Page 36 of Company of Thieves
“Do something that would have Prince Akbar calling for my head on a platter. All right, you can stop bristling at me—I don’t have designs on your woman. Safie is all my heart wants, as you well know.”
“I also know she’s just as mad for you,” Alan said, taking the three letters the messenger had been waiting impatiently to deliver.
“Then it shouldn’t be a problem killing her.”
“Not just yet.” He studied the message from his informant in London. The emperor was getting restless with his excuses for not making an appearance in court for almost six months. Dammit. He was going to have to don the mantle of Alan Dubain in the very near future. “Once we find someone else to captain theFalcon, we will arrange for my father to learn of her untimely and much-mourned artistically devised demise, and then you can marry her and have several sons all named for me. Blast it to hell and back.”
“Problems?”
“Ysed writes from Constantinople that a Black Hand representative has been cozying up to the imperator.”
“A truce, do you think?” Zand asked as they considered the repercussions of one of the two enemies of the empire suddenly becoming an ally.
“I hope not. I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could piss. Did you know that Etienne almost strangled Hallie back in El Kef?”
Zand looked suitably shocked when Alan told him Hallie’s recounting of the night.
“You’d better redouble your efforts to teach her to defend herself,” he said, nodding as they strolled by the area where Hallie was now on her back, slashing out wildly with the sword, attempting to strike Amir’s ankles. “I doubt she’ll have such an easy time getting away from him should she encounter him again.”
“You’re not telling me anything I haven’t told myself a hundred times. Woman! What the hell do you think you’re doing? You’re not a beetle that’s been flipped onto its back!” Alan strode into the practice area and gave Hallie his hand, righting her and dusting her off before giving her yet another lecture about the importance of proper defense.
“It’s this falchion,” she said, smiling at Amir when he bowed and murmured something about attending to other duties. “Thanks for all your help, Amir. I think it’s time to move to daggers, Alan.”
“I don’t know what types of combat they have in the Americas, but daggers are not a particularly effective weapon for close combat,” Alan said somewhat desperately. The fact that he was even considering doing as she asked said a lot about just how frazzled he was when it came to teaching her to protect herself.
“Please. I know I’ll be better at it. I always play rogues in video ... er ... that is, I’m very familiar with the rogues who live in America, and I just know that if I had a couple of wickedly sharp daggers, and you showed me some stealthy moves, I’d have a lot more luck with that than the sword.”
“Very well. But if you cut off a hand, I don’t want you complaining to me about it,” he said, realizing just how ridiculous that sounded, but unable to keep from saying it nonetheless.
She giggled. Then her gaze lit on his naked upper lip, and her brows pulled down. “Are you growing it back? It doesn’t look like you are.”
“I shaved it off a matter of two hours ago. My whiskers don’t grow in that fast, dove. What are your plans for this afternoon?”
“I was going to go into town for a fitting with the local seamstress, but if you want to start teaching me the effective use of a dagger, I can see her tomorrow, instead.”
“No daggers today. It will take some hours for one of the men to dull a couple suitably for you to practice with.”
Her eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned. She poked him in the chest with two fingers. “That is offensive, Your High and Mighty Prince Asshat.”
“Akbar, and the proper term of address is Imperial Royal Highness.”
“If the asshat fits, wear it,” she snapped, and would have turned on her heel and made a fine show of stomping away, but he caught her arm.
“There is something I must discuss with you.” He glanced around, then signaled for horses. “I will escort you into town.”
“What sort of something?” she asked, looking nervous when he led her over to where grooms were hurriedly saddling Sampson, and an ancient cart horse he’d purchased in town the day before. Hallie had reluctantly named her Delilah. “It’s not about the fact that I fell off Delilah yesterday, is it? Because I maintain she did it on purpose. Also, I don’t think it’s fair for you to insist I have one riding lesson for every fighting lesson you teach me. Those were not our original terms.”
“If you wish to remain here, you need to learn how to ride, and considering I could put a baby on Delilah’s broad back and it wouldn’t so much as tip over, you need the lessons.”
Hallie muttered something that sounded like “asshat,” but he ignored it, instead patiently helping her to greet the horse and stroke the old mare’s neck (both acts of which he insisted she do until she could approach the horse without making a fuss), before assisting her up onto the saddle.
Four men accompanied them as they set off toward the town, Alan having to slow Sampson’s ground-eating gait to an amble so the old mare could keep up. He made a mental note to find Hallie a nice little Arabian mare, one with a bit more spirit, but still gentle and easygoing.
“What was it you wanted to talk about?” she asked after fifteen minutes, the time being spent by her clutching to the horse’s mane, her back hunched, her legs swaying.
“You have to keep your feet in the stirrups,” he said, ignoring her question.
“I don’t like them there. I feel trapped. This way I can move if I have to,” she answered.
