The edge of her mouth curled upward with a cheeky grin. “Saving your life.”
He shook his head, still bewildered. “Besides that.” He smiled. It hurt his bruised lips. “How did you get here?”
“I followed you. You, my brother, my father. I followed you all the way from Constantinople.”
His thoughts were taking a moment longer than normal to formulate themselves. “Why?”
“I heard them talking. They suspected you were after something big. They had a feeling you wouldn’t be splitting it with them. So they decided they’d take it all for themselves. I wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t get away. You know how they are with me.”
“But they’re … your father? Your brother?”
She shrugged. “They’re bad men. I knew you wouldn’t give up whatever it was you were after without a fight. I knew what they’d do to you to take it.”
“So you followed them … for me?”
She kept her eyes firmly locked on his, and nodded. “You would have done the same for me, wouldn’t you?”
The simple honesty of her reply sank in with startling clarity. Of course, he would have. He didn’t doubt that for a second. There was an unspoken connection between them, an attraction that had built up over weeks and months of frustrating encounters. He was well aware of that. But for her to risk her life like this was beyond anything he’d imagined.
She handed him a leather wineskin. “You need water. Drink.”
He uncorked it and took a long chug from it.
“What’s this all about?” she asked as she watched him. “What did you want from that monastery?”
He handed it back to her, studied her for a beat, then led her to some shade under an outcropping in the canyon wall and told her everything.
From the very beginning.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The origin of the Order. What the Keepers set out to do. How it all went well. How it all went wrong. Everard and his men in Constantinople. The defeat at Acre. The disappearance of the Falcon Temple. The lost years in Cyprus. The king of France’s move against the Order. Friday the thirteenth. His rebirth in Constantinople. Meeting her. The swords. The monastery. The texts. The ambush.
It was the least she deserved.
Throughout, she listened intently, not interrupting more than a couple of times, for some clarification. And when he was done, they just sat there in silence for a long moment, she letting the information sink in, he assessing his current situation and trying to decide what his next move should be.
She watched him rub the stump of his forearm and nodded to indicate it. “Did they take it?”
He nodded back. “Yes.”
She watched him silently for a long second, then said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
He exhaled heavily. “I have to try and get it back.”
“There’s six of them and two of us.”
He held his stump up and gave her a self-deprecating grin. “One and a half.” He frowned. “One more thing I need to get back. Your father said they’d take it to Konya. Do you know where that is?”
“Of course. It’s where we’re from, it’s where I grew up.”
“How far is it?”
She thought about it for a beat. “Four days’ ride? Maybe three at a good gallop.”
“They’re weighed down by the wagon and what it’s carrying. We’ll be much faster than them. And they’ll have to find somewhere sheltered to stop for the night, out of view. Less easy when you’ve got all those horses.” He let his thoughts sink in, looked around, and made a decision. “I need you to help me with something first.”
“What?”
“I need to bury my friends.”
“We’ll have to do it fast. We don’t want to give them too much of a head start.”
” ‘We’?”
She gave him a knowing, sardonic glance. “I saved your life, remember?”
“They’re your family.”
She frowned. It was evidently not easy on her. “You don’t know enough about me.”
“And if I did?”
“You’d understand better.” Her tone was level and clear, and didn’t leave much room for debate. “Let’s not waste time. We can talk on the way.” She smiled. “But you’ll need to ride downwind of me until you bathe.”
“They took our horses. I can’t be downwind of you if we’re sharing a saddle.”
She shot him a look. “I brought two horses. In case one of them got hurt. It’s a long way from Constantinople.”
Conrad nodded, then glanced over at Hector’s corpse. “Hector’s more or less my size. I’ll take his garments. Until we find a stream to wash in.”
They used her dagger and their bare hands to open up a rectangular hole in the ground, at the base of the rock face. They placed Hector and Miguel’s bodies in it, side by side, before covering them with stones, to protect them from any more buzzards and other scavengers that roamed the valleys, and topping it all off with a layer of soil. Conrad used the dagger to scrape their names into the rocky wall behind the grave, then added a
He stood up and stared at the flattened earth and the carving in the rock. It wasn’t as fitting a grave for his fallen brethren as he would have liked, but it was the best he could do.
Maysoon read the grief etched into his face. “’
He looked a question at her.
“Rumi,” she said.
He still didn’t understand.
“I’ll explain later,” she said. “We need to go.”
“Very well.” He contemplated the grave for a final moment, but before turning away, he decided to do something else.
He carved his own name as well. Below theirs.
It was Maysoon’s turn to look a question at him.
“Just in case anyone else should ever come looking for me,” he said.
Then they rode off, thundering down to the end of the canyon before emerging into open flatlands and following the trail the Turk and his outfit had left behind.
They didn’t get too far on that first day. The sun was already sinking fast by the time they reached a small stream that wove its way through some forested, rolling hills. It was a good, safe place to spend the night. They’d catch up with their quarry the next day.
Conrad cleaned himself in the stream, relishing the feel of the cool water on his wounds. As he did, he thought about the past few days, about the abrupt disruption to his life, about the trapdoor that fate had conjured up and dropped him into. He didn’t have much time to think about it. The sight of Maysoon stepping out of her robes and joining him in the stream yanked his thoughts to a far better place. And right there and then, he decided he would suffer no more dilemmas about long-dead oaths and self-denying rules.
He pulled her toward him and kissed her with a feverish hunger. And then he buried himself inside her, and with it, he buried the last vestiges of his life as a warrior-monk.
From here on, the monk part of his life was definitely over.
He was just a warrior now.
Chapter 38
