The Companion (14 page)

He swallowed. “Yes, do,” he managed. Did she know that he could see the pulse beating in her throat? His veins were scratchy with pain.

“Perhaps you can help me. I have been studying scrolls that hint at the location of Kivala.” He raised his eyes, hoping his dread did not show there. She went on. “I never got to see the old Imam who had been there, but perhaps the scrolls will tell me.”

“Knowing the location now will do you no good in London,” he said repressively.

“We all like to feel vindicated,” she said, shrugging. “I almost have it. The texts are quite specific as to the position of the moon over the spine of the world and the time of year. But where is this ‘spine’? One thinks of the mountains just south of Addis Ababa, yet there are no sandstone washes like those at Petra. Perhaps the Atlas, but they stretch for hundreds of miles.”

God, she really did know where it was! If the text was so specific, perhaps others would find it east of the Atlas Mountains and south of the Rif, too. But what did he care, as long as he was far away in England?

“You seemed to know something of the city,” she continued. “You said when I first came on board that it was evil. And so the texts seem to confirm.”

“Do they?” He thought he might choke.

“ ‘And in the desert,’ ” she quoted, “ ‘there is a great evil, born of the sky, laid in the earth, sustained by the blood of men. It is manifest in the Temple of Waiting that is carved into the rock of Kivala, poison to man’s soul as well as to his body. For he who mingles blood with the blood of the Powerful One shall eat that power at the cost of his soul. Death and age, nor wounds nor blood, will not worry him.’ And so I thought of you, with that last part, you know, and I remembered what you said about the city, damping my pretensions, I expect.” She looked at him with a prosaic expression. “So I thought you might have been to Kivala, and could tell me exactly how to locate the ‘spine of the earth.’ ”

He stood. The chair tipped backward with a crash. “I can tell you nothing,” he rasped. He staggered against the table, unseeing. The chess pieces crashed to the ground. Then he was out the door. Blindly he wondered where on this small ship he was proof against her prying questions. He glanced aloft. She could not follow there. He swung himself into the ratlines and scrambled up to the maintop, bending backward to grab the futtock shrouds. A ship’s boy sat on the folded studding sails. Ian growled a command to run up to the crosstrees or choose another mast. But then he realized that this boy was the answer to his most urgent dilemma.

“Come here, boy,” he whispered, and drew on the strength that flowed in his veins. He let it shine out through his eyes to quiet the boy. He would take just enough to make it to Gibraltar. No, perhaps that would be too much for a single boy to provide in Ian’s depleted state. He would send this one below when he had taken only a little and will another aloft. Just a sip, if a sip he could manage, and perhaps the evidence of his activities would go unnoticed.

The wind has picked up. Thank the gods of sky and sea
, Beth thought as the day died. They might make Gibraltar tomorrow, and that might soothe Mr. Rufford’s strangled nerves. He had been nowhere in evidence all evening—not an easy feat in a ship not two hundred feet long. His cabin had been
dark. No one had seen him. It was most strange. Perhaps it was her talk of Kivala. But no, he had been upset even before she raised that topic.

Beth went down to the surgeon’s cabin. “Dr. Granger?” The surgeon had one of the ship’s boys under the skylight and was peering at his neck.

The man glanced up at her. He seemed to be better once out of sight of land, for she had not seen him drunk for days. “Here for Mrs. Pargutter’s draught?” he asked.

She shrugged agreement and smiled. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”

“Not at all. Callow here is not in danger of dying. He has two insect bites, rather inflamed. I bled him, and he will answer now.” He turned to the cabinet that held the dried herbs and drugs that made up his cure for seasickness.

Beth nodded to the young man. “I hope you are not in distress, sir?”

The boy straightened and puffed out his narrow chest. “No, ma’am. I only came because the bo’sun said they wasn’t natural, like, and I was havin’ dreams—like a fever, maybe.”

Beth’s eyes opened involuntarily. Two round wounds, slightly swollen, pricked Callow’s neck right over the main artery. She saw them as from a distance, heard the grinding of herbs in Granger’s mortar, the creaking of the wooden walls. The surgeon asked whether the tincture of laudanum was sufficient to assure Mrs. Pargutter rest. She managed some answer.

Two round wounds—she could not help but recognize them. Would they leave two round white scars? She had seen such scars, repeated many times, on another body in the ship.

“I would think he had been bitten by a bat,” Granger said conversationally, breaking all his patients’ confidences without compunction, “or perhaps a rat if there were any large enough. But the
Beltrane
is not producing rats of that size yet,” he laughed, “and we are far from Brazil.”

“Why Brazil?” she asked, transfixed by those two round wounds.

“Because there is a bat there that drinks blood, and the wound here is right over the carotid artery.” Granger turned to mixing the draught.

Drinks blood? “How. . . . how dreadful.”

“Not according to the bat. Some bats like fruit, and some, by nature, like blood. It isn’t fatal to their victims, and the poor beasts can’t help it, certain. Vampire bats, they call them.”

“I hope you recover fully,” she murmured to Callow as she took the draught. A thousand thoughts raced through her mind. Was Mr. Rufford’s nemesis here upon the boat? How could that be and he did not know it? Perhaps he did know it—that was why he was so distracted. She knew his condition was catching. But Callow could not have shared his blood. . . . In any case, the scars on his body related to his servitude, not his disease, did they not?

She almost stumbled into Mr. Rufford. She looked up and saw in his countenance questions, concern, but none of the distracted distress of last night.

“Miss Rochewell, are you well?” The rumble of the voice in his chest was always disturbing, all the more so tonight.

“Yes. Yes, sir, I am.” She pushed a wisp of hair behind her ear, searching his face. What would he say about Callow? She must know. “But young Callow is not.”

His brows drew together. “The ship’s boy? Is he ill?” He stared beyond her to the hatchway. His expression was nothing less than horrified. “I should perhaps look in on him. You will excuse me, Miss Rochewell,” he said, not looking at her but focused entirely on the stairs to the orlop, “if I postpone our game.”

He hurried down the ladder with a grace he could not have achieved last night. Indeed, as she watched him go, she thought she had never seen a clearer embodiment of power. Surmises swirled in her mind, half-fearful theories forming and melting. What was her mystery doing now? Did she truly want to know?

She did. But she could not follow him without revealing herself. Instead, she waited on the deck where he must reappear.

Appear he did. Before he saw her standing in the shadows where he had left her, his face was illuminated by the light from below. Sadness. An incredible regret. Shame? Loathing? He sucked in the sea air and lifted his face to the stars, unseeing.

“The surgeon says he will recover,” she whispered. “A passing weakness, no more.”

Her low voice yanked him away from his thoughts. She watched him try to mold his expression into one of bland civility. He was not successful. “Miss Rochewell, you’re still here,” he said in a choked voice. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure. The young are resilient.” A crooked smile strained for nonchalance, but he could not hold it and looked away.

She did not have the heart to ask him what had caused the marks. He knew. That was evident. But he would never tell her the truth when he was so clearly devastated by his knowledge. She began to suspect that there was someone or something hiding on the ship. What was Mr. Rufford so afraid of?

The night sea heaved under the keel. Wind sang in the rigging. The all-pervasive fecund scent of the sea drifted just below the smell of tar and wood, hemp and paint, and, faintly, cinnamon. She stood just behind his shoulder and felt the incredible distance between them. His hair escaped its confinement and wisps swirled around his face as he stared into the night, one hand on the shrouds. At last he clenched his eyes shut, then opened them slowly.

“My apologies. I am no fit company tonight.” Still he did not look at her. “Please excuse me from my obligation.” He bowed briefly and stalked forward into his cabin.

Beth stared after him for some time, her back against the wall of the quarterdeck. Whatever had happened to this man had happened in North Africa. He had disappeared, for something like two years. He was held prisoner and treated badly. His scars said that. He had acquired a “condition,” which gave him strange abilities. And one of her scrolls might just mention what had become of him. What had it said? “Death and age, nor wounds nor blood, will not worry him. Yet his needs will become unclean.” Ahhh! And what did that last part
mean? She chewed her lip. Perhaps she would just spend this night studying the scrolls with new eyes.

She had not quite left the mysteries of the land she loved behind her. That might be a relief or a burden. She did not yet know. But was she not exactly suited to sort out those mysteries? It was what she had spent her life doing. The Dark Continent had followed her on board the
Beltrane
. She would force it to yield up one last of its secrets. And she would be careful. Something had Mr. Rufford afraid. Suddenly so was she.

Ian sat on his rocking cot with his head in his hands. It had not gotten easier. Each time he must feed, the disgust he felt for himself was as powerful as that first time. What if young Callow had died? He thought he had been careful to take only enough to weaken, but in the first moment the girl had told him that Callow was in sick bay, he had been sure the boy was dead. And Watkins had not even declared his injury yet. Perhaps he would not, if Ian’s suggestion to him that it was a pleasant dream of childhood lasted. If the boy wore his stock, no one would be the wiser. Ian leaned against the cupboard. Already he could feel the faint glow of hunger in his veins. But it was only two days now until Gibraltar with luck and wind.

Revulsion overcame him once again. He might dream of England, but he would be taking the nature
she
had thrust upon him back into the bosom of his homeland. How could he expect a normal life when he must suck human blood to sustain himself? No choice, alas. He could not kill himself. He had not the strength to deny the hunger when it burned through his veins. He could only try to moderate his parasitic nature.

God! Why had he been afflicted thus? There must be no God, not as men supposed him to be. The universe was cold and random, and evil grew up unchecked, with no one to regret it except its victims. He shook himself. What use these thoughts? Long hours locked in his cabin with his regret were not healthy for his sanity. But he could not be trusted at large. He would stay confined here until they reached Gibraltar.

And the girl . . . she had looked at him so strangely as she reported that Callow was in sick bay. How much did she know or guess? She had read him a description of the temple. She recognized the depiction of his condition. What else did her texts say about him?

He raised his head. Actually, what they said might be useful to him as well. Perhaps there existed some arcane formula for getting back his humanity. He must press her upon the subject. And yet . . . he must not let her know what he was. She might accept the healing, even the strength, but she would not accept him sucking blood, and she had no idea about his ability to compel others. That she would never countenance. Ahh, the compulsion. Perhaps that was the greatest evil. It was certainly his greatest temptation. His breath came shallowly as the desert night reached out for him. He knew firsthand the evil of compulsion.

Fedeyah, for that was the tall Arab’s name, leaned into the silk curtains to talk to Asharti and then called the caravan to a halt. Ian fell to his knees in the sand as the litter was lowered carefully to the ground by the four bearers. He knew what stopping often meant for him. The hot, dry air made the stars pulse in the night sky. Or maybe it was the blackness pulsing at the edge of Ian’s vision. He shook his head to clear it. It had been . . . how long since he had first been called to Asharti’s tent? He did not know. Months. But he was weakening. His body bore the marks of her teeth on both sides of his neck and on the inside of his elbows, the large vessels between groin and thighs. Recently she had begun to rip his flesh, too, so she could lick his blood as well as suck. He was torn in a half a dozen places. She never took enough to drain him. He ran his dry tongue over cracked lips. Water rations to the slaves had been cut, what few slaves were left. The caravan had shrunk as they used supplies
.

Fedeyah returned to the palanquin as the camels up and down the line sank to the sand and settled themselves. “How much farther, Worshipped One? Shall I take a sextant reading?”

“Yes,” came the throaty voice in Arabic. She spoke a dozen languages and used whichever she pleased at any time. “We must be near.”

“Allah let it be so,” Fedeyah acknowledged. “Will you want your favorite?”

“Water him with the rest. Then wash him, inside and out.” The silk dropped into place
.

A reprieve! But she would want him later. And he would serve her. What did she mean, wash him inside? He felt the rope at his wrist jerked and he stumbled to his feet. He was not allowed a chain after he had used it against his keeper. The smell of water from the barrel being opened flooded over him. Fedeyah pulled him away from the caravan, now busy with watering the slaves, toward an outcropping of tumbled rock up a little sandy incline. Fedeyah wanted to talk of England. The Arab found some time to talk to Ian almost every night. Ian glanced behind him. Was he not to be watered? She had given permission for him to be watered. If Fedeyah took him away he would miss his chance. He sagged as he stumbled after the Arab. He should welcome death from thirst. But his body was cowardly. It longed for water
.