The Lion's Daughter

by Loretta Chase

  “Xhaxha?” Esme repeated, stunned. Jason—this child’s uncle? Incredulous, she stepped closer, all else forgotten as she stared at him. Her father’s hair, her father’s eyes…hers, as well.

  Beside her, Bajo lowered his rifle. “He looks like your brother,” he said.

  The boy was staring at Esme with equal astonishment.

  “Who are you?” she demanded in English.

  He stepped nearer, his gaze fixed on her face. “You speak English. Good heavens, you look—but Uncle Jason said she—you are a ‘she,’ aren’t you?” His face reddened. “Oh, dear. How rude of me. I am Percival Brentmor, Jason’s nephew.”

  “Jason’s nephew,” Esme repeated numbly.

  “Yes. How do you do?”

  Esme felt an insane urge to giggle. Or cry. She didn’t know which. She was aware of a rumble, far away. But perhaps she was merely dizzy. Her ears seemed to be ringing.

  “Percival,” she said, her mouth dry. “Jason’s nephew.”

  “Yes. Are you—are you Esme?”

  The rumbling grew louder. Bajo had turned away. He must have heard it, too.

  Esme glanced from him to the lad who called himself Percival, Jason’s nephew. The boy was speaking rapidly, but she scarcely heard him. Her concentration was fixed on the building thunder. Not a storm. Riders.

  Bajo raised his rifle.

  “Go back,” she commanded harshly in English, pushing the boy away. “Go back to your ship—quickly, child. Now!”

  “What is it? Bandits?”

  “Go back!” she shouted. “Run, damn you!” She gave him another, harder push. This time he got the message and backed away. His alarmed companion was already running for the ship. The boy gave Esme one bewildered glance, then followed.

  The pounding hoofbeats raced toward them, and Bajo was screaming at her to run. But the riders, coming from the east, were heading straight for the boy, who was still far from his own ship. If she and Bajo ran for their boat, her cousin would be caught in the crossfire.

  She had barely thought it when the dull thunder broke into a roar and a dense, black cloud swept down from the road onto the beach. In the thick fog, they were a whirling mass of dark shapes—a score of horsemen at least. Ignoring Bajo’s frantic commands, Esme raised her rifle and fired, drawing their attention to her. Answering shots flew over her head.

  She raced toward an overturned boat on the beach, and saw other forms approaching. Bajo’s comrades. A bullet whizzed past her. She dove for the shelter of the boat and hurriedly reloaded.

  The explosions outside jolted Varian from a sound sleep and brought him almost instantly to his feet. A glance about the cabin showed no sign of Percival. Varian yanked his shirt over his head, jerked on his trousers and boots, snatched up his pistols, and raced to the deck.

  On the shore, the light-streaked fog shrouded a writhing mass of horses and men and a cacophony of war cries and rifle fire. He scrambled onto the pier and dashed toward the battleground.

  “Percival!” he bellowed.

  As he leapt from the pier to the sand, he heard a high-pitched cry and turned toward it. A half dozen riders were bearing down upon one slight figure running clumsily across the sand. A feeble ray of early sun broke for a fleeting instant through the haze and lit a crown of dark red hair.

  His heart thundering as loudly as the deadly hooves closing in on the boy, Varian aimed and fired. He saw a horse crumple to the ground, even as he aimed and fired his other pistol. With shaking fingers, he began to reload. There was a deafening noise close by then something crashed. A lightning bolt of pain shot through him…then darkness.

  ***

  Gently, Esme wiped away the sand from the unconscious man’s face. It would be more efficient simply to empty the bucket over his head, but that might wake him too suddenly, and the blow he’d suffered would cause sufficient pain as it was.

  The ship rocked, and the water sloshed in the bucket beside her, splashing her trousers. They were soaked already, though, scratchy with sand and salt. Still, that was a negligible discomfort, her only physical one. Some of the others had not fared so well; two of Bajo’s cousins were dead, and several friends wounded. Townsfolk had quickly taken up the latter and would care for them.

  They’d not yet collected the six marauders’ corpses when Bajo had ordered her to the pielago. He’d thrown the Englishman over his shoulder and, deaf to her arguments, had seen them both safely aboard and ordered the captain to sail south, to Corfu. Then Bajo had set off to rescue the boy…her cousin.

  Esme glared down at the haughty face beside her knees. What fiend had led the man here, of all places, with a young boy—unguarded, unarmed?

  Actually, the Englishman’s face was that of a fiend, albeit a coldly beautiful one, she thought, gazing at the dark, curling tendrils that straggled over his high forehead. Her wary scrutiny traveled slowly over black, high-arched eyebrows and black lashes, down the long, imperious nose, and past the full, sculptured mouth to the clean, angular jaw. An arrogant face. Petro, the dragoman who’d been with the boy, had said this man was an English lord.

  Esme’s glance moved to the hand that lay over his flat belly. Long fingers, the nails manicured and clean but for a few grains of Durres beach imbedded there. Not a callous, scar, or scratch marred their elegant perfection. She looked at her own tanned hands, hard and strong, then at her stained, gritty trousers. Her belly tightened with anxiety. It was the way she always felt when she encountered her father’s countrymen: the same sense of inadequacy, the same tense anticipation of their barely masked distaste and scorn. Some looked right through her, as though she were invisible, and sometimes that was worse than the more open condescension. She knew they viewed her as little better than an animal.

  Those she had met before were only soldiers. This man was a lord. Even now he seemed to sneer at her.

  His eyes, she decided as she returned her gaze to his face, would be cold and hard as stone.

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. His opinion was of no consequence. She threw the rag into the bucket, angrily wrung it out…then paused, her hand inches from his face as his mouth worked soundlessly and his eyes slowly opened.

  Her heart skittered like a frightened mare. Gray eyes, but not like stone. Gray smoke. As they focused with painful slowness, the rigid countenance softened into life, and she drew the cloth away, her hand trembling.

  It was the face of a dark angel. For one giddy moment, she thought it was Lucifer himself, just hurled down by a wrathful Almighty.

  “Percival,” he murmured. “Thank G—” He blinked. “Who are you?”

  The low, hoarse voice was smoke, too, enervating as opium. Esme drew a sharp breath and told herself to wake up.

  “I’m called Zigur,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  The boy’s resemblance to Percival was startling: the same feline cast to vividly green eyes, the same small, straight nose and assertive little chin. He even related the dawn’s events in the same patiently logical way, though more succinctly than Percival would have done. Had Varian been his usual self, Zigur’s cool self-possession would have amused him, for the boy could only be a year or two Percival’s senior—fifteen at most. But Varian’s head was pounding, his muscles shrieking, and the tale, in any case, held no humor.

  “My father, Jason, is the uncle of the boy, Percival,” Zigur was explaining. “This morning, I learned my father had been killed and that men were sent to take me for their master’s pleasure. In the confusion at the harbor, these men took my cousin by mistake.”

  Zigur pushed back his thick woolen headgear slightly, and Varian saw that the hair beneath, like the eyes, precisely matched Percival’s. Then the boy’s meaning sank in. In these realms, Varian had heard, children of both genders were commonly abducted and raped. Percival was in the hands of pederasts.

  Varian must have looked as sick as he felt, for Zigur added hastily, “You have no cause for alarm, efendi. It was me they wanted. With Jason dead,
I have no kin to avenge the insult. Me these villains might take as easily as one collects a pebble from the shore. But my cousin is English, and Ali Pasha wants your government’s help to extend his domains. The villains know, as all Albania knows, that to offend any Englishman is to invite Ali’s cruelly painful revenge. When the abductors discover the boy is English, they will leave him in one of the villages to the south, where my father’s friend, Bajo, will easily find him.”

  “These men killed Jason,” Varian said, sitting up hastily. He instantly regretted it. An explosion seemed to tear his skull apart. He sank back down. “And they attacked me. That’s two Englishmen in a matter of days.”

  Zigur’s face tightened into a harsh mask. “Jason’s kin disowned him long ago. He is considered an Albanian. Naturally, there must be blood payment for his murder, but it is not your feud, efendi. As to you—they struck only to get you out of their way. Had they meant to kill, your severed head would now be lying upon the Durres shore.”

  Zigur hesitated, then placed a small, cool hand on Varian’s forehead. “You are warm, but not feverish,” the boy said. “Do not agitate yourself. We sail to Corfu, where you will find British soldiers to escort you to Ali in Tepelena. There you will find my cousin Percival safe, I promise. Ali will protect him as though he were a great, rare diamond, and your British friends will make sure the Pasha does not demand too high a reward for his hospitality. The matter is easily settled. Would to God all else were so simple,” he muttered as he reached again for the damp cloth.

  Later, Varian would wonder at his own docility. At the moment, however, he existed helplessly in a nightmare of shock and pain. He possessed neither the will nor the strength to make the ship turn back. Even if he did, what would that accomplish? He might be on the moon for all he knew of this place and its inhabitants. He must trust Jason’s young bastard because, quite simply, Lord Edenmont hadn’t the first idea what else to do.

  Esme had smelled the storm in the air by late afternoon. When she went above at sunset, she saw the awareness reflected in the crew’s eyes. The ship was not built to withstand turbulent weather. Money, she’d learned, had tempted the captain to make a voyage so close to the start of the stormy season. Now, clearly, he regretted his greed.

  “We can’t continue,” he told her. “Warn the English baron we must make for land.”

  Esme somberly eyed the coastline. Nothing resembling a port stood here, she knew, and the light craft already shuddered at the assault of wind and roughening sea. In the distance she saw lightning crackle.

  “It’s no good telling him,” she answered. “His head is broken and he understands nothing. You expect difficulty.” It wasn’t a question.

  “If I can’t maneuver close enough, we’ll have to get him on a boat,” the captain answered unhappily. “I’ll send two reliable men to take you to shore.”

  She calculated. A small boat ran less risk traversing the shallow waters. If they took it now, they’d reach land before the storm broke. Petro would be useless, of course. He’d begun wailing and praying hours ago. Fat, lazy, and dirty, he was the poorest excuse for a dragoman she’d ever encountered. While his origins were undeterminable, it was plain enough that he was inept in at least five of the seven languages he lay claim to. Nonetheless, with two sturdy sailors to help, she could manage.

  “Let it be now,” she said calmly. “Neither you nor I want a dead English nobleman on our hands. Your ship may survive the storm. If the lord remains aboard, I doubt he will.”

  As it turned out, the Englishman barely survived the short trip to shore, most of which he spent retching over the side. Still, he made no complaint—unlike Petro, who shed tears enough to sink them while he tore at his hair and wailed at Allah and Jehovah and all the saints by turns for mercy. Undistracted by their passengers, the two Italian sailors steadily plied their oars, leaving Esme to keep a lookout for obstacles and make sure the landlubbers didn’t tumble into the sea.

  When they all reached solid land at last, the Englishman sank to the ground, while the others gazed haplessly at the desolate landscape. All around them lay a flat stretch of wasteland, empty of any sign of human habitation. But there would be something, Esme knew. Some shelter. She might camp here comfortably enough—she’d slept in the open before, even in rain. Unfortunately, her patient needed a roof over his head, lest he contract a fatal chill, and that she didn’t need. He’d already caused complications enough.

  “Help the Englishman,” she told the sailors as she took up her long gun and swung her leather bag over her shoulder. “You, Petro, take his bag and hold your tongue. We must go eastward a ways, and we have no time for dawdling and lamentations.”

  When Varian finally awoke from what he fervently hoped was only a nightmare, the sun had risen. Or he assumed it had. Through the open doorway he saw gray, not coal-black. It was still raining, relentlessly, and a small lake had formed in the entrance, with sister ponds beneath the two narrow slits that passed for windows.

  Twice he closed his eyes, only to open them to the same appalling scene. The hut’s stone walls were dark and slimy, and the blanket he lay upon was damp and rough. His head pounded as though all the fiends of Hades beat upon it, his mouth was gritty with sand and salt, and his hollow belly knotted in hunger. “Bloody hell,” he groaned.

  A small, cool hand touched his forehead. Startled, he turned to meet a sober green gaze. He hadn’t realized Zigur was crouched beside him.

  “You still have no fever,” the boy said. “That’s good. We could not make a fire, and I feared you would take cold, but you are sturdier than I thought.”

  “My head is splitting into a thousand pieces,” Varian gritted out. “I lost my last meal on that wretched boat, and I don’t even remember when that last meal was. I’m wet and filthy and—”

  “Then you must be grateful you don’t have chills and fever as well. As I am, since my bag of remedies is still upon the ship. A chill is not such a bad thing, if properly tended,” he explained, oblivious to Varian’s exasperated gaze. “But what is to be done without garlic and restorative herbs?”

  Slowly and painfully, Varian raised himself up on his elbows. He saw that Zigur’s blanket lay next to his own on the tiny square of relatively dry dirt floor, and wondered bitterly what vermin had emigrated thence in the night. He was certain the boy’s clothes had not been washed since the long-ago day he’d first donned them. Varian wished Jason had devoted a bit less time to his little bastard’s language lessons and a bit more to personal hygiene.

  “I take it then,” he said, “that your magic cures, along with the ship, are at the bottom of the sea. It only wanted that, of course.”

  “No. The rest of us were up at daybreak. We saw the ship afloat, but badly damaged. Lightning, I think, for they’d lost their mast. Petro has gone with the two sailors to bring back what we need. I regret to tell you that this must be a long stay. I suspect they must replace the mast altogether. That, and the other work,”he spread his hands, “in this season, it will be weeks before the vessel sails again.”

  “Weeks? You mean we’re stranded here?” Varian’s despairing gaze wandered about the miserable, filthy, disgusting, hovel. He saw two snails inching up the wall.

  The boy settled himself into a cross-legged position and, with an annoyingly patient expression, explained. “This is the mouth of the River Shkumbi. The region near the coast is all marshland, with but a few poor villages. To travel by land we need horses, and the nearest place to hire them will be to the east, about twenty English miles.”

  “You’ve got to be joking. No horses for twenty miles?”

  “You are not in England or Italy. Mine is a poor country, and horses are precious. What fool would keep stables in a great swamp? You cannot hire so much as a mule here.”

  “You can’t be telling me I’m stuck in this hovel for weeks.” Varian shook off his horror. “That’s impossible. We’ll send someone for horses, or another ship.”

  “And if fort
une smiles upon you, they’ll accomplish the mission in less than a month.” The boy studied his grimy little hands. “As you wish, efendi. You are a great English lord. To walk is beneath your dignity. Besides, the journey will spoil your handsome boots.”

  Varian glanced down at his muddy, salt-stained boots, then eyed the urchin suspiciously. “You don’t think much of English lords, do you?”

  “I beg your pardon, oh great one, if I offended,” Zigur said, his eyes still downcast. “It is my ignorance. I am rarely in the company of princes.”

  “You’re an impertinent little wretch, and you needn’t waste that false humility on me. Despite this infernal lump on my head, my faculties are functioning.” Fighting his protesting muscles and the lightning bolts inside his head, Varian sat up. “You think I’m a great joke, don’t you? If you’d been the one with his skull cracked, you’d not be feeling so damned superior just now.”

  “If the Turk had struck me the blow he dealt you, I’d be dead,” the boy replied with the faintest of smiles. “Your head is wonderfully hard, efendi.”

  Gingerly, Varian touched the throbbing lump near his ear and winced. “All English lords are thickheaded. Didn’t you know that?”

  The boy’s smile widened, transforming his face, and for the first time, Varian saw a countenance quite distinct from Percival’s, though like it in many ways. The mouth was different, wide and overfull, the features altogether more delicate. This child, in short, was beautiful. At this moment, Varian could see how the boy might appeal to a man with that sort of appetite, though the understanding was purely intellectual. Depraved as he was, Lord Edenmont had always confined his carnal desires to adult women. The idea of children being used for pleasure thoroughly nauseated him.

  Banishing the image of Percival or this poor by-blow of Jason’s at the mercy of some gross Saracen lecher, Varian returned Zigur’s smile. “It’s true I don’t bear illness and pain uncomplainingly,” he said. “It’s also true I’m terrified of spoiling my lovely boots. But I’d rather not rot in the middle of a swamp, either, thank you. If you’ve got a sensible alternative, then out with it.”