“Camels, of course.” Mockery tugged at the corners of Azak’s mouth. “Not a dozen ships a day leave the harbor, half going north, half south. On the other hand, there are scores of camel trains and mule trains and wagons trekking around Arakkaran in a hundred different directions. We shall vanish into this web.”
He was assuming that Rasha would need to inspect every traveler individually, but of course the alternative was to credit her with such power that nothing the fugitives could do would be any use at all. Doing nothing achieves nothing. That had been another of Rap’s little mottoes.
Elkarath laughed softly. “I am a merchant. My caravan is even now being prepared. Every spring since long before you were born, child, I have made my annual journey to Ullacarn.”
Spring? Summer was unpleasantly close. “Why not go in the winter?”
A sigh of patience. “Bulls come into season in winter. They become dangerous and unmanageable.” If the sheik was smiling, she could not tell. The lack of eye contact was annoying her intensely. It wasn’t just her—the old man never seemed to look directly at Azak, either.
“This was the opportunity his Greatness revealed to me,” Azak said, as if explaining to a small, none-too-bright child. Inos tried to imagine Kade balanced precariously high on the vertiginous hump of a camel. She groaned. ”How long?”
The old man shrugged his pillowed shoulders. “If we effect our escape, well, three months, usually.”
“Three months?” Bewildered, Inos stared at Azak. “You are willing to be gone for three months?”
“That should get us to Ullacarn.” Azak was certainly amused. “The fastest road between two good ports is never by camel.”
“I usually cross the Agonistes by Gaunt Pass, “ Elkarath said, ”head north through the Central Desert to visit the emerald mines, and then south along the Progiste foothills. Sometimes it takes less time, sometimes more.”
“Hub is much farther, of course,” Azak added.
They were mocking her, but she was thinking only of three months on a camel. Oh, poor Kade! Still, the desert on a camel could be no worse than the taiga on a horse—could it? And Rasha would never look for them in the desert unless she realized just how crazy they all were.
“As I said,” the sheik added, having the same thought, “your aunt’s presence may aid us. Knowing she is with us, the sorceress may look less keenly at camels.”
Inos knew exactly how Kade would look at them. She would beam bravely and insist that she had always wanted to cross a continent on a camel. “Where is Ullacarn, exactly?” she asked in a small voice and saw Azak registering satisfaction, as if her ignorance were just what he had expected. The sheik was fingering his rings again.
“Almost due west, on the Sea of Sorrows.”
The other side of Zark, then. “So what is at Ullacarn?”
“Nothing. From there we can sail.”
“To where?”
“To Qoble,” Azak said irritably. “That is in the Impire. Then by land to Hub, and the Four.”
This was crazy! Three months on a camel, and then more months to Hub? The Krasnegar problem would be long solved by then. The wardens would dismiss her appeal as nothing but a historical curiosity. Maybe Kade’s instincts had been right, and Rasha, whatever her failings, had been Inos’s best hope. Three months!
It was too late to back out. Inos herself might just slink back to the dace and hope to escape punishment by pleading ignorqnce and the folly of youth, but Rasha would certainly find some spiteful torment to inflict on Azak for trying to deceive her, and the sheik might suffer even worse penalty for aiding him.
God of Madness!
Kade was always accusing her of being headstrong. What had she gotten herself into this time?
And then Inos caught a tiny flicker of a wink from Azak. It was so out of character that for a moment she thought she had been mistaken. But of course! He was doubling his tracks again. Elkarath was yet another blind alley, like the donkey. “It will be an interesting experience,” she said graciously.
A ruddy-skinned boy of about six came running in across the grass. He flashed a wide-eyed glance at Azak, ignored Inos, and fell on his knees before the sheik, bowing a head haloed in curls that flamed as if new-wrought in copper. Elkarath reached out and tousled them affectionately.
“Well, Hope of My House?”
The reply was so breathless as to be almost one long word. ”Greatness-my-father-bids-me-tell-you-that-all-is-prepared!”
“Good!” Elkarath raised an elbow, and Azak moved to help the old man rise. “We shall be on our way.”
The boy had sprung to his feet and was staring up at the tall sultan with awe. “You a real lionslayer?”
Azak put fists on hips and looked down sternly. “I am.”
“Where’s your sword, then?”
With a movement almost too fast to see, the big man snatched the front of the lad’s robe and raised him at arm’s length, so that their eyes were level. ”Who dares question me?”
“Let me down!” The boy stopped squirming when he realized that he was going to wriggle himself out of his clothes; already his legs were visibly longer. He clutched at the big hand supporting him and grinned. “How long can you hold me up like this?”
“I can stand it as long as you can. Hours and hours.”
“I’m going to be a lionslayer when I grow up! And kill brigands!”
“Grow up? Tall and strong like me?”
“Taller! Stronger!” But his breathing was becoming labored, and his face growing redder by the minute.
“This tall, maybe?” Azak effortlessly swung him overhead and hung him on a tree branch. He squealed, and his grandfather—or more likely great-grandfather—bellowed with laughter and asked him what he would do now.
Inos rose, marveling at this new, strangely playful Azak. How could anyone trust a man who changed roles so easily? How could she trust this Sheik Elkarath, a total stranger who never looked anyone in the eye? That curious shiftiness made him seem like an invisible man, as if she could not see him at all.
Months on a camel? Or not? She must just hope that Azak had indeed winked at her, that he did have another coil on his rope, a better plan than three months on a camel. She looked up to find him glowering at her, his arms folded, his face shadowed again by his kaffiyeh. The wind playing in the boughs overhead sent bright coins of sunlight dancing over him like a glory, and for a moment he seemed larger than human. Deadly. Cruel. Ruthless. And honest as a djinn. How could she have dreamed of trusting him? He could abandon her if she became inconvenient, or sell her off to a slaver.
She had no hold over him at all.
“Having second thoughts, your Majesty?” a soft voice asked. Inos turned to look at the old sheik. He was plump, but it was only the contrast with Azak that had made him seem small. He was actually quite large, although stooped. For the first time she saw his eyes, red like a rooster’s comb, shrouded in wrinkles, but as clear as the eyes of a child. Penetrating.
Inos raised her chin. “Of course not!” She had vowed to play politics from now on, and politics required taking risks.
And surely the risks were worthwhile in this case? This was the opportunity of a lifetime! She would experience the sort of wild escapade found only in the poets’ romances—caravan to Ullacarn!
A woman of royal birth had no right ever to expect such an opportunity. A shiver of excitement ran through her, all the way to her toes and fingers. Adventure! Never since Yggingi’s cohorts closed in around her had she felt truly free, and suddenly that oppressive aura of captivity fell away like breaking shell. Sensing escape at last, her heart began to pound with joy.
She grinned mightily at Azak. His scowl melted into a menacing smile. The big man smiled as he did everything elsedeliberately, fearlessly, and very well. He must be feeling the same sense of release, even more strongly than she.
“I will show you the desert, lady!” he said. “And teach you to love it.”
“You can try!”
They laughed simultaneously. How strange!
“Come then,” the sheik said with a contented smile. “Let us depart.” He gestured for Azak to precede him, and the sun flashed a dazzling rainbow of flames from his jeweled hand.
3
Like a wreck on a reef, Rap was still slumped on the bench overlooking Milflor harbor. He hoped that his ankle would start feeling better soon, or that he would find the manliness just to walk on it anyway. Or that he might think of something else to do. The sun was really cooking him now, and it wasn’t near noon yet.
He had an infuriating hunch that he was overlooking some means of escape.