lively girl becoming a lady? It would be like the time I caught a wildcat and tried to tame it.”
He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to listen.
He closed his hands into fists, and Brat sighed. “Where do you propose we buy this land and have this manor?”
This was the tricky part. “I want to go ... to Baminia.”
Nothing could stop Brat’s shriek. “What?”
Ruby sat up and wailed.
“Now see what you’ve done?” Glad of the distraction, Dom bustled to the bed and lifted the child into his arms. “You woke her.”
“You must have known I would.” Brat stalked toward him. “Have you gone mad? Baminia?”
Ruby snuggled into his arms, murmuring, “Dom,” and Dom laid his cheek against the short, soft hair. He’d never had anything to do with children, but from the moment he’d delivered Ruby in a cave in the mountains of Montenegro, he’d been in love. Nothing but the best for this child.
“We haven’t been back to Baminia since they chased us out thirteen years ago.”
“It’s time, then.”
“We tried to overthrow your brother.”
“He wasn’t the king then.”
“He is now, and soundly in command. You know what we’ve heard. The people adore King Danior and Queen Evangeline, the country is united—it’s not even Baminia and Serephinia anymore, but Sereminia—the peasants are getting as fat as ... as the peasants here! Dom, this is madness.” She cupped her hands and raised them toward his face. “We lived through hell on earth there. Why would you ever want to go back?”
Ruby lifted her head and stared. Pointing a finger at her mother, she said, “Bad Mommy. We love Dom.”
Brat transferred her hands to her head and held it as if it ached.
He felt so sorry for her he would have given an explanation if he could. But how could he tell her when he didn’t understand it himself?
Yet Brat knew more than he thought. “It’s in your blood. You really are a king’s son.”
He’d struggled with the truth, unwilling to accept he had inherited anything from the man who had so callously used and discarded his mother. But the longing in his soul wouldn’t leave him. He had to do this thing, no matter who get hurt.
“Have you thought about what the old woman said?” Brat demanded. “You do remember the old woman.”
He swallowed. He didn’t even need to ask the old woman’s name. He knew to whom Brat referred. “I remember.”
“And, let me think ...” Brat placed a ringer on her chin in feigned confusion. “Didn’t what she said burn your ears when she was throwing us out of the country?”
Ruby’s head drooped on his shoulder, and he rubbed his palm up and down her little spine. “The old witch,” he muttered.
“I won’t argue with you there. She scared me half to death, all bent and misshapen. And those eyes!” Brat shivered. “When she looked at me, she stripped me down to the bone.”
A thousand years old, so the legend said. The crone was a thousand years old and a saint to boot. Dom didn’t know if the legend was true, he only knew that when she looked at him, he trembled. He, twenty years old, leader of the rebellion, bastard son of the king, afraid of nothing, not even torture, not even death: he had fallen to his knees as if she commanded him.
“King’s son,” she said, “listen and listen well. The blood of royalty flows through your veins, but hatred corrupts your heart so that it is a puny thing, twisted and deformed.” Her gnarled finger lifted, and she pointed away from the mountains and toward the great, unknown lands of Europe. “Take your mercenaries and leave, and don’t come back until you’ve become a man.”
The way she said that phrase, “until you’ve become a man,” called everything he was into doubt. His leadership, his virility, his courage. And he hated her as he had never hated anyone, not even his brother the prince, not even his father the king.
“I’ll never come back,” he swore.
The old eyes, the color of blue flame, burned him with their power, and she uttered the prophecy that had pursued him throughout the countries and the years. “Yes, you will. The land will call to you, the rivers will sing to you, and you’ll return. You’ll return— begging on your knees.”
She was at least partially right. The land called to him, the rivers sang to him—but he would never go back, begging on his knees. He would go back on his own terms.
“Dom, please, not Baminia,” Brat moaned. “Can’t we just run away?”
The child Ruby slept now, her body limp against him, and he stroked her head one last time before he placed her in the bed. He tucked her in, then turned to her mother. “Am I not still the leader of this band?”
Brat laid her hand on her chest. “You know I follow you always.”
“Then I say—we do this thing.”
Her head drooped. “As you wish.” She looked up again. “But you’re wrong.”
He’d never felt more sure. Their luck had changed. They would succeed. Yet he couldn’t do it without Brat. “I need your help,” he told her.
She tensed, his to command now that they’d settled their strife. “Why are you here? I thought you were going to talk your way into the palace.”
“I did. I have. But something happened tonight— lucky for me, but too much of a coincidence.”
“And you don’t believe in coinc
idence.” She straightened, becoming before his eyes a strategist of war. Motioning him to a chair by the fire, she pulled up a bench. “Tell me.”
With a last, lingering glance at the sleeping child, he seated himself and with a minimum of words told her about the kidnapping attempt. Before he had finished she had grasped the importance of the events.
“Do you think de Emmerich is behind this?”
“Why would he give me the money to dress like a suitor, then try and circumvent me with a kidnapping?”
“If one plan doesn’t work, perhaps another will?” she suggested. “Or he thinks he’ll learn what he wants by torturing her?”
“Or by blackmailing her father.” He’d already considered each possibility. “Maybe the country isn’t as stable as de Emmerich would have me believe. Maybe the kidnapper was some bold bandit with more nerve than brains. Maybe one of Laurentia’s suitors thought to wed her the old-fashioned way. I don’t know the answer, and I need you to find out.”
“I’ll go into the city tomorrow. Visit the market. Talk to the shopkeepers.” She frowned. “Could de Emmerich be positioning you to take a fall?”
Leaning down, he touched the hilt of the newly honed knife in his sleeve. “I don’t know. I try to think as he does. I never succeed.” It was the middle of the night, and he had to be back at the palace, awake and perceptive, by dawn. “I do know we won’t get anywhere with this speculation.”
She leaned back, her hands on the bench, a sly smile nudging her lips. “But you turned the whole mire to your advantage. Does the princess trust you implicitly? Did you already bed her?”
“I made some mistakes.” Had he ever.
“Mistakes?” Brat straightened. “What sort of mistakes could you have made?”
“When she saw me—”
“She fell in love.”
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