Sandstorm (17 page)

Shah chuckled. "Perhaps." He reached out and rang a small, silver bell resting on the table.

A moment later servants appeared, working quietly and swiftly, removing the trays of appetizers and several of the wines, replacing them with bowls of soup, plates of meat, bread, and vegetables as well a whole new spectrum of wines.

Isra selected a dark, gold-brown wine and poured it into a dish of palest pink china. From a tray in front of him he chose several bits of roasted meat, breathing in the spicy smell, smiling. "I haven't had this since I returned to the Desert."

"Enjoy," Shah said, then accepted the food Witcher offered, pale meat smothered in green and yellow herbs.

Nanda selected a wine that was almost orange in color and poured it into a dish of green glass, offering it to Sahayl. "Try this one, it's called Sunrise. It's quite sweet and goes well with nearly everything on the table." He sniffed. "Unlike the Desert Dusk your friend is drinking."

Isra leaned forward to see around Sahayl and glared at Nanda. "Clearly you prefer strong flavors that overwhelm the food. That is your problem."

"Why not let Sahayl try yours again?" Shihab asked slyly. "Let him decide."

"Be quiet!" Isra snapped.

Sahayl frowned.

"Shihab," Ikram said quietly, but in a tone that brooked no argument.

"Yes, father." Shihab subsided, but when Ikram looked away he smirked briefly at Isra, who scowled but kept his mouth shut. "Bahadur," he said. "Try this. I think you'll like it. It's made by the monks who hide away in the mountains." He passed over a clear crystal dish filled with a wine that was pale green in color. "It's called Evening Prayer."

Aikhadour and Beynum began laughing. Bey stole the carafe of wine and filled a new, dark green dish with the wine as Bahadur finished sipping from Shihab's. "Good, yes?"

"Yes," Bahadur said. "Still nothing like I'm used to, but it has…a hard punch of its own. This was brewed by monks you say? Why would monks need such as this?"

"Good question," Bey said. He grinned at Aik. "Do enlighten us, decadent monk."

Aik rolled his eyes. "Those of you who live down here with the sand and sun have never survived a winter full of snow and ice. Endure one of those and you will rapidly learn why we brew such things. Most of the winter it keeps us warm, and when it's not enough to warm it helps us forget we're cold."

"Then should I ever venture into snow, Lady forbid, I shall be certain to find monks to spend my time with." Bahadur refilled his wine dish.

Beynum grinned. "Yes, they're quite good for keeping warm."

Shah shook his head. "Behave, my pirate."

"He never has before," Nanda said, rolling his eyes. He reached out and chose a piece of the same dark meat Isra had taken before and held it to Sahayl's lips.

Sahayl took it, still clearly discomfited. "Are you certain I cannot feed myself?"

"That would be rude," Shah said, eyes sparkling with mirth. "You are the second highest ranking person at this table. I would be a poor King to ill treat a guest by making him feed himself. Besides, Nanda is enjoying training you on how to properly appreciate everything."

"Appreciate in all the wrong ways," Isra countered, then chewed on a piece of dark bread smothered with butter to hide a reluctant smile. As hard as he was trying, and despite Shihab's harassment, he was having fun. He loved his Desert, and hated the events that were waiting to be discussed here, but he was having fun.

Shah laughed. "Nanda, I do believe you have met your match."

"In a Desert savage," Witcher added with a grin. "I would say that does not surprise me, but I might find myself not sleeping very comfortably tonight."

"You might find that you won't wake up," Nanda replied tartly. He rose slightly on his knees and selected a small bit of a dark green vegetable dripping with spice-laden butter. "I think you'll like this, and as I said before it goes quite well the Sunrise. Ignore them."

"A lesser King would be jealous, Nanda," Shah said with a fond smile. "You're never this nice to the rest of us."

Nanda sniffed delicately and offered Sahayl another vegetable. "The rest of you need a firm hand." He shot Bey a quelling look. "Be silent."

Bey sighed loudly. "Yes, oh bossy one."

Bahadur laughed beside him. "If you will forgive my possible rudeness, I sense that were you of my Tribe you would wear many marks for disobedience."

The table once more burst into laughter, and Bey laughed louder than all of them. "If I were not fond of flouting rules, I would not be here. Disobedience, in my experience, gets much better results than doing as I'm told."

"Pirate," Shah said with a sigh, but his eyes were full of warmth as he looked at Beynum.

"Speaking of marks," Shihab interjected. "Can I ask what yours mean, Bahadur?"

Ikram looked despairingly at his son. "How can my son have turned out to be so rude?"

"Look at the environment in which I grew up," Shihab immediately replied, making Shah and his harem laugh. "Well?" he persisted, grinning impishly.

Bahadur didn't return it, expression taking on a gloomy edge. He touched the marks on his cheeks. "They mean many things, but the over all message is that I fell short of many things."

"I'm sorry," Shihab said contritely. "Given how effectively you captured me, I assumed they were high praise."

"No harm done, shadowfire. Some of them are fairly basic." Bahadur touched a finger to the lines on his right cheek. "My family name." He touched the small Jackal head on his forehead. "That I am a warrior, and one of notable skill." He brushed lightly over the calligraphy on his left cheek. "One who should have been a protector, but I lost the duel. Until my loss, my family had held that honor for many generations."

Around the table, those of and familiar with the Desert all winced in sympathy.

Shah tilted his head. "I am most curious to have this explained to me, but I do not want to continue what is obviously a painful subject. Permit to say, however, that my impression is that if you lost, it was for a very good reason. You do not look as though losing a fight is something that happens often."

"Your Majesty flatters me. I assure you there are any number of men in the Desert - in my Tribe - against whom I would likely lose. And I do not mind explaining, though my failures dishonor the Ghost Sheik."

"No," Sahayl said firmly, and Isra blinked at the way his strange shyness faded as his role as Sheik came to the fore. "From what I have learned to date, the Jackal Sheik and Amir were far from worthy of so fine a protector. In my Tribe, you will always be welcomed with honor and my favor."

Bahadur's eyes widened slightly, and Isra thought that the two of them had forgotten everyone else in the room. He bowed his head low. "You honor me, Ghost Sheik."

Isra caught Shihab's gaze, then turned to where his friend silently indicated, noting the way the King and Ikram spoke silently to each other, obviously about Sahayl. He looked back at Shihab, who gave a minute shrug. Giving a shrug of his own, Isra poured a sand-colored wine into a blue dish and sipped it as conversation resumed.

"Indulge a King's curiosity," Shah said, "and explain what we of Tavamara are missing."

Sahayl took up the task of explaining. "All Amir are given a protector once they are old enough to begin taking an active role in caring for their Tribe, and they keep those protectors as Sheik. Protectors are both bodyguard and assistant. In Ghost, the Amir chooses his protector."

"So too Falcon," Isra interjected.

"But in many Tribes, such as Cobra and Jackal, men fight for the honor," Sahayl continued.

"The duels are taken quite seriously. Families like Bahadur's, where the honor is won generation after generation, are not unusual." He frowned. "I have heard tales of Tribes where the fight is one to the death."

"Viper," Bahadur said, "but they are a bloodier Tribe than even Jackal."

"I see," Shah said with a nod. "So it is a matter of great honor."

"More than that," Ikram said. "Honor as Tavamara understands it is a very simple thing." He tapped his finger on a carafe filled with a pale pink wine, like the inside of a sea shell. "This would be honor to Tavamara." He pointed across the table to the carafe of Midnight still on the table. "That would be honor as the Desert understands it." He shrugged. "It is why I am a former son of Cobra, and why I could not send my son there - and why I always called upon Ghost rather than Cobra when we required Desert assistance. By abandoning my Tribe to live here, I dishonored my family, Tribe and the Lady." He motioned to Bahadur. "What he did was, in the eyes of Jackal, far worse."

"Yes," Bahadur said somberly, staring at his wine, then glancing up at Sahayl as he spoke.

"My family marks," he touched his right cheek, then moved to his left, dusting over a particular bit of scrolling calligraphy. "are negated by these here. Essentially I had a Tribe but no family. If my family had no son, then there was never any dishonor. When my former sister bears a son, he will continue the tradition unbroken."

"Have you a protector?" Shah asked, breaking into the unhappy tension.

Sahayl grinned, and Isra was struck by how boyish he suddenly seemed. "Yes. His name is Wafai, son of Masur, son of Ghost, son of the Lady of the Sands. He stayed behind to lead the Tribe in my absence. We have been friends since we tried to kill each other selecting horses as children."

"You should teach him to keep his guard up," Isra said acidly, suddenly feeling annoyed.

His comments made Sahayl laugh. "Saa, he was quite furious with himself for that mistake."

Isra sneered. "As he should be. If not for you, I would have had him."

"Saa, desert rose, I've no doubt he'd welcome another chance to prove you wrong."

Isra nearly spilled his wine, seeing red, head snapping up. "I have told you not to call me that, Ghost Sheik."

Sahayl looked chagrined, almost horrified. "My apologies. It was a slip. Perhaps I've indulged too much in the wines."

Muttering a curse, Isra turned away and reached for a carafe of a wine that was dark lavender in color. "Perhaps not enough wine," he said begrudgingly. "Nor will I permit you to stop before we've reached the dessert wines."

The tension eased at his words, and Isra ignored the way all were exchanging curious glances, looking up only briefly to glare at Shihab.

"Mention of the dessert wines does make me curious to see the debate continued," Sahayl said. "Saa, what wine is best then?"

"Morning Mist," Isra and Nanda said at the same time, then glared furiously at each other while the rest of the table roared with laughter.

Thirteen

Even with his headache, Sahayl felt much like he was in some strange dreamland.

The beautiful palace, the previous night's dinner that he would not soon forget, the handsome men that surrounded the King, every one of them so devoted and enamored it almost hurt to see. So much that would never survive in the rough life of the Tribes, taken so completely for granted by those who dwelt in the palace.

So much green; the gardens had left him gawking, the fountains had horrified and fascinated.

Truly he had not expected any of this when he'd determined to visit King Shahjahan.

It was little wonder Ikram so dearly loved his life in Tavamara.

As beautiful and magnificent as it was, though, Sahayl already ached to be home. He did not mind the days he spent here, so long as they remained only that - a few days. He missed the sun and the sand, the dark shade of his tent, the familiar sounds of his Tribe working diligently throughout the camp.

He wished Wafai were here with him, to make light of everything. Even with his father's brutal treatment and cold words, Sahayl had never felt anything less than an Amir who would someday be Sheik. He was used to being in charge, as exhausting a burden as it was. Here, he felt much like a child.

Like at dinner.

Lady have mercy on him, he hoped the meeting with the King he was headed for would not be like last night. It had been fun, but it felt in every way foolish to be fed by another like he was a babe incapable of doing it himself. Though…in the privacy of his own head, he had not minded the one time Isra had shared his own wine, determined to prove Nanda wrong. That hadn't felt silly. It had felt more like…something was being shared.

Sahayl forced his thoughts to stop wandering, and turned them back to fretting. As the meal had drawn to an end, Shah had requested that they speak together privately over breakfast.

The King's eyes had been even more intense than usual, and Sahayl had slept restlessly wondering what the King was up to.

Because it was obvious he was up to something, and whatever it was relied upon Sahayl -

though why, he couldn't begin to imagine. Nor did he particularly care, so long as it helped the Desert.

The meeting wasn't until late morning, still two hours away, but a lifetime of habit had forced him to rise early and he was far too restless to remain in his room. If he went where he shouldn't, hopefully someone would tell him so. But as he passed several guards and a smattering of servants, none did more than bow low and occasionally stare - and several maids he heard burst into whispers once they were past.

He truly wanted nothing more than to take Bloodmoon and race back into the Sands.

Stifling a sigh, hating to sound so ungrateful even in his own head, Sahayl continued wandering the halls, admiring and marveling over statues and paintings, mosaics in the floor and hangings on the wall.

To think all this was completely normal for so many people. No wonder they considered his people savage.

"Is my Lord looking for something in particular?" Sahayl spun at the sound of a voice, and stared for a moment at the guard who had spoken. Until then, they had all been silent. He looked quite young, surely not more than sixteen or so, which surprised Sahayl.

From the looks of the other guards, the young man was probably not supposed to be speaking. It also looked as though he would be reminded of that once Sahayl was out of sight.

"Merely wandering," Sahayl said. "I am afraid I do not quite know where to go. Should I not be here?"