Devil's Bargain by Judith Tarr Page A

wondered what had brought Mustafa there at so late an hour.
    But it was not Mustafa. This was a taller man, somewhat, and considerably older, and although she had no complaints of his looks, he was not the hawk-faced desert beauty that Mustafa was. He had a book in his lap, one that she had borrowed from Safiyah, but he was not reading it. He was gazing into the lamp’s flame.
    When he raised his eyes to her, the flame burned in them, clear and steady. His smile was a part of it; it warmed her immeasurably.
    She had all but forgotten that she had been hunting for him earlier. The urgency was gone; it seemed vain and faintly foolish now to take him to task for giving Eleanor a gift that would arouse her suspicions and possibly turn her magic against him or his brother. Even his wife’s absence—need thatsignify anything but that Safiyah had other concerns than the teaching of a single thickheaded pupil?
    Sioned needed sleep. Tomorrow she would be passionate again, and indulge in indignation. Her tent beyond this one, the bed that waited, lured her irresistibly. But he had drawn her, too, back among the shelves of salves and the boxes of bandages.
    She greeted him politely, bowed to the dignity of his rank, and said, “My lord. Are you indisposed? Is there some medicine that you need?”
    “I’m well, lady,” he said, “and I ask your pardon for keeping you from your rest. It is only . . . I have a thing to say, and it seemed best to say it soon, and not wait for a more proper time.”
    “About Eleanor?”
    He lifted a shoulder in the suggestion of a shrug. “I know I don’t need to warn you against her. But are you wary enough?”
    “I would hope so,” said Sioned a little stiffly.
    “I’ve insulted you,” he said with what seemed to be honest regret. “I didn’t mean to do that. It’s only . . .”
    “She is subtle,” Sioned said, “and I’m terribly young yet. I know that. She’s dangerous. But she doesn’t know what I am—I’ve kept my head down where she is, always, and let her pass over me. It seems safer somehow.”
    He nodded with perceptible relief. “Yes, it is safer. I . . . should greatly dislike to see you harmed.”
    Her cheeks were warm, but her heart was cold. There was something she should say—but she could not. She could not tell this man what bargain Eleanor had made.
    This was an outlander, an enemy. And yet it was a sensation close to pain, to keep silent; to let him go away in ignorance of the plot against his brother.
    Magic drew its own lines, created its own bonds of nation and kinship. The magic in her did not want to see this man as an enemy. He was of her own kind—her heart’s, her magic’s kin.
    Still she did not speak. She protected her true enemy and concealed the truth from her true friend. She would pay for that.

C HAPTER T EN
    T ime was when Mustafa without a war to fight would have been a lost and useless thing. But since he came to Richard, his gift for languages had served him remarkably well. Richard trusted him, Allah knew why, and kept him close through all his interactions with the folk of Islam. He was notably more preoccupied now than he had been on the march, kept at his translating from dawn until long after dusk. When he was done, he had no thought for anything but to fall asleep—it hardly mattered where.
    Richard’s servants looked after him, kept him clean, saw that he had fresh linen in the mornings and a bath every evening. They were all handsome boys, big and fair as the king was said to like them. Sometimes Mustafa wondered where that left him: dark, slight, dwarfed among all these foreigners. The deserts of Morocco bred beauty, but seldom endowed it with size.
    Not, to be sure, that he wanted to be a great hulking creature like these nobles of the Franks. He was more than content with himself. And so, it seemed, was Richard. He used his servant ruthlessly, but Mustafa never felt that he was a mere andmindless instrument. Richard