The Mer- Lion (90 page)

"I pray you are right. It will make what I do less dangerous. Word of the fate of Eulj Ali must not get to the Sublime Porte. Nor can he, for the sake of our country, go free to tell what he knows." She looked down at the sprawling redhead and spat at him. "Even th
e name leaves a bad taste in my
mouth. Take him, as planned, to Tunis under heavy guard. I have had the prince's cage restored in the Dar al Bey. Keep him there, dressed and fed as I have ordered until such time as I can make best use of this pawn in the game his father and I play.

"As for the Taureg, I wish him well. Take him to the mud tent east of here. It is already prepared for him. Do not bind him, for he
is one of us, but leave a strong guard outside his tent to assure his sleep is not disturbed. When he awakes, tell him that he is free to return to his tribe and his former wives. Tell him I would hope that he would take them back. Tell him also that my grandfather has another granddaughter, Khadija's daughter. You need not tell him, of course, that the girl is fat and fatuous. Let him find that out for himself. If he chooses not to visit the tents of the sheikh, do not obstruct him. Give him horse or camel—he may choose—and an escort—"

Two men disposed of, two men to go.

She hesitated a long while, choosing her words with care.

"Ali," she began but he stopped her lips with one finger of his bandaged hand.

"I know. You have changed your mind. And it is right. For both of you. He is descended from kings, as you are, and his destiny is not to be a plaything in someone's bed, but to father kings. As for you
..."
His voice broke. Then he recovered. "If ft cannot be me, men I rather it be he. He is the best, the winner of the games, the champion of champions."

Tears welled within her eyes. "Ali, I'm so sorry. Always I am the one who hurts you. And you are the one person I would hurt the least."

The two looked deep into each other's eyes. Then, she rose up on tiptoe and kissed his lips gendy, fleetingly.

Somehow, from somewhere, from the depths of his soul, he summoned a smile and a lie. "You make more of this than there is. He would have been my
anata,
a mere receptacle for my lust. And within weeks I would have cast him from me, as the lowly slave I thought he was. No, you do us all a favor by choosing him. And twice over you please my father. By selecting a worthy man as your consort and by sending me back to my concubines. Now, enough of this. What would yo
u do with this one?" He nudged Fi
onn with his foot.

Aisha wanted to believe Ali. Even if she could not, she could pretend that she did. Thus, she forced a mischievous look to her face. "Take him to Zainab's tent. For one with a gargantuan appetite, a giant should satisfy."

"As for the
jamad ja'da—"
She bit her lip. "It is so easy to say
what his fate will be, but it is my experience that he goes not willingly to fulfill it. I may marry him, but how do I make him marry me?"

She had a point.. Never in Ali's life had he met a man more determined to fight fate rather than accept it. He confessed defeat.

"Then what I cannot have willingly, I shall simply have to take. Untie him
...
and the spears as well that made up the trophy pole. Then follow me."

She held aside the diaphanous curtains so that her men might carry their burden through. At her direction they thrust the heads of the spears deep into the sand, two at either end of the bed. The silken ties that had bound him first to the trophy pole, then to the tent pole, now tied him hand and
foot, spread-eagled across her
sheepskin-draped bed, but not before all of his wedding finery had been stripped from his limp body.

Then she and her drugged husband were left alone, except for al Abid, the cheetah, who took her usual place beneath the rattan cage that housed the Amira's birds. Al Abid considered these her rightful prey and could not understand why they were denied her. With the patience of the hunting cat, she waited each night for the cage to fall and present her with her just deserts.

Suddenly, Aisha did not want to be left alone. She wanted desperately to call after Ali, "Come back, don't leave me here with him. I'm afraid." But she bit off the words before they were voiced. Ali would not have come back, and if he had, he would not have understood. Instead of the determined, decisive princess he believed her to be, he would have seen a spineless child, afraid of being alone with a
man utterly helpless to do
aught against her will. She smiled wryly. Determined, decisive princess, indeed. Instead, she was one caught in a trap of her own devising with no way out. The fact is, was, and always would be that she needed a husband. To block Barbarossa, to depose the Moulay. What she had secretly wanted and prayed for was that he be a husband in name only. That was why she was so willing to entertain the thought of his being a slave. What she had obtained—chosen, she had to admit, of her own free will—was the one man truly worthy of being her consort. His exploits in the games would make him a legend at the oases and aid her cause. He also happened to be the one-man who had refused to

bend to her will—the one man who would never agree, she knew, to being husband in either fact or fiction. Unless she were willing to give him up and forfeit all chance to be queen, she must before daybreak find a way to elude her own ensnaring and impose her will upon him. Otherwise, she had no choice but to accept defeat.

Damn you, she thought, looking over at him where he lay, a motionless, magnificent golden brown statue against the white of bedcoverings, all clean limbs and symmetry like one of the life-sized Roman bronzes recendy pulled from the deep off Djerba. "You lie there drugged, unable to speak, bound hand and foot, totally helpless, and still you defeat me."

There she had said it. Defeat. The very thought was foreign to her nature, and she chided herself. "For Allah's sake, Aisha, are you going to give up without a fight? Does being queen mean so little to you? Are you so impervious to this man mat you would willingly let him go free on the morrow? Can you ignore his audacity, his absolute genius in the arena today? The picture he made astride the gray?
Admit it -
just thinking of him makes your blood race. He has captured yo
ur imagination and you want him
. And you want to be queen. The two go hand in hand. You must have a plan. You can not simply lie down there beside him and wait like some sacrificial lamb for the morning to come and the sheikh to arrive to find the sheepskin unsoiled and unsullied and the marriage unmade."

She tried to argue with herself. "What I don't want is to be married.

"Neither did Ramlah. And she, like you, was raped by the Moulay. "With me, it was different. "Different, yes, but no worse!"

It wasn't, she had to admit. Ramlah had known what was going to happen to her, Aisha hadn't. Ramlah had foreseen the pain, the agony, the degradation, Aisha hadn't. Nor had Aisha had to live through a nine-month-long consequence of her deflowering. Ramlah had, and against all odd
s Ramlah had loved the child born
of that rape. Ramlah wanted her child and her child's children to rule this country. Would she now nullify all of Randan's sacrifices and dreams? No. Never. Not if it meant getting down on the ground and groveling at this man's feet and begging him to marry her.

The very thought took her aback. Her chin went up, her back stiffened, her shoulders squared. Make her beg, would he? She'd show him. Hadn't she been trained by the most talented odalisques in the land to seduce men's bodies to her will? How many men had she practiced on? Men who had been warned their lives were at stake if they responded. Yet they did and begged for release until in her mercy she had them castrated. Was this man any less impervious to her wiles than they were? All she need do was arouse him. And if he would not take her, then she could take him. It was not, after all, as if she were a virgin or unfamiliar with the mechanics of the act. She knew both all too well. Her pacing had brought her alongside the bed and she stared down at him, daring him to wake up, to unsheath his manhood and know desire.

But despite her resolve, her throat constricted, her lips were dry, and something within her, protesting at the thought of self-imposed rape, tightened into a cramp. However, she had made up her mind. If necessary, to keep this man and to be queen she would mount him and ride him until the sheepskin below them reeked of his seed.

She found herself praying as she paced back and form, that although not cut as Arabs were, he would react physically as other men did.

How long, she wondered, before she could find out? He slept the sleep of the drugged. He had been first to succumb. Would he be first to revive? She had no way of knowing, yet she needed to know. She feared she was in for a long wait. Wearily she attempted to remove her garments, but she had never done this by herself before. With her hair caught in a jeweled clasp, she was helpless and called for Zainab. Then she remembered her handmaiden had her own plans for the evening. Of course, she thought. Why didn't it occur to me earlier?

She clapped her hands, summoning the
asira
as she watched for some response from
the man. Nothing. As she gazed
down upon him, she did not feel the tugging of the
asira
as they untangled her hair, nor was she conscious of her heavy garments being removed and a thin gown slipping over her head. When the well-trained
asira,
as a matter of course, handed her the throwing dagger she was never without, it was purely instinct that made her take it and throw it into a tent pole. Instead, she was painfully aware of the man's beauty, the
carve of his cheek, the line of his chin, the set of his lips. Suddenly, she realized that she was not the only one who gazed upon him longingly. That she would not have. Immediately all the
asira
were dismissed, except one that she remembered had been useful to her before. It was the girl who had retrieved the mirror. "Child, I would ask of you a kindness." "Anything, highness, anything."

"I would ask you to torture yourself for me." The statement was misleading but deliberately testing.

The child swallowed once or twice, then spoke the simple truth. "You have but to command!"

"You know the blond giant who survived the games?"

"The one who now occupies Zainab's bed?"

"The same. I see you do know him well."

The girl did not look up but her cheeks dimpled.

"Would you know him better?"

The
asira's
kiss on her hand was Aisha's answer. "Then, I should like you to listen by Zainab's tent and let me know when he awakes."

"How, highness," she asked ingenuously, "will I know?"

"You'll know. Zainab will unwittingly see to that. And if you come promptly to tell me, I promise you that when Zainab is through with him, he shall be yours. Would you like that?"

The girl's eyes shone. "Oh, yes, a man to oneself—that would be better than almost anything else."

Aisha chose not to pursue mat subject further.

Once the
asira
left, the only sound in the tent was the hissing of the coals in the braziers and the rasping of the cheetah's loud breathing. In the flickering of the torches, the gentie noises were soothing. The bed looked so soft, so fresh, so inviting. The man upon it so handsome yet helpless.

She drew closer and studied that face once again. Unlike Eulj Ali's of only an hour ago, under the drugs his lips had not sagged disgustingly open. Nor did he snore loudly like the giant had done, nor did bubbles of drool appear in the comers of his mouth as they had the Taureg's. He slept peacefully, like a child. Suddenly she realized she did not even know how old he was. With that strange gray hair, she assumed him to be old. But looking down at him, she
was not at all sure. Asleep like this with his lips set in a half-smile, he awoke in her a fierce maternal instinct. She wanted to hold him and protect him. She half laughed aloud ruefully. The person he most needed protection from was herself. Carefully, she sat down on the bed next to him so as not to disturb him, then caught herself up short. The one thing she wanted to do was disturb him, to wake him up. It was essential to her plans. Encouraged, she
reached out to touch that mass of ombré
gray hair. Would it be wiry like Ramlah's occasional gray strand? At first, she was tentative, stroking with a single fingertip. Then, when he offered no resistance, she plunged all ten fingers into the curls of his head. They were soft and smooth and ran through her fingers like silk embroidery floss.

Now her hands seemed to have minds of their own. Not content with playing with the curls on his head, they made their way lower. One finger traced the arc of those startlingly proud black eyebrows, another lightly ran down the length of his aquiline nose. Two fingers on his chin and his head moved side to side within the frame of his outstretched arms. Yes, he was young she thought. Perhaps as young as she was. They would have many years—she caught herself; she had almost thought to grow gray together, but he was already that. But of all the features of his face, the one that fascinated her most was his mourn. Tenderly she brushed those lips with a fingertip. And this time he reacted instinctively, like a baby when first presented with its mother's nipple; he followed the caressing fingertip.