Heart of Flame Read online

  But first, she needed to make water. She glanced beyond the filigree walls of their bower at the mountain towering overhead, wondering if it would be possible for her to get out and do it quickly or whether she needed to wake him and ask him for some protective warmth. There didn’t seem to be a breath of wind and she was quite cozy here in the furs, but she doubted somehow that that would last when she cast the pelts off.

  Carefully she rolled onto her other side to face the nearest wall of their nest—and she nearly emptied her bladder right there and then because Zubaida was there on hands and knees in the snow, her face a finger’s breadth beyond the ice screen, her pointed teeth bared in a snarl. Ahleme sat up with a convulsive movement, face-to-face with the djinniyah, whose weight did not even dimple the snow she knelt upon.

  “So you didn’t resist him after all,” Zubaida hissed. “I gave you a weapon and you didn’t even raise it to defend yourself. Coward.”

  Ahleme tried to stop gasping. “It’s not like that!” she whispered. “I mean…we’re… Elder sister, it’s all right now.”

  “All right? Because you want to play the whore with him? Because you’re happy to shame your people and his? It that all right, then?”

  Ahleme’s mouth fell open as color flooded to her cheeks. “I…”

  “Is it going to be all right when you conceive a monster by him?”

  “What?” She was stunned.

  “Whore,” breathed Zubaida. “You will destroy us all.”

  Ahleme drew a breath to call Yazid awake, but before any sound could escape her throat Zubaida dissolved into a flurry of stinging ice particles that blew away over the snow and the rocks and over the lip of the ridge, down among the long shadows that stretched like fingers toward the valley below.

  Rafiq paid the guards handsomely to open the gate and allow them out in the middle of the night. He and Taqla set up their equipment in the shelter of an orange tree grove, and there she performed the final stage of the rite and he choked down the flask of bitter liquid, struggling to swallow the sand but determined to drink it all.

  “Think of Ahleme,” she told him. “Keep saying her name.”

  So he said it, and the philtre lay like lead in his stomach, and then he felt the tug, a drawing on his body as strong and sure as the pull of the North upon a lodestone. “That way,” he said, pointing. Then, with a look at the rising sun and the city walls behind them, “East. Dead-on due east.”

  They mounted the Horse and rode without stopping all day long, up into the Zagros Mountains and down into the lands beyond, which turned rapidly to desert beneath their flying hooves. When the sun set they ravelled up the silver ball and walked until midnight, falling asleep under a sheltering rockface.

  Exhausted, Taqla slept more heavily than she ought. She woke some time after dawn and looked blearily around her. Into the fold of her aba was tucked a blue bead on a thong. It fell to the stones as she sat and she picked it up, confused. A scarab beetle, her eyes told her. The prickle in her skin told her rather more. She frowned, recognizing what it was from descriptions in several of her books. Where in all the world had he got this from?

  But when she looked around she saw no glimpse of Rafiq—and equally, she realized with a lurch of her stomach, no sign of the saddle. Checking frantically in her robe pockets, she found the fabric slit—and the Horse Most Swift gone.

  Once she understood Rafiq’s betrayal, Taqla felt as if she’d been hamstrung. Her legs wouldn’t hold her up and she had to sit down hard. She sat for a long time, just staring, her hands clenched under her breasts. A breeze lifted the ashes of their little campfire, but though her eyes followed the movement of the ash, she didn’t see, and nor did she blink.

  She didn’t believe it at first. She couldn’t believe that he would have treated her the way he did—like a sister-in-law, he had promised—only to rob and desert her, that he could have risked his life repeatedly for her sake only to abandon her in the middle of the wilderness like this.

  Crawling to their baggage, she checked through it. He had taken very little—some food, a single waterskin. He’d left everything else including his bags of money, departing with only the clothes he stood up in, his weapons, the saddle, the Ring of the Djinn—and the Horse Most Swift.

  Then she found she did believe it, and she blamed herself. What real reason had she had to believe he wouldn’t betray her? They weren’t related. He was a merchant out to maximise his profits, and she was a woman of no family who happened to possess some very valuable goods. He must be used to women falling for his generous smile and his wry charm—it was part of his repertoire as a vendor. The Horse must have been a source of temptation beyond all endurance. He’d only waited for the optimum moment. He had the Horse and a way to find Ahleme and the means by which to defeat the djinni all at his command. The Ring of the Djinn was all he had been waiting for. She’d been a fool to imagine that by following him round like a lost puppy she would ever gain any hold on his loyalty, his affection or his respect, and now the thought of how she’d debased herself by trusting the man made her feel nauseous.

  After that she got angry, so angry that a smoke seemed to rise in her head and blind her. She got to her feet and clenched her trembling fists. Shame on her for being such a gullible fool, but that gave him no right to steal from her. She focused on that, on the theft of the Horse. It was hers. She had never offered it to him. She would take it back. And she had prepared for this eventuality.

  Lifting her fist to her mouth, she kissed a ring on her right hand, the simple twist of silver wire identical to the strands that made up the Horse Most Swift. “In the name of Ahura Mazda the Most High God, stand still,” she whispered. Then, “Lion Most Strong.” Then, after a calculated number of exhalations, “Pin him. Hold him. Do not let him escape.”

  She wasn’t helpless and she wasn’t stranded there. She had ways of travelling other than her own feet and the Horse Most Swift. They had a cost, but in this instance she was willing to bear it. After making a survey of what she needed to take, Taqla began a spell of shape-changing. It wasn’t anything so simple as the transformation into Zahir or Umar because they at least had been human and around her own size, and she had made the shift naked. This time she intended to take her clothes and her rings with her. It took longer to cast, and it hurt in every fibre of her body, every pinion breaking through her skin like a needle, but she did it in the end, folding herself down into the shape of a desert falcon. She wanted something fast, and she wanted it to have good eyesight. She knew exactly which direction they had been heading, but if he’d been lying about that too she intended to be able to spot the Horse’s trail in the sandy places. With a bitter screech she leapt from a rock and flew eastward.

  It took several hours pursuing the tracks of the magical mount, but she caught up with him eventually. She saw the Lion Most Strong from a good way off, standing motionless in the middle of the broken landscape with its silver body catching the sunlight, and as she neared, she saw that it stood with one heavy paw on the chest of a supine Rafiq, pinning him to the ground. His waterskin lay to hand. He had crooked an elbow over his face to shield it from the afternoon sun, and she was perversely annoyed that he wasn’t struggling, even though he’d been held captive for hours and must have given up long ago. She would have liked to have seen him struggle and rage. Taqla slipped back into her own form a little way off, and sat for some time while she got her breath back and the ache faded from her shoulders. Though she watched him, she didn’t see Rafiq stir any more than to shift a leg or lift a hand.

  When she was ready, she approached on foot and ordered the Lion Most Strong to stand back, and it released Rafiq who let out a grunt of surprise. He struggled up onto his knees, blinking at her, his face crusted with sand. “Taqla,” he groaned.

  She stepped in as he lurched to his feet and punched him as hard as she could in the face. At the last moment he saw her fist and flinched away so her knuckles stuck him only a glancing blow, which
was perhaps a good thing because she managed to skin her knuckles on his teeth and split his lip even so. He staggered a little. She clenched her stinging fist, shocked how much it had hurt her and blaming him for that too.

  “Bastard! Thief!”

  “Taqla—” He lifted a hand in dismay to his bleeding lip.

  “You stole my Horse! You dumped me in the desert! You son of a whore!” She was burning too hotly with fury to judge her attacks. When she struck again at his face, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hard against him, seizing the other hand as it flailed, and wrestling both wrists behind her to pin them at the small of her back. She was still too angry to be afraid. “How could you?” she spat. “After everything we’ve been through! Everything you promised!”

  “Taqla!” he shouted as she twisted furiously in his arms. “Shut up! Stop it! Listen to me!”

  “I hope street dogs eat your corpse!”

  “Stop!”

  She stopped struggling to draw breath, snarling. He was very strong and held her easily, his face over hers.

  “Taqla, I’m sorry.” His eyes burned. “Listen. Listen. I haven’t betrayed you. Believe me.”

  “You left me!”

  “I had to take the Horse. I am sorry, but I need it to find the house of the djinni. I had no choice. I would have returned it when I could.”

  “Tell me your ass is made of solid gold and you shit diamonds! Shall I believe that too?”

  He shook his head, teeth bared. “Taqla—I left because I couldn’t bring you with me and see you hurt.”

  “Me—hurt? Haven’t I saved your life before now? Haven’t you needed me every step of this journey?”

  “Yes!” He turned his face aside so he could spit blood into the sand, then caught her gaze again, his eyes hot with anguish. “Yes. I’ve needed you. But this is different. There’s so much chance of you getting killed—”

  “You think I’m afraid?”

  “No. Never. Taqla, listen to me. I couldn’t see you hurt for my sake. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “We had a bargain,” she snapped. “We were in it together. You get what you want and I get what I want.”

  He shook his head as if in pain, and when he spoke again it was under his breath. “I read the scroll.”

  “What?”

  “The spell in the Scroll of Simon.”

  She felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “Oh,” she said while the import of his words sank in and the desert seemed to reel about her. It had never occurred to her that he would be able to read Greek. She was suddenly horribly conscious of the way he was holding her up tight against his hard body. “No,” she whispered, trying to shrink away from him. She couldn’t move an inch.

  “How could I let myself hurt she who loves me the most?”

  “I…”

  “Look, Taqla, I saw you drown in the swamps of Basra. I couldn’t do that to you again—not now. I couldn’t let you risk your life out of love for me.” His voice was soft, all shouting done.

  “No, you’ve misunderstood…”

  “Taqla, why are you scared of admitting it?”

  “I… It isn’t like that…”

  “Isn’t it? What is it like then? Tell me.”

  She groaned. His lips curved, self-deprecating, as if knowing he was inviting another blow.

  “I think I know exactly how it feels. Taqla, is it not obvious that I’ve been falling in love with you this whole time?”

  She went still, her eyes widening.

  He smiled lopsidedly because of his split lip. “I’ve been like a man sliding down a sand dune, trying to keep on my feet and all the time falling. Can’t you see that?”

  She tried to speak but for once had no words. Not even when he bent his head and kissed her through her veil. She felt the warm softness of his lips on hers and the ghost of his breath through the silk. Her heart slammed painfully in her chest, sending the blood roaring through her head.

  Quietly, while his lips still held hers, he let go of her wrists. One hand stayed to hold her close to him, but the other rose to touch her face through the folds of her headscarf. Then he drew back a little so he could look into her eyes. She could read his intent. She knew what he was going to do and the voices of warning were roaring in the back of her mind, but still she didn’t resist when he gently drew down the fold of her veil and bared her face, though she shivered at the touch of his fingertips. A warm pleasure danced in his eyes. He brushed his thumb across her lips and whispered her name.

  “As honey on my lips, I love you. As breath in my lungs, as water in the desert, I love you.” Then he stooped again to kiss her for the second time, his mouth bruised and sweet and—under the gentleness—hungry. He tasted of blood.

  Taqla’s inner voices of reason and propriety were shrieking with dismay now. Rafiq had crossed a line that should never be crossed. She was in terrible danger, they told her. She was a fool, and he was an opportunistic dog, and this was the worst move she’d ever made.

  She heard them all, and she let them go. She gave up thinking. She let the future fly from her grasp so that she could feel what was happening to her now, in this wonderful, terrifying moment when the whole world turned inside out and his hands were on her and her body was melting against his in a way that she could never even have imagined. When they broke for breath, she reached up and touched his jaw, tracing her fingers over the hard bone and the inflorescence of dark stubble as if to convince herself he was real. A new world of textures and sensations was opening to her. She brushed the outline of his lips and he bit softly at her fingertips.

  “I was right,” he murmured. “You do have a beautiful smile.”

  She hadn’t even been aware she was smiling. It wasn’t a wide one, just a tentative curve of her lips.

  “I’ve never seen it till now, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “What for?”

  Sorry for hiding her smile from him? Sorry for being afraid? She hardly knew. She touched the bloody contusion on his lip. “For hurting you.”

  “Oh, I can take worse.”

  She flashed him a startled look.

  “Better that you hurt me than I hurt you,” said he.

  “I’ve been hurting day and night,” she said simply, no longer caring how dangerous it was to confess. His eyes darkened and his hands tightened on her.

  “Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taqla…I want…” Rafiq shook his head, ashamed of his sudden incoherence. “You’ve enslaved me, my sorceress. That’s the truth. I’ve never met anyone like you. You cut me open with a glance. I’ve never…”

  She gazed up at him, wide-eyed, and he swallowed hard.

  “Never before needed a woman to look at me the way you do.” He stooped for another kiss, the third, and this time she slid her arms around his neck. She had to, for support, because this kiss was longer and deeper and he was bearing into her, arching her back. Something was changing between them, something happening in both their bodies, a wordless contract of intention being drawn up without any reference to her will.

  This is alchemy, she thought, the mystery of changing matter. What was soft became hard, what was firm became liquid, what was cool began to fill with urgent heat—a heat fuelled by the meeting of lips and tongues, by the mingled scents of skin on skin, by the pressing of thighs and the slide of hands. And when his hands came round until he was holding her only by the hips and his thumbs slipped down the twin creases of her thighs toward her delta, that insistent touch was enough to make Taqla feel she would crumple in his grasp. Without meaning to, she moaned into his mouth, and then pulled away in shock and embarrassment. But not far. His hands held her there. His gaze pinned her even as she blushed and squirmed.

  “Taqla…” It wasn’t a question—and yet somehow it was. Rafiq’s voice had changed subtly. It was deeper, and held an undercurrent of wildness. His eyes simultaneously promised and pleaded, and where their two bodies met, t
he extent of his arousal was indisputably apparent. As for her own sex, she wasn’t sure whether she was going to melt or burst into flames. She lifted her lips to his mouth but didn’t kiss him, instead she brushed her cheek to his, her nose to his, tasting his skin scent and sharing his breath. The aching tension between the two of them was painfully taut.

  She left it to him to break it.

  Quietly he moved his hand to the knot of her belt, and as she looked up at him through her lashes, he pulled the sash free from about her waist, letting her robe fall open. He dropped the belt and then treated her headscarf the same, so that her black hair hung about her throat. He ran his fingers through her hair then lifted a lock to his lips, kissing it. And all the time he gazed into her eyes, as if there was a magical bond between them that couldn’t be broken. Even when he shrugged off his own outer robe, he kept focused upon her. Only when he laid it in the patch of shade cast by the Lion Most Strong did he glance briefly away. Then he offered her his hand.

  Taqla felt her heart in her throat. There was no resistance left in her, not to him and not to the tide of her desire, as strong as an ocean. She set her fingers in his and let him lead her to stand upon his robe. His deft hands opened the man’s jacket she wore beneath her outer aba. Beneath that she wore a woman’s blouse, which wrapped over at the front and knotted about her waist. When he loosed that knot and drew the cotton aside, her breasts were bared for the first time—to the daylight, to the surrounding wilderness, to his hands and his glance. She read the delight in the gleam of his eyes and the quirk of his mouth, and she lowered her gaze, shy. But his touch was gentle—gentle and tender—and he cupped her and stroked her with caresses that offered such exquisite pleasure that she sagged against him, her legs weakening. He pulled her tighter to him and claimed the stiffened buds of her nipples again.

  “Oh!” she said. It was all she could think of to say. She said it several times and then bit her lip, frightened she was babbling.