Laura Kinsale by The Dream Hunter Read Free Book Online

town some days out of Damascus, on the hajj road to Mecca. She would no longer be in the mountains there—she would be in worse case than here, farther than ever from Beyrout, abandoned on the edges of the desert itself where the Bedu raided most frequently; and a part of the desert where she knew neither friends nor allies.
    The dismayed expression of his companion was not lost on Lord Winter. “If you start blubbering again, I’ll abandon you right here,” he said caustically. “Get down and make yourself useful. And what the devil is your name?”
    Zenia, well broken to the voice of command, ducked her head and dismounted. She choked back a sound of pain as her cold and swollen feet touched the ground.
    “Selim, your excellency,” she said, the first Arab name that came to her tongue.
    “There’s food in the packs,” he said, “and the animals need grain and water.”
    She limped hurriedly to do his bidding, the rocks icy and rough beneath her bare feet. She was shivering so badly in the cold mountain air that she could hardly untie the donkey’s halter.
    Lord Winter seemed uninterested in her labors. He stepped up onto an elevated ledge and knelt there, overlooking the mountainside, the beautiful rifle balanced across one knee. Zenia had no quarrel with that: she was glad to know he kept watch. She led the animals to the spring and filled a goatskin with fresh water.
    She carried it to Lord Winter. He took it from her. Zenia stood shuddering in the chill while he drank.
    “Bring the food and sit here,” he said, pointing below him. “Out of the wind. We’ll rest an hour.”
    Wordlessly, she searched among the baggage, found unleavened bread and olives, and brought them back to the place where he waited. They ate in silence, Lord Winter still mounted upon the rock and Zenia huddled below, while the last stars began to disappear and the wind swept across the mountaintops.
    “What Arab are you?” Lord Winter asked.
    “I am Anezy.”
    “Oh, that is instructive!” Arden said dryly. It was a huge tribe, the largest in the desert, with kinsmen spread from Syria to his destination in the center of the Arabian Peninsula. “What tents among the Anezy?”
    This time the silence was longer. Finally, the boy said, “El-Nasr.”
    “Wellah,” Lord Winter murmured, somewhat disappointed. The Nasr was a small fendi of the tribe, greatly weakened since the days when they had been Lady Hester’s old Bedu allies. Their sheik was still respected over all the Anezy, Arden thought, but they were a family of the north. He should have guessed—the boy was bitterly thin, but too tall, and too timorous, to be home-bred in the pitiless crucible of the southern deserts.
    But still, a member of el-Nasr would have a passport to his distant Anezy kinsmen in the south.
    “Does el-Nasr have any blood feuds?” he asked.
    “No,” the boy said reluctantly. “But I am not sure—I haven’t been in the desert for—” He paused, and shrugged. “For a very long time.”
    “How long?”
    “Many summers,” he said vaguely.
    Lord Winter smiled. “Just how many summers have you seen in your life, O ancient one?”
    Selim appeared to be much interested in discarding the seed from his olive. “I don’t know, my lord.”
    The viscount looked down upon the boy’s dark head. A puzzle in many ways, young Selim. The Bedu made little of time—in the desert the seasons passed without remark beyond some extraordinary event or another, but Selim spoke English so well, with only a trace of accent, a little lisping slur here and there, that Arden supposed Lady Hester must have gone to some lengths to educate him. Surely he knew how long he had been with her.
    “Can you read and write?” he asked.
    “Yes, my lord!” The answer came quickly and positively. “In English and Arabic.”
    “So,” Arden said, “I suppose you want to go to Beyrout and be a clerk.”
    “I do not wish to be a clerk. I wish—” The boy stopped