The Gypsy King (24 page)

Feeling distinctly unsettled—both by Azriel's troubling words and by the lingering feel of his hand on her thigh— Persephone reluctantly made her way toward the sound of Rachel cheerfully chattering away to Fayla. She was just wondering what the Gypsy girl would have made of Azriel's wandering hand when she rounded a thicket of
sugarberry bushes and beheld a sight that caused her to give a heartfelt cry of anguish.

For when Azriel had referred to Fayla's “gown” Persephone had never imagined that he'd meant a gown like
this
, with its innumerable snow-white petticoats edged in the finest lace, its cunningly embroidered silk skirts, its bodice encrusted with seed pearls and tiny gemstones! And when the pirate thief had referred to Fayla's “other things” Persephone had never
dreamt
he'd been referring to rings of real gold and ruby pendants and crystal hair pins and a velvet riding hat with three perfectly matched white pheasant feathers and a matching travelling cloak with an actual fur collar and impossibly soft kid gloves that fit like a second skin and gleaming riding boots without a mark on them!

At the sound of Persephone's cry, Fayla turned. “Is something the matter?” she asked in her haughty, cold, noble voice as she wiped tiny beads of sweat from her upper lip with her gloved finger.

“Nothing is the matter except that you look completely and utterly
exquisite!
” lamented Persephone.

“I do?” said Fayla uncertainly.

“You
do
,” said Persephone, so woefully that the other girl couldn't help smiling.

“Show her how the skirts swirl when you twirl, Fayla,” said Rachel, who was already grinning in anticipation of Persephone's reaction.

Still smiling slightly, Fayla began to twirl, but before she was halfway around, her knees buckled. Persephone and Rachel just managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

“Fayla, what's wrong?” cried Rachel.

“It is … nothing,” she gasped.

“You're flushed,” said Persephone in alarm, noticing the girl's unhealthy pallor for the first time.

“And warm,” added Rachel, putting the back of her hand against the Gypsy girl's forehead.

“I am a little feverish but it is nothing,” repeated Fayla, jerking away from Rachel's touch. “And since it is nothing I would ask that you not concern Azriel and Tiny with mention of it. A child's life depends upon me playing my part and nothing short of death shall stop me from doing so.”

With Azriel and Tiny in the lead, Fayla on Fleet in the middle, Persephone and Rachel bringing up the rear and Cur alternately loping alongside and diving into the brush to terrorize something small and furry, they set out. Before long the dirt path along which they were trudging emerged from the woods, widened and finally met up with a well-travelled road. The land rapidly grew replete with signs of humanity—vast agricultural fields and neatly fenced pastures, haystacks and signposts, wagon tracks and hoofprints, great castles and mean huts, bridges and other roads. By mid-morning, they arrived at the first of several hamlets. Most of its slaves and lowborn inhabitants were in the fields, but a few tired-looking women with scrawny babies on their hips and even scrawnier toddlers clinging to their dirty skirts stood in the doorways of their
hovels and stared dully at Fayla as she rode by in her finery. Persephone was acutely aware of the fact that even one of the gemstones sewn into the bodice of the Gypsy girl's lavish gown would have paid for food enough to fill all those empty bellies for a year, but there was nothing to be done about it. For an Erok noblewoman to acknowledge the presence of a lowborn—never mind to show charity to one—was an unheard-of thing, and to have done so would only have brought danger upon them all. Hard as it was, the only thing to do was to keep walking.

No one had to tell this to Fayla, of course, though Persephone couldn't even be sure that the Gypsy girl had noticed the women, the children or even the hamlet itself. She'd said not one word since they'd first set out, and though the way she held herself in the saddle could easily have been mistaken for a noble bearing, something about her ramrod straight posture gave Persephone the impression that she was fighting for control. She could tell that Rachel had the same impression, and that she, too, was torn between telling Azriel and Tiny the truth about the girl's ill health and respecting her request for silence. It was a terrible decision to have to make, and as she watched the growing stains of fever-sweat darken the fine cloth at Fayla's back and beneath her armpits, Persephone was so consumed by it that she all but forgot her earlier fears that something was about to go very wrong, very soon.

Then, nigh about noon, the sound of galloping horses and barking dogs brought her sense of foreboding flooding back with a vengeance.

SEVENTEEN

L
OOKING WEST, Persephone saw half a dozen colourfully dressed horsemen appear at the far end of a fallow field. They were riding parallel to the road and for a happy moment, it looked as though they might continue to do so. Then one of them must have noticed Fayla and her entourage because with a loud whoop, all the horses veered left and began galloping across the field, dogs baying and barking at their hooves the entire way. When they reached the fence, the dogs—which were hairless, grey-black beasts just like the ones that had attacked Persephone by the river—slithered beneath the rails like eels while, one after another, the horsemen urged their steeds over the fence and reined up beside Fayla.

“Well, now!” cried one.

“What have we here?” cried another.

“Marry me!” cried a third.

“Yes, do marry him!” shouted a fourth. “Then take me as your lover!”

At this, the horsemen all guffawed raucously, and
several drank deeply from silver hip flasks. Persephone— who'd kept her head down thusfar—took the opportunity to risk looking up. One glance at the horsemen told her that they were all young, all noble, all drunk and all looking to make the kind of mischief that could mean terrible trouble—even for a noblewoman.

Azriel and Tiny—who'd done nothing up to this point in the hope that the horsemen would leave without incident—obviously saw the same thing Persephone did, but before they could move to place themselves between Fayla and the drunken noblemen, a soft-featured young man with close-set eyes and a fleshy pink pout offhandedly issued a command. At once, the dogs surged forward. Slinking around and around Azriel and Tiny, they snapped their teeth and whined so hungrily that there was little doubt as to what would happen if either Gypsy moved so much as a hair.

With the “armed escort” thusly taken care of, the fleshy-lipped nobleman nudged his horse forward until his knee brushed Fayla's thigh. Bowing in his saddle so that his face was mere inches from Fayla's, he deliberately dropped his watery gaze to the creamy swell of her bosom.

“I am Lord Atticus Bartok, future Duke of these parts,” he said thickly. “My friends call me Lord Atticus, so as not to confuse me with my father, Lord Bartok, the all-powerful current Duke.”

Fayla drew herself up with what Persephone was sure must have been the last of her strength. “I am Lady Elwin of the Nicene Prefecture,” she said haughtily, using the name Azriel had said she always used in such situations—
that of an actual living noblewoman, but one from such a distant branch of such a minor family that though the name would sound familiar to most, few would have met the lady in question or been able to recognize an imposter.

Fayla then held out her gloved hand for Atticus to kiss—as was custom among the Erok nobility—and with an intimacy that made Persephone's skin crawl, Lord Atticus took it in both of his hands and pressed his fleshy lips against her glove until his saliva left a mark on the soft leather. “You are exceedingly beautiful, Lady Elwin,” he murmured without letting go of her hand. “And yet I can feel that you wear no wedding ring. Can I therefore assume that you are as yet a maid, untouched by any man?”

“No, you cannot,” said Fayla. “As it happens, I am a widow.”

“Ah,” said Lord Atticus with a sudden leer. “A young, noble widow—my favourite kind of diversion. Rich, proper, experienced in the ways of the flesh and hot with pent-up desire.”

At this, the other young noblemen laughed lewdly and nudged each other. Lord Atticus grinned over his shoulder at them.

“You embarrass yourself, m'lord,” said Fayla icily. “Kindly order your men to stand aside so that I may continue on my way.”

“Brrrr,” said Lord Atticus with a mock shiver. “Fear not, m'lady, I've just the thing to warm you up.”

“Your jests demean us both, m'lord,” murmured Fayla, who was clearly fading fast. “Once again, I ask you to kindly—”

Without warning, Lord Atticus thrust his soft-looking hand forward, clamped it around Fayla's biceps and began to drag her from the saddle. At the risk of being torn to pieces by the noblemen's dogs, Tiny probably would've flung himself at Lord Atticus if Rachel hadn't inadvertently created a diversion by purposely knocking Persephone off balance to stop her from drawing her dagger. As a consequence of being knocked off balance, Persephone found her face firmly planted in the muscular hindquarters of Lord Atticus's sweaty horse. The horse was so startled by the unexpected pressure that he reared up on his hind legs. With a cry, Lord Atticus let go of Fayla's arm and grabbed wildly for his horse's mane in an effort to stay mounted—a task made doubly difficult by the fact that Fleet had chosen that exact moment to begin aggressively nosing at the already-panicked creature's left saddlebag.

Predictably, the other drunken young noblemen were, by this point, quite helpless with laughter. In a rage, Lord Atticus raised his riding crop high in the air and yanked his horse about so that he could punish the interfering wenches who'd diverted him from his diversion and made him look the fool.

Just before he delivered the first stinging blow, however, Persephone saw his eyes flick sideways from her face to Rachel's and then widen in surprise.

Ever so slowly, he lowered the riding crop.

“Twins,” he murmured in wonder. Abruptly, he slapped his blue-velvet-clad leg and started laughing—a shrill, unpleasant sound. “Twins!” he repeated, louder this time.
“Filthy, lowborn twins, to be sure, and not nearly ripe enough for my taste, but I'm not especially fond of green apples, either, yet I'll eat them when I'm hungry enough.”

Fayla—who was already white as a sheet—grew paler still. “You … you'll leave my servants be,” she said hoarsely, “or I'll—”

“You'll do nothing at all, m'lady,” said Lord Atticus as he tossed the riding crop to a nearby companion and slid out of the saddle—all without taking his eyes off Rachel and Persephone, “for I am the eldest son of the great Lord Bartok and you are the widow of an unknown minor lord from the middle of nowhere. You will watch me and my men have our enjoyment”—here, he snapped his wormy white fingers at the other young noblemen, who promptly slid, jumped or fell out of their saddles, depending on their state of drunkenness—“and if and when your wenches are once more fit to travel, you and your pitiful little entourage will continue on your way.”

On the other side of Fleet, the noblemen's beasts began barking with a vigour that Persephone somehow knew meant that Azriel was attempting to make good on his “solemn vow to protect her with his life” in spite of his rather endearing terror of dogs. Unfortunately, she also knew that he was never going to be able to fight his way past the dogs
and
the leering noblemen in time to save her and Rachel from ravishment at the hands of the Lord Atticus, who was even now advancing upon them.

It was going to be up to her.

And so, forcibly shoving Rachel behind her, Persephone slipped her hand into her torn pocket and
closed her fingers around the hilt of the dagger at her thigh. She did not unsheathe it, however, for she could not risk having it knocked from her grasp before the young lord was close enough that she could be sure of spilling his guts. Instead, she lowered her head, squared her shoulders and readied herself to attack.