Alamut (34 page)

The guard stood unmoving, but his fist clenched on the hilt of his sword. In his eyes was death. He had been betrayed; he had failed of his duty. He would die.

“No,” Aidan said, purring it. “Not until you have been my messenger.” He gathered power in his hand and held it, lightly, straining against the bonds of his will. The guard could see it. His fear was sweet. Aidan set a single word deep in him, where no power of his could cast it out: “Go.”

He went. The others watched, mute.

The atabeg was sorely shaken. He was like all the rest: he never truly comprehended the power of Alamut, until he saw it bare. His guard, his mamluk, his cherished possession, whom he had raised from a child, had never been his at all. So close, the Assassin could come. So easily.

He would not have been mortal if he had loved the one who stripped him of his complacency. He was lord enough, and king enough, not to call in the executioners. He said, “You are no friend to me or mine.”

“No enemy, either,” Aidan said.

“There is nothing between.”

“My lord is entitled to his judgment.”

Gumushtekin's lips were thin for a man so richly fleshed. They thinned to vanishing; he drew himself up. “I might best serve my city and my lord, by handing you over to our ally in Masyaf.”

“You might. You might also win the open enmity of Jerusalem, and bring Damascus down anew upon you.”

“Do you matter so much in the high places of the world?”

“Let us say,” said Aidan, “that I'm an excellent excuse.”

The atabeg did not believe him. Not quite. But the seed of doubt was large enough to give him pause. “Shut up in my prison and held for ransom, you would bring down no army upon us. Dead, you would cease to trouble us at all.”

“I doubt that you can hold me. I doubt very much that you can kill me.”

It was the simplicity of it that caught Gumushtekin and held him speechless. It was not even arrogance. It was merely the truth.

“Let me go,” said Aidan, gently, quietly. “Give me my servants and leave their punishment to me. I can promise that it will be just, and that it will not be light. And that I shall execute it well beyond the bounds of your city.”

Gumushtekin had no words even yet. He barely understood what Aidan offered. Aidan said it again. “You have no need of me here, whether alive in your dungeons or dead on your scaffold. Let me go, give me my mamluks, and I will leave your city. I give you my oath that I will betray none of your secrets; for truly I am no enemy of yours, but only of the spider in his web in Masyaf.”

“You were better dead,” said the atabeg. But slowly. As if he had begun to doubt it.

He was thinking, clear as a shout, of his alliance with Sinan. Of promises given and received. Of two trusted servants who were not his own; and one who was openly Sinan's, who seemed now no more than a feint.

Aidan let him think. He gnawed his lip. He looked without love at the dog of a Frank who so troubled his peace.

He said, “Very well. You live; you go free. I banish you from my city. If after tomorrow's sunset you are found within these walls, your life is forfeit.”

“And my mamluks?” Aidan asked.

“They share the ban.”

They were not remarkably cast down. Aidan brought them to heel with a glance and a toss of the head; they came willingly, the Kipchaks with a hint of a swagger that drew growls from the guards and a hiss from Arslan. The latter had the greater effect.

Aidan, oblivious as a prince should be to his servants' infelicities, bowed to the atabeg in Frankish fashion. He voiced no thanks. When he turned to go, there was outrage, that he should turn his back on the lord of the city. He stared it down. Coolly, with his mamluks in his wake, he left the regent's presence.

22.

After Aidan had gone, Joanna sat unmoving, hardly thinking. Not daring to think. The roiling in her middle threatened to become all of her; bile seared her throat. She choked it down.

It was easier for him. He could go out. She was not allowed. Her every movement was watched and guarded. His presence every day was a torment: to have him so close, within her arms' reach; to knot her hands in her skirt, to keep from clutching him. She might have touched him. Easily. But she dared not. For if she did, she knew that she could not let go.

Or that she would claw his eyes out.

She knew where he slept: he had told her. He had not been fool enough or mad enough, yet, to enter the harem and snatch her away. That he had thought of it, she knew very well. It was in his eyes when he looked at her. It was in his persistence in coming back, day after day, although he took no more joy in it than she did.

It was flattering, somewhat. He was not tired of her.

Yet.

When she told him what she had to tell him...

She rose slowly. Her maid and her guard rose with her, watching her. She wanted to scream at them, to thrust them away from her. She set her teeth and advanced, at a dignified pace, toward the privy.

oOo

The day dragged itself through what had become its pattern. She remembered little of it. She had duties, which she did. None lingered beyond the doing.

She knew that Aidan had been taken away to the atabeg. She could not make it mean anything. He would come back unharmed, and scarcely inconvenienced. No mere mortal lord could be a match for him.

And, damn him, he knew it.

In the House of Ibrahim, they took the nightmeal after the sunset prayer: the men first, the women after, when the men had eaten their fill. Tonight Joanna had no appetite; as she had taken to doing, she retreated to the garden, to feel the cool of the evening, to breathe sweet air. She never lingered long: only until the flies had found her. Even so, it was almost enough.

It was a long, scented, fly-stung moment before she realized that she was alone. The women all lingered over their dinner. Samin the eunuch, for what reason God knew and she hardly cared, had not followed her.

She had waited, hoped, prayed for this. She glance about. Nothing human stirred. She darted toward the wall, and the gate which she knew was there, deep hidden in greenery. There were thorns, which she had not expected; she cursed as they sank claws into her. But the gate was as it had always been, small, weathered, its latch long broken and never mended. She slid through it, not easily for all the vines that wove about it, but the other side was clear, facing the back of a little pavilion. No one lingered there or anywhere that she could see, or that she could hear through the pounding of her heart.

She went slowly, pausing more than once to remember where she was. Dusk made it all different. There was jasmine where she remembered roses, and the pomegranate tree that had shade the path was gone.

She found its stump by stumbling against it. She stopped. This was idiocy. She should go back where she belonged. She was not sure she wanted him. What if he did not want her?

Then be damned to him. She knew the way surely, now. Round the rose arbor, past the fountain, and there was the loom of the house, the glimmer of white that was the rail of its gallery. Painted iron. They said that witches and nightfolk could not abide it: it seared them like fire.

They knew nothing of this one, with his predator's eyes and his affinity for fine steel.

She was not the hoyden she had been, but she could still climb a trellis, particularly in eastern trousers. It groaned under her weight, but held. She grasped the rail and hung there, and paused to breathe. The muezzin's wail nearly made her lose her grip.

It was safety. They would still be away from their sleeping places, all the younger uncles and cousins who were housed here: lingering over their dinner, praying together there or in the mosque, many of them ready to go out afterward in search of the night's pleasures.

She pulled herself up and over the rail, and nearly fell. One of Aidan's hellions grinned at her: Raihan, the half-Frank, whose dour face was only for strangers. He offered his hand. She took it, and let him steady her on the tiles. He let go quickly.

He knew. They all did. And she was in no mood for pretending at secrets. “Is he there?” she asked.

Raihan shook his head. “Not yet, lady.”

Her heart chilled. “He's — still — ”

“Oh, no, lady!” he said with swift solicitude. “He came back hours ago. He's at dinner.”

Of course. Where else would he be?

It was only Raihan on guard, alone and glad of the company. Joanna left him at his post by the door, and went in slowly. There was a lamp lit, illumining a room that might have been anyone's, small and bare. The mat was spread, the coverlet arrayed on it, a robe laid out. Aidan was the wonder and the despair of the harem, tall as he was, needing garments new and not made over from the common stock. The cousins liked to giggle over the length of them, and wonder aloud if all of him was likewise endowed.

She settled on the mat. When sitting wearied her, she lay down. The flutter in her middle lessened. The edge of fear receded: fear of the Assassin, fear of being discovered here, fear of the hunt that would, inevitably, catch her. Aidan would find her first; he would defend her. If she did not tell him yet. If —

She must have slept. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, he was there, sitting on his heels, watching her. His face wore no expression at all.

Then he smiled, and she had no will left. She was on him, clinging to him, drinking him in until surely she would drown.

Even he had to come up for air on occasion; and she was mortal. When she pulled back, she was in his lap, and he was laughing in delight. She was grinning herself, even though she wanted to hit him. Because —

No. She must not think of that. Think of him; of the light in his eyes, making them strange; of the warmth of his body, the strength of his hands, the joy in him that she was there, escaped, free. How great it was, she could well see: his robe was light, its belt lost somewhere in their greeting, his shirt and drawers of silk, concealing nothing of consequence.

“I was going to come to you,” he said, “if you hadn't come to me first.”

She hardly heard him. “I should go back. They'll be looking for me.”

“Not now.”

She stared at him.

He smiled. “Yes,” he said as if she had spoken. “I've added a touch or two of my own. You've decided to sleep in the garden, where it's cool and quiet. Your maid is watching over you.”

Dura, who was terrified of Aidan, who endured him for love of her mistress. Joanna frowned. “Will it work?”

“Until dawn, it should. I'll go back with you. We won't be seen.”

She wished that she could be as sure of it as he sounded. She had been mad to venture this. She had been worse than mad. With a little more time, she might have cured herself of him. Now the sickness was worse than ever. The thought of dawn, of leaving him, of going back to her cage and her fears and her wretched few moments of his presence, tightened her fingers on his arms and wrung from her a gasp of protest.

“I wish,” she said fiercely. “I wish we could run away and never come back.”

“We can,” he said. “When I've fulfilled my oath.”

She stiffened. “Yes. There's always that. Isn't there?”

“Only a little while longer,” he said. “That's all. Then, if you want it, we'll go. The world is wide. I'd joyfully span it with you.”

Her tension eased not at all. “What if I asked you to forget your oath? To take me now and carry me far away, and thwart the Assassin as he'd never expect. Would you do it?”

He barely hesitated. “I can't.” It was gentle, but there was no yielding in it. “I've made too many promises, set too much in train.”

Understanding flooded, blinding her. She thrust herself away from him and stumbled to her feet. “The atabeg. He called you to him. You made a bargain.”

Aidan nodded. “He banished me from Aleppo. He thinks I'm a spy; I may have dissuaded him, but my presence does nothing for his peace.”

She drew a breath. Suddenly she could have laughed, or wept, or shouted aloud. She asked with barely a tremor, “When do we leave?”

“I,” he said, “must be gone by tomorrow's sunset.”

“We're going to have to be quick, then, or we'll never be ready. If we begin now — Grandmother should know, and Karim — ”

“They know,” he said. His voice gentled. “I am going, Joanna. You will stay here.”

“And be killed the moment you leave?”

He checked for the fraction of a breath. “I'll lure the Assassin away, as I deceived your kin tonight. When we're far from here,I'll face him and cast him down. He'll never come near you.”

“How do you know?” she demanded. “How do you
know?”

“Joanna,” he said with mighty patience. “Think. If you are riding with me, on such a ride as this will be, what can you do but chance being killed if my vigilance fails again? Here at least you are with kin; you have duties; you are safe, and loved, and needed.”

“And you need not fret your mind over me.”

“I'll always do that, no matter where you are. But if you're here, I'll fret less.”

“I don't want to stay,” she said. “I won't. I've had enough of being locked in cages while you fly free.”

“Even to save your life?”

“My life is no more or less safe whether I go or stay. My sanity is another matter.”

He was, when it came down to it, male. He refused to understand. “You can't go.”

“I will. Lock me up if you like. I'll break free. I'll follow you on foot if I have to. I'm not staying in this city without you.”

He sucked in his breath. She flung herself at him, bore him down. He did not try to fight her. She sat on him, searing him with her temper. He winced. “Lady — ”

“I'm going. If you want to lure the Assassin, what better bait than my living self? And no need to wear yourself out in working your magic from so far away.”