Roman (24 page)

There, walking across a far corner of the bailey toward the wide opening that led into the main building was a pair of Damascene soldiers, the telltale colors of their sashes like a slap to Isra's face. She looked as closely as she could at their dark faces, so out of place here in this compound of reddened, pale complexions—and so much like Isra's own—but she could not say they were familiar at such a distance.

Neither could she say they were not.

A hand grasped her arm from behind and Isra barely stifled her scream as she jumped and spun around, pulling free of the grasp.

But it was Roman who had touched her—of course.

“What is it?” he asked, at once alert to the fear on her face.

“Those men,” she began and turned around to indicate the pair of soldiers, but they had vanished. “They must have gone inside.” She looked up at him again. “Two men. Perhaps from Damascus.”

Roman's brow fell into a frown. “It's possible they are only mercenaries, but there is no way of inquiring unless we wish to incur suspicion. I've just been told the king is feeling exceptionally poorly this evening and will not be present for your performance.”

Now it was Isra's turn to frown. “I thought it strange they wished the troupe to perform so soon after our arrival. Think you they would make their attempt this night?”

“It's brilliant really,” he said, although his tone bore no real admiration. “The Saracen mercenaries, the troupe—all of it is the perfect cover. It would be impossible to mark the king's murder as treachery with so many strange visitors about to blame it on.”

“You think it is the machination of Raynald,” Isra said.

But Roman surprised her by shaking his head as his gaze skittered over the features of the exterior walls of the keep. “No, I'm not entirely convinced he's involved at all. But it must be someone under his command.” He looked back to her. “If whoever it is thinks to take advantage of the performance tonight to do this evil, it means I must reach the king beforehand.”

He took her arm again and turned her to face the keep, nodding toward one of the long balconies partly hidden by an olive tree. “Baldwin is there, in those apartments.”

Isra glanced up and then looked back to Roman. “How will you reach him?”

“He must be housed in the royal wing. Which means there is likely only one direct access from the common area. It will be separate from the other living quarters, with chambers for his personal security.” His gaze was intense. “Once we are inside, I must try to gain the upper level while you have the fortress distracted, and hopefully before anyone else with ill intent can reach him. Which means you must show Kahn without me.”

A chill of fear swept up Isra's spine as she looked into his eyes, but she could not refuse. Hadn't they come all this way to do this very thing? Hadn't they been given almost the perfect opportunity to do so?

“Zeus and the others will be present. If I have not returned by the time you are finished, you must rejoin the troupe and all of you must leave Kerak as quickly as you can.”

“As you wish,” she said as calmly as she could, although her heart pounded so that she could feel its reverberations along her throat.

He pressed her arm and held it securely for a moment, looking as though there was something else he wished to say. Then his touch was gone and he walked around the end of the wagon and opened the door for her. “I'll wait here while you dress.”

Isra obediently climbed into the shadowed interior and Roman closed the door behind her. She left the lantern unlit and sat for several moments in the darkness, absorbing the feeling of being safe, of having the man she loved within her reach, guarding her, protecting her.

But then Huda's bruised countenance burst into torturous relief against the blackness of her vision, and Isra fumbled in the dark with shaking hands to light the lantern, frantic to fill the wagon with wildly swinging light and to convince herself that it meant nothing.

It meant nothing
.

B
arnaby led the procession into the keep, his fingers plucking a lute and his strong, clear voice ringing off the stone walls. Nickle followed with a jangly tambourine, and when his little capped head disappeared beyond the doorway, applause echoed politely and Isra's insides clenched and twisted into a ball.

Helena went next, leading her line of little darlings dressed in their finest, and the shouts of delighted laughter tumbled along the stones of the wide corridor where Isra walked as if in a funeral procession.

Kahn's wagon eased to a halt, pulled by the strongmen Zeus and Arpetto, and Isra stopped too, turning to place her hands on Zeus's stooped shoulders, her slippers in the stirrups of his hands. Gunar scrambled up the wheel and onto the roof of the cage behind her.

She looked over her shoulder at Roman, who waited in the entryway to the bailey, leaning against the thick wall with his arms crossed over his chest, watching her.

“
Ena, dio, tria,”
Zeus said, and on three he hoisted Isra into the air.

She reached up and took hold of Gunar's hands, pulling herself atop the wagon.

“If you would, mistress,” the young man commanded, indicating an area where he had spread a square scarf. Isra eased down onto one hip, her legs crooked to the side, one arm out to brace herself. Asa's whip and staff lay waiting, the latter of which Gunar bent down and retrieved, tossing it into the air before snatching it in his fist. Isra thought he would make a very capable leader of his own troupe one day.

He swung down from the top of the wagon and straightened his stiff collar before striding boldly ahead through the doorway, where Barnaby's gay melodies still filled the air and the yaps of Helena's dogs elicited bursts of laughter.

“Fine people of Kerak!” Gunar cried out while raising his arms, and the wagon began rolling forward slowly.

Isra looked over her shoulder once more and saw that Roman was still watching her. He winked and his mouth crooked in a grin. She tried to return it, tried to memorize how he looked just then, in the long white tunic she had purchased for him with her own money. The late afternoon sun filled the bailey behind him, lighting up his blond hair like a halo.

Isra looked forward, relaxed her face into what she hoped was an expression of haughty disinterest as she and the tiger beneath her rolled into the huge stone hall.

Isra's heart pounded as her eyes flicked over the crowd crammed into the cavernous room. It seemed as if every person living or working at Kerak must be gathered there, which caused her dread to increase. Roman's suspicions of using the performance as cover while the ultimate evil was committed above everyone's head seemed more than possible; it appeared to be guaranteed. Surely no one was missing from the audience.

No one but the king and whoever had been charged with seeing him dead.

The wagon rolled to a stop and the performers circled around it twice, encouraging the audience in their welcoming applause while the wagon swayed almost imperceptibly beneath her seat; Kahn was awake and pacing.

Her eyes scanned the crowd closely now, and she took stock of the spectators: the seated nobility and their companions, the fighting men gathered around next, with their array of weaponry on shining, deadly display at their sides; the servants and lesser residents of the castle pressed against the walls, leaning up on tiptoe to peer over the sea of people crushed together.

And there, standing just behind the lords in their ornate chairs, were the two Damascene soldiers, their turbans causing them to stand out as if alone in the room. Isra's blood ran cold as their dark eyes watched her closely, their heads leaned together.

Gunar introduced her again and Isra rose to her feet, her knees weak, the muscles of her thighs quivering with dread. She picked up her whip and held her arms from her sides.

“Many years ago, over a city boasting streets of gold,” she began, projecting her voice from deep beneath her diaphragm to steady its tremble, “ruled the wealthiest prince in all the land. And although his riches guaranteed him anything his heart could desire, his most longed for possession was the love of a poor young woman from his own village.”

She caught a ruffle of movement out of the corner of her right eye and turned that way to continue her story.

“All his gold would not allow him to make the poor village girl his wife,” she said as her head turned, and she caught sight of another turbaned head, moving from a doorway along the front wall through the crowd toward his similarly dressed comrades. The man glanced up at her and Isra's heart clenched, stopped.

Even from across the room, separated by hundreds of faces and months of time, Isra knew that black, evil gaze. She would know it after a hundred years, a thousand.

Hamid.

He slowed and turned his head toward her once more, his body following his gaze as he came to a complete stop.

Isra swallowed, very aware of all the eyes upon her, and broke gaze with the man. “Eventually, she was married to a man of her own status and soon had a happy family. The great prince was heartbroken and would have no other for his bride.”

Another flash of movement at that same doorway caught her attention and Isra looked quickly. It was Roman, and he paused now, watching her, one foot already on a stairway that disappeared around a turn. The question on his face was clear.

Isra glanced back to Hamid, and his face was a stone mask as he brazenly stared at her, his long arms hanging at his side.

What would happen if she alerted Roman that the man who had set murderers after her, who had commanded the monsters who viciously killed her sister, who had allowed it to happen in his very presence, was in this room? Was in this room and
recognized her?

Would Roman stop in his mission to save the king in order to save Isra?

Did he care for her enough to do that?

The better question might be: did Isra love him enough to allow him to do what he had come all this long way, all these many years to do? To at last redeem his friends, his brothers, even if it meant placing herself within reach of the man who would kill her?

Perhaps then she would feel worthy of him, of surviving Damascus when Huda had not.

So she shone her brightest smile in the direction of the doorway before swinging her gaze back over the crowd, sweeping over Hamid's head without pause. She kicked the first latch free.

“Instead, the prince began leaving his great palace in the dark of night to pace the edge of the jungle around his love's village, stalking her.” Now she let her gaze come back to Hamid, whose eyes were black as any devil's. She looked at him directly, daring him to act. “Waiting. Waiting years for even a glimpse of the woman he knew he
could never have
.”

The general began to push through the crowd toward the wagon as if mesmerized, and so Isra walked to the edge of the roof nearest him. With a flick of her slipper, the second latch came undone with barely a click of sound.

“Soon he could no longer bear leaving the jungle even for a short time lest she slip past him unnoticed. The prince became wild, unpredictable, his skin discolored by the shadows of the forest, his teeth great fangs. He soon indulged”—she felt her eyes narrow—“unnatural appetites for flesh.”

The hall was silent like the air before a great storm. Isra turned from Hamid and paced to the rear of the wagon as she continued her tale. She released the third latch without breaking stride.

“His subjects mourned the loss of their once-noble ruler, but he was eventually forgotten, as all men are wont to be. And then, many years later,” Isra said and paused, unlatching the final clasp and sitting down at the edge of the roof, her slippers dangling. Zeus and Arpetto, waiting on the wheels, grasped her by her wrists and upper arms.

They lowered her to the ground, and the movement of air caused her scarves and her plaits to flutter and stream behind her, eliciting delighted sighs from the crowd. She landed on her feet and sauntered around the front of the wagon, playing to the enraptured crowd and ignoring the man she stepped ever closer to.

“The village woman's husband died. Now, the prince was no longer a prince but a desperate, feral creature, and thusly felt ruled by no law. So, one evening, as dusk settled over the village, the beast left the shadows of the jungle to approach his heart's desire as she drew water from the well.”

Isra stepped her feet one over the other in a sideways manner, feeling the cold hatred emanating from Hamid as she came closer and closer to him, and yet she refused to give him her attention yet. She circled her arms, gestured with her whip, and Asa van Groen would have crowed with delight at the way she had mesmerized the crowd.

“When the woman looked up at the sound of footfalls in the grass, she saw not the handsome benefactor who once might have protected her innocence but a vicious monster.” Isra stopped and threw out her hands. “Oh, how she must have screamed in fear when faced with such a fiend!” Isra lifted her face, her ear-piercing shrieks ricocheting off the high ceiling and walls.

“
Help! Help me! No! Stop! Please! Someone please help me!
” Isra lowered her face and took a step away from the crowd before continuing her sidestepping movement around the perimeter. Her throat was raw, but the pain felt wickedly good.

“But the beast came on, trying to speak to her words of what he felt was his triumph at last: ‘I've come for you. You are mine. You belong to me now.'”

Just as she would have come even with Hamid, she defied him further by turning on her heel and stalking slowly back in the direction from which she'd just come.

“The woman only heard terrible growls, and thinking she was soon to be devoured, she dropped her bucket and ran for her life, still shouting for help.”

She turned suddenly to walk toward Hamid yet again, the heads of those gathered in front turning the slightest bit with each of Isra's slow steps.

“The beast, seeking to ease her fears, gave chase. He caught her quickly, reaching out his arms to embrace her tender flesh, lowering his head for a sweet kiss.” Now Isra stopped, feeling not cold hatred but a burning rage, so that she knew she would be face-to-face with Hamid if she but turned her face forward.

And so she did.

As she spoke her next low words directly into that soulless gaze, her fear vanished. “But when she did not respond, the beast looked and saw that the girl was dead, mauled by his long claws and sharp teeth.”

The crowd gave a shocked gasp, and there were several cries of distress. Isra spoke quietly but clearly, her face only inches from Hamid's.

“And so the beast fled back into the jungle, damned for eternity to live out his days as a tormented monster, never to be seen again.” She paused, and even she was surprised at the twitch of her mouth as it longed to smile.

“I will kill you myself,” Hamid said in a whisper of their shared tongue. “You . . .
whore
.”

Isra leaned forward until it must have appeared to the crowd that she was going to kiss the turbaned man who so resembled her. Her smile widened and she even chuckled.

“Come then,” she whispered, her nose circling his in the air.

She backed away quickly with her arms, her whip raised high, and a gust of air rushed in to fill the space between her and the demon of a man, although her eyes never left him.

“Never to be seen again . . .
until tonight
!”

She heard the footfalls of Gunar, of Zeus and Arpetto, take their places behind her, and she turned toward the crowd, spinning around once completely so that her scarves and her plaits flew.

“Ladies and gentleman, Prince Kahn!” Isra pushed the edge of the front wall away and then the other three fell to the stone floor with earsplitting cracks. Even those nobles who considered themselves too precious to stand in the presence of such base performers rose to their feet then, and the hall roared with approval as the magnificent tiger was revealed.

Hamid left the fringe of the audience, his eyes bulging, his mouth a sneer. Several of the people around him pointed and whispered as he advanced, and it was clear they thought him part of the performance.

Isra backed up until her feet were on the wagon tongue. She turned and leaped sprightly up the narrow beam while Hamid continued his measured stalk toward the wagon. She held out her whip.

“And now,” she called out to the crowd, sweeping her whip across her chest and then before the crowd, “you will all be witness to a display of courage unlike anything you could imagine!”

Her head whipped back around and she saw Hamid was standing at the end of the wagon tongue. Isra flicked the long leather whip in her right hand and it licked Hamid's forehead, leaving a thin line of red that immediately began to drip into his eyebrows. The crowd gasped and his brown hand came up to touch where she had struck him. He looked back at her, his face darkening even further. He stepped onto the beam.

“Hamid!” one of his comrades called out. “What are you doing? It is a tiger!”

Isra turned and opened the door of Kahn's cage and stepped inside with the pacing animal. His cheek pads flinched at her entrance, but he seemed more agitated by the crowd as his big head swung toward the sea of faces through the bars.

“It is only a trick animal!” Hamid shouted over his shoulder, and the pleased murmurings of the crowd died suddenly as they realized what the turban man intended to do. “He can be nothing but tame. This woman, however, is a runaway slave. She belongs to me and I would retrieve her.”