"That depends on what you suspect."

The atabeg shifted his bulk. A servant sprang to aid him; he accepted a cushion, frowning, his mind fixed on the prisoner before him. "I suspect danger to my city and ill-will toward the lord in whose name I hold this office. All that you are, pro- claims you enemy."

"So I am," Aidan said. "But not to you, unless you hinder me."

The black eyes narrowed. "You dare to threaten us?"

"I tell you truth. I am a hunter, lord atabeg. My quarry is none of yours, nor shall I linger long in your domain."

"What do you hunt?"

Aidan showed a gleam of teeth. "a.s.sa.s.sins."

The air chilled and tautened. Gumushtekin was still; and Aidan, in the center of it.

Aidan let his eyes wander, as if idly, in the silence. There was more than fear here, or even hate. There was a sharpening of awareness; a fixing of will upon him, a taste on the tongue like cold steel. 221His body eased, secure in its element. He smiled with lazy pleasure. "There are," he said, "three of them here."

Gumushtekin's jaw flexed. He had been aware of one.

Aidan smiled wider. His eye found each. The one who was obvious: the youth in white that here was the color of death, with the eyes of a dreamer or a madman. The two who had been hidden: the chamberlain in his silks and his servility, and die guard who was closest to the atabeg's person, most cher- ished and most trusted of his servants. Aidan inclined his head to the last- "Tell your master," he said, "that I shall come to demand an accounting. For my kinsman; for the child who died untimely.'"

The guard stood unmoving, but his fist clenched on the hilt of his sword. In his eyes was death. He had been betrayed; he had failed of his duty. He would die.

"No," Aidan said, purring it. "Not until you have been my messenger." He gathered power in his hand and held it, lightly, straining against the bonds of his will. The guard could sec it. His fear was sweet. Aidan set a single word deep in him, where no power of his could cast it out: "Go."

He went. The others watched, mute.

The atabeg was sorely shaken. He was like all the rest: he never truly comprehended the power ofAlamut, until he saw it bare. His guard, his mamluk, his cherished possession, whom he had raised from a child, had never been his at all. So dose, the a.s.sa.s.sin could come. So easily.

He would not have been mortal if he had loved the one who stripped him of his complacency. He was lord enough, and king enough, not to call in the executioners. He said, "You are no friend to me or mine."

"No enemy, either," Aidan said.

"There is nothing between."

"My lord is ent.i.tled to his judgment."

Gumushtekin's lips were thin for a man so richly fleshed.

They thinned to vanishing; he drew himself up. "I might best serve my city and my lord, by handing you over to our ally in Masyaf."

''You might. You might also win the open enmity of Jerusa- lem, and bring Damascus down anew upon you."

"Do you matter so much in the high places of the world?"

"Let us say," said Aidan, "that I'm an excellent excuse."

The atabeg did not believe him. Not quite. But the seed of doubt was large enough to give him pause. "Shut up in my 222 Judith Tan-prison and held for ransom, you would bring down no army upon us. Dead, you would cease to trouble us at all."

"I doubt that you can hold me. I doubt very much that you can kill me."

It was the simplicity of it that caught Gumushtckin and held him speechless. It was not even arrogance. It was merely the truth.

"Let me go," said Aidan, gently, quietly. "Give me my ser- vants and leave their punishment to me. I can promise that it will be just, and that it will not be light. And that I shall execute it well beyond the bounds of your city."

Gumushtekin had no words even yet. He barely understood what Aidan offered. Aidan said it again. "You have no need of me here, whether alive in your dungeons or dead on your scaf- fold. Let me go, give me my mamluks, and I will leave your city. I give you my oath that I will betray none of your secrets; for truly I am no enemy of yours, but only of the spider in his web in Masyaf."

"You were better dead," said the atabeg. But slowly. As if he had begun to doubt it.

He was thinking, clear as a shout, of his alliance with Sman.

Of promises given and received. Of two trusted servants who were not his own; and one who was openly Sinan's, who seemed now no more than a feint.

Aidan let him think. He gnawed his lip. He looked without love at the dog of a Frank who so troubled his peace.

He said, "Very well. You live; you go free. I banish you from my city. If after tomorrow's sunset you are found within these walls, your life is forfeit."

"And my mamluks?" Aidan asked.

"They share the ban."

They were not remarkably cast down. Aidan brought them to heel with a glance and a toss of the head; they came will- ingly, the Kipchaks with a hint of a swagger that drew growls from the guards and a hiss from Arslan. The latter had the greater effect.

Aidan, oblivious as a prince should be to his servants' infelici- ties, bowed to the atabeg in Prankish fashion. He voiced no thanks. When he turned to go, there was outrage, that he should turn his back on the lord of the city. He stared it down.

Coolly, with his mamluks in his wake, he left the regent's pres- ence.

After Aidan had gone, Joanna sat unmoving, hardly thinking.

Not daring to think. The roiling in her middle threatened tobecome all of her; bile seared her throat. She choked it down.

It was easier for him- He could go out. She was not allowed.

Her every movement was watched and guarded. His presence every day was a torment: to have him so close, within her arms'

leach; to knot her hands in her skirt, to keep from clutching him. She might have touched him- Easily. But she dared not.

lor if she did, she knew that she could not let go.

Or that she would claw his eyes out.

She knew where he slept: he had told her. He had not been fool enough or mad enough, yet, to enter the harem and s.n.a.t.c.h her away- That he had thought of it, she knew very well. It was in his eyes when he looked at her. It was in his persistence in coming back, day after day, although he took no more joy in it than she did.

It was flattering, somewhat. He was not tired of her.

Yet.

When she told him what she had to cell him . . .

She rose slowly- Her maid and her guard rose with her, watching her. She wanted to scream at them, to thrust them away from her. She set her teeth and advanced, at a dignified pace, toward the privy.

The day dragged itself through what had become its pattern.

She remembered little of it. She had duties, which she did.

None lingered beyond the doing.

She knew that Aidan had been taken away to the atabeg. She could not make it mean anything. He would come back un- harmed, and scarcely inconvenienced. No mere mortal lord could be a match for him.

And, d.a.m.n him, he knew it.

In the House of Ibrahim, they took the nightmcal after the sunset prayer: the men first, the women after, when the men had eaten their fill. Tonight Joanna had no appet.i.te; as she had taken to doing, she retreated to the garden, to feel the cool of 224 Judith TOST the evening, to breathe sweet air. She never lingered long: only until the flies had found her. Even so, it was almost enough.

It was a long, scented, fly-stung moment before she realized that she was alone. The women all lingered over their dinner.

Samin the eunuch, for what reason G.o.d knew and she hardly cared, had not followed her.

She had waited, hoped, prayed for this. She glanced about.

Nothing human stirred. She darted toward the wall, and the gate which she knew was there, deep hidden in greenery. There were thorns, which she had not expected; she cursed as they sank claws into her. But the gate was as it had always been,small, weathered, its latch long broken and never mended. She slid through it, not easily for all the vines that wove about it, but the other side was clear, facing the back of a little pavilion.

No one lingered there or anywhere that she could see, or that she could hear through the pounding other heart.

She went slowly, pausing more than once to remember where she was. Dusk made it all different. There was jasmine where she remembered roses, and the pomegranate tree that had shaded the path was gone.

She found its stump by stumbling against it. She stopped.

This was idiocy. She should go back where she belonged. She was not sure that she wanted him. What if he did not want her?

Then be d.a.m.ned to him. She knew the way surely, now.

Round the rose arbor, past the fountain, and there was the loom of the house, the glimmer of white that was the rail of its gallery. Painted iron. They said that witches and nightfolk could not abide it: it seared them like fire.

They knew nothing of this one, with his predator's eyes and his affinity for fine steel.

She was not the hoyden she had been, but she could sdll climb a trellis, particularly in eastern trousers. It groaned under her weight, but held. She grasped the rail and hung there, and paused to breathe. The muezzin's wail nearly made her lose her grip- It was safety. They would still be away from their sleeping places, all the younger uncles and cousins who were housed here: lingering over their dinner, praying together there or in the mosque, many of them ready to go out afterward in search of the night's pleasures.

She pulled herself up and over the rail, and ncariy fell. One of Aidan's h.e.l.lions grinned at her: Raihan the half-Rank, whose dour face was only for strangers. He ofiered his hand. 225.

She took it, and let him steady her on the tiles- He let go quickly.

He knew. They all did. And she was in no mood for pretend- ing at secrets. "Is he there?" she asked.

Raihan shook his head. "Not yet, lady."

Her heart chilled. "He's-still-"

"Oh, no, lady!" he said with swift solicitude. "He came back hours ago. He's at dinner."

Of course. Where else would he be?

It was only Raihan on guard, alone and glad of the com- pany. Joanna left him at his post by the door, and went in slowly. There was a lamp lit, illumining a room that mighthave been anyone's, small and bare. The mat was spread, the coverlet arrayed on it, a robe laid out. Aidan was the wonder and the despair of the harem, tall as he was, needing garments new and not made over from the common stock. The cousins liked to giggle over the length of them, and wonder aloud if all of him was likewise endowed.

She settled on the mat. When sirring wearied her, she lay down. The flutter in her middle lessened. The edge of fear receded: fear of the a.s.sa.s.sin, fear of being discovered here, fear of the hunt that would, inevitably, catch her. Aidan would find her first; he would defend her. If she did not tell him yet- If- She must have slept. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened mem, he was there, sitting on his heels, watching her. His face wore no expression at all.

Then he smiled, and she had no will left. She was on him, clinging to him, drinking him in until surely she would drown.

Even he had to come up for air on occasion; and she was mortal. When she pulled back, she was in his lap, and he was laughing in delight. She was grinning herself, even though she wanted to hit him. Because- r No. She must not think of that. Think of him; of the light in his eyes, making them strange; of the warmth of his body, the strength of his hands, the joy in him that she was there, escaped, free. How great it was, she could well see: his robe was light, its belt lost somewhere in their greeting, his shirt and drawers of silk, concealing nothing of consequence.

tt! was going to come to you," he said, "if you hadn't come to me first."

She hardly heard him. "I should go back. They'll be looking for me."

"Not now."

226 She stared at him.

He smiled. "Yes," he said as if she had spoken. "I've added a touch or two of my own. You've decided to sleep in the garden, where it's cool and quiet. Yow maid is watching over you."

Dura, who was terrified of Aidan, who endured him for love other mistress. Joanna frowned. "Will it work?"

"Until dawn, it should. I'll go back with you. We won't be seen."

She wished that she could be as sure of it as he sounded. She had been mad to venture this. She had been worse than mad.

With a little more rime, she might have cured herself of him.

Now the sickness was worse than ever. The thought of dawn, of leaving him, of going back to her cage and her fears and her wretched few moments of his presence, tightened her fingers on his arms and wrung from her a gasp of protest."I wish," she said fiercely. "I wish we could run away and never come back."

"We can," he said. "When I've fulfilled my oath."

She stiffened. "Yes. There's always that. Isn't there?"

"Only a little while longer," he said. "That's all. Then, if you want it, we'll go. The world is wide. I'd joyfully span it with you."

Her tension eased not at all. "What if I asked you to forget your oath? To take me now and carry me far away, and thwart the a.s.sa.s.sin as he'd never expect. Would you do it?"

He barely hesitated- "I can't." It was gentle, but there was no yielding in it. "I've made too many promises, set too much in train."

Understanding flooded, blinding her. She thrust herself away from him and stumbled to her feet. "The atabeg. He called you to him. You made a bargain."

Aidan nodded. "He banished me from Aleppo. He thinks I'm a spy; I may have dissuaded him, but my presence does nothing for his peace."

She drew a breath. Suddenly she could have laughed, or wept, or shouted aloud. She asked with barely a tremor, "When do we leave?"

"I," he said, "must be gone by tomorrow's sunset."

"We're going to have to be quick, then, or we'll never be ready. If we begin now-Grandmother should know, and Karim-"