WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (25 page)

"You aren't going to argue with him, are you?"

Conar lifted his head and looked at her. "Why would I?"

Rachel avoided his gaze. "About allowing Catherine to leave St. Steffensberg," she replied in a low voice.

A long sigh of understanding wafted from Conar. "No, I won't argue with him about it.

Knowing Sajin, he did his job with remarkable aplomb until Cat outsmarted him. There's no sense rubbing salt into his wounds about it."

"I heard his sister was very angry that Catherine left. If what I suspect is true, Sybelle would have liked the two of them to wed. She dotes on her little brother."

Conar thought of the dark-haired woman he had met at the court of Catherine's father. The woman had made it clear to him that she thought him lower than a dung beetle and twice as useless.

If the rumors were true, she had been one of Jaleel Jaborn's many mistresses and if that were the case, he figured she had even less regard for him now since he had been Jaborn's murderer.

"Well, I don't know a damned thing the bitch can do about it," he answered Rachel. "She can get mad in one hand and …."

"Don't say it!" Rachel warned. Her husband's propensity for vulgarity shocked her at times and angered her at others. She had made it a habit since their marriage the week before, to forestall any Serenian sayings that she found offensive, which were most of them.

Conar chuckled. It amused him every time Rachel blushed at one of his coarser words and grew downright furious when he spouted sayings that were a bit off-color. As much as the woman enjoyed the carnal aspects of their life together, he couldn't understand why a little vulgarity displeased her so. It certainly didn't while they were making love to one another, which was most of the time when they were alone.

"At any rate, Sybelle should be overjoyed to learn I've divorced Cat," Conar said in a voice he didn't realize sounded defeated and terribly sad.

"She will be if she can persuade Sajin to go to Serenia to bring her back and take her to wife," Rachel answered.

Hurt drove straight into Conar's soul at his wife's words and he clamped his mouth shut to keep from blurting out that Sajin had no business going to Serenia and certainly no business with Catherine. As much as he had felt himself for the nomad's seduction of Catherine after he, Conar, had left her in Odess, he now realized that was the last thing he wanted. That Catherine was now free of him, something he had never really considered would ever happen, and free to take a new husband, ate at him like a hungry piranha.

"Let me get your back," Rachel ordered him. As he sat forward to allow her to bathe him, she averted her eyes from the horrible scars crisscrossing his broad back. The sight of the mutilation bothered her, as it did every woman who had ever seen it, and the pain he had been made to suffer made tears come unbidden every time.

"Sybelle should find her a husband," she said, dragging her mind from the image of her husband bound between two uprights, his flesh being seared with a cat-o'-nine. "It would make her a less severe woman, I would think."

"She didn't seem like the marrying kind," Conar quipped.

"Any woman is the marrying kind, milord, when the right man comes along," Rachel informed him. "Her first husband abused her, though, so I suppose she's not as anxious to take a new one to her breast."

Conar craned his head and looked around at her. "He beat her?"

"Many times," Rachel said, nodding. "Sajin would have called him out for it had the Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 112

bastard not died prematurely."

"On the end of some man's saber, I heard," Conar put in.

"Sajin knew nothing of what his sister was going through until her husband was in his grave. Even then, I think he would have dug the man up and stomped him to dust if he could have."

"I would have wanted to, too," Conar answered.

"She bears scars from his whippings, I hear," Rachel said, glancing down at the carnage on her husband's flesh. "He nearly killed her once."

"What of Jaborn?" he asked, knowing Rachel had slept with the man, herself.

Rachel's hand stilled on his shoulder. "What of him?"

"Did he beat her, too?" He fused his gaze with his wife's. "Did he beat you?"

Rachel shook her head. "He would not have dared lay a hand to me, Khamsin." She vigorously applied the rag to her husband's shoulder. "I would have killed him and he knew it."

"But he beat Sajin's sister," he said.

"It would not surprise me if he did. He was a very cruel man."

Conar nodded thoughtfully. "I know that well enough."

"There," Rachel said, coming to her feet. "All done." She lowered her eyes to the juncture of his legs. "Unless you feel too tired to finish the rest of you."

A slow, mischievous grin spread across the Serenian's face. "Well, now that you mention it

.…"

When the maid came to clean the bathing chamber later that night, she wondered why there was so much water on the floor beside the tub.

The three men crept silently down the hallway of the fourth story of Abbadon Fortress. The crystals in the pockets of their robes kept them safe from the prying eyes of the warriors and women scattered about. Every unlocked door was opened, every room searched, but the object of their search was not to be found in any of the rooms which ringed the fourth story. It was not until they came to the massive door at the end of the serpentine hallway on the upper story, that they found what they had been seeking.

Opening the door to the large chamber, one dark-shrouded figure moved soundlessly into the chamber and located their target. He stood for a long moment, looking down at the sleeper in the bed, then turned his attention around him, intent on surveying the chamber's furnishings. With one last probing scrutiny of his target, he backed slowly out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind him. Pointing one dark, stubby finger toward the stairs, he led the other two men to the safety of the servant's quarters.

"It's him, all right," the man told the others in a near-whisper. "He's got a woman with him.

We can't do it tonight."

"Can we afford to wait?" one of the others asked.

"We'll have to. Our orders are to take him when he's alone."

"But that could take days!" the third man protested.

"What difference does it make?" the first man sneered. "We've got a month before we have to have him in Rhiad."

Leaving without what they had come to Abbadon to retrieve, the men made their way from Abbadon Fortress, through iron-studded doors left carelessly unlocked, and to their mounts hidden half a mile from the desert keep. They had made camp three miles from the fortress and had resigned themselves to spending several days there. Every precaution had to be made in order to Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 113

do their work unobserved and correctly.

Had the men in charge of security at the Fortress known it was so easily accessed, they would not have slept so soundly that night.

And neither would the man whose kidnapping had been ordered by another bent on

exacting revenge.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 114

Chapter Eighteen

Sajin shook his head at his friend and then took him in his arms, tightening his grip to the point of discomfort, chuckling at the grunt of pain that escaped his friend's throat.

"Couldn't seduce her, could you?" Conar asked, his golden brows elevated beneath the fall of one thick tawny lock.

"It wasn't me the lady wanted, you bastard," Sajin grumbled as he draped an arm over Conar's shoulder. "You knew that when you offered her to me."

"You couldn't persuade her with your inestimable charms, nomad?" the Serenian drawled.

The Kensetti snorted. "Not even by singing Hasdu love sonnets to her under her balcony."

Conar grinned. "Well no wonder she took flight, Ben-Alkazar. If you'd come warbling under my balcony, I'd have jumped ship, too."

"I'm sorry, Conar," Sajin said, sobering. He stopped and looked at his friend. "I let you down."

"She outfoxed you, nomad," Conar answered. "Me, too."

"But I made a promise to you. I ...."

Conar held up his hand. "Did she tell you she had no intention of divorcing me, Sajin?"

When his friend didn't answer, Conar nodded. "And made you promise not to tell me she had. I understand how her mind works."

"From what I hear, you remedied that problem yourself." The Kensetti frowned. "I'm not at all sure you did a wise thing in marrying Rachel, Conar."

"Don't start," Conar warned. His expression was one that said he would not brook argument or discussion over what he'd done.

"I just hope you don't regret having acted so hastily, my friend," Sajin said, resigned to say no more about the situation unless Conar brought it up.

"Other than being out maneuvered by Cat, what have you been up to since I saw you last?"

Conar asked. He knew the matter of Rachel was finished.

"I made a stop in Kenset, hoping to catch Sybelle there, but she's off on another of her endless forays to wherever the hell it is she goes where I can't find her." He frowned. "I worry about her, but little good it does me. She'll do what she wants and the hell with how I feel about it."

"Did you happen to see Ghedrin's sister while you were there?" Conar inquired. "Jasmine, is it?"

Sajin shook his head. "I heard she came here to claim his body, but since there was no love lost between them, I doubt she's upset with his execution." He continued walking with Conar.

"You aren't worried that she'll try to cause you trouble, are you? If you are, don't. Jasmine is happy to be rid of that vile lecher and, if I remember correctly, rather liked that Hesar lad from Virago."

"He wanted to stay and court her, but I wouldn't allow it," Conar admitted. "I told him maybe she could come visit him at Tempest Keep this summer." The Serenian's brows drew together. "Who is her guardian, now?"

"I suppose I am," Sajin sighed. "We're distant cousins and I don't think there are any closer than me who would dare take on the obligation of seeing to her."

"Will you send word to her that she would be welcome to visit Paegan? I can arrange passage for her, I think."

Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 115

"I'm sure she'll jump at the chance," Sajin grinned.

"Then that's settled," Conar told the nomad. "I've had the cook prepare us a supper you won't soon forget and if you're a good little boy, I'll have something warm put in your bed this eve."

"Blond and blue-eyed?" Sajin asked, wagging his thick black brows.

"I'm taken," Conar answered, bumping his hip against his friend's.

"Oh, well," Sajin sighed hopelessly and both men broke into thunderous laughter.

After a repast that left them sated and pleasantly tired, Conar and the nomad sat in companionable silence in front of a blazing fire, warming their stocking feet. Conar sipped slowly on a snifter of fiery Viragonian brandy and Sajin puffed on a long pipe filled with strong Rysalian tobacco.

"I made a tour of the fortress yesterday," Conar said as he stared in to the flames.

Sajin, whose head had been lolling on the back of his chair, swung his attention to the man beside him. "That sounds ominous." His friend's tone had been filled with a strange quality that brought immediate concern to the Kensetti's mind.

Conar sat the brandy snifter down on the carpet. "I felt a need to re-visit the rooms where my friends died."

The nomad frowned through a cloud of thick blue smoke. "Was that wise, Conar?"

A long sigh came from Sajin's companion. "Maybe not, but I felt I had to do it." He laid his head back. "I was all right until I got to the room where Jaborn raped Cat."

Total shock spread over the nomad's face and he sat up straight in his chair, turning so that he was facing Conar. "You didn't tell me that had happened, Conar," he said.

"No one but you knows of it. She was unconscious and Jaborn is dead." He closed his eyes. "I don't think any of his men were aware of what the son-of-a-bitch was doing."

Sajin swallowed the nausea in his throat. "He told you what he'd done?" Intense fury welled up in the Kensetti Prince's gut and he could well imagine the hurt such news would have caused his friend.

Conar's head rolled toward Sajin. "I was made to watch him do it, Sajin."

The nomad's complexion bleached white as freshly fallen snow and his gaze became blurred with tears. "No," he whispered. His lips trembled for the guilt Conar must have endured.

"I am sorry, Conar. I ...."

"Do you see now why I couldn't keep her with me, Sajin?" Guilt flooded the trembling voice. "I was bound so I could not go to her, could not stop that bastard from putting his filthy hands on her, but if it had not been for me, such a thing would never have happened to her in the first place." He looked away from the misery on Sajin's face for he knew the man was desperately in love with Catherine, himself. "Jaborn could just have easily slit her throat as molested her." His voice lowered to an agonized whisper. "I half-expected him to."

"And she doesn't know?" Sajin's whisper was just as pained as his friend's. Conar shook his head. "It's bad enough that you do," Sajin stated.

"Did you know my first wife was raped by my own brother?" At Sajin's slow nod, Conar sat forward in his chair and braced his elbows on his knees, his attention once more riveted on the leaping flames. "I couldn't protect her, either. Or Nadia. Jaborn killed my daughter."

Sajin didn't know what to say to his friend's confession of guilt. He felt as though Conar needed to talk, but when no further words came from the Serenian, the nomad allowed the silence to play out between them. Time, in itself, was a healer. Their friendship was the catalyst he hoped would start the healing process. He knew Conar understood that he was there for him.