Chapter 17 #2
unwavering gaze and pushed at the jeweled comb pinning up her hair.
She dropped her gaze to her hands, folded together at her front,
pale against the deep red of her gown, and looked up again to find
his gaze on her, a quick half smile playing across his face.
She chanced a glance at Asim, but her brother
was paying attention to the ceremony, as Sahar and Aleksi should’ve
been. She looked down to Halah’s slippered feet and stayed that way
as she listened to the priest’s solemn words, only lifting her head
when Munir and Halah spoke their vows of faith and fidelity.
Aleksi’s words through the treehouse door
came to Sahar. I had hoped you had enough faith in me, in us, to
build a life together.
She looked to him staring at her as if he
could read her thoughts. She bristled. It wasn’t that she didn’t
have faith in him. She’d put her faith and her life in his hands
out in the wilds. Besides, he hadn’t exactly been faithful, going
from Sahar to Ursula so quickly after their last fight. Sahar had
heard the news from her maidservant, Safa, that Ursula was newly
betrothed and moving back to her homeland with her future husband
when King Maksimillian and his party returned.
Loud claps and shouts and whistles brought
Sahar back to the wedding, where Munir and Halah had become husband
and wife. She hugged Halah and then Munir, and Asim did the same,
and then Aleksi shook Munir’s hand and kissed Halah’s, bringing a
pretty flush to her cheeks.
“Hands off my wife, Aleksi,” Munir said,
taking Halah’s hand and placing it in the crook of his arm. He
wagged his brows at Sahar. “Go find your own.”
“He need look no further than the kitchens,”
Sahar said, and realized she was speaking to Munir’s back as the
newly wedded couple were already walking arm in arm to her parents
and his, where they were enveloped by family and well-wishers. Asim
followed, joining Rima and the king and queen, leaving Sahar
standing alone with Aleksi.
“What do you mean I need look no further than
the kitchens?”
Before she could answer, a wave of wedding
guests surged, sweeping them toward the dining hall and the feast
waiting there.
Munir and Halah took their seat in the center
of the long table, their parents on either side of them, and Sahar
took her seat among Halah’s brothers and sisters, that thin,
ghostly voice in her head whispering that Ommar should be
there.
He was, she told herself. He was there in
spirit, and she owed it to him, Halah, Munir, and their entire
family to celebrate that spirit.
She ate and drank, smiled and laughed, and
raised her never-empty goblet to too many toasts to count. After
the formal supper, when the last of the toasts were made, the
guests milled around, sitting and talking at different tables. She
made the rounds of all her relatives while keeping an eye on
Aleksi.
She told herself it was habit, even though
she knew better, and realized as she watched him that he’d made
more friends in the two moons he had been here than she had in one
and twenty years. Oh, she had friends, but they were all family or
family related, people she had grown up with. She envied him the
ease with which he made friends, an ease she never possessed. He
seemed to get along with everyone at the wedding except for his
half-sister who sat alone at a table with her prince, glaring at
her brother.
Aleksi had ushered his father over to the
table where Serge and Pyotr sat with Saqr and Feroz when Ursula
sashayed up with a full pitcher of beer, smiling and chattering
away as she poured. When her pitcher was empty, Aleksi stood and
hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, and as the serving wench
walked away, every man’s eyes were on her full, swinging hips.
Aleksi and Pyotr clasped each other’s forearms, and Pyotr slapped
Aleksi on the back as King Maksimillian beamed at his son.
Every drop of wine in Sahar’s belly soured to
vinegar.
Aleksi woke to a loud pounding that echoed in
his aching head.
“Enter,” he bellowed, a mistake he instantly
paid for as the pounding in his head threatened to split it in
two.
Yacoub, the manservant tending to him,
entered, carrying a tray of warm beer, fried eggs and flatbread,
which he set down on the small stool by the bed. “I thought you
might be needing this,” he said.
Aleksi’s stomach grumbled. “Thank you,
Yacoub. I do.”
He wolfed down the eggs and bread, and sipped
the yeasty beer as Yacoub poured water into the wash basin and set
a fresh cleaning cloth on the side.
“The kings Asad and Maksimillian request your
presence in the council chambers at noon,” he said.
Aleksi squinted at the shuttered window.
“What time of day is it now?”
“Late morning,” Yacoub said. “Closer to noon
than dawn.”
Aleksi rubbed his stubbled face. He had
gotten drunk at the celebration last night, and stumbled back to
his chambers sometime after midnight. “I overslept,” he stated the
obvious.
“The entire palace has overslept,” Yacoub
said with a quick grin. “People are just now stirring.” He moved to
the hearth and started stacking wood. “I’ll get your fire going and
leave you to your ministrations.”
“Thank you.”
His belly settled with food in it. Aleksi
took his time washing up and dressing, donning a clean undertunic
and breeches and an overtunic of leather lined with felt. Even with
the hearth fire going, the autumn chill had seeped into the
palace.
He wandered the mostly empty halls for a
while, killing time and trying not to worry about why he was being
called before his father and King Asad in the council chambers.
When he arrived, Brawn was standing guard
outside the door, his face giving nothing away. Aleksi nodded a
greeting to the inscrutable captain and entered the chambers where
King Asad and Queen Oona sat with Asim at one table, and his father
and Anastasia sat at another. Sahar paced along the far wall, a
felt vest over the tunic and skirt she’d been wearing the first
time he saw her.
The door closed and Brawn threw the inside
bolt and sat down at an empty table, indicating that Aleksi should
sit with him. Sahar, eyeing the room, took a seat on the other side
of Brawn.
King Asad cleared his throat, and the already
quiet room went silent.
“King Maksimillian and I have called you all
here for several reasons,” he said. He glanced at Anastasia, who
sat smiling smugly. “There have been accusations made, accusations
which we intend to have answers to, and these answers will affect
our decisions on some important matters. So, I—we—expect the
truth.”
Aleksi nodded, and out of the corner of his
eye, he saw Sahar do the same.
“Aleksandr, you agreed to a payment of one
hundred gold pieces, win or lose, to protect my daughter, Princess
Sahar, during the one-hundred-league race.”
“I did.”
“You accepted that payment upon your return
to this palace.”
“I did.”
“Where are those one hundred gold pieces
now?”
“Serge and Pyotr, my partners in our venture
here, each have twenty and five, and I kept fifty, as was our deal
if I had won the race.”
Sahar sat straighter on her chair, and he
could feel her eyes boring into the side of his head. King Asad’s
mouth twitched up, and Aleksi cocked his head, not sure where this
line of questioning was going.
“What do you intend to do with your coin?”
his father asked.
“To return to our homeland and build a stable
to rival any king’s,” Aleksi told him.
“To become a lowly horse trader, you mean,”
Anastasia scoffed.
“To be a self-made man, you mean,” Sahar said
hotly.
Both king’s mouths twitched up.
“Did you propose marriage to Princess Sahar?”
Maksimillian asked.
“More than once,” Aleksi answered.
“She refused you?”
“We are not betrothed.”
“Why not?” Maksimillian asked Sahar. “Is my
son not a worthy man?”
“Your son, Aleksandr, is a good and honorable
man,” she said without hesitation. “He has acted more princely than
many of those who claim that title.”
“So, it’s because he is my bastard son and
not heir to my kingdom?”
Sahar bristled and said nothing.
“Princess Sahar has told me many times that
she neither wants nor needs a husband,” Aleksi said, defending
her.
“That,” Anastasia said with a pouty smirk,
“is because she has no want or need of a man at all.”
Sahar’s breath hissed in and her eyes blazed.
Both kings remained expressionless, and Aleksi wondered how much
his father knew of his and Sahar’s time alone in the wilds.
“Do you have anything to say about Princess
Anastasia’s accusation?” Maksimillian asked Sahar.
“Princess Anastasia can think or say whatever
her walnut brain wants,” Sahar answered, her fiery glare razing
Anastasia, who sat with her mouth gaping. “I know who and what I
am, and so do those who matter to me. Not that it would be a bad
thing if I was so inclined to prefer women as she has insinuated.
As your son and I are not betrothed, I don’t understand why we’re
even being questioned about this.”
Aleksi pressed his lips together to keep from
smiling.
“I apologize for the intrusiveness of my
questions,” his father said. “But I need to know the truth of your
current relationship with my son. In time, you will both know
why.”
Sahar inclined her head in acknowledgement,
and Aleksi sat straighter in his chair.
What was his father up to?
Aleksi glanced from king to king to queen,
but none of them were giving anything away. Asim looked curious and
Anastasia looked confused. Brawn was his usual silent, watchful
self.
Maksimillian stood and approached their
table. “As you have all no doubt been told,” he said, “I have been
suffering from a general malaise for several moons now, the cause
and severity of which my physicians were unable to agree upon.”
“Have you been taking your healing tisane,
Father?” Anastasia asked. “You know you need to be taking your
tisane daily.”
Maksimillian grimaced, though it looked to be
more from mental pain than physical. He had not looked or acted ill