WindBeliever (4 page)

Another moan was stifled. A sour bile rose up in the young Serenian’s throat.

“Of course, he will have to share your company with Tzarevitch Peter, the eldest son of our Tzar. His Highness will wish to take you to the museums in Musco.”

Conar bit his lip, striving not to show his disappointment.

“You will love our land, Your Grace,” Serge sighed. “Just as you will love the Tzarevna.”

Conar looked around. He had become accustomed to the Koussev language, even though he had learned only a smattering of the guttural dialect. He found he rather liked the harsh, slurred words that made up the High Speech of the Outer Kingdom, but it was proving to be more difficult than Serge had predicted.

“The Tzarevna?” he inquired.

Serge smiled. “Ah, yes. Our Tzarevna! She is the daughter of our Tzar. The lady we are taking you to wed.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 17

“Turn the ship around!” Conar shouted, drawing the attention of every man on board the ship. His voice was a solid block of ice, his face livid with sudden fury.

“Did you hear me, Serge? Turn the damned ship around. Now!”

Serge looked at his passenger with a calm, innocent gaze. “Have I said something wrong?”

Conar’s eyes narrowed into thin, dangerous slits. He clenched his jaw and spat out his command in perfect Koussev. “Turn .... the .... damned .... ship ... around.”

“Stop teasing, Serge Nickolayevich,” Yuri snarled as he weaved his way toward the two men standing beside the rail. “He not used to such foolishness.”

Conar looked around at the Outer Kingdom warrior, almost smiled at the pea-green condition of the fellow’s complexion and the way he was pursing his thick lips to keep from vomiting, but the situation was too upsetting to be joking about it. He glared at the newcomer with a snarl on his handsome face.

“You’d better hope this son-of-a-bitch was joking!” Conar growled.

Yuri eyed Serge with a disdainful promise of future retaliation. “He was, Highness. Serge Nickolayevich think silliness entertaining.”

Serge’s face turned chalk-white. “Yes,” he muttered, then reached out to put a pleading hand on Conar’s forearm. “Yes! Indeed! I was teasing, Your Grace! Only teasing!” He swallowed and then a nervous, twitching smile pulled the Outer Kingdom sea captain’s lips into a sick facsimile of an ingratiating grin. “Just one of my silly little pranks.”

Conar looked from one man to another, searching faces that were nervous, just a little bit afraid, and that were carefully, too carefully, blank and accommodating.

“Let me put it in a way the two of you can understand. If it is your Tzar’s intention that I be forced to wed one of his old-maid daughters ....”

Yuri’s mouth opened wide, astonishment on his wide face. “Her Highness consider be loveliest woman this side of Uralap Mountains! She have many suitors for her hand, Highness!”

He drew his shoulders back and for just an instant, all seasickness was wiped from his face as pride, and what could only have been deep love and admiration, filled his face. “Men fight duel of honor over privilege of sitting with her at supper.”

The nervous tick that was beginning to develop in Conar’s left cheek not only annoyed him, he hoped it gave ample warning to the two men watching him that he was on the verge of lashing out with the doubled fists pressed tightly against his thighs. His face had turned hard, unreadable, but his eyes were two gleaming embers from the deepest pit of hell.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass if she’s the most desirable woman in the universe!” he spat, each word falling into the silence like hot lava rock. “If your master thinks to put me in a position in which I ....”

Yuri held up his hand. “Highness, please! That not Tzar Thomas’ intent, at all! You go to our homeland as honored guest. We would not dare insult you by put stipulations on your visit. This cow ...,” he reached out and viciously shoved the Captain, “make stupid mistake. He apologize to you.”

“I don’t want a damned apology!” Conar hissed. He took a step closer to Yuri, staring up at the man with a fierce squint. “I’m not a stupid man, Yuri.”

“No! Of course not, Sire!” Yuri hastened to agree.

“Do you think I can’t read between the lines here?” He jerked his head toward Serge. “If that man was joking, he wasn’t aware that he was.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 18

Yuri sighed, a long, drawn-out blister of a sigh. “Yes, Highness. You right.”

Conar’s jaw hardened. “And that was your master’s intent, to have me shackled to his daughter?”

Yuri flinched. He slowly shook his head side to side. “Not intent, Highness, but hope.” His face turned soft. “It ALL our hope, Prince Conar, to see you and sweet Tzarevna united.”

Serge eagerly nodded. “That’s true, Your Grace! Yuri speaks to you truthfully! To unite the two households has been something our Tzar has long since wanted. It would be a great thing.”

A militant, stubborn look set on Conar’s face. “I won’t do it!” he growled.

Yuri’s broad shoulders slumped. “It your decision, Highness.”

“Damned right, it is!” Conar spat at him. “I won’t ever marry again!”

“We didn’t mean right away!” Serge said and then yelped as Yuri very effectively kicked him in the shin. “Ow, Yuri! That hurt!”

“You haven’t seen hurt until you’ve tried to make me do something I don’t want to do!”

Conar warned. His soul was blazing beneath the lowered gold of his thick brows.

Yuri shrugged. “It only suggestion, Highness. Nothing more.” He looked down into the Prince’s angry face. “Forgive. We mean no harm.”

“Whether you meant it or not, it was done,” Conar replied ungraciously. He turned his face away from the two men. “Leave me.”

“Highness ...,” Yuri began, but those hot eyes jerked back to him and impaled him with utter contempt.

“Don’t make me give an order twice,” Conar barked.

There was something very dangerous about the way those words were spoken. And something lethal in the set of Conar McGregor’s face as he spoke them. Both men recognized it for what it was--the imperial command of a man not given to being denied. To ignore such an explicit warning would have been folly of the highest order.

“As you wish, Sire,” Serge mumbled, bowing. He backed away, still bowing, then curtly turned on his heel and strode briskly away, his shoulders hunched down into his uniform coat.

Yuri stood where he was for a fraction of a second, longer than he knew he should have. He opened his mouth to say something more, but Conar’s growl made him spin around and stumble his way back to the hatchway. He didn’t even look around as he left. He was afraid of what he would see on the young man’s face.

Turning back to the rail, gripping the wide teak with hands that itched to pummel someone, anyone, Conar stared out into the sea, scanning the wide waters from horizon to horizon. His fists pulsed with impotent fury, his face a livid shade of furious color, his blood rushing in his temples with enough force to blow the lid off a sealed jar.

“Just wait,” he whispered to the rolling waves in a tone anyone who knew him would not have recognized. “You just wait, you tzar-of-a-bitch! I’ll make you wish you’d never thought of me as a bedmate for your unmarriageable brat!”

In his anger, Conar had completely forgotten about his brooding. His self-pity had vanished.

His melancholy, a part of him for so long now, had simply ceased to be. And his grief had been pushed aside for a more important emotion--revenge.

“Wait ‘til you get to know the real Conar McGregor,” he snarled, a grin of pure vengeance on his sulking lips. “Let’s see how you’d like him for a son-in-law!”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 19

St. Steffensburg, the capitol of the Outer Kingdom, was a rather gloomy seaside town nestled along the outer rim of the crescent-shaped harbor of the Bulgas River, that muddy estuary which wandered haphazardly from the Northern Sea inland to Lake Marie Theresa. Tall spires, bulbous-shaped domes, forbidding gray stone blocks of buildings, squat and ugly, huddled so closely together, there was precious little room for an enterprising Outer Kingdom entrepreneur to build his own emporium. The cobblestone streets, although pristine clean and well-maintained, were narrow and dark, somehow forbidding, and as uneven and steeply graded as any wilderness mountain foothill. Obviously poorly engineered, the streets meandered hither and yon, sometimes without seeming purpose or destination, dead ended without warning, and were very tiresome on feet and hoof. There was nothing within the limits of the city that was pretty or worth standing long to look upon. The shops were functional, their plain and nondescript fronts showing only a sign of what the wares sold in that particular shop might be. The abodes, inns and the like, which were scattered at random along the main thoroughfare, if it could possibly be called that, were likewise as lackluster and unwelcome.

“Don’t you have any other color paint but gray? It’s depressing as hell,” Conar grumbled as he twisted his head to look about him at the buildings they were passing. “My god but that’s an ugly place!”

He had mastered the Koussev language, finally, and he had memorized all the words which conveyed insult in the High Speech.

Yuri, highly offended at his companion’s waspish tone, spoke his words around a jaw that was rigid and beginning to ache.

“The buildings are made from stone which is taken from the quarry at Vealton. Our country experiences numerous earthquakes every year, Highness, and stone is far sturdier and safer than the wood of which many of Serenia’s buildings are constructed,” he explained in his native tongue. He glanced at his traveling companion and scowled, for Prince Conar’s nose was definitely lifted in disdain at what he was seeing and Yuri’s own rather broad proboscis was decidedly out of joint. “It would be rather stupid to paint stone, don’t you think?” Yuri added with a hint of pique.

Conar shrugged. “Such ugliness needs something to make it easier on the eye.”

A snarl lurked behind Yuri’s tightly compressed lips, almost escaped, but the warrior swallowed it, and his growing aggravation with the man riding beside him, and turned a carefully blank face to Conar.

“We like it the way it is,” Yuri ground out.

“You would,” Conar snorted.

For over an hour the party of twelve men, Yuri and Conar at the head of the staggered column, clip-clopped through the winding streets of St. Steffensburg, and then took the wide, dusty road north which led to the Palace of the Tzars.

Not once in that entire hour did they pass a single citizen standing outside his or her shop.

There were no curious bystanders, shoppers out and about, children playing along the way. Not even a stray dog or cat. The shops appeared closed and shuttered, the town itself bare of habitation.

“Where the hell is everybody?” Conar had inquired.

“At the Palace, no doubt,” Yuri had answered. He had risked a sidelong glance at his companion. “Awaiting your arrival.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 20

“Why?” Conar’s tone was clipped and suspicious.

It was not in the Outer Kingdom warrior’s nature to be haughty or rude. Despite his massive build and lowering brow, Yuri was a man of calm disposition, great intelligence, and who possessed a vast amount of compassion and patience. But over the past two weeks, he had lost a great deal of that patience, had forced that compassion into remission and had developed a bubbling temper that was about to boil over. His hands on the reins of his palfrey were beginning to cramp with the tight grip he was using to keep his fingers from Conar McGregor’s throat.

“Because,” came the reply, a reply much like one used when speaking to a slow-minded child, “they wish to honor you.”

“Why?” The suspicious question sounded deadly.

A twitch snagged the left side of Yuri’s cheek. “Because of who you are.”

“That

being?”

Yuri’s head snapped to one side and his temper finally shot over the pot. “If you don’t know who you are, I sure as hell can’t help you!”

Conar’s left brow rose slowly, contemptuously, and his lips pursed. His wickedly dark eyes traveled slowly down Yuri and back again. “But you KNOW to whom you have just spoken?”

The brow jerked and then lowered. “And in what tone you dared to use?”

“I’ve done it now,” Yuri’s inner voice hissed at him. He looked at Conar McGregor’s rigid features and saw retaliation. The Outer Kingdom warrior swallowed, his agile mind searching for something to say.

“Well?” The question was lethal in its pitch.

A deep breath, drawn in through distended nostrils, calmed Yuri to the point where he could slip a false smile of ingratiating meekness to his taut lips despite wanting to tear Conar McGregor’s head off. He lowered his voice, forced into it a mildness he certainly didn’t feel.

“My apologies, Highness,” he replied, putting more emphasis on the last word than he thought prudent or wise, but unable to keep himself from doing so. He cocked his head to one side in mock subservience. “I did, indeed, forget to whom I was speaking.”

Conar’s lip curled into a sneering grin. “Well, don’t forget again.”

Yuri had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting. If he had been just a tad calmer, a little less impatient, he would have seen the flash of hilarity in his companion’s eyes before the dark orbs shifted back to the roadway. And he would have heard the snicker of amusement that was hastily concealed behind a ragged cough.

The road began to narrow as it wound upward toward the Uralap Mountains. Ragged cliffs of dark rust shale jutted outward toward the roadway, closing in on the road. Sparse growth, mostly hardy evergreens and a stray seedling of some broadleaf tree, grew in the ridges of stone. The farther up the men road, the taller the cliffs became until nothing could be seen but dusty road and rugged umber cliff.

“The Palace of the Tzars sits in the Valley of the Saints,” Yuri remarked as he sensed his companion’s boredom. “It was built by our first Tzar, Alexandre.”