Her Pirate Master (11 page)

“Come, we must go.”

“No.” She pulled away from him, staring blankly at the wall. The priest, what he’d said about Marc Antony, surely it couldn’t be true, but in her heart she felt that it was. Oh, if only she had been able to get the holy relics to her Mistress, Arsinoe could have shown them to him, could have explained what her being in possession of them meant, that she had the right to the throne. The people would have rallied behind her, they would have known she spoke the truth, the relics would have given them confidence, would have been seen as a sign that the gods favored her cause.

“You spoilt it all,” she said, turning to him wonderingly. “You. I trusted you, and you gave them to him just like that, with no thought. How could you? How?” Rage blinded her. She hit out at him with her fists, her legs.

“Imi!” At first, he just tried to defend himself, blocking her blows with his arms. “Stop.”

“I hate you. I hate you. You’ve spoilt everything, and you don’t care. You’re just a pirate. You don’t care about her, about Egypt.” The tears ran hot down her face. “You just gave them to him.”

He grabbed her arms. She kicked him, narrowly missing his groin. He spun her around, pinioned her arms behind her back with one hand, and pushed her face–down to the ground.

“We don’t have time for this. We must go. If you don’t behave, I will carry you. Do you understand?”

“If you do, I will scream.”

“I am a pirate who has just sold a shipload of slaves to some very appreciative and wealthy customers. No one will trouble me, but if anyone does, I will say you belong to me.”

“I do not, you hateful and wicked man.”

“Can you prove that?”

He was right. She was a stranger in a foreign land, with no money, nothing. Nobody would care about her or try to help her. In any case, she had failed her mistress. She had trusted this man and he had betrayed her and sold Arsinoe’s future away, Egypt’s future. What did anything matter now? She sighed and her body went limp as all the fury left her in an instant.

“You must behave if I let you go.”

Imi shrugged. What choice did she have? She had failed in her mission, and now whatever she did or didn’t do was all the same to her. He flung open the doors, pulling her along. The sun had long since sunk below the hills, but, at the jetties, men still worked as hard as if it were still high in the sky. Imi barely registered them, keeping her eyes to the ground as Seleucus led her to a small lighter. They cast off quickly and were soon back on the ship.

“Go to the cabin,” he ordered, but gave her a small, gentle push in its direction. Imi went. She was close to tears again, but she didn’t want him to see her break down. She had even thought herself half in love with him. How stupid she had been.

“Seleucus.” She turned back to him.

He watched her, his eyes dark, his face grim.

“Yes?”

“You should have left me with them.”

“Sahman would have used you and then killed you or sold you.”

She considered this. Nodded.

“I would have deserved it. Without the relics . . . “ She spread her hands without finishing the sentence.

A bleak look stole over his face, but he said nothing. Imi turned and went to the lamp–lit cabin. She closed the door, then sank to the floor and drew her knees under her chin.

“Great Mother,” she whispered.

In the unanswering silence, she bowed her head and wept.

The cabin was completely dark when Seleucus entered a few hours later. At first, he stood in the doorway letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The oil in the lamp was all used up.

“Imi, are you . . . “ And then he saw her huddled on the floor. His heart thudded dully in his chest. In two strides he’d reached her.

“Are you alright? Imi!”

He felt her neck, her wrists, breathing a huge sigh of relief when he realized she was unhurt. For a dreadful minute he had feared she’d harmed herself. He picked her up and sat her gently on the bed before crossing to the cabin to light another lamp.

“Are we under sail?” she asked, staring at the opposite wall, not looking at him.

“Not yet.”

She nodded.

“Imi.” The name came out like a muttered prayer.

“Don’t.” She wouldn’t look at him. He saw the wretchedness in her face, and it tore at him.

“Darling, please.”

She turned to face the wall and curled into a ball.

“Do you want anything to eat?” he asked. He didn’t think she would, for he knew something of what she was feeling, but he couldn’t think of anything else to offer her. She was suffering terribly and might suffer still more, though he meant to do whatever he could to prevent it.

She didn’t answer him, and he stood watching her for a few more seconds. She didn’t know, couldn’t know how he’d felt when he realized she’d been taken from him. At first he’d waited on the wharf for her, fear stealing around his heart and choking him so that by the time the sky darkened, he was almost frantic with worry. He’d known she had gotten under his skin, but he hadn’t realized exactly how deep until he thought he’d lost her. He’d burst into thermopoliums and taverns, hunting through the customers. He had even asked at the temple thinking, hoping, that she’d gone there and lost track of time talking with her fellow believers. But she wasn’t there. A long–haired priestess had told him they hadn’t seen anyone of her description, and he’d resumed his search through the streets.

When Sahman had tracked him down to tell him of the kidnapping and the ransom price they demanded, he’d only just barely held himself back from strangling the man on the spot. Only this thought—if he did, he might never see Imi again—stopped him. So, he agreed to their offer and made only one demand of his own: her safe return. Sahman had laughed and said he could find a hundred like her in any town with the silver the priest would give him. Seleucus’s fingers had curled into fists, but he’d merely responded “no girl, no deal.” And so it had been done, and now she was back with him.

“Imi.”

She ignored him. For a minute more he watched her small, beloved back, and then he spun on his heel and left her alone.

*****

When she heard the door close behind him, Imi took a deep shuddering breath and closed her eyes, giving herself up to the darkness behind her eyelids. She wished she never had to open them again, never had to move. She heard a shout from on deck and a little while later, splashing as if one of the lighters had drawn up alongside. More splashing and then only a heavy, thick silence. Somebody had come on board, or perhaps left. It might have been Seleucus, but she didn’t really care. It had nothing to do with her. He had nothing to do with her. He had betrayed her. Perhaps she should never have trusted him, but she had and now she had let everyone down. If she ever saw her mistress again, she did not know what she would say to her or to the priest and priestess who had seen her off with such confidence. Seleucus should have left her with Sahman. She would have deserved whatever degradation Fate had planned for her as the Hittite’s slave. She would have submitted, done whatever was demanded of her, and each fresh, shameful thing would have reminded her of how she had failed. And so her life would be one of endless punishment. Thus, would she have atoned for her failure. But Seleucus had robbed her even of that, and now she knew she would never taste the pleasures of Paradise. Like the priest and Sahman and Seleucus, too, her heart would be weighed when her time on Earth was ended and would be found heavier, much heavier, than a feather.

She woke before the sun had yet risen to the shouts of the sailors and the flapping of the sails. They were on their way but . . . so soon? He had told the priest he would not leave for another day or more. Her stomach growled, and Imi burrowed deeper into the bed. She had no wish to get up or to leave the cabin.

The sides of the ship shuddered. The wood groaned and shrieked as if in protest, and she realized that it was plowing through the waves at a great pace. She wondered what was going on but had no intention of going on deck to ask. Seleucus had said they would stay in Delos for another day of trading, but now they were racing over the sea as if pursued by a vengeful god. The thought brought a derisive smile to her face. She hoped it was indeed so, and she hoped the god destroyed Seleucus first. The ship heaved and shook and plowed on as the cabin grew hotter under the morning sun. Imi sweated and reconsidered her options. She had swung her legs off the bed and was about to get up when a sudden impact almost threw her to the floor. On deck a chorus of triumphant shouts then the muted sound of clashing metal. Fighting! But who? Had Seleucus run afoul of other pirates? Was this why they had left Delos as if Seth himself pursued them?

Stumbling and lurching with each pitch of the ship, she made her way out of the cabin, fighting to stay on her feet.

The deck of Seleucus’s ship was strangely quiet. It was the nearby ship where all the noise was coming from. Imi stared, horrified, at the roil of men across the water separating the two ships. They hacked and sliced each other on a deck slippery with blood and gore. Most of the men still on their feet were Cilicians, Seleucus’s men, but their opponents fought on with a grim determination. Her eyes searched among the fighters until she found him.

Two men pressed him hard, evidently thinking that they could still turn the fight in their favor if they could only dispose of him. She flinched and cried out with horror as one of the men swung his axe at him, but Seleucus spun on his heel as his sword sliced through one man’s arm and he evaded the other man’s blow. He then dealt him a lethal one of his own. Imi took a deep breath. Goddess, if he had died! One of the remaining fighters from the other ship cried out “Pax,” and as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

The man who’d surrendered was rounded up with his men and tied up as the slaves had been on their way to Delos while Seleucus’s men threw the bodies of the dead over the side and tended to the injured. Other men washed down the deck. Beneath the surface of the sea, dark shapes flashed and she saw giant fish seize the bodies in their huge jaws. Repulsed, Imi said a silent prayer for each of the dead, knowing that she herself might end up like them, far from her family and those who would conduct the proper rites for her.

She didn’t understand what this pursuit and its bloody end had been about. Seleucus should have turned a more than princely profit on the slaves and the goods he’d sold in Delos even without considering the priest’s silver, so why had this fight been necessary? She stared at him as he talked to the man who had cried “Pax,” and she wished she could make out what he was saying. As if he felt her eyes on him, he looked up. A strange expression crossed his face: a mix of guilt, happiness, and pure love. Imi’s heart rose into her throat. This man, she didn’t understand him, didn’t understand him at all. She drew away from the ship’s side and went back to the cabin. She was no longer hungry.

*****

Minutes later, heavy steps thundered outside. She recognized Seleucus’s tread and barely had time to turn away from the door before he burst into the room.

“Imi.”

He came to stand beside the bed, and it was all she could do not to face him.

“Imi, will you not even look at me?”

She didn’t answer, and he heaved a deep sigh.

“I have something for you. Look. Please, Imi.”

Did his voice tremble? She twisted around, unable to hold out any longer against him.

She gave a start of surprise. He was dirty and disheveled, his clothes torn, but, more than that, a red scar, raised and glistening with blood, ran from the outside of his elbow diagonally to the inside of his wrist.

“I did not see you hurt,” she said, feeling a flash of anger. He could have died on that other ship.

“It is nothing.” He flicked his hand, dismissively. “Look.” He held out a linen–wrapped bundle she hadn’t even noticed he carried.

“What is it?”

“Open it. Go on.”

She took it from him and began to unwrap it. The dawning realization squeezed the air from her lungs. The casket. Her fingers traced the carvings. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. She opened it, still expecting some kind of terrible trick, but there the sacred relics were, all of them, the sistrum, the diadem, and the container with the holy hair. She hugged them to her chest. Tears pricked at the back of her eyelids, but she winked them back. She thought that if she started to cry now, she would never stop until she had delivered the articles safely into Arsinoe’s hands.

“How?” she asked.

“I never meant to let him keep them, but he had to believe they were his.” Seleucus’s words came in a rush. His eyes were bright with triumph. “I knew he’d already procured a ship to take them to Egypt even before we did the trade, you see.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I had two options: I could either kill him and Sahman after we’d made the trade or I could dispose of the man who was to take them to Cleopatra.”

“The other ship.”

“Yes, and I had to wait until we were well away from Delos so the priest would not know for a while yet what had befallen his courier. The priest himself I did not want to attack, as that would have brought on a great hue and cry and Delos would have been closed to me.”

“He’d said much the same about you.”

Seleucus nodded grimly. “This way is better. He cannot say much against me without exposing himself, and, in the meantime, perhaps your princess will have regained her throne.” He didn’t really believe it, but it was what Imi wanted, and he would give his right arm to achieve her heart’s desire.

“She will,” Imi said as she clutched the casket against her chest. “It is hers; she must.”

Seleucus shrugged.

“Are you happy now, Imi?”

“Seleucus, yes.” She flew up into his arms and drew back as suddenly, seeing him wince.

“Your arm.” He was hurt, and she had not even thought about tending to his wounds. Ashamed of herself, she put down the casket and ran to the pitcher of wine.

“Come,” she said, as she poured out a small amount onto the linen that had wrapped the box. “It will sting a bit,” she warned. He smiled, and she remembered what he’d said about being lashed when he was a Roman slave. The wine would not trouble him. She dabbed at his cut, paying particular attention to the parts that still bled. When she’d finished cleaning it, she made as if to wrap his arm in the linen, but he stopped her.