If Azak slept at all, he must be doing so during the day, on his camel. If he did come to the tent, Inos never heard him. She suspected he prowled the campsite all night long. Early in the journey, he had worried only about petty pilfering in the settlements. In this lawless mountain land, all the lionslayers were becoming red-eyed and grumpy, and that was not from fear of fast-fingered village urchins.
Another spectacular belch rang through the twilight.
Inos discovered that her jaw had fallen open and she closed it quickly. That obscene noise appeared to have come from”Yes, the bread was delicious,” Kade remarked softly. Azak raised one eyebrow. He looked at Inos, then at Fooni. “It wasn’t me made it,” Fooni muttered. “It was her!” Azak coughed. “Congratulations, wife. Quite excellent.”
“I didn’t think it was much!” Fooni shouted. “Only bread! Too much salt! Any wife ought to be able to make better than that—my mother could! I can! What’s so wonderful about a woman grinding meal and making rotten bread?” She leaped to her feet and went running off.
Inos watched her departure with satisfaction. “That child deserves a good spanking!”
Azak chuckled. “Why? Was she responsible for this atrocious bread?”
She glared. He grinned wickedly through his brigand’s red beard. She glared harder, he began to laugh, then they laughed together, and even Kade joined in with a chuckle.
Inos had never heard Azak laugh in Arakkaran. Being a lionslayer must be less stressful than being a sultan. But this was her chance to dispose of the odious Fooni.
“No, I made the bread. However, these petty tantrums of hers are becoming very wearing! She snaps and gripes all the time.”
“Ah! But you must make allowances for her.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Lionslayers are romantic figures to a child of her years. Me especially, of course.”
“You mean she . . . That’s absurd! She’s far too young!”
“No, she isn’t,” Azak said firmly.
Inos choked. “Forgive me! I keep forgetting that you are an expert in such matters! I suppose you have bedded several girls of her age?”
“Quite a few,” he agreed complacently.
“Time for dishes!” Kade began gathering up the bowls and beakers in a hasty clatter.
“I’ll do that, Aunt!”
“My turn,” Kade insisted.
“Come walk with me, Inos.” Azak rose, inhumanly tall against the sunset, holding out a hand.
Inos hesitated, then accepted when she saw that he was wearing thick sheepskin gloves. Just for a moment, some trick of the twilight and the heavy clothes and she could have sworn he was a winter-garbed jotunn. Some jotnar had red beards. He pulled her up effortlessly, then he took off at a run, and she found herself being hauled at high speed up the bank, as if being towed by a horse, rocks rattling and rolling under Azak’s great boots.
When they reached the crest the wind struck them like a flying iceberg, and Inos staggered. Azak transfered his grip to her elbow to steady her. Below them, in the shelter of the slope, the braziers of the camp were spread in a long line like a string of fire jewels. At their backs, the sunset was drawing to a peaceful conclusion on the peaks.
“Idiots!” Azak said. “I tell them—and they camp all spread out like that! How can I defend them if they will not listen to common sense?”
“Can’t the sheik make them?”
“Bah! He just smiles. He does not seem to care. How he has survived this journey so many times, I cannot imagine. The Gods tolerate his follies, it would seem.”
Inos shivered at the bite of the wind, watching the long grass and wispy bushes writhe, as if in pain. Kade was plodding over to the spring, going to wash the pots. That was an excuse for a gossip, of course, or she would have made do with sand. Bells jingled in the distance, where the hobbled camels grazed.
“We’ve done it, haven’t we?” she said. “Three weeks? There can’t be any doubt now. Can there?”
Azak was studying her face instead of the scenery. “I expect so. There are very few passes, so I thought she might look for us here. But we seem to have slipped by . . .” He shrugged himself into silence, and gazed up at the stars.
“Why did you drag me up here?” she demanded, shivering.
“Is Krasnegar colder than this?”
She laughed. “This? There are times when you can spit ice in Krasnegar. ”
“Mmm,” he said, noncommittally.
He did look like a jotunn in the twilight. It was his height, and the clothing. The distant peaks shone with ice, and ice also reminded her of home, although Krasnegar’s hills were nothing like these ranges. A great adventure, this, but she was homesick still.
“Azak?”
“Mmm?
“How long? When will we ever get to Hub?”
“Why? Are you not enjoying the journey?”
“Well, some of it. But I’m impatient! I hate this dawdling through Zark when terrible things may be happening. It’s taking so long!”
He sighed. “I am enjoying it!” His grip on her elbow tightened. ”Be patient, little one! The world moves slowly. The imperor may still not know anything about Krasnegar, unless the wardens have told him. Even the Imperial post takes weeks and weeks to cross the Impire. Armies rarely march more than eight leagues a day. You must learn to be patient.”
Now it was she who said, “Mmm!” Then she asked again, “Why did you bring me up here? Because if you don’t have—”
“To ask a question. Have you ever been in love, Inosolan?” Love? Startled, she stared at him, but he was gazing at the last glimmer on the distant peaks. Alarm bells began to clamor in her mind.
“Once I thought I was. I’d been bewitched. I told you about Sir Andor. ”
“Just once?”
“Well, puppy love, maybe. There was a boy I was very fond of, when I was young. The one Rasha copied for that apparition she sent to haunt me, the first night on the trail, remember?”
Azak grunted. “I wondered why a stableboy upset you so much.”
“Oh, no!” Inos said. “Don’t start that! That was no stableboy! I can handle stableboys. It was a wraith, or seemed to be. Don’t accuse me of—”
“Fooni is not the only one who has been snappish lately.”
“Well, you’re not getting enough sleep . . .” Mention of Fooni roused Inos’s temper again. The child herself was bad enough, and Azak’s suggestion that she was lusting after him was pure barnyard disgusting. ”But talk to the sheik. Mayhap he will include her with your wages when we reach Ullacarn.”
Azak turned to face her and took both her shoulders in his big hands. Huge hands, in their massive gloves. He stared intently at her for a moment and suddenly her heart started beating very hard.
“Love is an impish notion,” he said. “It is not a Zarkian custom.”
“I have noticed.”
“I never thought it could happen to a djinn.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does. I have fallen in love, Inos. Imagine such a thing happening to a sultan of Arakkaran!”
She dropped her eyes and said nothing. Oh, Gods!
“You once told me you would marry a goblin if your people’s welfare required it.”
“Er . . . Yes.”
“You also said that any imp would be better than a goblin.”
“I did?”
“You did.”
She kept her eyes down and hoped the gloom hid her blushes. His grip on her shoulders was almost painful.
“How would you rank an imp and a djinn, Inosolan?”
“Azak! This is madness!”
“Yes, it is. But the poets say that all love is madness. The God of Lovers is the God of Fools, they say. Answer.” Answer how? Why had she let this take her unaware? Because the idea was so absurd?
“Anything but a goblin,” she admitted.
“So? A djinn also would be an outsider. Neither imps nor jotnar could object to a djinn. A royal djinn, Inos. A very suitable husband for a queen of Krasnegar.”
“The climate would kill—”
“Heat has not killed you.”
She tried to imagine Azak in Krasnegar and it was impossible. He would go mad with boredom. Would he kill off the burgesses if they annoyed him? Would he try to buy their daughters?
No, he wouldn’t. Azak was not a fool. He had obviously thought about this. Now she recalled how he had been asking a lot of questions about Krasnegar lately. He had also been laughing a lot, and smiling a lot, and cracking jokes. She should have guessed.
And Kade must have, because Kade had been making some very odd remarks about Azak lately, very catty remarks for her.
“You have a kingdom of your own. A duty of your own.”
“Arakkaran has many princes. Krasnegar has only one queen.”