The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

Lisa dropped her arms and let me kneel to slice the rope. The moment the last fibres parted, she was off. Charging straight back at the doors, screaming bloody threats and dire promises, both hands raised in obscene gestures. Fortunately the circulation hadn’t fully returned to her legs and I caught her before she got a third of the way back, wrapping my arms about her from behind and spinning her around bodily. “Christsakes, woman! They’ll take you right back off me and tear up the bill of sale. These are not nice men. Your mouth’s going to get your nose cut off and find you doing tricks in a dark-house just to eat!” I was as worried for me as for her. We were a long way from town, and these were the Corsair Isles: they could do pretty much anything and get away with it. I started to drag her away. It was actually slightly easier than dragging my three camels all the way up from the quayside. I got her back to where we started before she got her arm free and slapped me.

“Ow! Jesus!” I clutched my face. “What was that for?”

“They said you died!” Angry, as if it were my fault.

“They said you got married!” My turn to feel angry, and for more than being slapped, though I wasn’t sure why. The ingratitude of it probably.

I’d liked those camels. I grabbed her arm and pulled her on. “We’ve got to get out of here. If they see I know you they’ll either want more money or just kill me so this never comes back to them.” I set off, Lisa stumbling and jerking behind me. “How long before one of the men on the wall reports all this to someone important down below? I should have kept the hood on you till we were out of sight of the—”

I broke off as Lisa started sobbing, heaving in great lungfuls of air and shuddering them out as she walked. In other circumstances I might have said or at least thought something patronizing about the “weaker sex,” but frankly I knew exactly the feeling—there had been too many escapes of mine where I would have been sobbing with relief too if I hadn’t had a front to maintain before the company I was in. I kept glancing back at Lisa as I led her down through those hills.

Her sackcloth dress had got almost as muddy as my robes when I wrestled her to the ground, her hair stuck out at odd angles or hung in dirty straggles—slave-hood hair you could call it—and her eyes were red from too many tears.

Back at Thirteen I’d said I was after the least expensive beauty they had, and Lisa was in the line of eight they’d brought out from the discipline hut. None of them had been made presentable and some you had to look at pretty hard to see much beauty beneath the grime and bruises. Lisa though, took my breath. Something in her eyes, or the shape of her mouth, or . . . I can’t tell you. Maybe just because that mouth, those eyes, the curve of her neck, meant something to me, each part of her so overlaid with memories that it became hard to see what stood in front of me without our history crowding in. I didn’t like the sensation at all—most uncomfortable—I put it down to the shock of my Hell-trek and having been so long in heathen climes. It gave me additional reasons to be grateful for the desert veil I’d put in place. I’d worn it of course to stop her recognizing me and giving away the fact I was there for her. At best that would have simply increased her price ten-fold. At worst it would have got me killed.

“What?” she asked, self-conscious for the first time. “Have I got something on my face?” She reached up to touch her cheek, unconscious of the action and smearing more dirt there.

“Nothing.” I looked away, managing to stumble over a rock as I did.

She looked gorgeous. Far too gorgeous for Barras Jon.

We reached the outskirts of Port French before Lisa gathered herself enough to ask, “You have brought a ship haven’t you?”

“Well. A ship brought me, that’s certainly true.”

Lisa shuddered. “I never want to sail again. I was sick the whole way to Vyene!”

“Ah. Well, we are on an island, so . . .” I fell back alongside her, stepped in closer and put an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I know a lot of people don’t take well to boats. I’m a great sailor and even I felt a little rough during my first storm, but I took to the whole business with the ropes and whatnot immediately. Taught those Vikings a thing or two . . .”

“Vikings?” She looked up at me and frowned.

“It’s a long story.”

“And why are you dressed as a shepherd out of the nativity? Is it some kind of disguise?”

“Kind o—”

“And why.” She shook my arm off. “Are you so muddy?” She poked at a particularly filthy part of my Bedouin robe. I didn’t like to tell her it wasn’t mud. Camels are disgusting creatures, a week at sea does nothing to improve them, and I’ve never seen the like before when it comes to projectile shitting.