“They’d pay it,” Sabrina commented. “And more to get him back.”

  Kharis stared at her. “You are joking!”

  “She’s serious,” Harim answered him. He studied Sabrina. “But unless I miss my guess, she has no intention of letting them know where he is.”

  Conar swung his angry gaze from the slave warden to the woman. “Why not?”

  “Because I owe a debt and I intend to see it paid,” she answered, enigmatically.

  “To who?”

  Sabrina stood up and adjusted the folds of her skirt. “You don’t need to know that right now.” She ignored his furious snarl and looked up at Harim. “As much as I hate to request it, Harim, I think perhaps you should sedate him again. He ….”

  “No!” Conar bellowed at her. “Damn it, no! I won’t be drugged again, you filthy bitch. I will not ….”

  Harim lashed out and clamped his hand over Conar’s mouth, shutting off the enraged shout. “You have no say in the matter, slave.” Despite the wild movement of the man’s head, Harim kept his grip, turning his attention up to Kharis. “On the table, there by the window. There is a bottle of purple fluid. Bring it here, please.”

  Conar knew an insane moment of primal fear that he could not explain at the mention of ‘purple fluid’. Something dark shuddered inside him, warning him, but he was helpless to fight back as the woman’s helper came into the holding cell and poured the amount ordered by the slave warden.

  “You’ll have to help me with him, Kharis.”

  Despite his struggles, his head was pulled back, his chin cupped, and the helper pried his jaw open with a hard, unrelenting hand whose thumb had hooked down over his back teeth to keep his jaws open as the slave warden poured the foul tasting potion into his mouth.

  Kharis grinned as he clamped the slave’s mouth shut, bracing his chin as he watched the look of distaste flow over the angry countenance.

  “Swallow it,” Harim demanded. He knew the man was holding the potion in his mouth. He pinched the slave’s nostrils shut. “Swallow it or suffocate. It’s your choice, my friend.”

  Sabrina watched as the blond man’s face began to turn red with his effort to keep from digesting the potion. But finally his throat constricted and his eyes snapped shut in defeat as the tenerse shot down his throat.

  “It is for your own good,” she told him gently. “I can not afford to have you try to escape before I get you back to the farm.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  They had turned the ship around as soon as it became known Conar McGregor was not on board. A thorough search had been made of the vessel, from stern to bow, deck to hold, but there was no trace at all of the Serenian. What they had found, though, had been a small puddle of dried blood on the aft deck, a smear of it on the larboard topgallant rail and in the fore-hatch, evidence of a stowaway.

  “Where is he?” Catherine had cried on Sajin’s shoulder.

  The Kensetti prince had not been able to answer. His arms had tightened around the sobbing woman, holding her to him, relishing, despite the reason he did so, the feel of her against him.

  “We’ll find him, Cat,” he had promised.

  But that had been two days before and there was no trace of Conar McGregor between the point where the ship had come around and the harbor at Bolgaston from where they had disembarked the Outer Kingdom.

  “What are we going to do?” the ship’s captain asked Sajin as they prepared to leave the ship. He glanced at the silent, grieving woman being supported by the Kensetti princess.

  “What can we do?” Sajin asked. His eyes were haunted. “There is no doubt he was thrown overboard. If he was dead when they ….” The nomad flinched. It had taken him a lifetime to find a friend like Conar McGregor and only a day to lose him.

  “Your Grace?” the ship’s first mate called out. Sajin glanced around. He saw the man pointing to a carriage pulling up on the dock. “It bears the royal coat of arms, Highness.”

  How was he going to tell Tzar Thomas? What possible explanation could he give for Conar’s disappearance? He turned to look at Catherine, flinched again as he saw her tearful face and trembling lips.

  “I have something I need to tell you, Highness,” the captain started to say but Sajin cut him off.

  “It can wait.” He squared his shoulders and turned his attention to the men getting out of the royal coach. Even from that distance he recognized the Tzar and his eldest son.

  “Something’s wrong, Father,” Peter said, shading his eyes as he watched Prince Sajin helping Cat into the longboat. “I don’t see Conar.”

  The Tzar felt a cold finger of premonition scrape down his spine. When the ship had been spotted, a runner had come to the palace at break-neck speed. There was no adequate explanation why the Kensetti ship should have come back so soon.

  “Thomas?” Charlotte had asked, fear already forming on her lovely face.

  “I’ll go see,” her husband had said, patting her hand. “Maybe Conar developed the fever again.”

  “There would have been no reason to bring him back here, Father,” Mikel said. “They could treat him just as well in Kensett.”

  Standing there, watching the longboat being rowed to shore, focusing on the worried look on Sajin’s face, the blank look on the man’s sister’s face and the bowed head of his own daughter, the Tzar knew something terrible had happened. It did not take Sajin coming up to them on the dock and actually saying the words.

  “How?” the Tzar asked, reaching out to grip the Kensetti’s shoulder.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Sajin answered, “but we believed he was murdered and thrown overboard.”

  Peter gasped. “Murdered? By whom?”

  Sajin shook his head. “We think there was a stowaway on board. There’s evidence of it, but whoever it was, he’s not on board now.”

  “How could this have happened?” the Tzar asked, disbelief crossing his face. “And how could his assassin have left the ship without you knowing it?”

  “We think there must have been two of them. One probably held him while the other ….” He tore his gaze from the Tzar’s. “There could have been a boat waiting for them. They could have slipped overboard and swam to it without us noticing.”

  “Far fetched,” the Tzar mumbled. He narrowed his gaze. “Have you questioned your own men, Ben-Alkazar?”

  Sajin stiffened. “You know that I have.”

  “Not one of Sajin’s men would have had anything to do with McGregor’s disappearance,” Sybelle said as she joined the men. Her arm was tight around Catherine’s stooped shoulder. “I suggest you let all this talk go for now and get Catherine to a physician. She has not spoken a word since early yesterday morning.”

  Peter reached out for his sister, took her unprotestingly into his arms. He looked over her head at his father.

  “Go on,” the Tzar said. “I’ll ride back with Ben-Alkazar.”

  Gently helping his silent sister to the coach, Peter supported her sagging body, speaking to her in a soft, gentle voice meant to ease her pain.

  “There is no hope he is still alive?” the Tzar asked, searching Sajin’s face for an answer he hoped to find.

  Sajin shook his head. “I don’t believe so.

  Sybelle took her brother’s arm. “His destiny was sealed before you ever met him, Sajin. Be happy that you knew him if for only a short while.”

  All the way back to the Outer Kingdom palace, Sajin stared out the coach window, his expression one of intense grief. He did not feel his sister’s gentle touch as she patted his thigh or hear the low conversation between her and the Tzar. He felt numb, drained. In the back of his mind, he told himself there should have been something he could have done. That somehow he was responsible for what had happened to his friend.

  If you hadn’t taken him with you, an inner voice chastised him, Conar would still be alive.

  The Kensetti closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window’s framework.

  “I’m sorry, Conar,” he whispered, wanting to cry and knowing he could not. “I let you down, my friend.”

  Storm Jale bent over and threw up, not surprised to see stringy strands of blood in the vomitus. They’d given him a beating the day before that had made him piss bloody urine. His kidneys were on fire and his belly so sore he could barely stand erect.

  “Get your lazy ass back to work!” one of the keepers shouted at him.

  Straightening up, Storm stared hopelessly across the wavering sands of the desert. There was nothing for miles around them except the pyramid being erected behind him. He let out a tired, despondent sigh.

  “You let me down, Conar,” he whispered. “I thought you would come, but you haven’t.”

  “You, there!” came the furious shout. “Get back to work!”

  Storm’s shoulders sagged. “Alel, help me,” he prayed.

  He barely felt the sting of the lash as it wrapped itself around his bare chest.

  He came to inside the confining heat of a moving wagon. His wrists were manacled to the wood above and behind his head and his ankles to the floorboard of the wagon. His head was hurting and he had the godawful taste of the tenerse still in his mouth.

  Tenerse? he thought idly. How come I know what it was they gave me?

  Because you’ve had it before, fool, he heard himself answer.

  He was hungry. Starving, actually. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, but he knew it hadn’t been in the last two days. His stomach was rumbling and his head throbbing from lack of nourishment and he wondered if they intended to starve him.

  With a jerk, the wagon stopped and he heard voices outside the canvas side to his right, then the back of the wagon dipped and the woman climbed on.

  “You’re awake,” she said, smiling.

  He glared at her, hating her with every ounce of awareness in his body.

  “Are you thirsty?” she asked, holding up a gourd. “It’s fresh spring water.”

  “Combined with what?” he sneered.

  She smiled. “Poison, but it’s chilled.” She arched a thin black brow. “Interested?”

  His lips pulled back over his clenched teeth. “Why the hell not?”

  She slipped her hand behind his neck and lifted his head, brought the thick rim of the gourd to his lips and allowed him to drink.

  The water was cool, tasteless, odorless. He hoped with every fiber of his being it wasn’t laced with something that would put him back into the mindless slumber into which he’d fallen earlier that day.

  Sabrina gently lowered his head and set the gourd aside. “Are you ready to listen to me?”

  “Do I have a choice?” he snapped.

  “Your name is Conar McGregor,” she told him. “Conar Aleksandro McGregor.” She watched for any reaction the name might have on him, but there was only a brief smirk from his expressive mouth.

  “Stupid name,” he pronounced. He didn’t know if what she said was true, but he didn’t like the name, anyway and he told her so.

  “It means ‘black-winged scavenger’ in Oceanian,” she informed him, again searching his face for a response.

  “Idiotic name. I don’t care for it.” He sniffed disdainfully.

  Sabrina shrugged. “Then let’s call you something else,” she answered.

  His gaze narrowed with suspicion. “Like what?”

  She thought a moment then her face lit. “How about Khamsin?”

  That didn’t sound so bad. “What does it mean?”

  She could see interest in his eyes for the first time. “In the language of the Inner Kingdom it is a hot southerly wind.” She laughed. “Your temper is as hot as they come, my friend. I think the name suits you.”

  He shrugged. “Call me whatever you want.” He fused his gaze with hers. “I don’t have to answer if I don’t want to.”

  “No, you do not,” she agreed. She leaned back against the wagon’s side rail. “Shall I tell you about yourself, Khamsin?”

  He was dying to know what she could tell him, but somehow didn’t think letting her know he was all that eager was such a good idea. It was hard to feign indifference, but he gave it a try.

  “Do whatever you want.”

  Sabrina studied him for a moment, seeing through the guise of his unconcern. The man was exactly as he’d been described to her—arrogant and insolent and supremely churlish, but there was a vulnerability there that touched her deeply. He had no notion of who he was and that knowledge was a thorn in his side.

  “Are you going to just sit there and stare at me?” he sneered. “Or are you going to tell me who the hell I am?”

  Arrogant? Sabrina thought. The man was more than arrogant. He was downright surly. Then again, she’d heard him described that way on more than one occasion.

  “Let me show you something,” she said, reaching into the pocket of her skirt. She withdrew a packet of what appeared to be letters wrapped with a blue ribbon. She held them up. “This is how I know you.”

  Conar looked at the small packet of parchment and then looked back at her. “Letters?”

  She nodded and laid the packet in her lap to untie the thin blue ribbon. “Letters from someone very close to you.”

  “Who?” he growled.

  She picked up the first letter and unfolded it. “I will read it to you.”

  Sabrina took a deep breath and then began to read to him the contents of the letter.

  “My dearest friend,

  I finally took your advice and journeyed to Serenia. It is as I have always heard it described, beautiful and wild. The people there are friendly, although somewhat suspicious of strangers, but once they get to know you, they accept you with open arms.

  I know you are anxious to know if I have met him. Aye, I have, and in a way that I am sure you would not approve of.”

  Sabrina glanced up to see that sapphire gaze staring at her with boredom. “This letter is written about you.”

  His thick brows drew together.

  “I had been told by one of his men that he would be at a certain tavern on a given day and it was there to which I traveled, hiding myself in the loft of the stable where his horse was boarded.”

  Conar looked up from the letter to the woman.

  “The tavern was called the Hound and Stag,” Sabrina told him. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head irritably.

  “It was not long before he came out to the stables and I could tell from the look on his face, a face even more handsome than I had imagined it ….”

  The black woman glanced up to see a smug look on her companion’s face. She snorted gently and continued to read.

  “ … there was to be trouble.”

  “Who’s writing this letter?” he asked.

  Sabrina shushed him.

  “Three men entered the stable not long after him and I began to realize they were there to rob him. A mistake on their parts since Conar had no intention of letting them take anything that is his.”

  “Damned right,” he muttered.

  “You can not imagine how brave he is, Sabrina. He took them all on, single-handed.”

  Sabrina lowered the letter and arched a brow at him. “Not a particularly intelligent thing to do on your part, do you think?”

  Conar shrugged. “Obviously I won.”

  She answered his shrug. “With help.” She seemed to scan the letter until she found the part she wanted. “Here. This I like.”

  “He didn’t see the pitchfork coming at him. If I had not been there, he would have died. As it was, my dagger barely made it into the bastard’s throat before he could ventilate Conar’s back.”

  Sabrina looked up and saw her companion’s scowl. “Four against one are rather mighty odds, don’t you agree?” At his nod, she continued.

  “I killed two men for him that day, Sabrina, and wounded another. One escaped and I pray for his sake he never shows his face around me again for I will be inclined to make him pay for trying to hurt my beloved.”

  “Beloved?” Conar repeated.

  Sabrina put the letter down. “Yes. This was written by your intended, Liza.” She smiled as confusion spread over his face. “It goes on to tell how you and she travel to a keep owned by your brother and then on to another tavern where you ….” She lowered her eyes. “Made her your woman.”

  Conar stared at her, watching her re-fold the letter and lay it down beside her. As she unfolded another parchment, one much smaller than the first, his mind was working furiously.

  “Liza?” he asked, the name meant nothing to him.

  Sabrina nodded and held up the smaller parchment, putting it close to his face so he could read it. “This is your wedding invitation.”

  He jerked his head away. He glared at her around the obstruction of the parchment she held. “My what?”

  “Read it,” Sabrina sighed. When he refused to look at the parchment held in front of him, she rattled it. “Go on, Khamsin. Read it.”

  Cautiously his tore his gaze from her and let it settle on the parchment, drawing his head back some to focus on the elaborately scrolled letters. She pulled the parchment back, adjusting the distance for him and he was able to read it.

  “The King and Queen of Oceania request the pleasure of your company at the nuptials of their firstborn daughter, the Princess Anya Elizabeth, to the firstborn son of His Majesty, King Gerren McGregor of Serenia, Prince ….”

  He slowly lifted his eyes from the page and stared at Sabrina with his mouth open.

  The black woman nodded, lowering the page. “You are Prince Conar Aleksandro McGregor.”

  He snapped his mouth shut, his furious stare boring into her. “Who the hell do you think you are, woman? I don’t know what your game is, but ….”

  “Elizabeth was a very good friend of mine,” she interrupted him. “We took our initiation into the Daughterhood on the same day. She meant more to me than any woman I had ever met and her letters to me were like warm rays of sunshine.”

  “I am not royalty,” he shouted at her. “Look at my back and tell me different!”

  Sabrina jerked up another letter and quickly unfolded it, ignoring his outburst.

 

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