The Lion's Daughter (17 page)

“
What?”
Varian turned so quickly, he nearly
sliced off his ear.

“The
bullet went deep, and at a strange angle, and did not come out the
other side.”

“He
was shot?” Varian threw down his razor. “Damn. I
knew
this would happen. Where is he? Have
they summoned a doctor?”

“What
doctor? Here?” Petro shook his head. “There is an old
man, wise in these things. He says the arm must be taken off before
the poison goes to the heart.”

“Bloody
hell.” Varian pulled on his coat. Poor Agimi. How old was he?
Little more than a boy
—
eighteen,
nineteen, perhaps. But these things happened. How many young men had
lost limbs fighting Napoleon's armies? “I hope to God he's not
conscious. Where is he?”

“In
the next house. The little witch has gone there, and she howls like a
dying cat and will not let anyone near him.”

Varian
rushed from the room.

ESME
WAS NOT howling when Varian entered the tiny house, though her voice
sliced like a whip as she berated the men, a score of them, who
shouted back, furious as she. Yet she stood defiantly by Agimi's cot,
knife in hand, and the men, incredibly, hung back.

Varian
swiftly threaded his way through the crowd. As he neared the cot, the
room quieted to a low rumbling.

Esme
looked up at him, her eyes twin green flames. “They shall not,”
she said, “no matter what you say. The first one who comes
near, I will kill. And the others I will kill after, one by one.”

“Will
you murder me, too?” Varian asked, stepping nearer.

“You,
too, if you let them commit this outrage.” She nodded at Agimi,
who gazed dully back. “The wound is not so bad as it appears. I
have had two such. I can take out the bullet and heal his arm, but
they have no faith in me. They will not help me. They heed only that
babbling old man there,” she said, gesturing with her knife at
a small, gnarled Methuselah who trembled in a corner, mumbling to
herself.

Varian
turned his gaze back to Agimi and to the filthy, oozing hole in his
muscular arm. “The old man may be senile,” he said
gently, “but the wound is ugly. I had friends at Waterloo,
tended by surgeons, and it was often so. Better to lose part of a
limb than to die.”

“
I
am alive,” she snapped,
stamping her foot. “I showed you the scar on my arm, where I
was shot. Dp you think I lied? That it was merely boasting?
Twice”
she said. “The arm that held a
bullet now holds a knife. I stand on the leg where another bullet
stung. Where should I be now, if others had made a cripple of me, as
they mean to do with him?”

The
vision her words conjured up triggered a chilling wave of nausea that
made the room whirl giddily about him. Varian inhaled slowly, and the
room swung back into focus. “Very well,” he said. “What
do you require?”

Her
shoulders sagged slightly in relief. “I need a great, blazing
fire, so I may clean my knives and tools in the flames.
1
need
raki
to cleanse the wound. Send someone
for my bag. The tools I require are in it, as well as the medicines:
pine resin, green bark from elder twigs, and white beeswax. I shall
need some good olive oil as well, and clean sheep wool.”

“A
salve?” he asked, surprised.

“Yes,
it is very good. An old man in Shkodra taught me
—
he who took the bullet from my
arm. It weakens the poison and aids the flesh to heal. That is why my
scars are so small.”

“How
do I tell them to listen to you?”

“
Dëgjoni,”
she murmured.

Varian
turned to the group.
“Dëgjoni!”
he said sharply.

Esme
looked about her at the uneasy faces, then, her voice clear and sure,
rattled off her commands in Albanian.

The
men looked from her to Varian.

Varian
was about to nod when he remembered. He shook his head in the
Albanian affirmative. “Yes,” he said.
“Po.
As Zigur says.”

THE
TALL ENGLISHMAN stood by her while Esme tended her patient. She
wished she'd not insisted on Lord Edenmont's remaining, for it was
plain that of the two, his lordship suffered most. When she gently
slid her thin knife into the wound, his face went white as ashes.
Still, he held onto Agimi, his smooth aristocratic hands firm on the
young man's shoulder. Agimi endured it all silently. He had refused
the laudanum she'd offered, preferring
raki
instead. She hoped the liquor numbed
him sufficiently. She couldn't tell. He kept his blue gaze pinned to
the ceiling and his lips pressed tightly together.

“Dammit,”
the baron muttered. “I'm ready to cast up my accounts, and he
doesn't even groan.”

“He
is
Shqiptar”
Esme
said softly. “Son of the eagles. Strong and brave.” She
murmured soothingly in her own

tongue
while she probed, then smiled when she located the bullet. “Ah,
as I thought. It will come out easily.”

The
room was quiet. His lordship had managed to persuade the others to
leave. Only Mati remained, to help keep Agimi still.

Esme
eased the bullet free, then, with the precious tweezers Jason had
bought for her, caught it and dropped it into the bowl in her lap.

She
heard Lord Edenmont's muffled oath.

“We
shall pierce it,” she told Agimi, “and you shall wear it
about your neck and laugh when you tell them your story: how here in
Poshnja, they wanted to cut off your arm just to get this little
bullet.”

Agimi
smiled wanly.

She
poured more
raki
into
his wound. His mouth tightened, but he made no sound. “Your arm
is very drunk, indeed, Agimi. You had better let it sleep.” He
shook his head weakly. Then she applied the salve and covered it with
the wool, which she fastened with strips of cloth. “Let it
sleep,” she repeated. “Close your eyes, and be patient
with your drunken arm.

“It
is done,” she said, looking up at Lord Edenmont. His face was
gray. He looked far worse than Agimi. She handed him the
raki.

He
took one quick swallow, then passed the flask to Mati.

“You
need not remain,” she told his lordship. “I'll stay and
look after him. The dressing must be changed in a few hours.”

“You
most certainly will not. You're exhausted. Tell Mati or one of the
others what to do. They can summon you if there are any problems.
You're coming back with me,” he said huskily.

He
gathered up her tools and medicines, and placed them carefully in the
leather pouch. “You're going to have a long, hot bath, and
something to eat and drink. And then you're going to tell me where
the devil you learned to perform surgery.”

Chapter
9

“THESE
ARE NOT MY CLOTHES.” CLUTCHING THE blankets to her chest, Esme
frowned at the garments Varian had heaped upon the woven straw pallet
where she sat. At the moment, she wore only an overlarge shirt.
Varian's shirt. His last
clean
shirt.

“They're
donations,” he said. 'Trousers, shirt, vest. Oh, yes, and a
frock,” he added, tossing a red woolen gown onto the pile.
“While you were yelling at them, they figured out you were a
girl. That partially explains why the men were so reluctant to let
you operate on Agimi. After I sent them away, they had a good, long
discussion about you. Someone must have noticed the color of your
eyes. You were
glaring
at
them, recall. The concluding evidence was this,” he said,
lightly touching her hair. “When our hostess collected the
coffee cups, she found a strand of red hair on the tray.”

He
sat down on the edge of the pallet. “I didn't realize you were
molting, Esme.”

“I
knew
I
should have shaved my head,” she muttered. “But there was
no time.”

“Well,
it's too late now,” he said quickly. If Esme decided she must
shave her head, then Esme would do it, and he might

as
well protest to the stone wall, for all the good it would do him. And
they said the English were obstinate.

“In
any case, the revelation seems to work to my advantage,” he
went on. “As soon as they deduced you were the Red Lion's
daughter, they were filled with sympathy for my plight. What does
kokëndezur
mean?”

She
flushed. “It means rash. A hothead.”

“They
seemed proud of you, nonetheless. They said you're fearless, a lion
like your father. They said you're highly intelligent as well.”
Varian paused. 'They said that's why Ismal wants you as his wife.”

Her
mouth tightened.

“Rumor
has it he wept at the news of your death,” Varian continued. “I
was unaware this man was in love with you.”

“Is
that what they say?”

“Oh,
yes. Petro couldn't believe his ears. He made them repeat their
remarks several times, to be sure he hadn't misunderstood. He told me
Ismal is very rich, very powerful. A most desirable spouse. Wed to
him, you would live in the greatest luxury.” Varian looked at
her. “I take it this Ismal is rather elderly, however?”

“He
is young,” she said. “Two and twenty, I think.”

A
young man, closer to her own age. Much closer, Varian thought with a
twinge of irritation.

“But
an ugly brute, no doubt,” he said.

“He's
considered very handsome. His hair is fair, pale gold, and his eyes
are like blue jewels.”

Nonetheless,
Varian assured himself, the man must be a brute. A great, hulking
creature, with a neck like the trunk of an oak. And huge, clumsy
hands.

He
felt edgy and ill, and very, very weary. It was not enough that she
must drag him through the most godforsaken wasteland this side of
Siberia. It was not enough to spend all his days and half his nights
tense with anxiety for Percival and sick with longing for her. It was
not enough that she leap into battle against twenty men, insulting
and humiliating each and every one of them
—
including
her own escort
—
men
leave Lord Edenmont to restore peace. He'd stood by her side while
she worked on Agimi, because she'd asked him to, and he didn't want
her to think he'd no confidence in her skill. He'd wanted to avert
his gaze from the ugly wound, but hadn't dared, because she would
think him weak.

None
of these purgatories was enough. Now the whole town must know who she
was, and within hours
—
thanks
to their accursedly swift communication methods
—
her
enemy would have the news. An enemy, it turned out, who was young,
rich, handsome, powerful, and surprisingly well-liked. That should
not amaze him. These baffling people even admired that monster, Ali
Pasha.

Her
uneasy voice broke into his thoughts. “You wonder,” she
said, “why such a man should go to the great trouble of killing
my father and trying to abduct me.”

“I
wonder about a great many things,” Varian said.

“I
don't understand, either. He might choose from hundreds of women for
his harem. Women brought up to wear the veil. Beautiful women whose
blood is not mixed. Still, if Ismal imagined he must have me, it
would have been enough merely to steal me. Jason did not believe in
blood payment, and he could not take me back to England once my
virtue was gone. Here, the man is the guilty one, and must make
amends. There, the woman is shamed.”

In
her case, it would have been far worse, Varian thought. Even had
Jason actually wed her mother, English law recognized no marriage
rites but those of the Anglican Church. Esme would still be
considered, technically, a bastard, and society would leap eagerly
upon the technicality. Illegitimate and despoiled, she'd be a pariah.

“That,
unfortunately, is accurate,” he answered. “In the
circumstances, Jason would be obliged to consent to the marriage.”

“As
Ismal knows. He's been educated abroad. He's well aware my father
could do little against him. There was no need to kill Jason,”
she said tightly. “I would have gone willingly, had I known his
life was in jeopardy. Many women must endure worse husbands than
Ismal, for smaller reasons. It would not be so terrible a sacrifice
for me.”

It
seemed terrible to Varian, to imagine this fiery young nymph stifled
in a harem. Still, women endured worse, he knew, even in England.
Among the upper orders, families formed alliances for land, money,
political power. Sons as well as daughters were merely pawns. Even
when they chose