WindBeliever (45 page)

“They tell me you don’t know who you are. Is that true?” she asked him, cocking her head to one side when his brows drew together in confusion.

He stared at her, her question taking him off guard.

“They say you’ve lost all memory of who you are.”

He wondered at the game she was playing with him. Did she really know who he was? Could she help him piece together the jumble of incoherent pictures which flooded his mind? Could she help him make sense of the faces and sights he saw when he closed his eyes?

“If you will promise me you will behave, I will have Harim remove the gag and we will talk.” She smiled warmly at him. “Will you do that?”

He thought about it for a moment and then almost imperceptibly nodded his head, wary of her motives and disliking the look on her dark face.

“Good,” she said and looked up at the slave warden. “Hiram?”

Harim could not help but admire the color of the man’s hair as he untied the gag. Even with the sweat and grime which turned it lanky, the flaxen thickness would bring a high price at the breeding farm. Combined with the color of the man’s strange eyes, there would not be a slave owner within a thousand miles who would not want to have this man’s offspring in his household. And if that owner should find out who the man really was ....

The gag came off and the words came tumbling out before he knew he was even going to speak.

“I don’t like being owned by a goddamned woman!”

Sabrina’s face showed her surprise, then her amusement. “From what I know of you, I would imagine not.”

He clenched his jaw, hissing his warning at her through his teeth. “And I will not be a goddamned st …”

His lips pulled back. “A goddamned st ....” His breathing was shallow and forced. “A st ....”

“A stud,” Harim finished for him and was rewarded with the blond man swinging his furious face up at him. He grinned. “A stud.”

“Harim,” Sabrina warned, looking at him with disapproval. She then found herself the object of that outraged glower.

“I won’t do it!” Conar fairly screeched at her. “I’m no seed boar, woman!”

“I have not said you would be,” Sabrina reminded him in a calm voice.

“And I’m damned sure not going to be your plaything, either!” He bellowed at her. “Or any other woman’s!”

“Have I told you that was what I wanted of you?” she asked.

He snorted. “I know what you are.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 217

“Be careful,” Harim advised him, unperturbed at the vicious look the slave aimed his way.

“Are you not curious to know who you are?” Sabrina asked, wanting to get the man’s mind off what he had been contemplating.

“Aye, I’m curious!” he ground out. “If I’ve got family, they’ll pay you for my return.”

“Really?” Kharis asked, highly amused. “Have you any concept of how much the lady paid for you?”

“They’d pay it,” Sabrina commented. “And more to get him back.”

Kharis stared at her. “You are joking!”

“She’s serious,” Harim answered him. He studied Sabrina. “But unless I miss my guess, she has no intention of letting them know where he is.”

Conar swung his angry gaze from the slave warden to the woman. “Why not?”

“Because I owe a debt and I intend to see it paid,” she answered, enigmatically.

“To

who?”

Sabrina stood up and adjusted the folds of her skirt. “You don’t need to know that right now.” She ignored his furious snarl and looked up at Harim. “As much as I hate to request it, Harim, I think perhaps you should sedate him again. He ....”

“No!” Conar bellowed at her. “Damn it, no! I won’t be drugged again, you filthy bitch. I will not ....”

Harim lashed out and clamped his hand over Conar’s mouth, shutting off the enraged shout.

“You have no say in the matter, slave.” Despite the wild movement of the man’s head, Harim kept his grip, turning his attention up to Kharis. “On the table, there by the window. There is a bottle of purple fluid. Bring it here, please.”

Conar knew an insane moment of primal fear that he could not explain at the mention of

‘purple fluid’. Something dark shuddered inside him, warning him, but he was helpless to fight back as the woman’s helper came into the holding cell and poured the amount ordered by the slave warden.

“You’ll have to help me with him, Kharis.”

Despite his struggles, his head was pulled back, his chin cupped, and the helper pried his jaw open with a hard, unrelenting hand whose thumb had hooked down over his back teeth to keep his jaws open as the slave warden poured the foul tasting potion into his mouth.

Kharis grinned as he clamped the slave’s mouth shut, bracing his chin as he watched the look of distaste flow over the angry countenance.

“Swallow it,” Harim demanded. He knew the man was holding the potion in his mouth. He pinched the slave’s nostrils shut. “Swallow it or suffocate. It’s your choice, my friend.”

Sabrina watched as the blond man’s face began to turn red with his effort to keep from digesting the potion. But finally his throat constricted and his eyes snapped shut in defeat as the tenerse shot down his throat.

“It is for your own good,” she told him gently. “I can not afford to have you try to escape before I get you back to the farm.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 218

They had turned the ship around as soon as it became known Conar McGregor was not on board. A thorough search had been made of the vessel, from stern to bow, deck to hold, but there was no trace at all of the Serenian. What they had found, though, had been a small puddle of dried blood on the aft deck, a smear of it on the larboard topgallant rail and in the fore-hatch, evidence of a stowaway.

“Where is he?” Catherine had cried on Sajin’s shoulder.

The Kensetti prince had not been able to answer. His arms had tightened around the sobbing woman, holding her to him, relishing, despite the reason he did so, the feel of her against him.

“We’ll find him, Cat,” he had promised.

But that had been two days before and there was no trace of Conar McGregor between the point where the ship had come around and the harbor at Bolgaston from where they had disembarked the Outer Kingdom.

“What are we going to do?” the ship’s captain asked Sajin as they prepared to leave the ship.

He glanced at the silent, grieving woman being supported by the Kensetti princess.

“What can we do?” Sajin asked. His eyes were haunted. “There is no doubt he was thrown overboard. If he was dead when they ....” The nomad flinched. It had taken him a lifetime to find a friend like Conar McGregor and only a day to lose him.

“Your Grace?” the ship’s first mate called out. Sajin glanced around. He saw the man pointing to a carriage pulling up on the dock. “It bears the royal coat of arms, Highness.”

How was he going to tell Tzar Thomas? What possible explanation could he give for Conar’s disappearance? He turned to look at Catherine, flinched again as he saw her tearful face and trembling lips.

“I have something I need to tell you, Highness,” the captain started to say but Sajin cut him off.

“It can wait.” He squared his shoulders and turned his attention to the men getting out of the royal coach. Even from that distance he recognized the Tzar and his eldest son.

“Something’s wrong, Father,” Peter said, shading his eyes as he watched Prince Sajin helping Cat into the longboat. “I don’t see Conar.”

The Tzar felt a cold finger of premonition scrape down his spine. When the ship had been spotted, a runner had come to the palace at break-neck speed. There was no adequate explanation why the Kensetti ship should have come back so soon.

“Thomas?”

Charlotte

had

asked, fear already forming on her lovely face.

“I’ll go see,” her husband had said, patting her hand. “Maybe Conar developed the fever again.”

“There would have been no reason to bring him back here, Father,” Mikel said. “They could treat him just as well in Kensett.”

Standing there, watching the longboat being rowed to shore, focusing on the worried look on Sajin’s face, the blank look on the man’s sister’s face and the bowed head of his own daughter, the Tzar knew something terrible had happened. It did not take Sajin coming up to them on the dock and actually saying the words.

“How?” the Tzar asked, reaching out to grip the Kensetti’s shoulder.

“We don’t know for sure,” Sajin answered, “but we believed he was murdered and thrown overboard.”

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 219

Peter gasped. “Murdered? By whom?”

Sajin shook his head. “We think there was a stowaway on board. There’s evidence of it, but whoever it was, he’s not on board now.”

“How could this have happened?” the Tzar asked, disbelief crossing his face. “And how could his assassin have left the ship without you knowing it?”

“We think there must have been two of them. One probably held him while the other ....” He tore his gaze from the Tzar’s. “There could have been a boat waiting for them. They could have slipped overboard and swam to it without us noticing.”

“Far fetched,” the Tzar mumbled. He narrowed his gaze. “Have you questioned your own men, Ben-Alkazar?”

Sajin stiffened. “You know that I have.”

“Not one of Sajin’s men would have had anything to do with McGregor’s disappearance,”

Sybelle said as she joined the men. Her arm was tight around Catherine’s stooped shoulder. “I suggest you let all this talk go for now and get Catherine to a physician. She has not spoken a word since early yesterday morning.”

Peter reached out for his sister, took her unprotestingly into his arms. He looked over her head at his father.

“Go on,” the Tzar said. “I’ll ride back with Ben-Alkazar.”

Gently helping his silent sister to the coach, Peter supported her sagging body, speaking to her in a soft, gentle voice meant to ease her pain.

“There is no hope he is still alive?” the Tzar asked, searching Sajin’s face for an answer he hoped to find.

Sajin shook his head. “I don’t believe so.

Sybelle took her brother’s arm. “His destiny was sealed before you ever met him, Sajin. Be happy that you knew him if for only a short while.”

All the way back to the Outer Kingdom palace, Sajin stared out the coach window, his expression one of intense grief. He did not feel his sister’s gentle touch as she patted his thigh or hear the low conversation between her and the Tzar. He felt numb, drained. In the back of his mind, he told himself there should have been something he could have done. That somehow he was responsible for what had happened to his friend.

If you hadn’t taken him with you
, an inner voice chastised him,
Conar would still be alive.

The Kensetti closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window’s framework.

“I’m sorry, Conar,” he whispered, wanting to cry and knowing he could not. “I let you down, my friend.”

Storm Jale bent over and threw up, not surprised to see stringy strands of blood in the vomitus. They’d given him a beating the day before that had made him piss bloody urine. His kidneys were on fire and his belly so sore he could barely stand erect.

“Get your lazy ass back to work!” one of the keepers shouted at him.

Straightening up, Storm stared hopelessly across the wavering sands of the desert. There was nothing for miles around them except the pyramid being erected behind him. He let out a tired, despondent sigh.

“You let me down, Conar,” he whispered. “I thought you would come, but you haven’t.”

“You, there!” came the furious shout. “Get back to work!”

Storm’s shoulders sagged. “Alel, help me,” he prayed.

He barely felt the sting of the lash as it wrapped itself around his bare chest.

WINDBELIEVER

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Page 220

He came to inside the confining heat of a moving wagon. His wrists were manacled to the wood above and behind his head and his ankles to the floorboard of the wagon. His head was hurting and he had the godawful taste of the tenerse still in his mouth.

Tenerse? he thought idly. How come I know what it was they gave me?

Because you’ve had it before, fool, he heard himself answer.

He was hungry. Starving, actually. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, but he knew it hadn’t been in the last two days. His stomach was rumbling and his head throbbing from lack of nourishment and he wondered if they intended to starve him.

With a jerk, the wagon stopped and he heard voices outside the canvas side to his right, then the back of the wagon dipped and the woman climbed on.

“You’re awake,” she said, smiling.

He glared at her, hating her with every ounce of awareness in his body.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked, holding up a gourd. “It’s fresh spring water.”

“Combined with what?” he sneered.

She smiled. “Poison, but it’s chilled.” She arched a thin black brow. “Interested?”

His lips pulled back over his clenched teeth. “Why the hell not?”

She slipped her hand behind his neck and lifted his head, brought the thick rim of the gourd to his lips and allowed him to drink.

The water was cool, tasteless, odorless. He hoped with every fiber of his being it wasn’t laced with something that would put him back into the mindless slumber into which he’d fallen earlier that day.

Sabrina gently lowered his head and set the gourd aside. “Are you ready to listen to me?”

“Do I have a choice?” he snapped.

“Your name is Conar McGregor,” she told him. “Conar Aleksandro McGregor.” She watched for any reaction the name might have on him, but there was only a brief smirk from his expressive mouth.

“Stupid name,” he pronounced. He didn’t know if what she said was true, but he didn’t like the name, anyway and he told her so.

“It means ‘black-winged scavenger’ in Oceanian,” she informed him, again searching his face for a response.

“Idiotic name. I don’t care for it.” He sniffed disdainfully.

Sabrina shrugged. “Then let’s call you something else,” she answered.