WindSeeker (2 page)

on, he lost face."

His wife turned her back for him to do up her buttons.

"Running off all his sheep and cows was a bit much, Conar." There was humor tugging at her lips.

"I sent them back, didn’t I? It was a harmless enough trick. It made him aware of just how vulnerable he

is to me. I believe he thought himself immune to retaliation. I proved the bastard wrong." He wedged his

hand inside the back of her gown and cupped one naked breast, pulling her against him. His lips found

the pulse point at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and he nibbled on the sensitive flesh. "After all, I

have the Outlaw’s blood in me, you know," he whispered.

"Conar!" she gasped, wiggling away from him. "Stop that!"

Conar withdrew his hand, returning his fingers to her buttons. "Why is it you deliberately arouse me,

Liza, and then leave me wanting?" He sighed. "You do it all the time."

"I do no such thing. You just can’t seem to keep your hands to yourself, Milord."

"I have no desire to. You’re mine to play with as much as I like."

Her eyes went to the rock ledge where she had seen movement. "He wasn’t happy when he found it

was me that you had married."

"Who?" Conar asked, glancing at the ledge.

"Galen," she said, her brow furled. "He was very upset."

Conar shrugged. "He wanted you and he thought that, once I was wed to The Toad, he’d make you his

mistress."

"Let him find his own Toad," she mumbled as she turned into her husband’s arms and linked her lips with

his. "I like well my master."

Conar drew back his head and looked at his wife. "I thought you once said you had no master, Liza."

His wife shrugged. "Things change, Milord."

He tightened his arms around her. "That they do, Milady." His lips swept down to hers.

* * *

"Do you think it’s safe to see what they’re doing?" du Mer asked his companions.

"One of us should. It’s getting late," Thom quipped. "You do it, Legion."

Mumbling, the Vice-Commander of the Serenian Forces pushed his way up the ledge and froze. Legion

A’Lex’s eyes widened, he grinned, and then slipped back down the ledge to sit.

"What are they doing?" Teal inquired as he looked at Legion’s smiling face.

"We’re slipping, my friends." Legion grinned and then stood, dusted off his cords.

Looking at one another, Teal and Thom also stood and gazed at the beach below. What they saw made

their faces turn beet red with humiliation.

There in the sand where Conar and his lady-wife had lain was a sand drawing of a naked man complete

with a somewhat out-of-scale erection. Beneath the drawing were the words:
What you didn’t see
.

"He’s going to kill us," Teal said miserably.

"Or maim us," Thom agreed.

"Or both." Legion chuckled.

* * *

"Are they still there?" Liza asked as she and her husband wound their way up the pathway to the

seagate.

Conar glanced behind him and out to the jut of jagged rock where his brother and friends were standing,

talking.

"Aye, they’re there." He reached down to sweep away her gown from one of the sharp thorn bushes

that lined the pathway. "They’ll be expecting me to come after them."

Liza stopped on the narrow stone riser and looked back at her husband. "You aren’t going to do

anything silly, are you, Conar?"

Tawny brows lifted in surprise. "Me?" He grinned. "What would I do?"

A fine black brow crooked. "What, indeed, Milord?"

* * *

The three men kept waiting for Conar to do something, to say something, to acknowledge their

transgression against him, but he didn’t. Instead, he constantly walked by them, whistling and smiling,

eyeing them with humor, and never once opened his mouth. None of them dared draw a breath of relief,

for with Conar you never knew what he’d do next or when; how he would attack you; usually when you

were least expecting it and were at your lowest level of defense. They felt sure he’d eventually get around

to punishing them for spying on him so they kept well out of his way as much as possible.

Legion, Teal and Thom might not have continued following Conar and keeping an eye on him, but others

of his Elite like Storm Jale and Marsh Edan, and even some of his father’s personal guard kept a careful

watch. King Gerren took seriously the threats on Conar’s life, and the men of Boreas Keep were taking

no chances.

"It’s not just that disgraceful twin of yours," the King fumed after hearing once more of the nasty threats

Galen was making against Conar, the future king of Serenia. "It’s that damned Hasdu thing, as well."

"They wanted me for ransom, Papa," Conar answered, referring to the attack that had been made on

him and his men where Thom Loure’s own twin, Rayle, had been slain. "I seriously doubt they would

have done more harm to me than injuring my pride."

"That Hasdu sword barely missed your dangly, Conar!" his father snapped. "Does that sound like they

meant you no harm?"

But his son only shrugged away the incident. "The bastard talked a good threat, Papa, but he was expert

enough with that curved sword to have actually maimed me if that had been his intent."

"I’ve heard things, Conar! Rumors that the Hasdu want you, not to hold for ransom, but for their

prisoner. They mean to lock you away for life, for whatever reason they see fit. Does that sound like idle

threats? I am worried!"

Conar, on the other hand, wasn’t concerned. He knew who was circulating such ridiculous rumors. He

also knew who was behind
that
person, and simply bided his time. He knew the day would come when

he and his fraternal twin, Galen, would clash and he would make the stupid fool pay for all the worry

caused to their father. Enemies came and enemies went, but unfortunately for Conar, Galen and Kaileel

Tohre, the High Priest of the Domination, would be the bane of his existence until he could do something

about them.

He believed Tohre had been behind the Hasdu’s attack and it wouldn’t have been to some dark Inner

Kingdom dungeon to which Conar would have been taken either. It would have been to one of the

hell-cells of the Abbey of the Domination.

"I’ll take care of it, Papa," he told his father. "There’s no reason to concern yourself."

"Conar!" King Gerren threw up his hands in annoyance. "Doesn’t anything worry you?"

"No," the young man said, and grinned. He had no time for Tohre’s plots and schemes and even less

time to think about them. His lady-wife’s smiling face banished all thoughts of intrigue and sinister doings

from his mind. "I’ve got everything under control, Papa."

Conar might not have worried, but his wife did.

Liza’s every waking moment was spent in trying to convince him to be careful, to watch his back, and

not to grumble about the men shadowing him like his own shade.

Her eyes swept dark corners, evaluated strangers and friends alike, with close enough scrutiny to amuse

Conar. If he wasn’t concerned, why, he asked her just a couple nights ago, should she be?

"Because I worry about you, Conar!" she said in exasperation. "Because
you
don’t worry about you!"

Conar laughed and tweaked her nose, making her even more furious with him. "Don’t, Milady. I can

look after the both of us well enough."

But Liza wanted to take no chances with the life of the man she loved and swore to protect. Her lips

spoke silent incantations to goddesses only the Daughters of the Multitude knew existed. She made

entreaties to Conar’s own gods and lit candles in the Temple to keep her husband safe. She even had an

amulet minted for him to wear for protection.

"Liza," Conar groaned with exasperation as she slipped it over his head. He plucked at it with distaste.

"It’s ugly, woman, and it clanks against my WindWarrior medal."

"Humor me," she answered and went about her precautions as though his lowered looks did not effect

her in the least.

Others in the keep at Boreas watched the young woman’s diligent care of her mate with approval.

Young Prince Conar had garnered for himself the perfect wife, a lady who both loved him and looked

out for his welfare. That their Prince was happy, happier than he had ever been, wont to smile and laugh

and jest with them as though he had not a care in the world, made the Princess a saint in the eyes of the

keep’s inhabitants.

"She’s what he’s been needing!" they said.

"He’s a different man, he is!"

"Our bonny lad!"

Indeed, Conar McGregor was a different man than the one who had ridden out that day over three

years earlier to pay a visit to his brother Galen’s keep at Norus. The man who had come back from that

visit had been a vile-tempered, vulgar-talking, drunken aggravation to the servants. He had not endeared

himself to those around him during that time, nor during the long months he had sent his men looking for a

girl called Liza who had disappeared from the Briar’s Hold Inn. It was only when the young Prince and

his cohorts had trampled the countryside with the lady his people now knew was the Princess Anya

Elizabeth, Prince Conar’s betrothed, that he had begun to again show a more human side to his nature.

The love that his people had always held for him blossomed to adoration.

"But he did get bad again," Herbie, the aging kitchen helper, remarked to one of the new scrubwomen.

"When his lady-love vanished and he had to come back here to marry the woman his Papa engaged him

to."

"Didn’t know his lady-love and the Princess was one in the same!" Sadie, the cook, put in from her stew

pot. She lifted her ladle and took a sip of the bubbling brew, nodded in approval and then returned the

ladle to the pot.

"The Prince was a regular demon, he was, on his wedding night. Oh, you should have heard the dirty

little ditty he recited about the Princess in front of her kin!" Sadie chuckled. "His Papa almost had the lash

taken to his backside for that piece of mischief!"

"Would have served him right, too!" another of the cooks added. "Embarrassed that sweet little girl

something awful, he did!"

Herbie shushed the women with a stern look. "It all came out to rights, though," he reminded them. His

face took on a dreamy look. "I ain’t never gonna forget standing there in the courtyard when he unveiled

her. By the sweet merciful Alel, that is a day this land won’t forget no time soon."

"He didn’t know the lady he was courting was really his intended?" the new scrubwoman asked as she

wrung out a rag in the sink.

"Didn’t have a clue!" Sadie chortled. "All that suffering the little demon had thinking he was gonna have

to spend the rest of his life with a woman he despised was for naught. He’s always had the luck of the

devil. Always has had things go just the way he wanted them to. Even with him flaunting Tribunal law by

keeping company with a light-o’-love, he weren’t punished. He lifted the lid on a warlock’s box and it

turned out well for him in the end." Her face crinkled with spite. "But one day that little bugger ain’t gonna

be so lucky!"

"And he’s different in more ways," one of the dairy maids added. "You should’ve seen him ’fore the lady

came. He downright mistrusted women in general. Weren’t all that polite to any of us."

Sadie sniffed, her steely glare running off the buxom girl with distaste. "Weren’t no need for him to be

polite to the likes of you women who couldn’t wait to hoist your skirts up for him! He got what he

wanted from you."

The dairy girl turned up her nose. "He was a practiced lover, he was." She blushed at Sadie’s knowing

look. "Or so I been told."

"Well, he ain’t no more!" Sadie snarled. "Leastwise not to no one but his lady!" She nodded. "Better not

be, is all I can say. Not unless he wants to lose his thing!"

"He treats every lady with respect, now," Herbie scolded. "Ain’t a single one of you who don’t get a nod

of greeting or a thank you when it’s warranted."

The dairy girl agreed. "He be polite as all get-out to even them what he wouldn’t give the time of day to

before."

Sadie put down her ladle and stomped to the oven where she poked at the rolls rising on the hearth.

"The lady’s made him look at women in a new way," she said grudgingly. "He might not respect some of

’em, but he don’t show no outright hostility no more." She lifted a pan and set the rolls into the arched

recesses of the brick oven. "In that way, I suppose you could say the little bugger has changed."

"Still arrogant as the day is long, though," the assistant cook mumbled. "Always has been and I reckon

he always will be."

"He’s the Prince Regent," Herbie snapped. "He’s got every right to be a touch uppity, don’t you think?

He’s gonna be sitting on the throne one day."

"Alel help us when he does," Sadie grumbled. "He’s gonna turn this kingdom upside down with his

devilish ways."

"He’s gonna make us a fine King," Herbie snorted. "You just wait and see!"

Sadie let out a long breath. "Well, with the lady at his side, he might turn a fair mind to the people. She’ll

keep his horny little ass in line, I’m thinking."

* * *

"Checkmate," Legion said, grinning.

Teal pushed back from the chess table and folded his arms. "I’m not going to play another game with

you, A’Lex."

"Sore loser," Legion remarked as he lifted his snifter of brandy to his lips.

"Has he done anything to either of you?" Thom asked as he looked up from the mending he was doing