The Lion's Daughter by Loretta Chase
When they stopped for their midday meal, Varian’s throat was swollen enough to make eating a torture. He drank raki instead, which made him sick to his stomach. By the time he climbed back onto his mount, his entire body was shaking.
Berat lay only five more miles ahead, five treacherously steep, downhill miles in a downpour. Grimly, Varian rode on, shivering one moment, burning up the next.
The hours passed like decades. He scarcely saw Berat. It was all haze. He heard voices, was aware the group had stopped, and halted his horse. He looked down, and the ground yawned miles below him, then swayed, treacherously.
An earthquake, he thought. Of course. Why not?
Someone cried his name. Esme’s voice. Varian turned his head, searching for her, and the world tipped sideways, then sank away and left him falling into the heavens.
Varian opened his eyes to a thick gray fog. He blinked but couldn’t focus. It must be a dream: a white mountain side, a rushing stream, and evergreens. No. The somber green was her eyes. They shouldn’t be so dark as this, not so afraid. Esme was never afraid.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Croaked. Was that horrible sound him?
“Aye, now you are sorry.” She laid her cool hand upon his brow. “Only because you are hot with fever and miserable. If you were not so sick, I would beat you.”
He smiled. It hurt. His lips were parched.
He felt himself sinking again. Esme brought her arm round his back and raised him, while she nudged cushions underneath to prop up his head. The room shifted dizzily, then slowly slid back into focus.
A moment later, the most ghastly aroma rose to his nostrils. Varian glanced down. A spoon. He groaned and turned his head into the pillow, then winced as a great claw squeezed his skull.
“It is not poison,” she said. “A broth, of garlic and chicken. Swallow it, or I shall call Petro and Mati to hold you down while I make you swallow it.”
“Yes, Esme,” he said meekly, as he turned back to accept the reeking spoonful. Yet he hated having her feed him, hated feeling helpless, like a child. Too often she made him feel like a child. Except when he held her in his arms. He couldn’t even lift them now.
“I’m not a child,” he said.
“When I am ill, I am a little baby,” she said, administering another dose. “Cross and impatient. Once, I threw a bowl of soup at my father’s head, then wept with vexation when he laughed.”
“I can’t imagine you ever being ill.”
“It was when they took the bullet from my leg, and I was made to lie abed for weeks. Two years ago.”
Varian closed his eyes briefly. He’d felt the scar upon her thigh that night…when his hands had explored nearly every part of her. He’d wanted to kiss it. He wished he’d been there two years ago to look after her. He wished she’d thrown the bowl at him. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t explain, even to himself.
“But you will try to be more cheerful,” she went on, “for I have good news. My cousin Percival is here, and he is well and eager to speak with you. Later, though. I told him you must rest.”
“Percival? Here?”
“Yes. Bajo found him, as I told you he would, and brought him here, to this very house, where Mustafa has taken very good care of him. But you must hurry and grow strong, for the boy has no one to talk to except me, and he makes my head ache.”
“I must hurry and get strong,” Varian said, “so that I can give him a birching.”
“Be quiet. Eat. I will tell you a story.”
He accepted another spoonful, then another, while she told him of her life. Her voice low and musical, she spoke of the years she’d lived in the north, near Shkodra. Another pasha ruled that area, and it was thought safer than Ali’s territories, which at the time were in bloody turmoil. There, in the harsh mountains, Esme said, the stern Canon of Lek prevailed, laws handed down over generations, from the time of the hero Skanderbeg in the fifteenth century. Blood feuds raged all over Albania, and violent revenge was a common response to injury. In the north, however, the rules were intricately defined and strictly carried out. It was a hard place for women, she told him, but the land was beautiful.
For five years she’d lived in the region of Shkodra, the longest her father had lingered anywhere. Not that he truly lingered. He left her with friends while he traveled the length and breadth of Ali’s domains, doing what he could to help bring order and persuade the fiercely independent tribes to unite. Before Shkodra, she’d spent two years in and around Berat. Before that, three in Gjirokastra, where her mother had died—though they continued to visit often afterward, because Esme’s grandparents lived there. Korge, Tepelena, Janina. But these she said she didn’t remember well. Janina not at all, for she’d been an infant. Jason had met her mother, a young widow, there. One of Ali’s spoils of war, she was given in reward to Jason for services rendered. She was the only woman Jason accepted from Ali. Her name was Liri.
Varian absently swallowed what must have been a cauldron of odiously pungent broth while he listened. It was not just that the tale of her life took his mind off his physical misery and the great claw tearing at his head. He listened because this was Esme’s life, what had made her what she was, and he was greedy to know. She had secrets. He wanted to learn them all.
At last she put the relentless spoon away. Varian breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am sorry you didn’t like it,” she said. “Yet I am glad you were brave enough to take it anyway. Now your body is filled with the strength to fight your illness.”
“My body is filled with garlic,” he said. “I reek of it.”
“Yes, it will sweat through your skin, taking the illness with it. Now you have only to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” he said.
“I tell you this long, boring story of my life and you are not sleepy?” She peered at him. “But you are,” she said. “You blink and blink to keep your eyes open. Close them.” She stroked the tight place between his eyebrows.
“I want to look at you,” he said.
“There is no need to watch me. I shall not go away and make new trouble for you. Do not be anxious.”
But Varian was. He knew the fever and headache muddled his mind, but he was afraid to close his eyes, because he might wake and she’d be gone. Then how would he find her again?
All the same, there was no withstanding the gentle pulsing between his brows, no resisting the waves of cool peace streaming through the tight muscles of his face. The claw eased its grip and the world grew soft and thick as velvet, cool and dark. He felt himself slipping, but some part of his mind, sweeping down this sweet river, snagged on a recollection. Time…years…count them. Five years in Shkodra, two in…where? Another place. Other places. How many years? He couldn’t remember. His mind went dark and he sank.
Within three days, Lord Edenmont was recovering very well, yet Esme continued to nurse him diligently. He was not overly demanding. He took his medicine with a minimum of complaint and ate whatever she gave him. Otherwise, he slept, mostly. That left her little to do, yet she remained with him and kept her hands busy helping Mustafa’s mother, Eleni, by mending clothes, picking through beans, carding wool. Esme did not want any more private conversations with her cousin, and this was the only polite way to avoid them.
Often, Percival kept her company, but while Lord Edenmont slept, the lad had to sit quietly. He did this surprisingly well for a boy. Sometimes he’d take out a half dozen rocks from his leather pouch and study them, occasionally making notes on the paper Mustafa had given him. Most often, though, the boy would sit reading one of Mustafa’s books.
Percival tried not to be troublesome, but even in the brief intervals they’d been alone together, he’d said enough to disturb Esme deeply. His heart was set on taking her back to England with him. This was painfully clear, though he said it was what his mama had wanted. When he spoke of his mother, Esme’s heart ached for him.
Percival said little about his father, yet here as well
That left the boy only an unforgiving old witch of a grandmother who had refused to write even one kind word to Jason, the son she’d not seen in more than twenty years. The boy had no one. He was desperate enough to make do with Esme, but it was Jason he truly needed, and Jason was dead.
Esme looked at Percival and saw her father’s image. She looked at the boy and saw loneliness. When the boy looked at her, she knew he thought he’d found a sister.
He was bright, even amusing, and gentle natured. She wished she could be a sister to him. They’d do well together. There was a bond. She’d felt it in the first five minutes they were together in Berat: kinship, and something else. A sympathy.
But Fate had decreed she must hurt him, and there was no way to prepare him, no way to break it to him gently that she would never accompany him to England. He must go on his own way alone, just as she must carry her burden alone. Yet even as she grieved for Percival, Esme told herself the grief was salutary. It reminded her of her duty.
For a while—too long a while—she’d let a shameful infatuation take precedence over duty. No more. From now on, all her mind would be fixed upon revenge. Merely killing Ismal would not be enough. He must suffer hideously, body and spirit, before he died. His blood for Jason’s, aye, but he must pay as well for the injury to her cousin, who’d needed Jason even more than she had.
Esme allowed herself to think of nothing else as the days stretched into a week. She evaded her cousin’s efforts to get close to her and told her conscience it was better this way. She watched Lord Edenmont grow stronger, heard the teasing irony creep back into his voice, and steeled her heart against him as well. She could not allow herself to feel anything for either of them, or give anything of herself. She had her own destiny to follow. They would soon be gone. It was better this way.
Chapter Eleven
Walled in by mountains, Janina climbed the eastern slope of the Hill of St. George, to command a breathtaking view of the Lake of Janina. Between hill and lake stretched a promontory that rose as it jutted out into the waters. This narrow, rocky quadrangle formed the foundation of the vast fortress that housed one of Ali Pasha’s palaces as well as the city’s prison, official buildings, cemetery, mosques, and the miserable dwellings of the Jewish population. A drawbridge connected the citadel’s lone gate to the small esplanade—a site of executions—which led to the pazar, the marketplace.
Janina’s pazar represented, physically as well as economically, the town’s lowest point, its crooked, filthy, ill-paved streets crowded with shops. Beyond the shops, the streets straggled on to the very edge of the lake, where the poorest classes lived. In this quarter, Jason Brentmor, too, had been living in quiet anonymity these last weeks.
After his supposed death, he’d disguised himself as a peddler and headed south, where discontent was building to fever pitch. The complaints he heard en route were familiar. An official of Ali’s would be robbed, or pelted with refuse, or suffer some like insult, and a group of innocent locals would be blamed. The punishments ranged from extortionate fines to maiming and execution. When the locals loudly objected to the injustice, the official—goaded, no doubt, by the same vipers who had actually caused the trouble—would respond with greater brutality. As a result, scores of southern towns and villages were seething.
On his way south, Jason had listened sympathetically to the villagers’ grievances, while counseling patience. Finally, he’d sent a trusted friend to the Vizier in Tepelena to urge Ali to replace his officials and pacify the people. There was no assurance Ali would do so. Even if he did, it would probably be too late.
A few agitators and a supply of weaponry could instantly whip outrage into open rebellion, as had happened every time before. Given the present level of frustration, the weaponry must be expected soon. Timing was everything. Jason guessed it was a matter of weeks. The weapons would surely come to one of the southern ports. But which one?
It was the same question he’d been asking himself for weeks. Pushing his supper away, Jason moved to the narrow window. Five days of unceasing rain. Mid-October already. Time was running out, and Bajo still hadn’t come.
For all one knew, the south could surge into bloody revolt in days…with Esme and Percival caught in the midst of it. Jason had heard about Edenmont’s arrival with the boy, and the ensuing events, but there was nothing he could do. A frantic dash north might, at best, be a waste of valuable time. At worst, it might endanger friends as well as kin. Jason had no idea what steps Bajo or other comrades had taken. His interference—even if he managed to interfere without being recognized—could undo whatever good others had done. He couldn’t take the risk, though it ate at him to wait, as helpless in this matter as in the other.
His only comfort was that Ali hadn’t blamed Ismal for the Red Lion’s death and taken bloody revenge. That would have promptly triggered revolt in the north as well as the south. Jason had counted on Ali’s greed and Ismal’s cleverness to avert that catastrophe. Local gossip confirmed he’d judged correctly.
“Ismal claims it was the work of misguided men, overeager to curry favor,” one old man had told him. “I do not know who killed Jason, only that Ali was happy to blame those Ismal accused, in order to have their riches and women. Some say Ismal should have been executed, because his followers would not act without his encouragement. I answer that Ali will not kill the goose who lays the golden eggs. Ismal may do as he likes, for he knows he may easily appease Ali by feeding his greed.”
How much longer, though, would Ismal continue to appease his cousin? Jason swore to himself. What the devil did it matter? At present, both Esme and Percival were in danger. He was bitterly berating himself for hanging uselessly about Janina when he heard a pounding at the door and a rough, familiar voice calling his assumed name.
Minutes later, the weary Bajo sat at the low table, making quick work of the fish stew and maize bread Jason had had no stomach for.
Bajo took a swig from the wine bottle and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I should have done as you advised and knocked your daughter unconscious,” he said. “Though I fear that would have been futile. It’s clear the Fates conspire against us, for I, who’d give my life for you, haven’t stepped once since I left you without stepping wrong.”
Despite this ominous opening, Jason was prepared to wait patiently until his friend had eaten. But Bajo needed to unburden himself at least as much as he needed to fill his belly. While he ate, he talked.
The story which distressed Bajo so much eased Jason’s anxieties considerably. Esme surely had reached Berat by now. She and Percival might even be on their way west to the coast—well protected by Maliq’s men—or already upon a ship. She’d be traveling with a cousin fully prepared to like her and eager to fulfill his late mother’s wish to send the girl to England. So Jason reassured his friend.
“I’m certainly not worried about Edenmont raising difficulties,” he added. “He may not care a damn what becomes of Esme, but he cares a great deal about his own soft hide. He’s probably frantic to be gone, and he’ll have to take her with him, like it or not. Both Mustafa and Percival will see to that.”
“So I’ve prayed, Red Lion,” said Bajo. “But I fear I’ve made a great mistake in my haste to rejoin you.” From the ammunition pouch at his waist he withdrew a piece of paper. Laying it on the table before Jason, he described his last meeting with Percival.
“I’d no time to look at it until after I left Ali,” Bajo explained. “Since then, I’ve heard many things, and each night as I studied that paper, I grew more amazed.”
Jason stared at the paper for a long while. It was not a riddle. Percival had drawn a boat with a black crown in one of its sails. There was a bit of black above, with a few stars. Within the hold, the boy had sketched a rifle. Beneath, in Greek characters, he’d writt
“This is incredible,” he muttered. Yet all the facts he possessed and all Bajo had said obliged Jason to believe it: his twelve-year-old nephew had sent the answer. Prevesa, a southern port, was the smugglers’ destination. The numbers must indicate early November, some two or three weeks hence, as he’d guessed. The crown and the night must signify the ship’s name. Very useful. The British authorities might be able to identify and stop the vessel well before it reached Prevesa.
He raised his head. “I should have realized Percival had an urgent reason for coming to Albania. He’d overheard me telling his mother something of our problem, you see. I can only conclude that somewhere in Italy he overheard another conversation and decided I must be informed. When I turned out to be dead, he passed the information on to you.”
“All I could think was that the boy had visions,” Bajo answered. “This message tells all, even to the traitor’s name: ‘Malis’ for Tsmal.’ And all so cautiously done, Red Lion. Not a word of this before Mustafa. No hint in the letter to Ali—for Fejzi, who’s trustworthy, translated it in my presence.”
“The letter to Ali was just an excuse to get writing materials quickly, before you could leave. Percival knew better than to warn Ali in a letter because Ismal might have been by when it was read.” That extraordinary boy of Diana’s had thought of everything.
“Still, your nephew has dangerous knowledge. I should never have left him in Berat.”
“If you’d taken him to Tepelena as you’d originally planned, Esme would have had the perfect excuse to go there as well,” Jason pointed out. “Then we’d have reason to worry. We both know why she left the ship and headed for Tepelena.”
“I know, Red Lion,” Bajo said wearily. “The little warrior wants Ismal’s blood.”