LITMIR.BIZ

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of the northerners—was improbable in the extreme.

      “How difficult, for a soldier. She must be fearsome.”

      “She is,” said Rodrigo Belmonte, with feeling.

      But something—a nuance, a new shade of meaning in the night—had been introduced now, however flippantly, and Jehane was suddenly aware that the two of them were alone in the darkness with his men and Velaz far behind and the camp a long way ahead yet. She was sitting up close to him, thighs against his and her arms looped around him, clasped at his waist. With an effort she resisted the urge to loosen her grip and change position.

      “I’m sorry,” he said after a silence. “This isn’t a night for joking, and now I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

      Jehane said nothing. It seemed that whether she spoke or kept silent, this man was reading her like an illuminated scroll.

      Something occurred to her. “Tell me,” she said firmly, ignoring his comment, “if you lived here for a time, why did you have to ask what was burning, back in camp? Orvilla has been in the same place for fifty years or more.”

      She couldn’t see his face, of course, but somehow she knew he would be smiling. “Good,” he said at length. “Very good, doctor. I shall be even sorrier now if you refuse my offer.”

      “I have refused your offer, remember?” She wouldn’t allow herself to be deflected. “Why did you have to ask what was burning?”

      “I didn’t have to ask. I chose to ask. To see who answered. There are things to be learned from questions, beyond the answers to the question.”

      She thought about that. “And what did you learn?”

      “That you are quicker than your merchant friend.”

      “Don’t underestimate ibn Musa,” Jehane said quickly. “He’s surprised me several times today, and I’ve known him a long time.”

      “What should I do with him?” Rodrigo Belmonte asked.

      It was, she realized, a serious question. She rode for a while, thinking. The two moons were both high now; they had risen about thirty degrees apart. The angle of a journey, in fact, in her own birth chart. Ahead of them now she could see the campfire where Husari would be waiting with the two men left on guard.

      “You understand that he was to have been killed this afternoon with the others in the castle?”

      “I gathered as much. Why did he survive?”

      “I didn’t let him go. He was passing a kidney stone.”

      He laughed. “First time he’ll ever have been grateful for that, I’ll wager.” His tone changed. “Fine, then. He was marked by Almalik to die. What should I do?”

      “Take him back north with you,” she said at length, trying to think it through. “I think he wants to do that. If King Ramiro has any thoughts of taking Fezana for himself one day—”

      “Wait! Hold, woman! What kind of a thing is that to say?”

      “An obvious one, I should have thought,” she said impatiently. “At some point he has to wonder why he’s only exacting parias and not ruling the city.”

      Rodrigo Belmonte was laughing again, and shaking his head. “You know, not all obvious thoughts need be spoken.”

      “You asked me a question,” she said sweetly. “I am taking it seriously. If Ramiro has any such thoughts—however remote and insubstantial they may be, of course—it can only help to have the sole survivor of today’s massacre with him.”

      “Especially if he makes sure everyone knows that man came straight to him from the slaughter and asked him to intervene.” Rodrigo’s tone was reflective; he didn’t bother responding to her sarcasm.

      Jehane felt suddenly weary of talking. This was a day that had started at dawn in the market, in the most ordinary of ways. Now here she was, after the slaughter in the city and the attack on Orvilla, discussing peninsular politics in the darkness with Rodrigo Belmonte, the Scourge of Al-Rassan. It began to seem just a little too much. She was going to set out on her own path in the morning, and morning was not far off. “I suppose you are right. I’m a doctor, not a diplomat, you know,” she murmured vaguely. It would be nice to fall asleep, actually.

      “Much the same, at times,” he replied. Which irritated her enough to pull her awake again, mostly because Ser Rezzoni had said precisely the same thing to her more than once. “Where are you riding?” he asked casually.

      “Ragosa,” she answered, just before remembering that she hadn’t planned to tell anyone.

      “Why?” he pursued.

      He seemed to assume he had a right to an answer. It must come with commanding men for so long, Jehane decided.

      “Because they tell me the courtiers and soldiers there are wondrous skilled in lovemaking,” she murmured, in her throatiest voice. For good measure, she unlinked her hands and slid them from his waist to his thighs and left them there a moment before clasping them demurely again.

      He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. She was sitting very close, though; try as he might to hide a response, she could feel his heartbeat accelerate. At about the same moment, it occurred to her that she was playing the most brazen sort of teasing game with a dangerous man.

      “This,” said Rodrigo Belmonte of Valledo plaintively, “is distressingly familiar. A woman putting me in my place. Are you sure you’ve never met my wife?”

      A moment later, very much against her will and any reasonable expectations, Jehane began to laugh. And then, perhaps because she was laughing, genuinely amused, she remembered again what she’d seen in that small hut in Orvilla, and then it came back to her that her father had spoken his first words in four years tonight, and she was leaving him and her mother, perhaps forever.

      She hated crying. Laughter and tears, Ishak used to say, were the nearest of kin. It wasn’t a physician’s observation, that one. His mother had told him that, and her mother had told her. The Kindath had survived a thousand years; they were laden with such folk wisdom, carrying it like their travelling baggage, well-worn, never far from reach.

      So Jehane fought against her tears on Rodrigo Belmonte’s black horse, riding east under moons that spelled a journey for her, against the backdrop of the summer stars, and the man with whom she rode kept blessedly silent until they reached the camp and saw that the Muwardis had been there.

      FOR ALVAR, a good part of the considerable strain of that night came from feeling so hopelessly behind what was happening. He had always thought of himself as clever. In fact, he knew he was intelligent. The problem was, the events unfolding tonight in Al-Rassan were so far outside the scope of his experience that cleverness was not nearly enough to show him how to deal with what was taking place.

      He understood enough to know that with his share of the ransom to be negotiated for Garcia de Rada and his surviving men he was already wealthier than he had ever imagined becoming in his first year as a soldier of the king in Esteren. Even now, before any further negotiations took place, Alvar had been assigned a new horse and armor by Laín Nunez—and both of them were better than his own.

      This was how soldiers rose in the world, if they did, through the plunder and ransom of war. Only he had really not expected to take that wealth from fellow Valledans.

      “Happens all the time,” Laín Nunez had said gruffly as they divided the spoils in the village. “Remind me to tell you of the time Rodrigo and I served as privately hired mercenaries of the Asharites of Salos downriver. We raided into Ruenda for them more than once.”

      “But not into Valledo,” Alvar had protested, still troubled.

      “All one back then, remember? King Sancho was still on the throne of united Esperaña. Three provinces of one country, lad. Not the division we’ve got now.”

      Alvar

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