Sandstorm (22 page)

"I see," Isra said with a laugh, and leaned up, body pressing against Sahayl's, warm and slick from the water, smelling of soap, and dragged him close for a kiss.

Sahayl kissed him back, relief and happiness pouring through him. "I thought I'd somehow ruined everything."

"No," Isra said slowly, shaking his head. "It is only that you reminded me of things I must think about." He moved away and climbed from the bath. "I wonder if we have time for breakfast."

Sahayl watched him go, shaking his head. He wondered how Isra kept up with his own ever changing moods. Levering himself out of the bath, he slipped into one of the thin linen robes hung on hooks along one wall, then strode back to his room.

He stopped short to see two people at his table.

"Good morning," Shihab said cheerfully. "I thought we could all have breakfast together, since we were unable to drink last night."

Bahadur pointed to Shihab. "He made me."

Sahayl chuckled. "Good morning, Shihab. Bahadur."

"Have fun last night, after we left?" Shihab asked, his grin shameless.

Feeling his cheeks heat, Sahayl turned away from the two men to find his clothes, ignoring Shihab's teasing laughter. "What transpired with the assassin?" he asked.

"Changing the subject," Shihab said in a loud whisper to Bahadur, then yelped when the larger man smacked his backside. Making a face, he began pouring tea into four cups and relented. "We left him with the prison guards, tried to get more out of him without success, then left a report for my father and found a bed of our own." He grinned and started to say something more, but it turned into another yelp as Bahadur pinched him. He glared. "Stop making me behave."

Bahadur snorted and sipped his tea.

"I might have known you'd be here," Isra said as he entered Sahayl's room. He took a seat at the table directly across from Shihab. "If I here one single word from you that I don't like, you will be wearing this tea." He lifted his cup and sipped the tea in question, then reached out and snagged a small bit of fruit and pastry from one of the trays.

Sahayl, dressed now in dark blue, sat down beside Isra. Silence fell as all four began to eat, interrupted only occasionally by a comment on the food or tea, taunts flying between Isra and Shihab. Sahayl exchanged amused glances with Bahadur, and caught himself admiring him, startling himself - but it would be stupid to deny that Bahadur was striking, the calligraphy eye-catching, beautiful but not delicate, and everything was enhanced when Bahadur smiled.

Shihab licked honey from his fingers as he finished eating. "The ceremony accepting you into the royal family is set for this evening, to be followed by a full banquet. If you think we've been drinking a lot so far…"

"I doubt I will survive," Sahayl said with a laugh. "Are you certain I should be made a Prince, when I am so easily done in by simple wine?"

"There is nothing simple about wine," Isra said with a sniff.

Shihab snickered. "If Isra can manage to make himself an expert, you'll be fine, Ghost Sheik.

Rather, Highness."

"Highness," Sahayl said with a sigh. "I still don't believe people will be speaking to me when they say that." He spread his hands toward Bahadur and Shihab. "You should call me Sahayl, please."

"As you wish, Highness," Shihab said with a wink, dodging away before Bahadur could pinch him again. "So what shall we do until the ceremony? Want to sneak off to the city? The bazaar should be at its peak this time of day, the crowds are fabulous."

"If you like being crushed to death," Isra replied with a snort. "We're not going into the city.

We've a journey home to prepare for, a ceremony, an assassin to interrogate and we must expect other attempts to be made on Sahayl's life."

Sahayl set his cup down suddenly, and looked across the table at Bahadur. "I never thanked you properly for saving my life, Bahadur. I owe you a great debt."

"There is no debt, Ghost Sheik. Prince." Bahadur shook his head. "Sahayl."

Sahayl nodded, and said nothing more, but silently vowed to find a place for Bahadur upon their return to the Desert. Jackal really was a Tribe of fools, to so poorly treat a man as strong and honorable as Bahadur.

He brought his straying thoughts back around "I guess we had best see to this assassin, though I wonder if he will break."

"I can always do to his arms what I did to his legs," Isra said.

"Or destroy his hands," Bahadur said with a grunt. "See how much money he makes killing men in their bedchambers then."

Shihab rolled his eyes. "I knew these two would get along once they began speaking to one another. As for me, I think we should just let him rot. Shah's men know better the questions to ask, and in a few hours you will be Prince. While they can still gain by killing you after the ceremony, they stand to lose more if they are caught. Killing a visiting savage is quite different from killing the King's brother."

"Brother," Sahayl said, shaking his head, bemused. "I came here for help, not to become a Prince."

Shihab snickered. "Shah does this sort of thing to people all the time."

"Makes them princes?" Sahayl asked.

"Confounds them," Shihab answered with a grin. "Why do you think his council is always so mad at him? From the men in his harem to the way he treats his wife as an equal to having a savage for an advisor - and now one for a brother - on top of all sorts of other things; it's little wonder, I guess, why so many people are mad at him"

"I hadn't realized your father's presence was a problem."

Shihab shrugged. "They don't like anyone not wholly and unquestionably of Tavamara being that close to the throne. With good reason, but my father is as Tavamaran as I am." He grimaced. "It had actually started to smooth out when my mother entered the picture. I'm afraid some of them never forgave my father for that."

"I've been curious about your upbringing, I admit," Sahayl said. "You're clearly eastern, but western looking. Saa, the contrast can be quite strange."

"It can certainly be frustrating," Shihab said. He smiled, but there was little of his usual levity in it. "My mother ran away from home not long after she had me. Her husband had died in a fall from his horse. She had no family of her own and her husband's family was…not the kindest. The marriage was an arranged one - she was wealthy, they had a good name for a woman who was essentially an orphan. When her husband died, his family tried to take the child away, raise it their way, force her out of the picture. My mother, to say the least, was not pleased. She hopped onto the first ship she could and wound up here." His smile softened as he continued, fondness replacing the unhappiness. "She met my father in the market, when he helped her with a merchant who tried to accuse her of stealing. They met again several days later, again by chance, and after that my father kept seeking her out.

Things almost didn't work out, because my mother was afraid her already having a child would displease my father…"

Shihab's grin turned into the familiar mischievous one they all knew so well. "But he followed her home one night and discovered her secret, then demanded she marry him. A few days later they were married, with the King's blessing, and Ikram adopted me. I was maybe two then."

"I still say it sounds like one of those stories the women were forever buying at the book stalls," Isra said as he finished. "Honestly, it's no wonder you're impossible to live with."

Sahayl looked at Shihab thoughtfully. "It must have been hard for your mother, to have not only to start a new life in a whole new country, but to do while taking care of a child. I can see where you come by your strength, shadowfire."

The smile Shihab gave Sahayl was sweet, and he leaned over the table to press a brief, soft kiss to Sahayl's lips. "Thank you, my Prince."

"You're welcome," Sahayl said, staring in surprise a moment.

Isra rolled his eyes. "Any excuse will do for you, won't it, Shihab?"

"When have I never needed an excuse?" Shihab asked, grin turning shameless. "Do you feel left out, Isra? Would you like a kiss too?" He snickered. "Didn't get enough last night?"

"That's it," Isra said, launching himself across the table, landing hard on Shihab, barely noticing as he knocked the table hard enough to knock over all the dishes, oblivious to the way Sahayl and Bahadur scrambled out of the way.

Sahayl shared a look with Bahadur, and they laughed even as they went to go tear the two wrestling men apart.

Sahayl felt very much like panicking.

Give him a fight to the death beneath the blazing heat of the Lady's sun any day.

He held out his right hand when an attendant handed him a heavy gold ring set with the royal crest. He slid it onto the third finger of his right hand, where he used to wear the ruby ring marking him as the Ghost Sheik. When he finished, Shah took his hand in his own and lifted them into the air. "Welcome my new brother," he shouted to the gathered crowd, and Sahayl barely managed to keep from recoiling from the cheers and cries.

He heard Shah chuckle faintly and fought not to roll his eyes. "Saa, I think perhaps having a brother will be interesting," he said, words audible only to Shah.

"I never had any siblings," Shah mused aloud. "This will, indeed, be interesting. I suppose it's just as well I am past the age where older brothers torment their younger."

"Are you past that age?" Sahayl asked.

Shah chuckled but otherwise made no reply as his wife stepped forward.

The Queen of Tavamara was renowned for her beauty, the daughter of a prosperous lord who hailed from the foothills of the Great Mountains. Dressed in pale lavender and silver, her hair sparkling with jewels, more at her throat and wrists, with a harem of equally beautiful women nearby, she was easily the equal of her husband. She reached up and kissed Sahayl's cheek, laughing softly as she pulled away and turned to her husband, amber eyes sparkling. "I think I married the wrong brother, husband," she said loudly. "Why was this one kept secret from me?"

Shah laughed. "I was hoping to save him, wife. It is a King's duty to sacrifice himself for his country after all."

Queen Fahima laughed, the sound rippling out across the crowded room. "I suppose worse sacrifices have been endured by the noble Queens who have come before me."

Throughout the court room the assembled laughed at the familiar antics of their King and Queen, and gradually the room began to empty, as the nobility presented themselves to offer formal congratulations and then moved on to the banquet hall.

How he was expected to remember all their names and titles, Sahayl didn't know. Thank the Lady he would be returning to a world that made sense tomorrow.

Three hours felt much more like ten when everything at last came to an end and the royal family and their attendees made their own way to the banquet hall. "I think I preferred being a Sheik. How do you do this every day?"

"It's not always this bad," Shah said. "Many of them were faces I have not seen in some time." He waved his hand at the closed doors and the nobles beyond them. "No doubt they were hoping to curry favor with my brother, as they failed to do so with me. Others were merely curious to see my 'savage' sibling." He smiled. "The banquet will be more relaxing."

Sahayl laughed. "If I fall asleep in my wine, brother, it will be your fault entirely."

Fahima snickered. "Remind me, brother in law, and when Shah is not paying attention I shall tell you the stories I know of when he was quite young and still learning how to drink wine.

There is one particularly amusing anecdote his nurse told me involving a well…"

"This is what comes from not being strict with one's wife," Shah said, but he lifted Fahima's hand as he spoke and kissed the back of it, escorting her to her seat as they reached their table at the far end of the banquet hall, raised up on a dais so that the royal table was higher than all the others.

Sahayl smiled and took his place, then looked warily between Isra and Nanda, who sat on his left and right as they had his first meal in the palace. "So will this be another lesson in wines?"

"Of course," Nanda said, the faintest of smiles curving his lips. "For our new Prince, only the finest wines will do. Summer Sun, Midnight Tryst, Dark Moonlight, Advent of Spring…" He smirked as he reached for a carafe filled with a wine that seemed at moments to be red, then purple, then blue. "This one no doubt is too bitter for the desert rose…" Nanda ignored Isra's snarl. "It's called Twilight, and you'll find it an excellent start, Highness, to a meal as lavish as this."

Isra sighed and reached for a carafe of dark green wine. "Nonsense. Mountain Forest is much more suited to rich food." He held a dish up for Sahayl to taste once Nanda had finished serving him the Twilight.

Sahayl's gaze slid to Shah. "You did this to me on purpose."

Shah smirked. "What are younger brothers for if not to torment?"

The table erupted in laughter and the meal continued, conversation a mix of taunts, jests, amusing stories, and the ongoing feud between Nanda and Isra. What seemed like hundreds of dishes were brought out as the meal progressed, wines refilled or exchanged as rapidly as the carafe's could be emptied, always something to match each dish and course, some to be sipped at, others to be drunk quickly, some for food, others to enjoy slowly once the performances began.

"I think I am being spoiled by my time here," Sahayl said as the latest performance, a dance by two women of the Queen's harem, drew to an end. "I miss my home, but my visit here was not what I expected it to be and I will miss it as well."

"We are glad, brother, that we did not send the savages running off in disgust at our lazy, civilized ways." Shah winked and accepted the wine Witcher held to his lips. "You are still planning to leave tomorrow?"

"Yes," Sahayl replied, "though I fear I will be leaving with quite the headache." Chuckles rippled around the table. "So what is next?" he asked as the servants took away empty trays and replaced with piles of sweets and fruit, replacing the wines with a brand new spectrum.

He smile ruefully as yet more wine was poured, careful not to move too much as his head spun, but obediently drank the wine Isra held to his lips, something a pale, pale blue in color.