The Crowded Shadows (14 page)

Without thinking about it, Wynter reached across and pressed gently on Christopher’s left hand, splaying the fingers out against his thigh. His hand would not quite flatten, the fingers being clawed slightly and incapable of straightening.

At this contact Christopher grunted and jerked forward, as though to get up. It was the first time he’d ever reacted badly to her touching his scars, but Wynter looked beseechingly at him and kept her hand firmly on top of his. Gradually, he leaned back against the tree, and watched, tense but unprotesting, as Wynter pushed his sleeve back and ran her fingers along the neat white ribbon of scar tissue that ran all the way from his missing finger to the crook of his arm. It must have been a massive infection indeed to have needed so long an incision to drain it.

“I almost lost it,” he said quietly. “If it weren’t for Razi
…”
Christopher bunched his hand into a fist and straightened it again. Wynter felt his muscles move under his skin. She slid her hand along his sinewy forearm and settled her palm against the warm hollow of his elbow. “After I got better, I lay in bed for weeks, just wishing I would die. Marcello thought I’d never recover.”

“But you did.”

“Aye. I did.”

Wynter tried to imagine that. Wondered what kind of strength it took to pick yourself up after something like that. She found it beyond the realms of her imagination.

“One day,” he said, “I just got up. I made my way down to the stables and I burnt everything.”

She clenched down hard on his arm. “What do you mean? Everything?”

“Everything. My guitars. My violins. All the music we’d collected over the years. My dad’s recorders, his mandolin, all our other little bits and pieces. I burnt them all because they’d never be aught but pain to me. Thankfully, Marcello caught me before I could burn my father’s trunk. I’m eternally grateful for that; it’s all I have left of him.” He looked at her. “It weren’t originally a dressing case, you see. It was an instrument case. All our gear fitted in it. In neat little compartments. Nice and safe. My dad had it made specially, he designed it.” Christopher’s voice became very quiet. “They sold it with me,” he said. “We were a job lot. Me and the case.”

“Christopher,” she whispered. His eyes were wide and bright. He was looking right at her, but she was not sure what it was he saw.

“It was desire for revenge that got me out of that bed, girly. I were a black seething pit of it. I worked daily to get my strength back, so that one day I’d be able to go and kill the bastards that had stolen my family, and stole my hands and
…”
He scrubbed his mouth, his eyes wide over the top of his hand. “They still had my girls, you see. My girls—the rest of my troupe.” He absently touched his cheek, just under his eye. “They had gone on ahead of me. To our new master. Already branded. Already out of my grasp. Beyond even Razi’s considerable power to save.” His eyes grew impossibly wide. “They might still be there for all I know, in that bloody place.”

“What place, Christopher?”

“The compound. André Le Garou’s compound.”

“André Le Garou?” asked Wynter. “The man that these Wolves call their father?” Christopher did not answer. He was very far away now, seeing things she could not. She persisted with her question, squeezing his arm gently.

“That is what they call their leaders… Father? And they are all considered his sons? Christopher?” She moved her head into his direct line of sight. “Chris?”

“They say that André’s compound is filled with music,” he said distantly. “All day and all night, musicians play there. Because André Le Garou, he
loves
his music.” He sneered at that. “Aye, he loves his music and he loves his… he loves his women.” He swallowed, his anger falling away to despair. “Women and music,” he repeated softly. “His harem… his bloody
brothel
… is just crammed full of artists, captured from all around the world.”

Christopher looked out blindly into the daylight. He was so very, very far away that Wynter wanted to grab him and hold him very tightly and say,
stop
.
Stop now. Come back. This is too much
. But he went on talking in his flat, dull voice and she went on listening, her hand on his arm.

“We were a gift for him, you see, the famous Garron troupe. As soon as the Wolves set eyes on us, they knew that their father would want us. And so they took us to him, or what were left of us after that bloody journey. More little monkeys for André’s zoo.”

He looked at Wynter then, really focused on her, really
seeing
her face instead of the memory pictures that had been there before. “Razi explained to me later how André has no right to call it a harem, how it’s nothing
like
a harem. He told me the very word
harem
implies protection and respect. André’s palace is nothing like that. The poor women… bullied and abused and shared amongst the Wolves. My poor girls,” he whispered desperately. “My poor
…”

“Why did they sell you, Christopher? And not your girls? Were you not—?”

“I weren’t ever meant to be sold, girly. I should have gone straight in with them. Only for I’m a
man
, you see, a
male
slave. There was no way that André would have allowed me to mingle with his women.”

He looked at her closely, hoping he wouldn’t have to spell it out. But he must have seen that Wynter didn’t really understand. “They would have to… I would have to be gelded first, you see.” He ignored her gasp of shock and went on, “André insists on doing
that
job himself. He don’t trust no one else to do it, for fear they damage the
goods
. He’s very good at it, apparently. No matter how old the slave, they very rarely die, very rarely even catch an infection.” Christopher smiled a bitter twisted smile at that. Wynter reached for his hands and squeezed them hard, but he couldn’t seem to feel her touch.

“No doubt he would have done a very neat job,” he murmured. “Had he ever got the chance. But Le Garou was away in Fez, and his sons had urgent business outside of town, so I was left in the care of Sadaqah al-’Abbas, one of their brokers. He agreed to hold me in his pens till Le Garou returned.” Christopher went very quiet. He seemed to have lost the energy to tell any more and just sat with his hands clasped in Wynter’s, his chin almost on his chest.

When nothing more was forthcoming, Wynter gently shook his hands and Christopher went on talking as if he were a clockwork toy. “Sadaqah decided to make a little money on the side,” he said. “So he rented me out to Hadil for the length of the wedding celebrations, strictly on the sly, of course. And that’s how I met Razi. That’s how Razi saved my life.”

Good God
, thought Wynter,
the randomness of it all
. She could not get past the tenuous circumstances that had brought her two friends together. Had even one small thing been different, some element of time, or of place, then they would never have met. Razi would never have been able to help him, and she would never have found this man who had come to mean so much to her. She tightened her grip on him, as if afraid he’d slip away.

“I wouldn’t have been able to live like that, girly,” he whispered. “I’d never have
let
myself live, not like that.” Christopher lifted one of his hands and made a delicate pressing motion in the air, as if lightly touching something only he could see. His lips curved into a smile. “In my father’s trunk there’s a secret drawer. It hides all my knives. I had a plan, you see. Once Le Garou had… had cut me, and once they’d brought me inside the compound, I planned to take those knives and kill my girls. Then I would have killed myself. It would have been our only chance of release. It would have
…”

Christopher lifted his eyes to the horizon, his hand still poised in the air, his expression wondering. “I couldn’t believe it when he came and bought me. I still don’t know how he persuaded Sadaqah to fall in with it. Razi must have threatened him something wicked, or bribed him something wicked. Either way, the broker took a huge risk, backing al-Sayyid against André Le Garou. They faked a clerical error, made it look as though I’d been auctioned by mistake. Razi came and bid for me. I couldn’t… I couldn’t believe that he’d kept his promise. It was just too incredible. This brand new life.” Christopher’s eyes widened in sudden horror and he curled in on himself, his wonder swallowed by darkness. “Oh, but my poor girls,” he moaned. “I left them.
I left them there
.” He released a groan of physical pain, and bent double, clutching his stomach.

“Christopher!” Wynter tried to put her arms around him, but he slipped forward and crawled out of her embrace.

He held his hand out to stop her approaching, and knelt there for a moment, his hand hard on his stomach, trying to push everything back down into the place it had been before. “It’s all right!” he gasped. “It’s all… Just
…”
He glanced at her, nearly lost himself at the expression on her face, and looked quickly away again. “You know,” he said. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer to catch the fish. Would you mind?”

“No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“I think,” he said, rising swiftly to his feet and pulling off his tunic, “I’ll go for a swim.” He kicked off his boots halfway down the rock and discarded his undershirt at the river’s edge. He dived headfirst into the water without removing his britches and disappeared from her sight for an alarming amount of time.

Wynter shot to her feet, then saw him break the surface about forty feet out, his dark head, sleek as an otter, almost invisible against the glittering reflection of the sun. He did not look back and she watched him swim steadily away from her, until the dancing water-glare had so blinded her that she saw nothing but white.

“Ahhh, Raz! I swear you could take a handful of mud and a pocketful of stones and make a meal to bring back the dead.” Christopher stretched and wriggled his toes and arched his back with a happy sigh.

Razi smiled at him across the flames of their little fire and returned his attention to cleaning his fingernails. Christopher settled lower against the stones, and Wynter smiled at his cat-like contentment.

The three of them were damp, sandy and tingling, dressed only in their britches and undershirts, their water-chilled bodies soaking the heat from the sun-warmed stones. The sky was a scarlet blaze above them, the river a crumpled copper ribbon, edged in purple shadows. Razi had done incredible things with half a dozen fish, a hat-full of lingin berries and a pocket of wild garlics. They were full and warm, and serene.

Earlier in the day, Christopher had padded his way from the river, smiling and easy. He had sneaked up behind Razi who had been hunched over, preparing the fish, and had shoved his freezing hand down the back of his tunic. Razi had roared with shock and Christopher had skittered away, cackling wickedly and shaking drops of water from his hair like a dog.

Razi had flung a stick at him and called him a
bloody menace
. Then had watched in tolerant forbearance as Christopher grabbed Wynter, treated her to a lingering, icy kiss, and threw her into the river.

It had been easy, after that, to pretend that everything was all right.

Now they lay together around the fire and looked up at the purple twilight as it blotted the sunset from the sky. One after another the stars began to shine, and little black bats appeared, flittering about in the branches above their heads.

Razi lay back against his saddle, his hands behind his head, his dark eyes roaming the sky. Wynter watched him through the dancing flames and thought about the Wolves and what they might be doing here. It made no sense. Why would they travel through Jonathon’s kingdom, when they could simply hop across the Spanish Rock and trot up through the Castilian provinces? The lawlessness and banditry there would be of no consequence to them. Unlike the merchants and diplomats that courted the use of Jonathon’s Port Road, Wolves had no need for an orderly, well policed route to and from the Moroccos.

Why did you let them go?
she thought.
After what they did to him? What possible reason caused you to let them go?
As she watched him, Razi frowned in puzzlement as though something had just occurred to him.

“Wynter,” he murmured in amazement, still looking at the stars.

“Aye?”

“What date is it?”

“Summer,” answered Christopher sleepily, as if that were as accurate as anyone need ever be.

Razi chuckled, and Wynter twisted her mind around the puzzle. “Let me see,” she mused. “ ’Twas Angel’s Sunday when father and I came down through Lindenston. That was two days before
…”
she bit her lip and counted backwards and forwards for a moment, her forehead creased. Then her face cleared and she leapt a little at the realisation of what day it was. “Oh, Razi!” she said and he turned his head to grin at her through the flames. “Happy birthday!”

“Thank you! I am twenty years old today!”

Christopher huffed in amusement. “I can just hear your mother now!” Suddenly his voice was very soft and very proper, an uncanny imitation of Hadil’s unswervingly quiet, unrelentingly disapproving tone. “One would think now, that al-Sayyid Razi ibn-Jon Malik al-fadl would take it in his mind to acquire himself a wife. It’s not for me, his humble mother, to suggest that al-Sayyid does not know his own mind
…”
(here Wynter pictured the usual raising of the graceful hands, the meek tipping of the darkly elegant head) “but it does seem a little undignified that Omar ibn-Omar, seventeen years old and just a lowly spice merchant, would already have two wives and a son and two daughters to honour the family’s name.” Across the flames Razi’s handsome face creased into a wide grin, his teeth gleaming white in the dancing light. “After all, my precious son,” Christopher’s voice perfectly took on that sly cutting edge that Hadil always managed to make sound so utterly feminine, “You are getting
soooooo
old. So very,
veeeerrrrrrryyy
old.”