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Interlude
Seeproosh
 

During my time teaching at Alton, many of other knights developed the belief that I could, at a glance, determine which of the novices would eventually kneel before the king to rise as Order Knights.

Among my many sins is this: I began to believe it myself.

What did I miss about Alexander? I can still remember standing in the door, over Bedivere's body, holding off the traitor duke's soldiers, while Alexander and Gray held the king back, ignoring his shouted demands that he be allowed to join me in the door.

If somebody that day—or any other day until the moment that he murdered Lady Mary and stole the Sandoval—had suggested to me that there was some serious failing in Alexander, I would have called him a liar. If somebody had suggested that he could have turned traitor, I would have called him out.

What did I miss?

—Cully

There he was.

By God, there he was!

Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph—or Hakim Ibn Muhammed, as he was calling himself these days, although he couldn't really think of himself by that name—forced himself not to quicken his pace as he made his way through the Limmasol markets. Too much speed would seem suspicious; the cut of his flowing robes and muted blue-and-black agal marked him as a Darmosh Kowayes merchant, and why would such a man be hurrying here, when he could take his time and spend his money at leisure?

The agal got occasional glances, always followed by shrugs. Merchants from the Dar New World were not unknown on Seeproosh, but rare, rare enough not to escape notice. That was acceptable, and a necessary risk; here, his accent would likely be seen as simply exotic, rather than suspicious. He would have preferred, of course, to have found his quarry at the Guild kontore at Kyrnia, on the northern edge the island—but that had not been the case.

Now, to kill the bastard. And, if at all possible, get away after.

It was all he could do not to whip out his sword, shove his way through the crowd, and make for Smith.

But, no. That would have been pointless. The idea was to kill Smith, and to—if at all possible—cut off his head and lay it on the grave of Lady Mary, and that called for patience, stealth and more patience, not bravado. A shout, a cry, a sudden movement would draw attention, and whatever you could say about the traitor knight, he was devilishly fast, even without drawing the Sandoval. Randolph had seen that for himself, on Pantelleria.

A direct, immediate attack would have been both suicidal and futile. Patience, as difficult as it was, was called for.

It didn't bother him at all. Patience? Bah. That was nothing. Trickery, deception, lying—that was hardly the worst of what he had done so far, and successful or not, it was likely to be nothing near as wicked as what he would have to do before this was all over.

A shame to his family? In one sense, absolutely.

Not by resigning his naval commission. Even Father had had no objection there.

Alphonse would have had to do that anyway, after the death of Francis during that horrible boar-hunting accident. Francis should have been the next earl, and while Randolph had as a boy always envied his older brother that part of his patrimony, he had found the navy to be a calling rather more suited to him. He had never expected to be the next Earl of Moray, although he had been quite confident that an admiral's flag had been somewhere in his future.

The navy was a good choice of a career for a second son, particularly one who wasn't dependent on a lieutenant's three crowns six every payday, nor worried about what being put on half pay might mean to his personal finances, as unlikely a possibility as that had been.

Instead, he always had been able to concentrate on rather more important matters, particularly after being given a ship—like being damned sure that the Redemption or the Lord Fauncher were always ready for service, even when that meant that he'd had to dip into his own purse to restock his ship's stores more quickly than the navy could, or bribe an openhanded shore officer, something that he had done repeatedly, and with no regrets. If other masters couldn't have afforded to do the same thing, and if some resented him for it—and, of course, most couldn't have; he hadn't known or cared about the resentment—well, that was their problem, not his.

But that was gone, vanished in a tumble from a horse. A quick death, yes, but a tragedy not only for Father and Mother—and, of course, poor Francis—but for Alphonse Randolph, as well.

He forced himself not to grin. There were few people who would have much sympathy for his position, after all. Becoming the heir to Moray was not what most men would have considered a tragedy, or even a mild disappointment.

By most lights, he should have been back at home, helping Father manage the earldom's affairs, mainly in aid of preparing himself to take the earldom upon Father's death, and not—to quote the Earl of Moray—"chasing off after that bastard Smith across the face of the Earth." He should have gotten himself married to some likely noblewoman—the future Earl of Moray would not have found the search difficult, after all—and had her pregnant with an heir.

On a clear day like today he should have, say, been riding out in a carriage to pay a call on one of the local land barons, properly escorted, properly attired, properly shorn, and carefully bathed, not stalking through a marketplace in these godawful robes, wearing a full beard, his skin darkened by endless hours lying in the hot sun, and sweating beneath his robes in a way that still reeked in his own nostrils.

He forced himself not to quicken his pace, or to change his stride. That had been one of the hardest of the skills to master, after all. Walking erect, his shoulders set with the dignity of his family and his training as a navy officer, would have been a far better clue that he was out of place than a few shades off of his skin color, and while the government of Seeproosh, such as it was, was a council of pirate captains, they were known to be quite efficient at disposing of those thought to be spies.

Not too efficient, of course; like any other kind of common merchants, pirates couldn't afford to scare off too many customers, and it wasn't only Guild traders who used Seeproosh, after all. Traders of all sorts made their way to Seeproosh, usually breathing a sigh when they got within sight of the island, where by order of the Council, merchantmen were every bit as immune from attack as they were when sailing away, under the ever-changing flag of protection that was invariably cast overboard at the first sight of a navy ship.

Truth was, a man with money—and particularly gold, and most particularly gold from Darmosh Kowayes—could buy damned near anything he wanted on Seeproosh, if he was willing to root around, and have at least a reasonable expectation of being able to keep it, as long as he took passage to and from there on the right ships. Guild ships were, of course, the safest—and Randolph had taken passage to Seeproosh on a Guild ship for just that reason, despite the absurd high cost for deck passage. While a flotilla of Guild ships had no immunity outside of Seeproosh waters, Guild ships were reknowned for giving pirates a good fight, and as a matter of clan honor scuttling themselves, with all hands aboard, rather than be boarded and taken. To the extent that one could be safe on a merchant ship in the eastern Med, passage aboard the Lubeck, the flagship of the Lubeck clan, was as close as you could come to it.

Despite the cost.

Still, the gold he had, and plenty of it, and he kept it on him; it added a good ten pounds to his weight. A very small portion of it—just two of the coins—were in the pouch at his waist, along with silver and copper, and he deliberately kept his hand on his pouch, as was commonplace. There were always pouch-slashers about in the most decent of places, of which this surely wasn't one.

Other than a few left more as bait than anything else at the bottom of his bags in his rented rooms, the rest was in the pockets of the vest that he wore beneath his robes, each tiny coin in its own tiny pocket, so that they wouldn't jingle, and each pocket close enough to each other than, in an extremity, the vest might serve as a minimal sort of body armor—useless against an arrow or bolt, unlikely to stop a thrust, but quite possibly able to put paid to a slash.

He kept his grin inside. Father had been, well, Father: he had made his position clear, he had chided Alphonse up one side and down the other—and then, when it was clear what was going to happen, Father had gone to some trouble to procure a preposterous number of the small golden coins issued by the Sharif of Darmosh Kowayes, for fear that Alphonse would find that exchanging good English golden crowns would be something that would expose him.

Randolph would have been careful, and it wouldn't have happened—his plans had included doing the exchange through two intermediaries in the City, lest the banking establishments had been compromised by Dar spies—but he had been touched by Father's concern.

Father had his flaws, yes—but unless Alphonse was seriously mistaken, the extra pains that Father had taken had every bit as much to do with a sense of pride that it might be a Randolph who would avenge the murder as it did with simple concern for the safety his son. Not that it couldn't be both, or more than that; Father was a complicated man, and Alphonse was not indispensable to the continuation of the Randolph line.

After all, there were still his two younger brothers and a half score of nephews who could have assumed the title, if necessary. Philip was married, and his first child a son. Father was not a cold man, but he had to be a calculating one, and part of that calculation had to include the possibilities arising both from Alphonse's failure or his success in this, and taking pains to prepare for both eventualities.

That sort of attention to detail ran in the family; Alphonse had gone to some trouble to make himself appear as other than he was.

It wasn't just the clothing, or the Arabic lessons. While the curved Seeproosh pirate saber that he had taken as a personal prize in the same battle that had gotten him the scar on his right cheek now hidden by his unshaven beard was at his waist, he had taken the precaution of having its plain hilt replaced with an ivory one. Smith—whatever he called himself these days, he was still Smith to Alphonse Randolph—might catch sight of him, and anything that even hinted at his real identity had to be changed, or discarded. Smith had never seen the blade, alas—Randolph devoutly hoped that it would be quite literally the last thing the bastard would ever see—but he had seen the hilt, and plain though it was and unlikely as it was that Smith had found it memorable, he would not see it again.

Smith stopped at a shashlik vendor's booth, and produced a coin, and after a very brief bit of haggling—Randolph wondered why Smith haggled at all, then decided that he had simply gone native in that—walked away with a heavily-laden piece of the local soft flatbread wrapped around the slices of lamb.

Losing sight of the bastard was, of course, unacceptable, but Smith wasn't walking quickly through the marketplace—he was taking his time as he made his way toward the docks, as though he had a particular destination in mind, but no particular sense of urgency in getting there.

So Randolph stopped and produced a copper coin, engaged in a quick few moments of haggling—Seepriots were as fond of haggling as was the greediest of a dockside Londinium fishmonger—and then walked away, chewing on the same meal that Smith had selected for his own, careful not to worry about how the drippings soiled his robes.

Randolph's mouth watered, and he forced himself to eat the shashlik slowly, despite his hunger, just as he forced himself not to quicken his pace. Dripping the sauce on his robes was more difficult for him, but Darmosh Kowayes traders were famous for such sloppiness.

Not exactly how he had been brought up, and not exactly the way that the future Earl of Moray would act, which was just as well, under the circumstances.

Father had not only been unhappy when Alphonse had taken his leave, closer to a year ago than farther from it; he had been visibly unwell. Was it just a passing case of the flux, or something more serious?

He wondered, from time to time, if he was the Earl of Moray, or if he ever would be.

Not that it mattered. Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph had, if not more important issues to deal with, ones that were more pressing and immediate, and far more personal.

Unsurprisingly, there was a slave auction going on dockside, and Smith stopped to watch, while Randolph stopped to watch Smith, while being very careful to seem to pay attention to the offerings on the platform.

The last of the compact but muscular Turkish male slaves had been sold off, and walked away quite meekly, keeping close to his new owner, without so much as a thin rope to lead him along—understandable, given the scars that crisscrossed the man's back; he had apparently taken quite some taming, but it seemed to have taken—as the first of a string of young women was brought up.

Again, all clearly Turkish. The raids on the southern coast had made the Izmir in particular the most common local source of new slaves, and they brought higher prices than Africans, for obvious reasons. Even here, thick-lipped African women were a drug on the market, and much less valuable than the light-skinned and often stunningly beautiful mulattoes imported back from Darmosh Kowayes.

For that, on Seeproosh, the Limmasol markets were the obvious place.

There was much trade in the Guild kontore at Kyrnia, of course, but none of it in human flesh. A man who was resolved to think kindly of what remained of the Hanseatic Guild would have said that was because they had long since disavowed such trade; a more reasonable one would note that HM Navy's policy had long been that the immunity of Guild traders was conditional, and a Guild ship outfitted for slaving would be quickly adjudged to have violated the conditions of its immunity. It was in the interest of Crown, Dar, and Empire that the flow of grain, timber, furs, tar, honey, and flax from Europe be echoed by an inflow of spices, gold, steel, and cloth from the Empire, Dar, and the colonies—but the Crown was hardly going to let the Guild supply new breeding stock or recruits for the Dar's janissaries troops without more than protest, after all.

And, besides, while trade was a lowly profession, and often a dirty business, slaving was the dirtiest of trade.

Smith watched with obvious interest, and perhaps hunger, as one young girl—she could not have been more than fifteen or so—was strung up by her wrists and then slowly stripped, as the bidding went on. She was wearing rather finer clothes than Randolph would have expected for a peasant girl, and rather a lot more of them—probably provided by the seller just for that purpose, although the auctioneer only hinted that she was of some of what passed for Izmiri nobility, rather than declaiming upon her ancestry.

Simply yanking off a simple peasant girl's shift wouldn't have gotten the same effect, Randolph supposed.

He was irritated that he found himself more aroused than disgusted by the sight of her nakedness, and forced himself not to look away, although he didn't bid. He considered it—but he would have had to do that carefully, for fear of winning the auction. And what the hell would he do with an Izmiri slave girl? Still, it might have been worthwhile to put in a bid in an early round, just to blend in, but while he hesitated, her price went quickly up, cutting out much of the hopeful early bidding.

She was remarkably shapely, at that; Turkish girls seemed to blossom early, just as they wilted young. But Smith just watched her, and waited. Whatever he was here for, she wasn't it. Unsurprising—no doubt, back in Qabilyah, he was able to maintain his own harim, with a variety to suit whatever his preferences were, stocked and probably regularly restocked by a grateful caliph.

Bidding was brisk, and a half dozen of the Turkish girls were quickly auctioned off.

"And we do have a surprise for you, noble bidders," the auctioneer said. "An Englishwoman, with hair the color of spun gold, freshly captured, and—but why tell you about her when I can show you her?"

Smith was watching with great intensity as a young woman was dragged up to the platform, stumbling both because of the rope around her slim neck, and probably because she was hooded. Like the Turkish girls, her wrists were quickly taken up and attached to a hook on the overhead beam.

Well, she certainly was dressed like an Englishwoman, although Randolph was suspicious. Not that it was unknown for Englishwomen to fall into pirates' hands, or be valued—apparently quite a few of the so-called nobles of the Dar Al Islam liked variety in the harim, and humiliating Christians undoubtedly but added to their enjoyment—but one would expect that her clothes would have been soiled, or at least ripped, in the ordeal.

She was dressed in what Randolph would have called a travel outfit—a tweed vest over a shockingly clean white blouse, that over long skirts that matched the vest.

The auctioneer ripped the hood from her head.

She was stunningly lovely, and, indeed, thoroughly blonde. Her golden hair fell about her shoulders, gleaming in the sunlight, as though it had been carefully brushed and somehow arranged to fall just so when the hood was removed, as seemed likely.

"Please, would somebody help me?" she cried out, silencing herself when the auctioneer's fingers went to the whip at his belt, much to the amusement of the crowd.

He wished she'd had a chance to speak longer; he couldn't quite place her accent. Brigstow, perhaps?

"Do I have an opening bid?" the auctioneer asked.

It didn't surprise Randolph that Smith made a gesture with his fingers, and the bidding picked up briskly, getting more so as she screamed when the auctioneer began to unbutton her vest. She tried to kick out at him, but he easily turned, and caught the kick on his thigh, then gestured to one of his assistants who quickly reached under her skirts, and bound her ankles to one of the U-shaped clamps on the platform.

Other than the fact that it was an Englishwoman, and the bidding steeper, it proceeded like the rest, with each garment being removed, one piece at a time. Either the auctioneer was much stronger than he looked, the clothing less well-constructed, or the hems had been deliberately weakened—the vest came off with a single yank, as did the skirt, leaving her dangling in her shift and underthings, her long legs bare from the knees down. Like the Turkish girl, her legs had been shaved; the sight of those long, porcelain-pale legs seemed to inflame the crowd, and the bidding grew more brisk, but for every bid that anybody else made, Smith simply nodded and gestured, and the auctioneer waited until Smith was the high bidder before removing another garment.

By the time that she hung from the ropes, stark naked, her eyes glazed, as though trying to pretend that she wasn't there, the bidding had reached two golden reis.

It wasn't the first time Randolph had seen a naked woman, although it was certainly the first time he had seen a naked Englishwoman in the daylight, with filthy smiles leering at her.

And the filthiest, of course, was Smith's.

At the sound of another bid, Smith made a gesture. "Four reis," he said, quietly, too quietly. "My final bid. The final bid of Abdul Ibn Mahmoud, servant to the caliph himself—may Allah grant him wisdom and long life." His Arabic had a strong English accent. "Would anybody care to bid further against me?"

There were gasps from the crowd, and then silence. There were rather a lot of men named Abdul Ibn Mahmoud in the Dar Al Islam, but one with an English accent? One who dropped the name and rank of the caliph?

The auctioneer seemed displeased, for just a moment, then studiously put a neutral expression on his sweaty, thick face.

"Seeing as there are none," he said, "the girl is yours, Noble Sir."

Smith walked up onto the platform and handed over four small coins to the auctioneer, then reached into his robes and produced a preposterously plain leather collar, which he quickly fastened about the girl's throat, then another set of leather cuffs, with which he fastened her wrists behind her.

She was wild-eyed.

The auctioneer came forward with another one of the thin cotton robes, but Smith waved it away. "No," he said, "I'd much rather walk her naked through the streets." He smiled, as he took her chin in his hand. "Always a pleasure to humiliate an enemy, isn't it?" he asked, in English.

The girl looked away, and didn't answer. He took her chin in one hand as he produced a thin chain from his robes, and snapped it to the collar, then turned, leading the girl away.

She cast a glance over her shoulder. "Is there no one here who will help me?" she cried.

Smith gave a cruel yank on the chain, much to the amusement of the crowd, and Randolph forced a smile and a laugh to his own lips.

Randolph watched as Smith led her away, but walked slowly away in the other direction.

Very nicely done, Smith, he thought. Just a little too pat, a little too easy. Any red-blooded Englishman spy in the crowd would have been sorely tempted to rescue one of his countrywomen, and while this was obviously not the time or the place, it would be a terribly easy matter for Smith to have planted men to watch and see who followed, no matter how far back.

He was tempted to look behind him for the eyes that were no doubt watching for somebody following, but didn't give into that temptation.

A nice trap, at that, he decided. Only a few false notes in it. Save for a fresh welt across her bare buttocks, the girl's skin had been unmarked—no hint of the sort of intensive beatings that it would have taken to have broken the spirit of an Englishwoman, although she had silenced herself at just a quick gesture from the auctioneer.

And a cry—in English—for help and succor? Smith had smiled too easily at that.

No. It had been a trap.

Probably a general-purpose one, rather than one set for Randolph in particular. Smith was up to something, certainly, and was making sure that his back trail was clear, at least clear of any decent man, who would out of simple decency do what he could for a poor English girl who had fallen into such foul hands, no matter what the cost.

Not today, he decided. Maybe not ever. And if that made him other than a decent man, there wasn't any alternative.

Whether the girl was exactly what she appeared to be, as Randolph doubted, or something else, there was nothing that he could do, and therefore nothing that he would do.

But he would definitely pick up Smith's trail. The talk of a naked blonde English girl being marched through the markets behind Abdul Ibn Mahmoud would mark it well.

Patience, he cautioned himself. Patience.

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Framed

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Interlude
Seeproosh
 

During my time teaching at Alton, many of other knights developed the belief that I could, at a glance, determine which of the novices would eventually kneel before the king to rise as Order Knights.

Among my many sins is this: I began to believe it myself.

What did I miss about Alexander? I can still remember standing in the door, over Bedivere's body, holding off the traitor duke's soldiers, while Alexander and Gray held the king back, ignoring his shouted demands that he be allowed to join me in the door.

If somebody that day—or any other day until the moment that he murdered Lady Mary and stole the Sandoval—had suggested to me that there was some serious failing in Alexander, I would have called him a liar. If somebody had suggested that he could have turned traitor, I would have called him out.

What did I miss?

—Cully

There he was.

By God, there he was!

Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph—or Hakim Ibn Muhammed, as he was calling himself these days, although he couldn't really think of himself by that name—forced himself not to quicken his pace as he made his way through the Limmasol markets. Too much speed would seem suspicious; the cut of his flowing robes and muted blue-and-black agal marked him as a Darmosh Kowayes merchant, and why would such a man be hurrying here, when he could take his time and spend his money at leisure?

The agal got occasional glances, always followed by shrugs. Merchants from the Dar New World were not unknown on Seeproosh, but rare, rare enough not to escape notice. That was acceptable, and a necessary risk; here, his accent would likely be seen as simply exotic, rather than suspicious. He would have preferred, of course, to have found his quarry at the Guild kontore at Kyrnia, on the northern edge the island—but that had not been the case.

Now, to kill the bastard. And, if at all possible, get away after.

It was all he could do not to whip out his sword, shove his way through the crowd, and make for Smith.

But, no. That would have been pointless. The idea was to kill Smith, and to—if at all possible—cut off his head and lay it on the grave of Lady Mary, and that called for patience, stealth and more patience, not bravado. A shout, a cry, a sudden movement would draw attention, and whatever you could say about the traitor knight, he was devilishly fast, even without drawing the Sandoval. Randolph had seen that for himself, on Pantelleria.

A direct, immediate attack would have been both suicidal and futile. Patience, as difficult as it was, was called for.

It didn't bother him at all. Patience? Bah. That was nothing. Trickery, deception, lying—that was hardly the worst of what he had done so far, and successful or not, it was likely to be nothing near as wicked as what he would have to do before this was all over.

A shame to his family? In one sense, absolutely.

Not by resigning his naval commission. Even Father had had no objection there.

Alphonse would have had to do that anyway, after the death of Francis during that horrible boar-hunting accident. Francis should have been the next earl, and while Randolph had as a boy always envied his older brother that part of his patrimony, he had found the navy to be a calling rather more suited to him. He had never expected to be the next Earl of Moray, although he had been quite confident that an admiral's flag had been somewhere in his future.

The navy was a good choice of a career for a second son, particularly one who wasn't dependent on a lieutenant's three crowns six every payday, nor worried about what being put on half pay might mean to his personal finances, as unlikely a possibility as that had been.

Instead, he always had been able to concentrate on rather more important matters, particularly after being given a ship—like being damned sure that the Redemption or the Lord Fauncher were always ready for service, even when that meant that he'd had to dip into his own purse to restock his ship's stores more quickly than the navy could, or bribe an openhanded shore officer, something that he had done repeatedly, and with no regrets. If other masters couldn't have afforded to do the same thing, and if some resented him for it—and, of course, most couldn't have; he hadn't known or cared about the resentment—well, that was their problem, not his.

But that was gone, vanished in a tumble from a horse. A quick death, yes, but a tragedy not only for Father and Mother—and, of course, poor Francis—but for Alphonse Randolph, as well.

He forced himself not to grin. There were few people who would have much sympathy for his position, after all. Becoming the heir to Moray was not what most men would have considered a tragedy, or even a mild disappointment.

By most lights, he should have been back at home, helping Father manage the earldom's affairs, mainly in aid of preparing himself to take the earldom upon Father's death, and not—to quote the Earl of Moray—"chasing off after that bastard Smith across the face of the Earth." He should have gotten himself married to some likely noblewoman—the future Earl of Moray would not have found the search difficult, after all—and had her pregnant with an heir.

On a clear day like today he should have, say, been riding out in a carriage to pay a call on one of the local land barons, properly escorted, properly attired, properly shorn, and carefully bathed, not stalking through a marketplace in these godawful robes, wearing a full beard, his skin darkened by endless hours lying in the hot sun, and sweating beneath his robes in a way that still reeked in his own nostrils.

He forced himself not to quicken his pace, or to change his stride. That had been one of the hardest of the skills to master, after all. Walking erect, his shoulders set with the dignity of his family and his training as a navy officer, would have been a far better clue that he was out of place than a few shades off of his skin color, and while the government of Seeproosh, such as it was, was a council of pirate captains, they were known to be quite efficient at disposing of those thought to be spies.

Not too efficient, of course; like any other kind of common merchants, pirates couldn't afford to scare off too many customers, and it wasn't only Guild traders who used Seeproosh, after all. Traders of all sorts made their way to Seeproosh, usually breathing a sigh when they got within sight of the island, where by order of the Council, merchantmen were every bit as immune from attack as they were when sailing away, under the ever-changing flag of protection that was invariably cast overboard at the first sight of a navy ship.

Truth was, a man with money—and particularly gold, and most particularly gold from Darmosh Kowayes—could buy damned near anything he wanted on Seeproosh, if he was willing to root around, and have at least a reasonable expectation of being able to keep it, as long as he took passage to and from there on the right ships. Guild ships were, of course, the safest—and Randolph had taken passage to Seeproosh on a Guild ship for just that reason, despite the absurd high cost for deck passage. While a flotilla of Guild ships had no immunity outside of Seeproosh waters, Guild ships were reknowned for giving pirates a good fight, and as a matter of clan honor scuttling themselves, with all hands aboard, rather than be boarded and taken. To the extent that one could be safe on a merchant ship in the eastern Med, passage aboard the Lubeck, the flagship of the Lubeck clan, was as close as you could come to it.

Despite the cost.

Still, the gold he had, and plenty of it, and he kept it on him; it added a good ten pounds to his weight. A very small portion of it—just two of the coins—were in the pouch at his waist, along with silver and copper, and he deliberately kept his hand on his pouch, as was commonplace. There were always pouch-slashers about in the most decent of places, of which this surely wasn't one.

Other than a few left more as bait than anything else at the bottom of his bags in his rented rooms, the rest was in the pockets of the vest that he wore beneath his robes, each tiny coin in its own tiny pocket, so that they wouldn't jingle, and each pocket close enough to each other than, in an extremity, the vest might serve as a minimal sort of body armor—useless against an arrow or bolt, unlikely to stop a thrust, but quite possibly able to put paid to a slash.

He kept his grin inside. Father had been, well, Father: he had made his position clear, he had chided Alphonse up one side and down the other—and then, when it was clear what was going to happen, Father had gone to some trouble to procure a preposterous number of the small golden coins issued by the Sharif of Darmosh Kowayes, for fear that Alphonse would find that exchanging good English golden crowns would be something that would expose him.

Randolph would have been careful, and it wouldn't have happened—his plans had included doing the exchange through two intermediaries in the City, lest the banking establishments had been compromised by Dar spies—but he had been touched by Father's concern.

Father had his flaws, yes—but unless Alphonse was seriously mistaken, the extra pains that Father had taken had every bit as much to do with a sense of pride that it might be a Randolph who would avenge the murder as it did with simple concern for the safety his son. Not that it couldn't be both, or more than that; Father was a complicated man, and Alphonse was not indispensable to the continuation of the Randolph line.

After all, there were still his two younger brothers and a half score of nephews who could have assumed the title, if necessary. Philip was married, and his first child a son. Father was not a cold man, but he had to be a calculating one, and part of that calculation had to include the possibilities arising both from Alphonse's failure or his success in this, and taking pains to prepare for both eventualities.

That sort of attention to detail ran in the family; Alphonse had gone to some trouble to make himself appear as other than he was.

It wasn't just the clothing, or the Arabic lessons. While the curved Seeproosh pirate saber that he had taken as a personal prize in the same battle that had gotten him the scar on his right cheek now hidden by his unshaven beard was at his waist, he had taken the precaution of having its plain hilt replaced with an ivory one. Smith—whatever he called himself these days, he was still Smith to Alphonse Randolph—might catch sight of him, and anything that even hinted at his real identity had to be changed, or discarded. Smith had never seen the blade, alas—Randolph devoutly hoped that it would be quite literally the last thing the bastard would ever see—but he had seen the hilt, and plain though it was and unlikely as it was that Smith had found it memorable, he would not see it again.

Smith stopped at a shashlik vendor's booth, and produced a coin, and after a very brief bit of haggling—Randolph wondered why Smith haggled at all, then decided that he had simply gone native in that—walked away with a heavily-laden piece of the local soft flatbread wrapped around the slices of lamb.

Losing sight of the bastard was, of course, unacceptable, but Smith wasn't walking quickly through the marketplace—he was taking his time as he made his way toward the docks, as though he had a particular destination in mind, but no particular sense of urgency in getting there.

So Randolph stopped and produced a copper coin, engaged in a quick few moments of haggling—Seepriots were as fond of haggling as was the greediest of a dockside Londinium fishmonger—and then walked away, chewing on the same meal that Smith had selected for his own, careful not to worry about how the drippings soiled his robes.

Randolph's mouth watered, and he forced himself to eat the shashlik slowly, despite his hunger, just as he forced himself not to quicken his pace. Dripping the sauce on his robes was more difficult for him, but Darmosh Kowayes traders were famous for such sloppiness.

Not exactly how he had been brought up, and not exactly the way that the future Earl of Moray would act, which was just as well, under the circumstances.

Father had not only been unhappy when Alphonse had taken his leave, closer to a year ago than farther from it; he had been visibly unwell. Was it just a passing case of the flux, or something more serious?

He wondered, from time to time, if he was the Earl of Moray, or if he ever would be.

Not that it mattered. Lord Sir Alphonse Randolph had, if not more important issues to deal with, ones that were more pressing and immediate, and far more personal.

Unsurprisingly, there was a slave auction going on dockside, and Smith stopped to watch, while Randolph stopped to watch Smith, while being very careful to seem to pay attention to the offerings on the platform.

The last of the compact but muscular Turkish male slaves had been sold off, and walked away quite meekly, keeping close to his new owner, without so much as a thin rope to lead him along—understandable, given the scars that crisscrossed the man's back; he had apparently taken quite some taming, but it seemed to have taken—as the first of a string of young women was brought up.

Again, all clearly Turkish. The raids on the southern coast had made the Izmir in particular the most common local source of new slaves, and they brought higher prices than Africans, for obvious reasons. Even here, thick-lipped African women were a drug on the market, and much less valuable than the light-skinned and often stunningly beautiful mulattoes imported back from Darmosh Kowayes.

For that, on Seeproosh, the Limmasol markets were the obvious place.

There was much trade in the Guild kontore at Kyrnia, of course, but none of it in human flesh. A man who was resolved to think kindly of what remained of the Hanseatic Guild would have said that was because they had long since disavowed such trade; a more reasonable one would note that HM Navy's policy had long been that the immunity of Guild traders was conditional, and a Guild ship outfitted for slaving would be quickly adjudged to have violated the conditions of its immunity. It was in the interest of Crown, Dar, and Empire that the flow of grain, timber, furs, tar, honey, and flax from Europe be echoed by an inflow of spices, gold, steel, and cloth from the Empire, Dar, and the colonies—but the Crown was hardly going to let the Guild supply new breeding stock or recruits for the Dar's janissaries troops without more than protest, after all.

And, besides, while trade was a lowly profession, and often a dirty business, slaving was the dirtiest of trade.

Smith watched with obvious interest, and perhaps hunger, as one young girl—she could not have been more than fifteen or so—was strung up by her wrists and then slowly stripped, as the bidding went on. She was wearing rather finer clothes than Randolph would have expected for a peasant girl, and rather a lot more of them—probably provided by the seller just for that purpose, although the auctioneer only hinted that she was of some of what passed for Izmiri nobility, rather than declaiming upon her ancestry.

Simply yanking off a simple peasant girl's shift wouldn't have gotten the same effect, Randolph supposed.

He was irritated that he found himself more aroused than disgusted by the sight of her nakedness, and forced himself not to look away, although he didn't bid. He considered it—but he would have had to do that carefully, for fear of winning the auction. And what the hell would he do with an Izmiri slave girl? Still, it might have been worthwhile to put in a bid in an early round, just to blend in, but while he hesitated, her price went quickly up, cutting out much of the hopeful early bidding.

She was remarkably shapely, at that; Turkish girls seemed to blossom early, just as they wilted young. But Smith just watched her, and waited. Whatever he was here for, she wasn't it. Unsurprising—no doubt, back in Qabilyah, he was able to maintain his own harim, with a variety to suit whatever his preferences were, stocked and probably regularly restocked by a grateful caliph.

Bidding was brisk, and a half dozen of the Turkish girls were quickly auctioned off.

"And we do have a surprise for you, noble bidders," the auctioneer said. "An Englishwoman, with hair the color of spun gold, freshly captured, and—but why tell you about her when I can show you her?"

Smith was watching with great intensity as a young woman was dragged up to the platform, stumbling both because of the rope around her slim neck, and probably because she was hooded. Like the Turkish girls, her wrists were quickly taken up and attached to a hook on the overhead beam.

Well, she certainly was dressed like an Englishwoman, although Randolph was suspicious. Not that it was unknown for Englishwomen to fall into pirates' hands, or be valued—apparently quite a few of the so-called nobles of the Dar Al Islam liked variety in the harim, and humiliating Christians undoubtedly but added to their enjoyment—but one would expect that her clothes would have been soiled, or at least ripped, in the ordeal.

She was dressed in what Randolph would have called a travel outfit—a tweed vest over a shockingly clean white blouse, that over long skirts that matched the vest.

The auctioneer ripped the hood from her head.

She was stunningly lovely, and, indeed, thoroughly blonde. Her golden hair fell about her shoulders, gleaming in the sunlight, as though it had been carefully brushed and somehow arranged to fall just so when the hood was removed, as seemed likely.

"Please, would somebody help me?" she cried out, silencing herself when the auctioneer's fingers went to the whip at his belt, much to the amusement of the crowd.

He wished she'd had a chance to speak longer; he couldn't quite place her accent. Brigstow, perhaps?

"Do I have an opening bid?" the auctioneer asked.

It didn't surprise Randolph that Smith made a gesture with his fingers, and the bidding picked up briskly, getting more so as she screamed when the auctioneer began to unbutton her vest. She tried to kick out at him, but he easily turned, and caught the kick on his thigh, then gestured to one of his assistants who quickly reached under her skirts, and bound her ankles to one of the U-shaped clamps on the platform.

Other than the fact that it was an Englishwoman, and the bidding steeper, it proceeded like the rest, with each garment being removed, one piece at a time. Either the auctioneer was much stronger than he looked, the clothing less well-constructed, or the hems had been deliberately weakened—the vest came off with a single yank, as did the skirt, leaving her dangling in her shift and underthings, her long legs bare from the knees down. Like the Turkish girl, her legs had been shaved; the sight of those long, porcelain-pale legs seemed to inflame the crowd, and the bidding grew more brisk, but for every bid that anybody else made, Smith simply nodded and gestured, and the auctioneer waited until Smith was the high bidder before removing another garment.

By the time that she hung from the ropes, stark naked, her eyes glazed, as though trying to pretend that she wasn't there, the bidding had reached two golden reis.

It wasn't the first time Randolph had seen a naked woman, although it was certainly the first time he had seen a naked Englishwoman in the daylight, with filthy smiles leering at her.

And the filthiest, of course, was Smith's.

At the sound of another bid, Smith made a gesture. "Four reis," he said, quietly, too quietly. "My final bid. The final bid of Abdul Ibn Mahmoud, servant to the caliph himself—may Allah grant him wisdom and long life." His Arabic had a strong English accent. "Would anybody care to bid further against me?"

There were gasps from the crowd, and then silence. There were rather a lot of men named Abdul Ibn Mahmoud in the Dar Al Islam, but one with an English accent? One who dropped the name and rank of the caliph?

The auctioneer seemed displeased, for just a moment, then studiously put a neutral expression on his sweaty, thick face.

"Seeing as there are none," he said, "the girl is yours, Noble Sir."

Smith walked up onto the platform and handed over four small coins to the auctioneer, then reached into his robes and produced a preposterously plain leather collar, which he quickly fastened about the girl's throat, then another set of leather cuffs, with which he fastened her wrists behind her.

She was wild-eyed.

The auctioneer came forward with another one of the thin cotton robes, but Smith waved it away. "No," he said, "I'd much rather walk her naked through the streets." He smiled, as he took her chin in his hand. "Always a pleasure to humiliate an enemy, isn't it?" he asked, in English.

The girl looked away, and didn't answer. He took her chin in one hand as he produced a thin chain from his robes, and snapped it to the collar, then turned, leading the girl away.

She cast a glance over her shoulder. "Is there no one here who will help me?" she cried.

Smith gave a cruel yank on the chain, much to the amusement of the crowd, and Randolph forced a smile and a laugh to his own lips.

Randolph watched as Smith led her away, but walked slowly away in the other direction.

Very nicely done, Smith, he thought. Just a little too pat, a little too easy. Any red-blooded Englishman spy in the crowd would have been sorely tempted to rescue one of his countrywomen, and while this was obviously not the time or the place, it would be a terribly easy matter for Smith to have planted men to watch and see who followed, no matter how far back.

He was tempted to look behind him for the eyes that were no doubt watching for somebody following, but didn't give into that temptation.

A nice trap, at that, he decided. Only a few false notes in it. Save for a fresh welt across her bare buttocks, the girl's skin had been unmarked—no hint of the sort of intensive beatings that it would have taken to have broken the spirit of an Englishwoman, although she had silenced herself at just a quick gesture from the auctioneer.

And a cry—in English—for help and succor? Smith had smiled too easily at that.

No. It had been a trap.

Probably a general-purpose one, rather than one set for Randolph in particular. Smith was up to something, certainly, and was making sure that his back trail was clear, at least clear of any decent man, who would out of simple decency do what he could for a poor English girl who had fallen into such foul hands, no matter what the cost.

Not today, he decided. Maybe not ever. And if that made him other than a decent man, there wasn't any alternative.

Whether the girl was exactly what she appeared to be, as Randolph doubted, or something else, there was nothing that he could do, and therefore nothing that he would do.

But he would definitely pick up Smith's trail. The talk of a naked blonde English girl being marched through the markets behind Abdul Ibn Mahmoud would mark it well.

Patience, he cautioned himself. Patience.

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Framed