Jasmine!
He suddenly remembered his last conversation with Omar Khayyam. He knew of this woman. She had been present when Bu Ali set him up. And her scent had given her away. Now he knew why his intuition had been so strong. This woman was not simply just poison; she was the ultimate danger. It made no difference whether she was the Sultan's wife or a favored concubine. Hell! This was the Jasmine Lady who had so much power no one would say her name out loud.
He let go of the wrist, but not until he had twisted the knife out of her grasp. He kept the knife and pushed her away from him.
He said, 'You better get your ass back to the palace before you get hurt.'
That did it. She told him what she was going to do to him when she had the opportunity.
'You don't say.' That made her even more furious, which took some doing since she was already just about as furious as a woman could get. 'That is a creative way to do it, but I don't think I'm going to let you.' He laughed, waiting to see if she would go completely out of control.
She surprised him. Suddenly she was cool. Regal.
She pulled the burnoose together and tied the sash that held it, her long, slim fingers working with deliberation. She looked him directly in the eyes and said, 'My knife.'
'Like hell.'
'Very well.' She turned her back on him, and without another word or another glance, walked slowly down the dark street in the direction of the palace.
That decided the Bu Ali matter, of course. He would have to take care of it tonight. He found a good alley to watch the cafe, hunkered down in the darkness, and waited.
A long time. Casca guessed Bu Ali was smoking hashish in the cafe. Despite the overpowering odor of the town Casca thought he caught an occasional whiff of the delightful stuff.
Sometime toward the end of the first watch — by the Hebrew reckoning — Bu Ali came out of the cafe. He was not alone. There was a young boy with him. Casca was too far from the cafe door to hear what they said to each other, but the young boy went one way down the street, and Bu Ali, after watching the boy go into the darkness, turned and went the other way, toward the palace.
'Bu Ali!'
Casca's scimitar was free of its scabbard, and he had already stepped into the street when he issued the challenge.
Bu Ali turned, saw Casca, was momentarily shocked at what he saw and thought to himself, The sneaky Frank must have held onto a branch on the side of the Bottomless Pit when he fell in, then drew his own scimitar, and advanced to meet Casca's attack without saying a word. In fact his return was so swift that it became an attack of its own, and it was Casca who had to parry.
Cut.
Thrust.
Parry.
Thrust.
Cut.
They fought in the dappled darkness of the street where the only light was that of the moon and the only sounds the clash of steel on steel, their labored breathing, and the shuffling of their feet on the ancient stone pavement.
Cut.
Thrust.
Parry.
Casca had fought many a man in the centuries since the Jew had damned him. Never, though, had he met a man quicker with the blade, faster with the footwork, more adept at every usage of the scimitar. Bu Ali seemed to anticipate every thrust, every cut. It was almost as though he could read Casca's mind before Casca could himself. Casca was shocked. He had known the big-assed Mameluke was good, but he had never even considered that he might be this good. The realization was coming to Casca very rapidly that Bu Ali not only was as good as he was — Bu Ali was a damn sight better. Instead of wasting the big Mameluke and getting this over with, it looked like it was going to go the other way. I don't stand a chance with him in a fair fight.
A fair fight, though, was not the point. The point was taking out Bu Ali. Casca gave ground, desperately trying to come up with some way to overcome Bu Ali's advantage. By now he was sweating. And by now Bu Ali was forcing him ever closer to the palace grounds. Soon the sound of their swordplay would reach the guards.
Have to do something about this… damn quick…
The ropes came from nowhere.
Behind him. Beside him. Above him. It was all confused in his mind. All he knew was that he was suddenly entangled, like a fly in a spiderweb, and Bu Ali was readying his scimitar to end it all.
'No!'
Bu Ali stopped in mid-motion as though he were frozen into marble.
'Yes, my lady.'
Casca saw her then. This time she was in a dark purple burnoose of cloth of Chin or some similar material. In the moonlight the touch of color was like that of the best steel. And she wore a matching dark purple mask. The jasmine smell was now so strong that he could smell it even from where he was standing.
Bu Ali moved, bowed deeply before her, and on rising said, 'My compliments to your guards, my lady. I will now take this dog to-'
'No, you will not. You will be rewarded for this night's work. Richly rewarded. But, as for this one-' She did not finish the sentence, but merely said to the big eunuch beside her: 'You know where to take him.'
Even if he had wanted to resist, Casca never got the chance. One of the eunuchs calmly brained him with something very hard and very heavy…
He was in the seraglio now, strapped to two tables, stripped naked. One table was at a convenient working height for the women with the knives. His legs were stretched out on this one, feet bound down on either side to spread apart the area of concern. The second table was propped against the wall at an angle, the upper part of his body bound to it. His head was free to move so that he could see what was going on. His mouth was free of any gag — so that he could scream. There was an enormous amount of light in the seraglio, lamps everywhere, even great torches flaming dangerously close to the cloth wall hangings.
Silence. The women — there were no eunuchs present — were waiting for something.
Or someone…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Silence.
Whoever they were waiting for had to be pretty important. Or… Are they doing this to make it worse on me? Give me time to imagine the worst?
But Casca already knew the worst… He remembered the Quadii in the northlands… the freed women slaves… and what they had done to the men who had raped them.
But at least those women had a reasonable excuse. He got the idea that the ones that would be going after him would be sick, because there were only three of them at the table with the knives. The rest of the harem was standing back, quite a ways back, and from the look on their faces most of them did not want to be there. They had tightened the muscles around their mouths in that implication of extreme disgust that only a woman can express. And one, the little slave girl, Ruth, whom Casca had seen trying to escape, was being forcibly held by a tough old bitch.
They were all fully-clothed. Except for the three at the table with the knives, there was not the slightest suggestion that this crowd of women existed only as sex machines for the Sultan. Nor did this particular room have sexual overtones. It was a large room, very tastefully decorated. There was much use of skillfully-carved wooden pillars, excellent and expensive wall hangings, a beautiful tile floor, and intricate wooden panels on the ceiling. In
