Chapter 9 #3
“That was before I knew you.”
“What about all the others who think they
know me, who think all women weak and incapable of anything more
than looking pretty and birthing babies, which is no simple task by
the way. If I quit now, I’d only be proving their baseless opinions
had some merit.” She stood at her full height and stared him
straight in the eyes, the fire back in hers. “I can do this,” she
said. “I will, with or without your protection.”
“I’m not withdrawing. Not from the race, and
not from my oath to your father.”
“Or from your reward of one hundred gold
pieces.”
Aleksi bit back his grin. “Which I only
collect if you return to your father uninjured and alive.”
Sahar sat cross-legged on her bedroll,
drinking wine straight from the skin. After leaving Munir at the
check point, where it was determined he had a dislocated shoulder
and several broken ribs, she and Aleksandr had ridden hard, making
the night’s camp as the sun sank below the western horizon. Even
after changing into dry clothing, she was still half numb with
cold, and her belly was only half full after eating her sparse meal
of jerky and dates.
Her heart felt wholly and completely
empty.
“It’s my fault,” she told Aleksandr, who’d
laid his bedroll down next to hers and was drinking liberally from
his wineskin as well. “All of it.”
“All of what?” he said.
“Munir, Kedar, all of it.”
“Did you cause the river to swell? Did you
loosen the log from its mooring and cause it to go tumbling down
the river to hit Munir and Kedar?”
“No.” She shook her head, and her vision swam
as a warm flush of heat spread from her belly to her head.
“Then you didn’t cause any of it.”
His low, rumbling voice echoed in the
cavernous maw of her chest, and she had the sudden urge to crawl
into his lap and curl up in the refuge of his embrace, to breathe
in the earthy scent of man and sweat, horse and leather that was
Aleksandr. To lay her ear against the solid expanse of his chest
and listen to the strong, steady beat of his heart. She took
another draught of wine instead.
“But I did,” she said, recalling the thread
of her thoughts, their conversation, with muddled difficulty.
“Munir only rode in this race to protect me. He would be back at
the palace, fit and uninjured, guarding my family and basking in
Halah’s adoration if not for me.” She sniffed back unwelcome tears,
and hiccupped. “Ke...Kedar would still be alive too, sa...safe and
co...comfortable in the royal stables, not bu...buried beneath a
hasty grave of brush and bramble. His bo...body’ll be gnawed upon
by scavengers until there is no...nothing left but bl...bleached
bo...bones.”
Aleksandr’s face loomed close, and she swayed
and braced herself with her hands to keep from falling back onto
her bedroll.
“Don’t blame yourself,” he said, as she
slowly straightened. “People do what they will do, what they feel
they must. You felt the need to ride in this race, and so did
Munir. You ride to prove yourself to a world that does not value
women as you think it should, and Munir rode to prove himself
valuable to your father and your family. You couldn’t’ve stopped
him anymore than he could’ve stopped you.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Why do you
ride?”
“I told you, for the coin, to return to my
homeland and build a stable to rival a king’s and raise a
family.”
She stared intently at the stubborn set of
his jaw, the firm line of his mouth, the hard glint of his eyes.
Her own vision blurred slightly, and yet she had never seen him so
clearly, the pain of a young boy set aside by his father. The shame
of a favored prince lowered to a common stable hand. The
determination of a man to prove himself to a world that considered
him nothing more than a bastard.
“No,” she said, reaching out and laying her
hand on his. “You ride to prove yourself as worthy as any royal, to
build a stable to rival not any king’s, but your father’s. You ride
to prove him wrong for casting you, his firstborn son, aside. He
was wrong. So very wrong.”
The hand beneath hers turned, and twined
long, strong fingers through hers.
“You are a son any man would be proud of,
Aleksandr, firstborn son of Maksimillian,” she whispered
fiercely.
Aleksandr lifted their joined hands and
lowered his head, brushing his lips against the backs of her
knuckles. “You are a woman equal to any man, my tigress.”
His gaze held hers for a long moment, intent
and serious and a little sad, and then he let go of her hand, and
she reeled back at the vivid memory of another hand letting go of
hers. A chill as cold as death passed through her. She shuddered,
shivered, and her teeth chattered. She may have helped save
Aleksandr and Munir, but she hadn’t been able to save Ommar.
“You need to stay away from me,” she said,
scooting to the far side of her bedroll.
“Why would you say that to me now?”
She clamped her eyes tight against the image
of Ommar’s outstretched hand, of his frightened face as he was
pulled from her grasp. She opened them to the night’s blackness and
took a long draught of her wine, welcoming the wet tartness as it
slid down her throat and warmed her from the belly out.
“Sahar.” Aleksandr’s voice was tinged with
anger. “What do you mean, I should stay away from you?”
She focused her blurring gaze on his. “I
mean, Alekshki, that you should stay away from me, as far away from
me as you can, for your own sake. I am”—she took another swig of
wine and wiped her mouth with her sleeve, pursing her lips at the
acrid aftertaste—“bad luck.”
He grabbed for her wineskin, but she swung it
out of his reach.
“This wine tashes funny,” she said.
“That’s because you’re drunk.”
“That may be,” she said with a flourish of
the skin that almost upended her. “But it doeshn’t make me
wrong.”
Aleksandr took a long, slow drink from his
wineskin, pursed his kissable mouth, and then fixed her with a
lopsided gaze. “How are you bad luck?”
She swayed as she saluted Aleksandr with her
wineskin. “Im’s not the only one’s drunk,” she slurred.
“No,” Aleksandr saluted her back. “Yer not.
However, you still haven’t not answered my question,” he
garbled.
Sahar uncorked her skin and drained it,
trying to drown out the vision of Kedar’s rotting corpse. The image
of Munir’s pale, ashen face. The memory of Ommar’s last words.
“Run away, Alekshandar. Far, far away. Any
man who shtands too close to me ends up hurt, or dead.”