The Pirate Prince (36 page)

By the time he opened his eyes again to face the Moors who would come to collect him, they already had his hands tied with rough ropes. Everything was very slow, like a dream. They dragged him to his feet and prodded him toward the dark, unspeakable chamber.

Fifteen minutes later, Darius came tearing back into the dim salon. Allegra ran to him, her heart in her throat when she saw his stricken gaze.

“They’ve got him. They’re headed this way.”

“What’s happened? Is he hurt?”

“Here.” He reached under the drapery of his robe and produced two pistols, one of which he tossed to her. She gasped when it almost slipped through her hands. When the boy presented Lazar’s all-too-familiar Moorish knife and pressed the leather-wrapped hilt into her hands, Allegra stared at the weapon in dread.

“Where did you get these?”

“Stole them from under Malik’s throne. I can steal anything. Come. We must hide.”

Her heart was pounding wildly. The blood roared in her ears as they crouched down beside a divan behind a wall of shimmering veils. A second later came the sound of voices and footfalls approaching the doorway where the Ethiopian guards stood.

“They put the old Englishman in the dungeon,” Darius whispered quickly.

The white-robed man who stepped into view under the arch between the slender columns was lean and swarthy and plainly in a state of agitation. He glided ahead, then doubled back impatiently, waiting for the others. There was a sinister grace about him, and she knew from the way Darius’s whole body tensed beside her that it had to be Sayf-del-Malik.

When Lazar came through the doorway, she felt as if her heart simply ripped in two at the sight of him.

His wrists were bound before him, his head bowed in defeat. His posture was one of exhaustion and pain, and by the dim light of the thuribles, she could see the sheen of sweat coating his arms and, here and there, trickles of blood on him. He looked ruined, brutalized. She could not take her eyes off him.

Deep in her veins she felt the first whisperings of a divine rage like nothing she had ever felt.

Meanwhile, Malik hurried the guards along as they shepherded her dazed champion. The party passed, slowed by the prisoner’s labored pace. At the end of the hallway, Malik opened a door on the left and ushered Lazar inside, then dismissed the other men.

Beside her, Darius was trembling. She thought this was due to fear until he spoke, and she realized it was hatred.

“Let’s go,” he said in a voice that made her blood run cold.

As she followed the Andalusian youth down the dark, wide hallway, she began to feel strangely collected. When they came to the closed door where the sheik had taken Lazar, Darius paused to put his ear to the door. Silently the boy set down Lazar’s pistols by the wall.

“They’re talking,” he whispered. “I’ll distract Malik. When he turns his back to you, kill him.”

She nodded.
Yes. Kill him
. For Lazar she would kill this Caligula without a qualm.

She suddenly understood Lazar more intimately than she ever dreamed she would, his rage of vengeance that had made him want to blot out her whole family and burn Little Genoa to the ground.

Darius waved her a step back from the door, then he knocked. At Malik’s bark, he announced himself. Darius stared straight ahead, his cheeks turning scarlet when Malik’s tone changed from rudeness to welcome, fraught with husky invitation.

Allegra shuddered, glad she could not understand the words.

The boy visibly steeled himself, then went in. Opium smoke wafted into the hall when the door opened. Darius left the door slightly ajar behind him, and Allegra waited.

“Come in, boy. I find my mind fired with interesting possibilities,” said Malik, in Spanish this time. “There now, go to poor Lazzo. Wipe off his wounds. Don’t be afraid of him. He is quite restrained. Is he not like a lion in a cage?”

Allegra clenched her teeth. Her heart was pounding. Her sweating palm slicked the handle of the great Moorish knife. When she realized how close she’d have to get to Malik to kill him, she silently picked up one of the pistols, but on second thought, she tucked the gun into her belt, for she dared not use it. Her aim was unpracticed, and Lazar too near.

“Don’t touch me,” she heard Lazar warn in a low, deadly growl, then Darius yelped from within the room.

She heard Malik laugh. His evil was palpable in the air.

She edged toward the door. Holding her breath, she peered around the corner. Lazar had knocked Darius halfway across the room to ward him off, and Malik stood perhaps five paces from her, his back to her, looking down at Darius on the stone floor.

“Boys, boys, I want you to be friends. Is the Andalusian not a rare youth, Lazzo? He has the heart of a wolf, but his face is fresh as dew.”

Her mind was calm and extraordinarily clear.

Allegra closed her eyes, wiped a bead of sweat off her cheek, blessed herself with the sign of the cross, then, with a heart full of thunder, walked into the chamber and, without a moment’s hesitation, sank the knife with all her strength squarely between Malik’s shoulders.

Flesh yielded to metal with sickening give, then the impact as the blade glanced off the spine jarred her wrist, and she shrieked in spite of herself.

Malik howled, and Allegra jumped back when he whipped around, his face feral.

Darius ran to shut the door as Malik bellowed with disbelief. Allegra stood frozen in place, hands clapped over her mouth at seeing the knife hilt jutting from the man’s back. Malik twisted in a circle, thrashing, screaming. He dropped to his knees.

“Shut him up,” Lazar grunted.

Darius brushed by her, pulled out the knife, and, reaching over the Arab’s shoulder, calmly slit his throat. The cut complete, Darius dropped him, facedown.

Suddenly blood was everywhere.

For a second the boy merely stared down at Malik as if he could not believe he had done it. Knife in hand, his chest heaved. Blood streaked the white lawn of his robe. Then Allegra’s own blood turned to ice, for Darius laughed.

The laugh turned to a vicious, sudden snarl, and he swooped down on one knee over Malik’s body, stabbing the dying man numerous times with dark and unrepentant zest.

“Darius!” she said, drawing back from the child, wide-eyed.

The boy stood, still staring down at the dead man in black satisfaction. “He deserves it.”

Back to cool efficiency, Darius wiped off the crimson blade on the white linen over Malik’s shoulder while the blood flowed and pooled. Lazar lifted his hands and Darius cut the ropes from his wrists. Then the boy bowed his head and offered Lazar his Moorish knife, hilt first.

“Prince of Ascencion,” he said, his voice hushed and rapid, “please accept the help of one who has suffered as you have. We must flee while there is time. Come. Your friend the Englishman is in the dungeon. I’ll show you where.”

But Lazar was staring only at her.

Her eyes welled up with tears at his mute and fractured gaze. She searched his poor, half-swollen face, at a loss for words. She moved toward him, but he warded her off.

“Don’t touch me,” he whispered.

And then, without another word, he snapped out of his ghastly stupor and was out the door. Darius did not miss his cue, following half a step behind. For a moment, Allegra was alone with the corpse. She glanced down, tempted to kick the dead man on the floor, his waxy brown face frozen in a rictus of rage. She looked away in revulsion, and it was then that she noticed a spark of gold on the chamber floor.

She picked her way around the viscid lake of blood spreading around Malik and picked up what proved to be the item they had come for. One glance at the image on the ring showed her the lion of the Fiori coat of arms. Lazar’s signet ring, made to fit a boy’s finger.

Proof.

Happy now?
She closed her eyes, sick with remorse that she had driven him to come here, to face this.
Has he suffered enough yet for the accident of his royal blood?

Love me
. That was all he’d asked. She dropped her chin almost to her chest as she clutched the ring tightly. How was he ever going to recover from this?

Distantly she heard the alien shouting of the guards. The far-off alarm roused her to action. Allegra ran out of the room and turned down the hall after Lazar and Darius. She caught a glimpse of them just as they turned the corner ahead. She pounded down the stone corridor after them, not daring to call out for them to wait.

“We can get out through the dungeon,” Darius panted, running beside him down the torch-lit corridor.

Only years of obeying honed instincts enabled Lazar to move at all. His mind was blank with shock, as though a mortar had just exploded in front of him. None of it felt real. His soul was cleaved in two like an earthworm by the plow, but his body fought on, mindless and precise, refusing as usual to die even when death was the only decent thing to do. He felt as if he were watching himself in action from somewhere outside his own skin, displaced as a ghost hovering over its own corpse.

They skidded to a stop before a forbidding wood-and-iron door. He knew Allegra wasn’t far behind. She was going to have to look out for herself at the moment, because he simply could not face her.

Automatically Lazar drew his pistol, shot the lock asunder, and hauled the great door open. With the grace of a small jungle cat, Darius darted down the dozen steps ahead of him into the dungeon’s echoing blackness. The great vault smelled like human dung and musty hay. Torture devices crouched in the shadows, lurking monsters. The cells were constructed of rotting wood and rusted iron bars. Warily, Lazar descended the dozen steps to the packed-earth floor.

He quickly dispatched the warden who accosted them, while Darius trotted down the row of cells in search of Vicar. As Lazar joined him to shoot the lock open, he heard another prisoner down the row, shouting and banging on the bars, pleading with him to be released.

Lazar asked Vicar if he was all right. Vicar nodded grimly, though he looked like hell, then Lazar gestured to the boy to lead the way. Darius scampered to the other end of the sprawling dungeon and up another pair of dusty steps to yet another massive door.

“It leads to the amphitheater,” he said. “No one will be out there now, but we’ll have to make a run for it.”

Lazar nodded, but he had his doubts about their making it out of this place alive. As he reached for the lock, Darius cried out, pointing behind them.

“Someone’s coming!”

Lazar turned and saw a slim silhouette in the doorway at the other end of the dungeon. He knew that slender outline at once. He clamped his jaw against an agonized animal moan.

“What the bloody hell is she doing here?” Vicar groaned.

“She?” Darius exclaimed.

“Never mind. I’ll go get her,” Vicar muttered.

Lazar let him go, using the precious extra moments to reload his pistols. Vicar hurried back down the steps, walked briskly down the row of cells, and stepped over the warden’s corpse.

“Miss Monteverdi, over here!”

“Vicar?” she called in a tremulous voice that filled the black dungeon.

The sweet echo made Lazar flinch.

How could he ever look her in the eye again? He could not. He’d come here to win her respect and had instead been utterly shamed in front of her.

It was time. Time for what he should have done long ago.
Just an hour longer. Just see her and Vicar and this ferocious child back safely to the ship. Then no more pain
.

He thrust his pistols back into the holsters and folded his arms, facing the door as he waited. The boy looked up at him in question. Lazar ignored him. A moment later, Vicar returned, tugging Allegra along by the hand. Her face was a pale oval in the darkness. With a glance Lazar noticed she was wearing his shirt and trying desperately to look brave.

He turned away from her quickly, because he could not bear to see the revulsion he knew would be there in her eyes.

Without further ceremony, he yanked the lock back and shoved the thick door open, both guns primed. But he met with only the empty, dusty ring of the amphitheater, where his friends and he used to train and had bled so many times for Malik’s entertainment. Above, the brilliant desert night was gaudy with stars.

The main block of the fort was nearby. Judging from the chaotic sounds coming out of it, Lazar realized Malik’s body must have been discovered. Maybe he should have been glad the fiend was dead, but he felt nothing, nothing at all.

Just as he started for the exit of the amphitheater with his small band following him, the shelling began. He had ordered his captains to pound the place to dust.

“
Run!
” Vicar yelled.

With the sand flying up in geysers before them, they fled all the way back to the waiting ship, leaving Al Khuum to its destruction.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN