By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Twenty-Three

Ed Perry moved over various bodies to meet Adrian. He scooped up the rifle from the floor where Adrian had let it fall, ejected the empty clip, and said crisply, "Give me another clip." Adrian rummaged in his pockets, unloading handguns right and left, and finally came to the spare clips for the rifle. Without a word, Ed took one and slapped it into place in the butt of the rifle. He took a couple of the handguns, tossed them across the pile of bodies to Will and Jake, jammed two more in his belt, and turned back toward the cell.

Adrian unsnapped the cover from his holster and drew his own handgun ... it seemed a whole lot easier to do without a fanged, red-eyed assailant bearing down on him. He followed Ed back toward the cells and saw Richard now, standing behind a dark-skinned vampire who was dressed in an outfit that would have broken the hearts of half the costume designers in Hollywood. Adrian thought it was a bit gauche ... but no one asked him.

Richard was holding a knife very firmly to the throat of this overdressed creature, but now he said to Perry, "Hold the gun to his nose." Perry lifted the business end of the rifle to Bahram's face, and Richard said, into the ear of his captive, "Can you smell it?"

Bahram Bakhtiar looked as if his dearest wish in the world would be to tear Richard Plantagenet into bite-sized pieces. "Yes!" he hissed. The silver bullets.

Richard stepped back away from him, lowering the knife. To Ed, and to Will, who had come back into the cell now, with his handgun, too, aimed at Bahram, he said, "Kill him if he makes any move I do not direct." Roughly, Richard grabbed the voluminous kaftan that covered the rest of Bahram's finery and stripped in down his arms. It was heavy white silk, encrusted all down the front and in a thick band around the bottom with gold embroidery and what looked like real gems. Richard tossed it carelessly to Jake, careful not to let it come between Bahram and the guns leveled on him. "For the lady," he said shortly, and slipped behind Will to go to Adrian.

Adrian was still looking at T'beth, and fighting to regain control of himself. He had never seen her look so helpless. He hardly felt the hand Richard put on his shoulder. T'beth pushed herself away from the wall and allowed Jake to slide the white kaftan up over her arms, and then turned toward the unconscious guard Ed Perry had clouted.

"No!" Richard said quickly, as T'beth took a step toward the guard. She turned to look at him, challenge in her eyes, her fangs visible, and Richard said calmly, "We must leave one alive to tell what happened here."

She stared at him for a moment, and then made a small sound of disgust and dropped to her knees beside the piled bodies, shoving at the vampires to get to the guard Adrian had shot. Jake reached down to help her; even Jake was stronger than T'beth right now. Ignoring everyone and everything, T'beth sank her fangs into the big vein in the guard's neck and began to suck convulsively. Adrian, who hadn't fed since yesterday morning (although that had been a banquet), felt a primitive urge to tear her away and take the guard for himself.

Instinct. He ignored it and turned to Richard, who was watching T'beth curiously, with no shadow of the fear or disgust Adrian had seen in other mortals who saw a vampire feeding. "Everyone's okay?" he asked.

Richard's hand squeezed his shoulder. "Yes. Do you know where the other rifles are?"

"A storage locker ... in the guards' room by the stairs."

"We must get them." He nodded to T'beth. "Does this take much time?"

As starved as she was? But he only shook his head and said, "A few moments."

"Unless they have taken it somewhere, there is a vehicle above we must reach," Richard said. "Ed says that only six new guards came with it, so there can be few guards left now. But there are still many of these." He nudged one of the vampire bodies with his foot. "We will take their sire with us; with him, and the rifles, we can leave here ... and we can expect pursuit. Without the vehicle, we cannot hope to outdistance them."

"The jeep's still there," Adrian said. He had seen it just inside the gate and hardly noticed it.

Richard turned back to look impatiently at T'beth, but she was finished now, and had let the drained body slide free of her hands. Her head was down, though, and Adrian knew, as Richard could not, the turmoil inside her as her starved body tried to assimilate the fresh blood she'd taken. "Jake," Richard said, "help the lady." He stepped back into the cell and took one of the handguns Ed had jammed into his belt and leveled it very coolly at Bahram's face. "Understand me," he said. "You have one value only: concern for your life can keep your creatures at bay. If it does not, you will die instantly."

Their eyes held for a long moment, and then Bahram nodded slowly. Richard seized his shoulder and pulled him out through the door and into the corridor. Jake had T'beth on her feet now, one arm around her slim waist. Her eyes were closed, but she was conscious, and her color was improving slowly as her strength returned.

Richard's free hand gripped Bahram's fancy silk tunic at the back of the neck. With the other hand, he held his gun steady in the middle of the vampire's back. "Move slowly," he said. "We go first to the guards' recreation room."

Move slowly? Adrian wondered why they didn't just run like hell. But they hadn't done too badly listening to Richard so far. He eased back against the wall of the corridor to let Jake and T'beth pass him, and then Will and Ed Perry. If anyone tried to jump them from behind, or if there were any guards left with regular old lead bullets, Adrian was the least vulnerable of them all ... and he felt nicely noble to think of it. This Vambo stuff was addictive. Maybe he should get a tattoo?

Half a dozen times, as they wound their way back toward the recreation room and the stairs to the surface, groups of vampires showed up and Bahram yelled immediately that they weren't to interfere. This didn't keep them from following, skulking from one corner to the next as the escapees moved through the corridors. By this time, there was so much subdued hissing going on down here the place sounded like an agitated snake pit.

Once, Bahram started to make a wrong turn, and Richard jerked him back. "Don't," he said simply, and Bahram gave up on the idea.

When they finally reached the recreation room, Ed darted inside, found the storage locker with a badly mangled door ... damn, Pretty Boy could make a good job of it when he put his mind to it ... and snatched up the stacked semi-automatics still resting there. With these passed out to everyone but T'beth ... and with her crossbow in hand, she looked scornfully at these less elegant weapons, they were in a whole lot better position to defend themselves.

The vampires of Khelat had been doing a little plotting of their own, and as their sire appeared at the top of the stairs, there was a hurried attempt to snatch him away from Richard. A quick spray from Ed's rifle discouraged this idea, too, and vampires went running in all directions. Only one of their number had been hit, and he lay on his back, rolling in the rubble, screaming in agony ... a sound nicely calculated to make his friends re-examine any other rescue plans they might have in mind. They would know now that the guns were loaded with silver.

There were no further attempts. The jeep was still where Adrian had seen it, and Ed quickly hot-wired the ignition while the others found inadequate room aboard. Richard placed Bahram in the middle of the back seat, where at least three handguns were aimed at his chest. Jake, holding an irritated T'beth on his lap, got the bucket seat in front. His not to reason why...

With everyone more or less in or on the jeep, Ed let go the handbrake and gunned the engine, throwing the thing into reverse, then straightened it out and drove at last out through the yawning open gate of Khelat. With the jeep to get them to where, hopefully, Kamal would be waiting with the ATV, they were home free. Adrian, looking over his shoulder at the vampires pouring out through the gate behind them, was almost tempted to cheer. They'd done it. They'd pulled it off.

That was when the jeep coughed and slowed for a minute, jerking.

Ed Perry reached forward and tapped his knuckles against a gauge on the dashboard. "What's the matter?" Jake said.

Ed sighed mournfully. "I think we're just about out of gas."

T'beth twisted around on Jake's lap and glared balefully at Adrian. "That does it, Talbot," she said, with profound disgust. "The next time, you get captured, and I do the damned rescuing."

It was unfortunate that the road from Khelat to Saravan was a continual climb for the first few miles. The jeep cheerfully guzzled its meager supply of gasoline and came to a coughing halt less than two miles from the fort. With a sizeable group of unhappy vampires certainly bearing down on them from the rear, this was not a happy situation.

As they piled out of the jeep, Richard asked Adrian, "Do you remember how to get to where Kamal was to wait with the ATV?"

"Yes." Well ... he was pretty sure he did. He was not an outdoorsman. But this probably wasn't really a good time to bring it up.

"You will have to go," Richard was saying, with that same total trust that could inspire Adrian to do things he could never have imagined himself doing. "You can move much more quickly than the rest of us. Go to Kamal and have him bring the ATV to the road and head this way. We will stay on or near the road. Don't let him use the lights. If you hear gunfire, stop him there and come the rest of the way alone."

Richard didn't even wait for an answer. He turned to grab Bahram again as Will hauled him out of the jeep. Adrian looked at T'beth. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

"No." Her head was tilted to one side, and her eyes slid over him from head to toe. "I'm trying to keep from having hysterics. What in the hell are you made up for?"

She was sounding like her old self again. Adrian felt a momentary, wild happiness. "Legend and song," he said briefly, and leaned in to kiss her cheek, dodging back before she could swat at him. "Gotta go," he said. "Vambo rides again." He raised a hand to Jake and scooted off into the darkness.

T'beth turned to Jake. "'Vambo?'"

Jake sighed. "I don't want to know," he said.

Richard got them moving ... running, really, with Bahram in front and everyone else, armed with their silver-loaded semiautomatic rifles, close behind him. T'beth brought up the rear because she damned well insisted she would ... but she had traded in the white kaftan for Bahram's green silk tunic. Why make it too easy for their pursuers?

When she had dropped the kaftan to the ground, Will Scrope bent to pick it up and stuffed it inside his shirt. At her inquiring look, he said gently, "It becomes you, lady. You should wear it again."

Not bloody likely, but there was something about the giant's voice that stopped what she almost said. Will could soften stone. Maybe that was why he seemed to be the only one who could get along with Richard.

The first sign they had that the vampires from Khelat were near was a bullet that grazed the top of Ed Perry's shoulder and knocked him to the ground. They didn't hear the sound of the gun until a second later.

Richard jerked Bahram to a halt while Will bent to help Ed up. "Tell them to stop shooting," he said. "Make them hear you."

Bahram sneered. "You cannot kill me," he said. "They will tear you apart."

"I don't have to kill you," Richard said agreeably. "I can shoot into your arm and they will hear you screaming."

Another bullet kicked up dust from the road beside them, and Bahram began to yell in frenzied Farsi.

"Make them answer you," Richard said. "I want to know they have heard you."

Bahram yelled something again, and from too close behind them, a voice answered.

T'beth came closer to Richard. "He told them not to shoot, but to stay near. The answer was that they would obey."

Bahram hissed at her, but T'beth ignored him. Her eyes were still on Richard's. He said, "We have unfinished business, you and I, lady."

She studied him for a long moment and then smiled. "Thank you, but I've had my fill."

"I," Richard said, "have not." He didn't wait for an answer, but turned and shoved Bahram on up the road, leaving T'beth to follow, her eyes speculative now.

There was no more shooting. Half an hour later, they heard the ATV coming, and within minutes it appeared, with Adrian standing up on the passenger's side in front, peering ahead, looking for them. As soon as Kamal brought the vehicle to a halt, they began to pile in, but this time, Richard made everyone else get in back with him while Bahram took the bucket seat in front ... with Richard's gun at his ear from behind.

Kamal, his teeth flashing in the dark, brought the ATV around in a tight turn and set off back the way he had come. When they had traveled only another mile or so, Richard said, "Stop here," and Kamal did. To Bahram, Richard said, "Get out. We no longer need you."

Bahram did. Half naked now, he drew himself up beside the vehicle and glared at Richard. "We will meet again," he hissed, his eyes fiercely red in the moonlight. "You will answer to me for this night, mortal dog."

Richard's voice sounded tired. "You misunderstand," he said simply, and shot the vampire leader through the heart. From far behind, they could hear the unholy shrieking of the Khelat vampires as they sensed true death taking their sire. Richard reached over to tap Kamal's shoulder. "Let's go," he said. As they pulled away, no one even bothered to look back at the insignificant mound of Bahram Bakhtiar, lying in the dirt of the road behind them.

Before anyone else thought of it, T'beth pushed herself off Jake's lap and slithered between the bucket seats to sit in front. Everyone in back would have been a lot happier if it had been Will who had moved, but they made the best they could of what room they had. It didn't occur to anyone to suggest a change to T'beth.

After a moment, Richard said to Kamal, "Is there time to reach Sa'idi before the sun rises?"

"Yes, Vaje Richard."

Richard settled back, and released his breath on a long sigh. There was nothing more he could do, and already the tension had begun to build inside him again.

Kamal followed the road over the crest of the ridge and most of the way down the other side before turning off to the west, toward Sa'idi. The group riding with him had become strangely silent.

But then, out of nowhere, Adrian said, "You just couldn't wait?"

Jostling against each other, crowded so tightly that those who needed to breathe were having trouble doing it, the group in the back seat all turned their heads to look at Adrian.

Adrian was talking to Richard, and Richard, jammed in beside him, looked suddenly both relieved and embarrassed. He said, "Adrian..."

"I don't get the chance to do heroes very often, you know," Adrian interrupted.

"You don't get the chance?" Jake said, trying to wiggle an arm free from under Ed Perry. "When in the hell were you ever in the mood?"

Adrian ignored him. He was glaring, as much as it was possible to do so in such close quarters, at Richard. "I blast my way through legions of armed and desperate guards, risk myself a hundred times, to get to you in time ... and find you with your knife at the villain's throat, all ready to get the hell out of there on your own. I should have stayed in my fucking cave. You couldn't have a little faith in me?"

"I did have faith in you," Richard said. "But it really wasn't possible to wait."

"Oh, hell, no. You saw your shot and you took it. Shit, I've worked with fucking ham actors who weren't as desperate to hog the spotlight."

"Adrian," Jake tried again, "Bahram was about to drain me. Richard had to do something."

Adrian turned on him fiercely. "What? He couldn't just do a flying tackle or something? He had to take charge of the whole damned bunch of them?"

"Adrian," Richard said, "We couldn't have made it out of there if you hadn't brought the guns with the silver ammunition. You saved us all."

Adrian thought about it for a minute. Come to think of it, he had. Okay, he felt a little better about it.

"And," Richard said calmly, "you don't have to mention the silver knife when you tell the story."

Adrian stared at him for a minute, glaring, and started to open his mouth ... when T'beth suddenly turned in her seat and said, "Talbot, will you shut the fuck up?"

Richard and Adrian exchanged shamefaced looks, and then, to everyone else's confusion, began to snicker like schoolboys. Jake, the one who had been most at risk, was beginning to get annoyed. "You wanta tell me what the hell is so damned funny?"

Adrian turned to look at him, opened his mouth, tried to say something, and instead snickered even harder. He turned back to Richard, and both of them began to laugh like idiots.

"Talbot..." Jake started, really angry now.

"Jake." T'beth's weary voice cut him off. "Let the children play. Just stay the hell out of it."

Jake's mouth clamped shut at the expression on T'beth's face. Beside him, Richard and Adrian had subsided a bit ... until they looked at each other and collapsed in laughter again.

Ed Perry was morosely silent, nursing a throbbing, torn leg and a wounded shoulder. Will, in not much better shape, closed his eyes and seemed to doze off. T'beth stared straight ahead and gave off "leave me the hell alone" emanations. Jake looked at Richard and Adrian and felt like belting both of them as they laughed helplessly over something only the two of them seemed to understand. Kamal drove.

The ATV ate up the miles through the moonlit desert valley, on its way back to Old Sa'idi.

There was a battered pickup truck parked in the main square in Sa'idi when a very tired group of rescuers and one rescuee trooped from the stable where the ATV had been parked and up through the narrow street to Ardeshir's house. It was an hour or so before dawn, but all the torches around the square were still lit, as was every window in most of the houses around the square. Ardeshir was waiting, anxiously, in his doorway, and even his delight in seeing T'beth among his guests didn't lighten the concern in his eyes.

Quickly, orders were given to attend to Ed Perry and Will, neither of whom was in great shape, and both of them were led away surrounded by fluttering females ... among whom was the lady who had occupied most of Ed's downtime during the last week. Hanan, incredibly, had another bevy of "closest friends" she was eager to introduce to Adrian, who rolled his eyes helplessly at Richard and allowed himself to be led away. Hanan herself stayed behind to take charge of T'beth.

Ardeshir said to Richard, "Vaje-ye, may we talk?" With a gesture, he indicated that he wanted Richard to follow him.

"Jake," Richard said, "come with us."

Caught totally by surprise, Jake didn't even manage to ask why. He followed Richard and Ardeshir down a hallway to a small, quiet room at the rear of the house, where they found a group of elderly people waiting patiently, sipping the strong coffee that was one of Sa'idi's major attractions.

While a silent, barefoot woman brought more coffee for everyone, Jake studied the strangers. These must be the village elders Adrian had told him about ... the three tiny women who looked so identical, the two men who looked so different. Names were passed around, all of which Jake missed entirely. He was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, and not even the heavenly coffee was helping much. Richard, he knew, had been awake much longer than he had; he didn't know how the man did it. There was no sign of fatigue at all in Richard's alert eyes as he waited for Ardeshir to complete the civilities and get down to business, which Ardeshir seemed in no hurry to do.

Finally, Richard said, "There is a strange vehicle in the square."

"Ah." Ardeshir seemed grateful that Richard had raised the issue, and the elders all nodded their heads in agreement. "The man you asked us to send into Saravan found it necessary to borrow the vehicle. His news would not wait until we could return for him."

Richard said nothing, and Ardeshir went on, reluctantly, "Events in the city are grave, vaje-ye, and the situation dangerous."

"In what manner?" Richard prompted.

Ardeshir sighed. "At some time during the night, the Exalted who served the late Ayatollah Zanjani seemed all to become ... deranged. All were heard to scream in what seemed great anguish, and they began to collect at the palace, where they appeared to decide, in great agitation, that they must leave Saravan. They commandeered what vehicles they required from the palace guards and from private citizens, and left the city, heading north."

"Can the man who witnessed this be brought here?" Richard asked calmly. He preferred to deal directly with the source.

Ardeshir looked momentarily surprised, but bowed his head and went to the door to call instructions to someone outside. When he returned and took his seat at his desk, Richard said, "Have the stricken Exalted been brought from the cave?"

"Yes, vaje-ye," Ardeshir assured him. "The house of Farjad Dulabi, across the square, was prepared for their use, all the windows and doors sealed, and they have been installed there as you directed. Farjad is honored to do this."

Richard recognized the name. Farjad was one of the men who had breakfasted with him when Ardeshir asked him to take command of Sa'idi. Further investigation had revealed that he was one of the village's most prominent citizens ... one of it's most successful and ambitious smugglers. Farjad did not simply wait for the Pakistani Baluchis to come to Sa'idi; he sent his own caravans into Pakistan and Afghanistan to trade for weapons and spirits, which he then traded in the largest city in eastern Iran, Zahedan, some 150 miles to the northwest. Farjad had a lot at stake in ending Zanjani's reign of terror.

"And the distillation of the narcotic has been done?" Richard said.

Ardeshir nodded. "A great deal of the plant, scarlet crowfoot, was collected yesterday, and more today. The women have been extracting the juices and boiling them down ever since. We know the usual strength of the substance when it is used for human consumption; we can hope that this will be sufficient for our purposes. If it is not, further distillation may be required. We do not know."

"And the volunteers?" Richard asked.

Ardeshir looked mildly surprised. "Vaje Richard, there is no one in this place who has not volunteered. To provide for the Exalted is an honor few of us here had hoped to attain. It is a great day for Sa'idi."

Jake understood that what was going on here was that Richard had left instructions before he went to Khelat and was now dragging a report out of Ardeshir on how well those instructions had been carried out. What he didn't understand was why Richard had wanted him to be here to hear all this. And he was getting sleepy enough not to give a damn one way or the other. After all, if he just stood up and said he was going to bed, what the hell could Richard do about it?

That sounded like a plan, come to think of it. Jake set his coffee mug down on a table and stood up. "If you folks will excuse me..." he began.

"Sit down," Richard said. He didn't even look at Jake. To Ardeshir, he said, "How long after taking the drug does it fully affect the human host?"

"Within the half hour, vaje-ye," Ardeshir answered. Neither he nor Richard seemed to notice as Jake sat back down with a peculiar look on his face. How did the man do it? Jake had found his muscles obeying before his brain caught up with them. It was almost as bad as having Adrian ordering him around when he was pulling his "you can't disobey me" mind thing.

"When I have spoken with the man who was in Saravan," Richard said to Ardeshir, "I must rest. I would like a bath prepared."

"It will be done at once, vaje-ye."

"Preparations for attempting to restore the Exalted Ones should not begin before late afternoon; if you succeed in reawakening them, it is necessary that they are able to remain alert. I will wish to speak with them once the awakening is complete."

Ardeshir looked uncomfortable now. "Vaje Richard, I cannot presume to give orders to the Exalted."

Richard's tone did not change. "You can convey orders that I have given, at my direction. The responsibility is mine."

Ardeshir hesitated, but then bowed his head again. More subdued, he repeated, "It will be done, vaje-ye."

There was a soft scraping at the door, and Ardeshir raised his voice to admit a small, furtive-looking man who bowed deeply to the silently observing elders, then to Richard, before turning to Ardeshir. "This is the man Mahrab," Ardeshir said to Richard. "He is skilled at passing unnoticed, and is the man we sent into Saravan."

No one offered Mahrab a seat or a cup of coffee, Jake noticed. Mahrab seemed to be in almost uncontrollable awe to be in the same room with all these others. He didn't appear to be very high on the Sa'idi pecking order. And he did not speak English, so the terse, pointed questions Richard asked and the voluble and nervous answers Mahrab gave were cycled through Ardeshir. Jake thought the poor little guy looked scared to death ... but then Richard could do that when you understood what he was saying; it must be a lot worse when all you had to go on was the look on his face and that lethal tone of voice.

What Jake got out of the exchange was that Mahrab had spent yesterday and last night in Saravan, per Richard's instructions, circulating wherever he could without drawing excessive attention to himself and learning whatever could be learned of what was happening in the town. What he had learned wasn't encouraging.

The mayor of Saravan was dead, along with most of his staff and the town council. He had tried, as he was supposed to do in the absence of an approved religious leader, to take possession of the palace and to direct the government of the town. The palace guards had taken him prisoner, along with the others who had come with him, and turned them over to the renegade Exalted at sundown. Other local officials had gone into hiding, and even the police had disappeared from the streets. The town was in a state of total anarchy.

Then, last night, the renegade vampires, scattered throughout Saravan, had suddenly been heard shrieking insanely, all at the same moment, and soon after, they had collected briefly at the palace, then grabbed whatever vehicles were close at hand, and left town in great haste. At Richard's question about numbers, Mahrab had to admit that he, himself, had not seen this exodus, but that the numbers of the Exalted were reported to him as twenty or more.

The palace guards, who were so widely despised by the people of Saravan, had further damaged the already inadequate power station, depriving the entire town of electricity, and cutting off all contact with the outside world. They had raided the police stations, confiscating whatever weaponry they could find, and had now withdrawn into the palace itself, where they had barricaded themselves within, allowing no one to enter or to leave.

No one in Saravan dared to venture into the streets, Mahrab said. Thieves and criminals of all kinds had taken over, and the town existed in a state of fear and despair, with no one to bring order. He looked at Richard as if he expected Richard to wave a wand or something and set all this to rights.

Instead, Richard waved him away. Ardeshir said something in his own tongue, and Mahrab, bowing, scuttled quickly from the room. Richard stood; apparently, whatever he had come here to learn he had now learned. But before he could leave, one of the tiny old women spoke up in a voice surprisingly low and mellow. Ardeshir translated, while the elders watched Richard with intense interest. "The Kanum Mahasti asks if the Vaje Richard will extend his command into Saravan," Ardeshir said, almost apologetically. But the same intensity was in his eyes. It dawned on Jake that these people really expected Richard to take charge of this whole damned end of Iran.

Expressionless, Richard bowed to the lady who had spoken and said, "I am gratified with the lady's trust that such a thing is within my ability." He turned his eyes toward Ardeshir. "This is a thing that must be discussed when the Exalted Ones have been restored. At that time, the Kanum Mahasti will have my answer."

Ardeshir's eyes took on a calculating look as he conveyed this to the old woman. She smiled serenely, as did her sisters and the two old men. Everyone bowed their heads to Richard, and Ardeshir rose to his feet for a more elaborate bow. Jake was the only one still sitting, and it occurred to him that this probably wasn't a good idea. He stood up ... and was ignored.

"I would appreciate it, Vaje Ardeshir," Richard said, "if other accommodations can be found for the others of my party. I must rest after I have bathed. I prefer to rest alone."

Ardeshir bowed again. "It will be done, vaje-ye," he said again.

Richard turned to look at Jake ... at last. "We are finished here," he said. "Come with me."

There was more bowing all around, in which Jake joined this time, while the village elders and Ardeshir watched Richard with almost predatory eagerness in their eyes, and then Richard left the room with Jake trailing behind him.

"Uh ... Richard," Jake ventured, "was there some reason you wanted me to hear all that?"

Richard looked over his shoulder for a moment with a small, amused smile on his face. "You didn't find it edifying?"

"I didn't find it much of anything. If those people don't know you've already decided what you're gonna do, they're not paying attention."

Richard stopped for a minute, looking up at him with some surprise. "Very good, Jake," he said, and then kept going.

They ended up in a room in which a small, oddly-shaped tin tub had been filled with steaming water that Jake would have given his right arm to dive into. Instead, he watched half a dozen women strip Richard down to his bare skin, every one of them casting resentful eyes at Jake. Jake couldn't take his eyes from the pattern of scars on Richard's pale body, and he saw, now, what the mark on Richard's hip really was. As Richard stepped into the tub, he said to the women, "The Vaje Jake will attend me. You may go."

The light dawned, again. When the women, openly disappointed and not at all pleased with Jake, had filed out, Jake glared at Richard, who had settled with a long sigh into the water. "Shit," Jake ranted, "is that what you've been dragging me around for ... to keep Ardeshir's women from crawling all over you?"

Richard's eyes had closed. He opened them again now, and regarded Jake with controlled amusement. "They have been ... inconvenient," he admitted. "But as it happens, I wanted to talk to you."

Dammit. He'd done it again. Jake subsided, even angrier but not exactly sure what he was angry about. That was Gabe Tallant's mark on Richard, and it wasn't very old. "Talk to me about what?" he said.

Richard didn't answer right away. He got busy with a sponge and a bar of soap ... and the smell of it made Jake's every joint ache. He would like to have flung Richard across the room and curled up in that tub for a solid ten hours.

Then Richard said, "Thank you for what you did at Khelat."

Oh, Christ. There was a stool behind Jake. Helplessly, he sank down onto it. The man was going to drive him totally crazy. He said, "All I can see that I managed to do was to get us all caught. If Will had been guarding the corridor, they never could have jumped us."

Richard wasn't looking at him. He was scrubbing vigorously, and Jake was relieved to see that he was supple enough to reach his own back. He said, "If you had not called Will, the lady might have killed me. The fault was not yours, Jake. It was mine."

"How the hell do you figure that?"

Richard looked at him now, his dark eyes entirely sober. "I could have sent Will back into the corridor immediately. I did not. I was ... distracted. That is an error no commander can afford to make."

Oh. Jake thought about it for a minute ... and remembered what having a vampire feed from you could do to you. Could, hell. Did do to you. He remembered looking at Richard in that moment when T'beth had released him and watching how carefully Richard was controlling his breathing as his eyes held T'beth's.

Richard didn't wait for him to work it all the way out. He said, "In all that you did at Khelat, you acted quickly and correctly, and I am grateful that you did. Had you not known to distract Bahram Baktiar exactly when you did it, I would not have been able to seize him and disable his followers until Adrian could reach us. Your help was invaluable, Jake."

He had gone back to his scrubbing. Jake sat there, feeling as confused as he could ever remember being in his life. Without really realizing what he was going to say, he blurted, "Richard, why the hell is it that you always make me feel like I was about ten years old?" He was sorry he'd said it as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

But Richard seemed to regard the question seriously. He gave it a moment's thought, and then he said, "I told you once before that I understood that the situations I have led you into were not those with which you were familiar. I have never expected more of you than you have given; in truth, you have on occasion exceeded what I expected of you." And damn him to hell, he smiled that soft, totally unexpected smile Jake had seen on the boat on Lake Ontario and said, "It is your own expectations you aren't meeting, Jake, not mine. I understand. I have done it all my life, and felt just as inadequate. Could you hand me that towel there?"

Jake handed him the towel. He sat there, silent, while Richard dried himself and covered his scarred body with one of the light silk kaftans he had thought to bring on this insane trip. And when Richard, leaving, turned to say, "Shall I ask the women to prepare a bath for you?" Jake looked up at him, swallowed noisily, and said, "Yes, please," and Richard nodded and walked out.

Jake sat there, staring at nothing, thinking about nothing, aware only that, somewhere deep inside him, something that had been wrong ever since he'd left Toronto quite suddenly wasn't wrong at all anymore.