chapter TWO
Corin glanced back once as he passed the edge of camp. Iryana chased him, but after her came guards responding to Razeen’s cry. All along the camp’s edge, they came boiling from the lanes between tents like ants from a spoiled hill. Corin pounded across the sand, his black cloak flapping after him.
The girl came alongside him, running hard despite bare feet and bruises. Corin tossed her a grin. “You came after me!”
She growled, “You left me little choice, but it barely matters. They are already catching up, and the desert is their home.”
“I know,” he said. “Just run.”
They ran. They topped a dune with less than thirty paces’ lead on the closest pursuers. But there below, just beyond a rough outcrop of stone, waited two saddled camels.
At Corin’s side, Iryana gave a startled cry of relief, but a moment later she groaned. “We won’t have time. The guards are too close. There are too many!”
Corin threw a glance back, risking a spill down the sandy slope. He looked just in time to see the line of white-robed warriors top the dune behind them.
“Looks like just the right number to me,” he said. “But where in Ephitel’s wretched name is Blake?”
She caught Corin’s sleeve as he turned back to the camels. “Is this him?”
Where she pointed, another figure was just now cresting a smaller dune to their left. It was the man who’d drawn so much attention at the auction block. Now the bright-red sash clung to his sweat-slicked torso, but despite the splash of blood on his bare skin and the complement of angry sheiks pounding along behind him, he was grinning.
“Blake,” Corin said, equal parts relieved and irritated.
“They’ll cut us off!” Iryana screamed. She stopped, still ten paces from the camels, and looked around frantically. To their right, the sands climbed into a sheer, nearly concave dune. “We’re trapped!”
Corin said nothing, though she was clearly right. Still, he coaxed her into motion again, almost dragging her down to the camels. She struggled so much that the tardy Blake was able to reach the beasts one step ahead of them.
Blake paused as they arrived, one hand on the reins, and narrowed his eyes at Iryana.
“You brought her out?”
Corin busied himself handing her up to a seat on his own camel, showing no regard for the angry mobs rushing down on them from two directions. “I couldn’t let them sell her off.”
“You should have let them sell her off!” Blake shouted, scrambling into his saddle. “All you needed was a word! And after all, she is the one who ran.”
“These slavers are not gentle men.”
Blake spat. “Neither are we. Gods on high, Corin! All you needed was a word.”
Corin stood unmoving, holding his first mate’s gaze as the first of their pursuers arrived. They were the sheiks who’d followed Blake from the auction block, a smaller crowd. But orders rang among them, barked in the strange language of the sands, and they fanned out into a loose circle surrounding the fugitives.
A moment later the second force arrived, all those who’d come swarming from the camp behind Corin and Iryana. There must have been at least a hundred, every one among them armed. Most of them fell into ranks outside the ring of sheiks already watching, but a handful of soldiers from the second force pressed through to the center.
Razeen moved at their head. He stopped just outside arm’s length from Corin and surveyed the camels with some appreciation, but his expression turned sour when it touched on Blake and dark indeed on Iryana.
Still, he feigned a gap-toothed smile for Corin. “As I told you, friend, we will collect the weight that’s owed. You’re not the first who’s tried to run.”
Corin sighed and stepped forward. His eyes traced the edges of the heavy swords among these accusers. Seven here. Another twenty in the ring of sheiks, but hundreds more arrayed beyond them. Soldiers filled the sandy slopes.
Corin showed a lopsided smile. “How many try?”
“Thirty-seven in my time. Five or ten a year, I’d guess. And none has made it. Ever.”
Corin reached toward his belt, but Razeen’s curved blade cut through the air and stopped just short of his throat.
With exaggerated care, Corin completed his gesture. He drew the dagger from his belt and dropped it in the sand. Corin met the big guard’s eyes. “You seem overcautious.”
“I have seen your tricks.”
“Of course,” Corin said. “But have you seen my pirate crew?”
Razeen blinked, confused. He glanced at Ethan Blake, but Corin shook his head.
“That’s just one man, however impressive his disdain.”
Razeen frowned at Blake, then raised his eyes to the ring of surrounding sheiks, to the larger force that had followed him from the camp, and finally up to the tops of the dunes.
“Too far,” Corin whispered.
Then on the slopes above them, one hundred and forty men threw off their linen wraps. Beneath they wore the loose, light trousers of sailors and the red silk sash that Blake had made so popular. Daggers and Ithalian short swords gleamed in the desert sun, but not as brightly as Corin’s grin.
Razeen cried, “How?”
Corin shrugged. “You brought them to me. Blake, take the sheiks’ swords.”
“We should kill them now,” Blake said as he slid from his saddle.
“Ephitel bless your murderous heart,” Corin said. “But we do not want a blood feud with these slavers. Tie them up.”
“This is no joke—”
“And this is not a council,” Corin snapped. “You have my order. Tie them up and leave them here, then bring the men to camp.”
“Bring?”
Corin grinned. “I’m borrowing your camel. See you at the cliffside.”
The captain swung up into the high saddle and nodded to the great sea of his men outside the frail circle of slavers. He threw a mocking salute to Razeen, avoided Blake’s glare, and grabbed Iryana’s reins. Then he led her from the watching crowd, between the dunes, and off toward the sunset.
They went a while in silence, but Iryana made no effort to escape. She came easily along, her strange, dark eyes cutting into the back of Corin’s neck. At last, almost irritated, he asked, “What’s on your mind?”
“A time is coming soon when you will wish that man were dead.”
Corin glanced back and shrugged. “He is just a slaver’s guard. And I will leave these sands behind—”
“I do not mean Razeen,” she said softly. “I mean the man you left in charge.”
“Blake? Ha! He is no threat.”
“He hates you.”
“With all his black little heart,” Corin said.
“You know this, and still you leave him so much power?”
Corin shared a secret smile. “He alone among all my crew is wholly and utterly predictable.”
“Even though he hates you?”
“Because he hates me…and still he follows me. That should tell you much about his ambitions. But perhaps your people are not so complicated.”
She favored him with a smirk. “Or we are not so simple.”
Corin laughed, bright and clear. “Oh, there is nothing simple about me. As for Blake…aye, I’ll give you that. But I know the shape of his schemes.”
She reined up hard and rounded on Corin, her dark eyes flashing. “You do not know as many secrets as you claim, and I know more than you’d believe. I can see the treachery draped across that man like Aeshmir silks, and it drips with the blood of clever men.”
“I am not without my bloody rags,” Corin said.
“You are clean as sand-polished bone against his stain. You are shifting shades and interwoven tones, but there is a beauty and a harmony in your madness. He is just one shade and just one tone.”
“Iryana—”
“No.” She spoke over him. “Hear my words and understand. He drips with dark ambition, and you stand in his way.”
Corin licked his lips and forced another smile. “I hear you,” he said, with unaccustomed gravity. “And I tell you true, I know full well the treachery that reigns over that man’s heart. I will not underestimate him.”
She tore her gaze away, but not before he saw the sadness in her eyes. “There is not treachery enough within your heart to truly understand a man like him.”
“Oh, Iryana.” He took her fingertips in his hands and waited until she turned to him again. Then he grinned at her with a new confidence. “Soothe your pretty heart. I am bad enough to handle Ethan Blake.”
She smiled through a sheen of tears, and Corin reached up to brush away her hair. “Gods’ blood, I’m downright wicked. Now come! Let’s desecrate a tomb.”