Laura Kinsale (4 page)

The thought of the dress made fresh tears roll down her cheeks. She was twenty-five years old, and barefoot. It came as no surprise to Zenia that Lord Winter mistook her for a Bedu youth. In her childhood, her mother had never allowed her to dress in anything but the male costumes of the Turks. Only Lady Hester’s maid Miss Williams, marooned by her despotic mistress among the infidels, had secretly made up English clothes for Zenia, and when Lady Hester was sleeping let the little girl practice her English bows and manners. But Miss Williams had died, and Zenia had been sent to the Bedouins in the desert, and never since then had she owned a gown or shoes or stockings. The Bedu gave Zenia a musket and a camel and an Arab name, and consulted her on magic, because she was the daughter of the Queen of the Englezys.

She hugged herself, burying her hands and calloused feet in the folds of her robe. Oh, a true princess, she: princess of the lawless land of famine, a miserable queen of nothing.

If she had believed for a few hopeful days, when Lady Hester called her back to Dar Joon, that her mother wished for her presence out of loneliness or affection, or thought to send her to England, such optimistic conjecture was soon set to right. Zenia was not allowed to discard her Bedouin garments; she was not even suffered to replace them, for there was no money. Somehow Lady Hester’s spies were paid, presents made to pashas and beggarly dervishes fed at her doors, but there was no money for new clothes for Zenia. For the last five years she had served her mother’s frenzied whims and lived hidden behind the screens again, listening as Lady Hester told such infrequent English guests as Lord Winter that she would rather sleep with pack mules than with women, which made him laugh and answer that she was too severe, that sleeping was the only undertaking he found to be tolerable with women.

If only it was not Lord Winter who had come!

Zenia clasped the miniature that hung about her neck beneath the striped folds of her threadbare
abah.
It was the single item she possessed, a fragile thread: the only thing, sometimes, that convinced her in the face of all experience that she was not this ragged Bedouin boy in truth. Years ago, in one of her mother’s hysterical fits of melancholy, Lady Hester had thrown the keepsake from her window down the cliff, but Miss Williams had sent Hanah Massad to retrieve it. Her mother’s gentle companion had pressed the small portrait into Zenia’s hands with a scared look, whispering, “This is your father. Don’t forget! She must not know you know it!”

To a child, the fear in the eyes of her only friend had made a profound impression. They were all frightened of Lady Hester’s temper and her Eastern punishments. She would not hesitate to bastinado an erring servant, having the soles of his feet beaten until he was crippled for life, and she had prided herself on the strength with which she could deliver a slap to the face of an impudent maid. Zenia had crept about her mother’s chamber with apprehension, quick to obey any order, for which she was derided daily as a spiritless milk-and-water miss.

Forewarned, Zenia had always taken the most extreme care to hide the miniature painting from her mother. She cherished it. She took the portrait from beneath her robes only in the greatest secrecy, and memorized the features of the handsome young man with beautiful eyes and the shadow of a tender smile in his expression, as if he looked into the distance at something he loved. In Zenia’s dreams, he was looking at her. Inside lay a lock of hair and a roll of paper written upon in an untidy hand:
For my dearest love, the most wonderful creature in the world, affectionately yours Mic. Bruce.

His dearest love was her mother, of course. The most wonderful creature in the world. But his smile—Zenia pressed the miniature against her breast and stole his loving smile for herself.

She rose, holding the keepsake gripped in her hand, swallowing tears. Wiping her face with her sleeve, she returned all the papers to their chests and doused the lamp, curling up with her broken musket in a corner. Her mother had never suffered Zenia to speak of going to England in her lifetime. But once, after Lady Hester had been reminiscing about her girlhood among the greatest British statesmen of the day, smoking her fragrant
narguile
and telling Dr. Meryon reverent stories of her uncle Mr. Pitt and her grandfather Lord Chatham, Prime Ministers both, mimicking Lord Byron’s lisp and laughing at the way Lamartine had kissed his poodle, she had called Zenia to her in the small hours of the night and promised that there was money set aside so that Zenia might go home.

She felt a great fool now to have believed her mother. Lady Hester had ever been able to command the imagination of those who sat through the long nights listening to her speak. Zenia had been too credulous of this, the thing she desired over all else. She did not believe now that there had ever been any such special savings hidden away as Lady Hester had pledged to her, or if there had been once, the money was long spent on a pair of dueling pistols or a gold-braided camel’s harness to gratify some smooth-voiced lying pasha, or just as probably stolen by Lady Hester’s rapacious servants.

She would make her way by herself. If she had not a penny, if she was barefoot, if she did not know where he lived or even if he lived, even so Zenobia was fixed in her purpose. She hated the desert and Dar Joon. She was going home, the home where she had never been. She was going to find her father in England, and live like the Englishwoman that she was.

She sought for a more comfortable position, leaning her shoulders against the wall. She had not lain down to sleep for the past four days, sitting up beside her mother while Lady Hester lay wrapped in her drifting white robes, coughing and gasping for breath as the servants prowled through Dar Joon and stole what scraps were left. Her mother had wailed hoarsely at her to stop them, but as soon as Zenia rose Lady Hester cried for her to come back.

Huddled in her corner, Zenia feared to sleep now. There were secret entrances to Dar Joon, and wolves sometimes climbed the walls. She had never been so alone, and wished that she had gone down to the village with the others. She couldn’t leave now, with the dark and the demons. Her mother’s frenzied weeping haunted her as soon as she closed her eyes. It wove into lifelike dreams, and she trembled, afraid that she would wake and find Lady Hester’s ghost calling for her. Voices seemed to echo in the empty rooms, and white hands in pale robes reached out to detain her.

The crack of a gunshot made her body jerk. The voices were suddenly real, shouts and running footsteps. She hunched in the corner, staring toward the door. Light bobbled, throwing fantastic shadows in the garden outside.

A figure in white Eastern robes stole inside the door. Zenia gasped. It was her mother—Zenia pressed her spine against the wall, staring at her mother’s ghost. She sat immobilized in terror, watching it sink into the blind shadows just beside the portal. For an instant she could see the gleam of metal, and then it too was lost in shadow. She heard the cock of a gun.

“Wolf cub!” a man’s voice hissed.

The English words startled her. She panted silently with fear. She did not want to answer, or reveal her position.

“Do you know a way out?” he whispered. “They have the main gate covered, and the tunnel from the stable.”

Zenia was too frightened to answer. She heard rough voices, the crashing sound of a door kicked in.

“Damn you—are you here?” he muttered.

“Yes,” she whispered.

‘Then bloody well give me some help!”

“Beside the fountain,” she said, in a voice that shivered with her breath. “Under the vines.”

He made a soft English curse. “Nothing closer?”

“No, my lord.”

“Lead the way.”

She sat against the wall, shuddering.

“Coming?” he demanded softly. “These aren’t respectable fellows, my cub. They’re deserters.”

Deserters! She grabbed her broken musket and stood up, quaking in all her limbs. She could hear the others coming. The light suddenly increased as they broke into the court outside.

She saw the gleam on metal again, as he aimed from behind the doorpost. The explosion made her body jump, a yellow flash that lit his face and the room, burning it on her eyelids, then suddenly all was blackness and angry shouts.

“Go!” Lord Winter snapped, and Zenia moved, stumbling over boxes toward the door. From the dark he groped and grabbed her arm, shoving her out into the court.

Someone ran into her. She bit back a cry and cringed against Lord Winter. She felt him move as hard hands closed on her—there was an ugly whack, a grunt, and the clutching fingers dropped away. The gunstock hit her as Lord Winter recovered his balance, a hard jolt on her collarbone and a tangling of their gun barrels together, but she threw herself pell-mell toward the courtyard wall.

Lord Winter came with her, close at her back. Her toes dug into the dirt as she flung around a corner, making her way by memory and feel, for she could see nothing. Lord Winter’s hand gripped her shoulder.

A shot blasted from behind them, echoing around the walls. Zenia tripped, her foot thrust under a root. Her ankle twisted. She fell hard, with cold pain flashing up her leg and thorns ripping into her hands and face as she smashed facedown amid a rose bush.

Lord Winter dragged her up, but another body intervened, a chaos of shoving and struggle. She could not tell if it was a knife or thorns that tore across her. She rolled over and staggered to her knees, leaning on her musket, as another report exploded in her ear. She saw the moment like a traceried still life: Lord Winter rising on one knee with his rifle at elbow level, the bright fireball of light from its muzzle thrust point-blank against the chest of a bearded man. The dazzling afterimage hid any more, but she heard the heavy crash of his body into the roses.

She tried to run, pitching onto her knee again as her ankle failed her. Lord Winter hauled her up. She used her broken musket as a crutch, limping heavily, groping ahead with her free hand.

She collided suddenly with the fountain, encountering the marble edge with a gasp and a splash. Feeling her way to the side, she scrabbled through a mass of honeysuckle to find the concealed door.

Light cast a shadow on the wall. “Down!” Lord Winter ordered sharply, and she dropped. She ran her fingers over the wall, searching, afraid that he must be out of rounds. He could not have reloaded the rifle while they ran, and she hadn’t seen that he carried pistols.

Even as she thought it, he fired—twice in rapid succession. The light vanished.

Her fingers found the wooden latch. She pushed the trap door open.

“Here!” she whispered.

He came after her, rustling the vines, climbing down into the slanting hole. Zenia slid down on her belly, feet-first, with her musket beside her. At the lower entrance, she pushed the concealing brush away with her good foot, skidding into the open air outside the walls. In the starlight, the valley and the limestone mountains lay white and silent, the cliff falling away from the base of the wall in a shadowed jumble of rock.

Her ankle throbbed, a sickening pain that seemed to take her breath. Lord Winter stole past her, the Arab head scarf flowing back over his shoulders, his face lost in shadow.

Zenia tried to stand up and made a faint whimper. But long ago she had learned that in the desert those who fell behind were easily forgotten. She limped desperately after, trying to stay in his footsteps on the rough ground. They circled away from the main gate and the village, taking a barely visible goat track. Zenia used her hands and toes and fingernails to drag herself between the boulders.

For as long as she could she pursued his swift pace, losing ground with every excruciating step, until finally she was so far behind that she lost the pale shade of his outline.

She was alone in the dark. She kept hobbling quickly, even after she came to the valley floor, afraid of what she might see if she paused and looked behind her. There were eerie things abroad at night—this night, when her mother lay in her crypt. Lady Hester was angry: Zenia could feel it. She knew Zenia meant to leave her. Her mother had chosen Dar Joon deliberately for its dreadful isolation, to prevent her servants running away any farther than the tiny village where they could easily be seized and hauled back. Between Zenia and the way to England lay a waterless mountain country haunted by jackals and wolves and civil war. She had nothing but the robes she wore, a broken musket without powder, and a horror of walking through the demon-plagued passes alone.

A wild cry came from somewhere on the ridges above her. She tripped, pitching to her knees and scrambling to rise again, trying to listen over the sound of her own panting. She could hear nothing at first, but as she sank down against the musket, a jackal laughed. She looked back in the direction of Dar Joon. The moon was just coming up, casting cold shadows that seemed alive. As she stared at them, they crept across the ground toward her until she had to close her eyes to keep from bursting into tears.

Then she heard the hooves. The sound came out of the dark, echoing from the rocks around her, so that she could not tell from what direction. She staggered to her feet just as the animal was upon her, a huge dark shape—a djinni, a hot-breathed devil materialized out of the night with her mother mounted upon it in flying pale robes. Its hooves nearly trampled her, spraying sand and rock as it halted. Zenia cried out and scrambled away, but her ankle crumpled, nauseating pain that stole her breath and rushed blackness up into her brain.