Page 7 of Company of Thieves
Alan Dubain was furious.
That event by itself wasn’t ground-shaking, Alan mused to himself, but given the number of items he was juggling, including being a diplomat in the court of William VI, being a former member of the Black Hand, and, most important, being better known throughout north, central, and southern Europe as Prince Akbar, infamous warlord son of the imperator Aurangzeb III, he felt entitled to a little more fury than someone who wasn’t trying to be all things to all people.
And still keep the general population alive.
“We’ll never be to El Kef in time to keep that bastard Etienne from stealing Octavia’s cargo,” he growled to Zand, his companion since childhood and closest friend. The two men were riding with a complement of approximately thirty Moghuls to the camp they’d set up a week before. “She’ll have more than a few things to say to me if she loses any more cargo to him.”
“Why is he here, in Tunisia?” Zand asked, pulling up the tail of his turban to cover his mouth, the sting of sand against Alan’s face indicating another windstorm was kicking up. “His sights have been set on Prussia and your father’s empire for the last eight years. Why would he comeherewhen his goal is elsewhere?”
Alan thought about the last communiqué from his father, and pressed his heels into his horse, urging the great black gelding to a ground-eating canter. He felt itchy, and not just with the sand that was working its way in through his clothing. Like his friend, he adjusted the turban so that it covered his nose and mouth, squinting through the dark green glass of his goggles. “I believe he plans on meeting the imperator.”
Zand looked startled. “His Imperial Majesty comes to North Africa?”
“So he says.” Alan ground his teeth for a few seconds. It wasn’t difficult enough to juggle two personae, and three separate commitments of time—no, now his father had to rouse himself out of Constantinople and blight him with what was sure to be nonstop interference. “We can only hope that he loses interest quickly and returns to the comforts of his palace. Damn, where is the camp? Have we gone astray hunting those revolutionaries?”
“It should be ahead of us,” Zand said, consulting his compass. “Over that next dune, perhaps.”
“The next time I have the bright idea to go chasing revolutionaries into the Sahara, you have my permission to knock me silly,” Alan growled, relieved when, as Zand said, they crested an elegantly wind-carved sand dune and saw below in a rocky valley a dark shadow that was his temporary base. “They’ve lost me far too much time by evading us, and Octavia will have my head if I don’t help protect her cargo.”
“She has theFalconnearby, though, surely, and she is an impressive airship,” Zand pointed out. “Not to mention the other ship, the one captained by her father.”
“Robert Anstruther is in Ireland, I believe, although, yes, theFalconshould be there. At least, that is what Safie told me she was doing, and she is a most dutiful captain.”
“She is most definitely that,” Zand said in a voice that sounded to Alan partially strangled.
He smiled into his turban, well aware that his friend had a tendresse for his oldest sister, and fully intended on talking to Safie about how they could arrange for her to marry Zand without their father beheading him. Or Alan. Or all three of them. Alan’s smile faded when he thought with annoyance of his father’s imminent arrival. What the devil was he thinking to prove by coming all the way to Tunisia?
As they rode, the dark shadow that was his base began to resolve itself into a variety of structures. His tent, a mammoth structure of black and gold, sat in the center of approximately twenty others, beyond which was tethered an airship, theNightwing. Another smile curled his lips under the thick black mustache he grew each time he returned to his Moghul roots. His belovedNightwing, the best of all his ships. She was small as airships went, with only four envelopes, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up in speed, maneuverability, and firepower.
“We’ll take off as soon as we get into camp,” he told Zand, waving a hand behind him. “Az can take care of the prisoners.”
“As you like,” Zand said, and promptly dropped back in order to have a word with Azahgi Bahajir, one of the guards who rode alongside the seven revolutionaries they’d caught after a several-hour hunt that dragged them deep into the desert.
Alan was mentally drafting an apology to Octavia when a shout from the east caused him to pull up, one hand shading his eyes to better see the approaching horsemen.
It was the four-man scouting party who were tasked with checking the local wadis and dry riverbeds for signs of more revolutionaries, but these men rode in a tight formation, some large object hanging between them.
He frowned and tried to figure out what it was they held. The remains of a dead camel? Some other animal? It wasn’t until the men were almost upon him that he realized that the scouts held a person slung between them.
“If that’s another revolutionary, place him with the others, assuming he’s alive,” he instructed Zand, who moved up next to Alan, his eyes similarly shielded to see the oncoming group.
Alan started forward, but Zand’s words stopped him. “I don’t think that’s a man.”
“Of course it’s a man. What woman in her right mind would be wandering around the desert on her own?” Despite the irritation of yet another delay, Alan turned his horse toward the scouts. To his surprise, he discovered Zand was all too correct.
“My prince,” the lead scout said, leaping off his saddle to make a low bow. “We bring to you a most valuable prisoner. A spy!”
“I am so going to make you sorry!” a woman’s voice croaked in English. “You’re not going to be able to walk by the time I get done with you!”
Alan slid out of the saddle and froze at the words, his eyes narrowing on the woman who’d been slung between the two rearmost scouts. She was clad in some sort of long, silky trousers and tunic, vaguely green in color, but now badly stained brown by sand and earth. But it was the fact that she spoke English that made him wary.
“Let her down,” he told his men, speaking in their native language while at the same time pulling around the tail of his turban. A woman who spoke English in this area could be only one of two things: a member of the Black Hand or someone Octavia had recruited. And if it was the latter, it was best that he do what he could to hide his face, since only one person other than his sister and Zand knew that Alan Dubain and Prince Akbar were one and the same.
The men took him literally. They dropped the woman, who hit the ground with a whomp that made Alan flinch. He strode forward to help her up, but she was on her feet before he could reach for her, her face yellow with sand and dirt. She spat and coughed, but he couldn’t help but notice the glittering green eyes that seemed to shoot sparks of anger toward him.
“Are you their boss?” she snapped, rubbing a hand over her mouth. It just smeared the sand and dirt across her lips and chin.
He made a polite bow, not the court bow that Alan Dubain was known for, but the short, choppy bow practiced by the Moghuls, and said in the accent of his youth, “I have that honor.”
