WindLegends Saga 9: WindRetriever (28 page)

"Bad news I take it?" Azalon quipped as he turned to cast an amused glance at the ball of discarded parchment.

"Women!" was the grumbled reply.

Azalon nodded sagely. "The bane of many a man's existence," he agreed.

The nomad prince flung himself into a chair and slouched, his normally placid expression now filled with the light of mayhem. "I could beat the woman black and blue and it would do little good in achieving any semblance of cooperation from her."

"Aye," Balizar chuckled, "but it might well gain her attention, at least."

Sajin cast a jaundiced eye at the transplanted Serenian warrior. "You don't know my sister, Arbra. Such a solution would only make her the more stubborn, I fear."

"What's she done to cause you such anger, nomad?" Conar asked as he looked up from the map he had been drawing.

With a disdainful shrug of his wide shoulders, the Kensetti's answer came from between clenched teeth. "Oh, nothing of any real import," he snapped. "She's just decided to drive me to an early grave with her foolishness." He spat out a vulgar word, then sat up in the chair, leaned forward so that he could speak to his friend. "You never had a sister, did you, McGregor?"

Conar shook his head. "Not that I know of, at any rate." His blue gaze sparkled with mirth.

"But, as you are fond of telling me, nomad, I don't know everything."

Sajin snorted. "Fine time to admit it," he grumbled. "Count your blessings that you have not been so encumbered." He swung his angry gaze to Asher. "
You
know what I'm talking about, don't you, Stone?"

Asher's left brow rose in question. "Not unless you decide to tell me, I don't."

The animosity between the two men, half-brothers, had not cooled to any discernible degree, but at least they no longer glowered at one another when they happened to be in the same room.

"Willfulness!" Sajin snapped. "Women are getting to be just too damned willful! You can't tell them what to do anymore without having them tell
you
they don't have to do it unless they want to!" The nomad pounded the chair arm with a bunched fist. "They do what they want, when they want and the hell with what their men folk say!"

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Conar remarked as he began to re-fold the map on which he'd been working. "I like having a woman as my equal rather than as my chattel, nomad."

He laid the map aside. "It makes for more stimulating conversation and one hell of a sex life."

"Then you take Sybelle," Sajin snarled. "Maybe you can do with her more than I have been able to!"

Conar grinned. "Whatever she wrote in that letter must have put a burr under your tail."

"I ordered her to get her ass here to Abbadon and she tells me—no—she informs me that she is content in Helix and that is where she will be staying as long as I am playing warrior in the sandbox with the Infidel dog!"

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One thick golden brow lifted. "Is that what she calls me?" Conar asked.

"Among other, less charitable things," Sajin snorted.

He looked over at his friend. "Don't ask me what other things for I really don't think you'd care to know how little my sister thinks of you, McGregor."

Conar laughed softly. "I don't imagine she's called me anything I haven't been called before." He got up, stretched, then shot an admiring glance at Azalon. "You did good today, Ben-Hasheed." A wide, teasing grin appeared on the mobile mouth of Conar McGregor. "For a Rysalian."

Azalon blushed to the roots of his coarse black hair. "One does what one can, milord Khamsin," he answered, pleased that his leader had singled him out. He looked about him, seeing approval on the faces of the other men in the room and drew his shoulders back, inordinately content with his new station in life as warrior instead of merchant.

"We'll hit the slave depot at Tarses this Friday morning. If you have any questions, you'd better ask now." Conar looked around the room but no one seemed to have any concerns about the upcoming raid in two days. "Any comments? All right, then. I'll see you gentlemen in the morning."

Sajin nodded absently as his friend left the room amidst mumbled 'good eves' from those gathered. His dark gaze followed the Serenian until Conar was out of sight.

"Sometimes," Balizar said as he got up from his chair and stretched his aging bones, the sound of those old bones popping making everyone except him wince, "I wish I'd known that boy when he was younger."

Asher turned his head to look at Arbra. "Why is that?"

Balizar let out a long sigh. "I came across some letters from my brother, Hern. I hadn't read some of those letters in thirty years, don't even know why I kept them." He snorted softly.

"Just the old fool in me, I suppose."

"Maybe you just didn't want to let go of your brother," Rupine remarked. He drew on his pipe, withdrew the stem from his mouth and pointed at Balizar for emphasis. "Or maybe you thought it might be the only legacy you'd ever have from him."

Balizar nodded. "Aye. That's more the truth of it." He crammed his big hands into the pockets of his burnoose then leaned heavily against the wall. "I've been trying to decide if I should let him read 'em."

"Conar?" Asher asked. At Balizar's grunt of agreement, the younger man cocked his head to one side. "Is there something in them that might be of help to him?"

"Aye, I believe so," Balizar answered. "One or two of 'em might even be the answer to what he's seeking."

"That being what?" Sajin inquired, curiously.

"Like I said," Balizar continued as though the nomad prince had not wanted clarification of his last answer, "I wish I'd know the lad way back then." His face turned hard. "Before all his real troubles started." He took one meaty hand out of his pocket and wiped his sweaty face. "Before he had more pain that he could handle and while he was still innocent of most of life's treacheries."

"Then you'd had to have known him before he reached his sixth birthday," Sajin said quietly. As the others turned to look inquiringly at him, the Kensetti shook his head. "Conar hasn't been innocent since then."

"The Domination had control of him, didn't they?" Rupine asked.

"They had more than control of him," Sajin answered. "They had his very soul in their corrupt hands."

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"It molded him," Balizar said. "Made him what he is today."

"No," Sajin disagreed, "I believe your brother had more to do with making Conar what he is than any other influence." When Balizar looked his way, Sajin smiled. "Conar once told me that had it not been for Hern Arbra, he would have probably given in to what the Domination had tried to make of him. But Arbra taught him what it was to be a man, a real man, and that was something Conar never forgot nor took lightly." He fused his gaze with Balizar's. "Let him read the letters."

"It might help him to see that he and that little lady need to be together," Balizar said. "That he's more'n capable of taking care of her."

"Well," Sajin said, coming to his feet, "if those letters can accomplish that, my friend, I'll take them to him, myself."

"Even though you love the woman, yourself?" Asher asked, drawing Sajin's attention.

"That doesn't matter!" Sajin shot back.

"Keep telling yourself that and one day you just might come to believe it," Asher retorted.

He would like nothing better than to see Sajin Ben-Alkazar with Catherine McGregor. Should that happen, Khamsin might well take his wedding vows to Rachel seriously.

"Did the boys wear you out this morning when you went riding with them?" Legion asked as he sat down.

"Where do they get such energy and recklessness?" Catherine laughed. "I can't remember my brothers ever being that rambunctious when they were that age."

Legion chuckled. "They are Conar's sons, milady," he answered. "Before you condemn them, consider that fact."

Looking over to where Tristan and Regan were sitting at a marble table, intent now on a game of chess that had been going on for nearly three hours, the Outer Kingdom woman sighed. "I don't want to be here when checkmate is called."

"A wise decision," Legion agreed. "Sometimes it leads to bloodied noses and at others, a begrudging murmur of congratulation. You never know which."

"Is Little Brelan going to be that intense?" she asked, turning to smile at Gezelle, who was re-lacing the boy's shirt for what had to be the tenth time in the last hour.

"Probably not," Legion told her. "He has his mother's meekness about him." He glanced around at Tris and Regan. "Something neither Liza nor Raja was known for having." Turning back to cast a fond smile on the little boy running toward him, Legion squatted down beside the fountain and held out his hands. "That's not to say he won't be all boy, though." He scooped up the child and held him on his hip, laughing as Little Brelan tugged playfully on his uncle's thick beard.

"Isn't that right, Brelie?"

"Right," the little boy giggled, nodding emphatically before twisting forward and holding his hands out to Catherine, who took him with a whoop of laughter.

"He's Conar's son, all right," Legion grumbled. "The lad would rather be in a woman's arms than anywhere else."

"I'll take him in for his nap, now," Gezelle told them as she came up to take the boy from Cat. "If I don't, you won't be able to live with him."

"In that regard he's Conar's son, too," Legion snorted.

Catherine kissed both of the little boy's chubby red cheeks then allowed Gezelle to take him Charlotte Boyett-Compo WINDRETRIEVER 129

from her. "Sweet dreams, Brelie," she told him.

Legion sat back down on the fountain and stretched out his long legs, folded his arms over his chest and regarded the woman beside him. When she turned, an arch of inquiry on one thick brown brow, he chuckled softly.

"You've won them over, lady," he said, admiration thick in his gentle voice. "The whole keep is feeding from your hand. From the lowest scullery maid to the fiercest Palace Guard."

"And that amuses you, Lord Legion?" she asked, tilting her head to one side to look at him.

"Aye, it does," he answered. "Liza did much the same thing, gently inching her way into the hearts of Conar's people before they were married. Even had he not loved her, it was already too late. The people of Boreas Keep did and they would have stood, tooth and nail, against my little brother had it come down to a choice between him and their lady."

Catherine's forehead crinkled with concern. "That was not my intention, Legion," she said, fearful that he thought her a conniving witch.

"He'll think it was," Legion said in answer to her worry. "Knowing my brother, he will think you came here, charmed his people into liking you, so that he could not so easily dismiss you should he decide to do so." He shrugged. "Don't let it be a problem for you, Catherine. If I for one moment believed that you were not what you appear to be, I'd have managed to undermine your purposes. Conar's people aren't as gullible as he seems to think they are. They see the good where it is." He nudged her thigh with his knee. "As do I."

A slow, infectious grin spread across Catherine's lips. "Do you, now?"

"If I hadn't approved of you, lady," Legion told her, "I'd not have sanctioned the marriage by proxy." He let his pale blue eyes roam over her pretty face. "You are what my poggleheaded brother needs and I aim to see he has you whether he's willing or not."

"A rather tall order," Catherine laughed. "My husband is a very stubborn man, as you well know."

"Stubborn men can be putty in the hands of the right woman," Legion reminded her.

"A lesson I intend to see that Brianna learns early in life," Catherine answered dryly.

"Then you aren't worried about him putting you aside?" Legion asked.

The fierce hazel glow shooting from Catherine McGregor's gaze was lethal in its intensity.

"I don't care if he comes back with a harem full of women, I have no intention of letting him cast me aside, A'Lex!"

A look of horror passed over Legion's face. "You don't think he would dare do such a thing, do you?"

Catherine's upper lip quirked upward with disdain. "He'd damn well better not!"

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"Are you all right?" Sajin asked.

Conar pushed away from the wall. "What I get for not having eaten any breakfast," he mumbled. Turning, he unbuttoned his breeches and began to urinate against the wall on which he'd been leaning heavily before the nomad's untimely arrival. "Just a bit lightheaded, that's all."

Sajin, having looked away to give his friend privacy, wasn't reassured by the weakness in Conar's voice. There was a strained quality that told him the Serenian was either lying or dissembling or both.

"Everything sewn up?" Conar asked as he re-buttoned his breeches.

"Sure," Sajin answered, looking back around. He didn't like the pallor on Conar's face, either. Nor the numerous times he'd been witness to the Serenian having to empty his bladder. He stared into those alien sapphire eyes, too blank, too carefully so to be believed, then looked away.

"No loss of life this time."

"Good," came the immediate, relieved reply. Conar started to walk away, his intent to check in on the questioning of the slave merchants Azalon had taken upon himself to do.

"Is it getting worse, Conar?" Sajin asked quietly, not surprised when his friend turned, had to blink to focus on him.