3
Ramsay had never been so happy to see his humble little cabin. Soon all would be well again, and he could go back to his normal life. Even if felt more and more like simply existing.
He turned away from those thoughts, because they were a waste of time and would get him nowhere. Reaching his yard, he dismounted and told Feather to stay. Then he strode to the house and unlocked the door with the key around his neck.
The inside smelled like tea and honey, and as though the house had not been properly cleaned for several days. Of a person, there was no immediately obvious sign. Smiling, he called out, "Kaj! You can come out, it's only me."
Immediately the hidden door to his cellar—which he had been careful to show Kaj before he left—sprang up from the floor beneath the table. Kaj scrambled out and bolted straight to him. "Ramsay!"
Ramsay scooped him up and hugged him close, kissing his cheek before finally setting him down on his feet again. "Were you good while I was gone? Did you stay hidden? Did anyone come by?"
"Only a peddler, and I did not answer the door or say anything or even move," Kajan said proudly. "I was good."
"I knew you would be, and so brave," Ramsay said with a smile and tousled his hair. Then he nodded toward the door, where Nadir stood. "Look who has come to see you home."
Kajan's mouth dropped open, then he screamed in delight. "Nadir! Nadir!" He bolted across the cabin and threw himself into Nadir's arms, laughing in delight as he was scooped up a second time. As slight as the boy was for his age, Ramsay suspected he took after his late mother rather than his father, and would probably never be quite as filled out as the king.
But that was hardly a problem. He was living proof that small and slight meant nothing when it came to strength and ability.
"Where is Papa?" Kajan asked.
"He is waiting at home for you, where it is safe," Nadir replied. "Where you should be, Kaj."
"I know, I'm sorry," Kajan said, looking downcast.
Nadir sighed softly. "Well, so long as you are safe now, hm? And what a fine rescuer you have. Did you properly thank Ramsay for saving your life?"
"Yes," Kajan replied, then proudly shoved his ring in Nadir's face. "Look at what he gave me. He said I could keep it until he took me home. Isn't it pretty? I thought papa had rings like this, but I do not think so anymore. It's special."
"Yes," Nadir replied, smiling in amusement at Ramsay. "Quite special. You should be grateful someone so special saved you and found us, and now will be taking you home to Papa. Are you ready to go?"
Kajan nodded. "Yes, I want to go home and see Papa."
"Then I say we leave in a couple of hours," Ramsay said. "Give us time to eat and rest, let the horses refresh. Though, really, you have no further need of me. I could just stay he—"
"Don't even think about it," Nadir said firmly, glaring at him. "Shafiq will want to thank you personally, and I am certain Kajan here would like to show you around the palace. Wouldn't you, Kajan?"
Kajan began to all but vibrate in place as this idea was put into his head, and he fled back eagerly to Ramsay's side. Ramsay shot Nadir a suspicious look, not entirely certain why he was suspicious, but then dutifully turned his attention to Kajan, who was talking faster than he could actually manage, perhaps correctly speaking one word in ten.
Tousling the boy's hair again, smiling fondly, he guided him toward the door, nodding absently as Mazin finally stepped inside, but alert as to why Mazin would have been outside so long. "Come and keep me company while I tend the horses, Kaj. How many horses does your father have, hmm?" He laughed as that started the rapid-fire chattering up again and led Kajan outside.
He should have been surprised to see the line of seven men arrayed outside, but mostly he was just irritated with himself for not anticipating them arriving sooner. He had thought such an attack would wait until they were on the road. He should not have let Mazin stay outside by himself for so long. "Kajan, run to the stables."
Kajan immediately obeyed, bless him, and a man bolted after him. Ramsay drew a dagger and let it fly, taking the man out in his neck. He did not wait to see the man drop, only drew his sword and went for the others. He managed to throw one more dagger before he was forced to contend with the remaining five.
Unfortunately for them, they made the same timeless mistake as everyone upon seeing him and did not realize until they had gone from seven to five in a matter of seconds that looks could be very deceiving. By the time they could sufficiently act on it, he had reduced them to four.
Some indeterminate amount of time later, he had managed to kill them all. He wiped blood and sweat from his face and strode to the stables, but he was not even halfway there when Mazin came out of the stables with the prince in his arms and a knife to his throat. Kajan was crying. Damn it. Mazin must have gotten the better of Nadir and heard him order Kajan to the stables.
"You won't get far," Ramsay said quietly. "Why would you do this?"
"The king is trying to hurt my family, all for money. Why should I not hurt his for the same?" Mazin hissed. "Let us go, or I will kill the boy here and now."
Ramsay kept his face expressionless. "If you do that, you will have no protection left, and I will kill you."
Mazin sneered. "You might think you are a tough little kitten , but as Nadir said, I am better with a knife by far. Before they were nobles, my family was a band of robbers. Through the generations, we have been careful not to forget the valuable skills with which our ancestors rose through the ranks."
"Like kidnapping and murdering harmless young boys?" Ramsay asked coolly.
"Drop your sword," Mazin said. "Lay down upon the ground, hands where I can see them. Do not move from that spot."
"It will be all right, Kaj. You have my ring, right? Then everything—"
"Shut up and get on the ground!" Mazin snarled.
Winking at Kajan, Ramsay obeyed.
He waited silently as they moved past him, then mounted the only horse remaining in the yard—Feather. In the noise and blood of battle, the other horses had all fled. Only Feather, trained as a Holy Protector's horse, had stood as he had been ordered.
With some very vocal difficulty, Mazin managed to get the prince and himself mounted. Then he began to swear loudly and colorfully. "What is wrong with this damned horse?"
Ramsay said nothing, merely lay quietly.
"Tell me what is wrong with your fool horse, you damned foreign bastard," Mazin snarled.
"He will not move for anyone but me," Ramsay finally said. "It is the way he was trained. If I am not on him, or at least with him, he shall not move."
"Make him move, or it will be the prince's life."
"You dare not kill Kajan until you have what you want from the king," Ramsay replied calmly. "If you want me to make that horse move, you shall have to try other tactics. Harming Kajan will not change the simple facts of my horse's training—he will only move when I am physically with him."
Snarling and cursing in frustration, Mazin tied Kajan to the 0, then slid off the horse and stalked back toward Ramsay. He stopped well out of harm's way. "Get up."
Ramsay obeyed—and whistled sharply as he did so. Immediately obedient, Feather raced off, vanishing down the path and into the forest before Ramsay had even completely risen to his feet.
Mazin bellowed in anger and charged him.
The fight was brutal and bitter. Mazin had not lied—he knew how to use the knives he carried. The problem with a knife fight was that no one came out unscathed. It was a good fight if anyone managed to survive at all.
But a man trained to kill would never be better than one raised since childhood to stop those killers at all costs.
When Mazin was at last disarmed, Ramsay finally took hold and snapped his neck. He let the body drop, then put fingers to his lips and whistled high and long. Then he turned and headed for the house as quickly as he could while blood poured and dripped from several wounds. Thankfully, while annoying and possibly a problem if left neglected too long, none of them were immediately dangerous.
Nadir sat in front of the stove, pale-faced and bloody but definitely alive. "He left me for dead, eager to get to the prince. He did not bother to make certain of it," he said with a weak smile. "I suspect I left you the bulk of the work. I am sorry."
Ramsay went to his bed and fetched a chest that held the medical supplies he had bought shortly after arriving and settling into his new home. Returning to Nadir, he set them down. "One moment, I must fetch His Highness, then we will patch the both of us up."
"I'll be fine," Nadir said. "Your wounds are far more concerning."
"I'll be all right for a few minutes yet. Be right back." Ramsay went outside just as his horse returned to the clearing. "Are you all right, Kajan?"
"Uh-uh-huh," Kajan managed. "Why did papa's man try to take me?" He clung tight to Ramsay once he was freed from the horse, shaking and crying.
"I do not know," Ramsay said quietly. "But he will not hurt you anymore, all right? Come on, let's go help poor Nadir, who tried to stop him."
Inside, Kajan sniffled and sat curled up against Nadir's good side while Ramsay patched up his wounded one. Once that was done, Nadir stitched up the worst of Ramsay's wounds and then bandaged all of them. "It's a miracle you were not hurt worse."
"It is," Ramsay replied. "You have skills of your own, to have not been killed. That wound barely missed hitting something vital."
"I had my own adventures before I joined Shafiq's harem, and since then have received extensive training. Still nowhere near your skill level," Nadir said, envy clear in his voice. "Knife fights usually leave everyone dead."
Ramsay shrugged the praise aside. "It is what I have been trained to do since I was a boy. If men like that could mark me so easily, I would not be fit to be a Holy Protector. It is a very sacred duty in my homeland."
"Sacred usually means lonely," Nadir said softly.
Ramsay did not reply. Instead he said only, "You need rest."
"So do you, but we need to get home more," Nadir argued. "Mazin is dead, but the rest of his family is still about, and who knows what else is waiting for us between here and the capital."
"Nothing," Ramsay said flatly. "They would not dare risk it, not when Mazin was right here in the thick of it and seven men were following us. The rest of their resources are waiting in the city or the palace. With so much at stake, they would not put themselves at risk until absolutely necessary. What I do not know is why."
Nadir grimaced as Ramsay helped him to his feet. "Have you a spare change of clothes? As to Mazin, I can answer the why—corruption. Tavamara has always had a smuggling problem, and right alongside it a human trafficking problem. No matter what we do, how hard the battle is fought, new rats who trade in human lives crop up. Many changes are coming to how various systems work, including most importantly how goods are handled at the warehouses. Import, export, it's all changing, to counter illegal goods, bribery, and more.
"Mazin's family is amongst the most heavily corrupt. Several of them were recently arrested on a host of charges, nearly all tied to taking advantage of the current system. Not just his family stands to lose fortunes as their cheap and easy ways of making absurd amounts of money of smuggling and trafficking are cut off." He sighed. "At least until they devise new work arounds, but in the meantime it will still be many lives saved."
Ramsay nodded. "I see. They thought to kidnap the prince to force the king not to go through with the change in the system."
"Yes," Nadir replied. "It goes for final voting and the king's signature in four days. If we had not been able to locate Kajan by then, the king would have been forced not to sign, and Mazin's family—along with others—would have continued to flourish at the cost of others."
"That is why they were especially frantic to get the boy back," Ramsay said, nodding. "They dared not take further action, until they heard—or did not hear— from Mazin."
Nadir stripped off his torn and bloody clothes and accepted the ones Ramsay had pulled out for him. They did not really fit well, but the loose pants and robes were slightly too big for Ramsay, having been bought used, and so fit Nadir better than they might have otherwise. "Shafiq suspected, but we hoped we were wrong…"
Ramsay nodded and motioned to Kajan. "Come along, it is time to go home for real this time, Kajan. I promise. In two days, you will see your papa."
Outside, he grimaced at the mess and made certain Kajan did not look upon it. He was not looking forward to his return in a few days, when he would have to clean up the bodies, especially since they would have been sitting out for all that time. Disgusting work.
But delaying their departure to tend the matter now would not do. They had to get the prince home sooner rather than later. So he simply took anything useful the bodies contained, which amusingly included money enough he'd not struggle for quite some time. Thankfully, they found a couple of horses not too far away. Mounted, the prince well-covered against being recognized, they rode off.
They reached the palace in record time, if half dead and hungry enough to eat their horses. Kajan, poor thing, had not been able to stay awake. They had abandoned his horse at the first rest stop, to a group delighted to have her, and Kajan had ridden with Ramsay the rest of the way to the palace.
They arrived late at night. Nadir rode on ahead to arrange everything, leaving instructions for Ramsay to follow in order to get to the king unobserved. The instructions took him around the palace to the far southeast corner. Given his limited knowledge of the palace, and the more obvious prince in his arms, he surmised he was being directed to yet another secret entrance to the king's private wing.
As promised, Jankin waited just outside the wall, right at the corner. He smiled as he saw them and motioned them forward. Reaching him, Ramsay carefully dismounted. Then, with Jankin's help, he pulled the prince down and bundled him close. Throughout, Kajan remained fast asleep.
"Stay," he whispered softly to Feather. "I will be back soon."
Kajan secured, Jankin pulled a key from a hidden pocket in his pants and used it on an equally hidden keyhole in the wall. In the dark, Ramsay could not properly make note of it, and thought tiredly that he would have to find another way out later.
Jankin pushed the door open and led the way down a short flight of stairs to a tunnel that most likely ran beneath the gardens of which Ramsay had caught the barest sight. Jankin continued onward, through a long hallway, then up another set of stairs that spilled out into a large room. A sitting room, Ramsay decided.
At the far end sat the king, surrounded by the rest of his harem. Nadir smiled briefly, arm rebandaged and in his proper harem clothing again. Ramsay ignored all of them, intent only upon the king. Crossing the room, he knelt and placed Kajan in Shafiq's arms, then drew back and bowed his head. "Your Majesty."
"Thank you," Shafiq said roughly, and held his son tight. "Thank you, Ramsay."
Ramsay said nothing, only nodded.
In Shafiq's arms, Kajan began to squirm and mutter, eyes slowly opening. Then they widened. "Papa! Papa! Papa!" He threw his arms around his father and began to cry and apologize and talk all at once, achieving in the end little more than a garbled mess.
"Shh, Kaj, all is well now," Shafiq soothed his son, holding him just as tightly.
Ramsay stood and fell back, keeping out of the way now that his part was done.
"You better not try to sneak off," Jankin said, a knowing look on his face. "Come on, you and I are going to put Feather in the stable where she will be nice and cozy."
Ramsay scowled, but could find no way out of that. He'd simply have to get her there whenever he found an opportunity to leave. So he tore his eyes away from Shafiq, who was still absorbed in his son, calming him slowly, listening to everything he said, somehow able to easily understand the clumsy spill of words. With his son returned, Shafiq looked years younger, almost a completely different person. Astonishing the amount of fear he had managed to hide, and yet how obvious it was that it was now gone.
Fetching Feather and taking her to the royal stable was easy enough, and it gave him a chance to learn more of the palace. Not that he needed to learn it all, he'd never see it again after this, but old habits.
Back in Shafiq's room, Kaj was still speaking, his exhaustion given way to a burst of energy spurred on no doubt by a fear this was all a dream or something.
On one side of Shafiq were the twins, Nadir adding to Kajan's tales where he could. He was curled up in Ender's arms, who constantly caressed and petted his brother, as though assuring them both that Nadir was well.
On Shafiq's other side, Berkant hovered protectively. Ramsay approved.
He was also beginning to feel like an interloper again. His duty was done, his role played out, and he had no good reason to linger. Even if they made him want to smile. Even if they made him want a lot of things, things he had thought he'd buried with his brother.
Jankin was warm beside him, despite the fact they were not quite touching. Ramsay moved away from temptation, stifling a sudden yawn as he leaned against a wall.
He jerked when someone touched him and realized with complete shock that he had dozed off.
That shook him. Badly. Holy Protectors never fell asleep in unfamiliar places, surrounded by unfamiliar people, especially when the safety of the person they protected was tenuous at best. But was it tenuous? Though he should be suspicious of all of them, he could not help but feel that every man in this room was indeed safe. He did not realize until now that the warmth they showed, Mazin had not.
"What?" he finally asked, looking at Jankin, noticing sadly that everyone else was gone.
"Come, my dear old friend. We prepared a bed for you." He held up a hand before Ramsay could speak. "We'll have your wounds cleaned and bandaged again, then let you sleep. The others want badly to speak with you, but will wait until morning."
Too tired to argue, knowing he would need the rest if he was going to slip away in a few hours, he followed obediently along. Thankfully the healer was waiting for them in the room, and it didn't take long for him to tend the wounds, though he clucked disapprovingly and scowled the whole time, muttering about recklessness and stupidity.
"You had better be here in the morning," Jankin admonished, once the healer was gone, as he ushered Ramsay over to the bed. "Truly, Ramsay—stay. You saved Kajan, and Shafiq wants very badly to express his gratitude. He can never repay the fact you brought his son back, alive and safe. I know you and your tricks. Do not sneak out."
Ramsay sighed. "Thank you for the bed. Goodnight, Jankin. It truly was good to see you again."
Jankin smiled and softly kissed his cheek. "You too. Sweet dreams, Ramsay."
He was fairly certain Jankin was not supposed to do that, but Ramsay said nothing, save to grunt a reply. Then he tumbled into his bed, where he fell immediately asleep.
He woke up a few hours later, while the half moon was still high and bright in the sky, shreds of it filtering through his window and bed curtains. Jankin must have drawn them. Pushing them aside, he climbed out of bed and saw immediately that water and clothes had already been set out for him to find in the morning.
Don't sneak away, Jankin had said. More than once. But why should he stay? His duty was done, and there was no place for him here. Why would he even expect or hope for there to be? Flexing and stretching to work the stiffness and soreness from his muscles, he then quickly rinsed off and dressed in the fresh clothes, mindful of his bandages.
He left the room and stood pondering a moment, thinking back carefully over all the twists and turns they had made. Even mostly asleep, he had noted where he moved. When he was confident he remembered the way, he traveled back the way they had come.
It was only as he reached the secret door that he realized he did not have the key, and even if he did, he could not find the hidden keyhole.
Hmm.
Turning away, he retraced his steps and paused at a set of double doors that, if he had his bearings correct, should be the king's bed chamber. Opening one door cautiously, he slipped inside and closed it again. Then he glanced around. Sure enough. He moved soundlessly through the room, more than a little annoyed that in the entire wing, not so much as a single guard patrolled. Perhaps they were posted outside the wing, to give the king as much privacy as possible.
It was also true that should anyone make it this far, they would have a rather formidable harem with which to contend. He also conceded that having guards within the wing would have made the sneaking around this evening impossible.
Ramsay crept along through the bedroom, careful to watch every step, every sleeping person. Shafiq slept in his bed with his son, the twins twined together on the right side of it, Jankin on the left, and Berkant at the foot.
He paused, despite himself, to memorize every detail that moonlight was kind enough to reveal. How did they sleep, he wondered, when Kajan was not in the room? What must it be like to live this life? Hard, he would imagine, but rewarding. Lover and friend and protector, all rolled into one. All of the duties that had rested upon his shoulders for so long, but none of the loneliness. It sounded so ideal, so very much like a dream, it made him ache.
These men would never have let Colum die.
Forcing himself to move on, Ramsay finally left the bedroom and stepped out into the garden. It was impressive by moonlight, and probably truly beautiful by daylight. He strode through it quickly, fighting with all his might against the desire to turn back, until he at last reached the high walls that turned the palace into its own private world.
It was harder than he thought it would be, to make himself scale the wall and leap down neatly on the other side. But he did it, brushing off dirt as he stood up, finally free to return to his normal life.
His normal existence.
Feeling wretched and miserable, resenting that his fragile peace had been snatched away from him by one little boy and five strangely compelling, fascinating men. Heavy-hearted, he went to fetch Feather from the stable.
*~*~*