I smiled to myself. I’d give her a stake in it, a very personal stake that few women could resist investigating, at least. After all, she’d only just told me I hadn’t a principle in my whole body. Maybe she was right.
I’d made my decisions and now I occupied my time in quietly straining at the wall manacles, working my wrists back and forth, trying to loosen them from their wall brackets. It was, of course, a pure waste of time, but it passed the day.
A couple of times I had a few visitors, Rif guards who stopped in to check on me. On the other side of the dungeon a small patch of reflected sunlight had lighted up the wall. When it disappeared I knew the day had ended, and little by little the darkness seeped down into the dungeon until I sat in near blackness. The only light was a fitful glow reflected from a wall torch around the corner of the corridor outside.
As the hours went on I was beginning to wonder if perhaps my confidence in the basic essentials of female psychology had been misplaced. I smiled wryly. It would be a hell of a time for it to go wrong.
And then my ears picked up the faint sound, soft footsteps in the darkness. I watched the arched entranceway into the room and saw the slender shape appear, halt and peer about.
“Over here,” I whispered.
She came to me at once, kneeling down beside me. She still wore the bare midriff top and the diaphanous skirt.
“I was expecting you,” I grinned in the dark.
Her French was heavy with a Berber accent.
“Then you promise to keep the bargain,” she said. I nodded. “You promise to take her with you?” she asked.
“You set me free, and I’ll take the girl with me, I promise,” I said.
She reached up and turned the iron cross-bolts holding the manacles closed.
My arms dropped to my sides and I rubbed the circulation back into them.
“Where is the girl?” I asked.
“In the women’s quarters,” she answered, standing up. “I will take you to her.”
We moved out into the corridor, and as we passed the wall torch I glanced at her face.
She was looking pleased, smug. No doubt she was contemplating her restoration to number one position again. In one simple stroke she would have gotten rid of an obvious threat and put herself back in as number one.
I got a bittersweet amusement out of being so right about her scheming, conniving little nature.
She led me up a narrow flight of steps, through a passageway barely large enough for one, over an open balcony looking down onto the courtyard and into one of the buildings forming the rear of the Casbah.
I heard the sounds of female voices and laughter as we made our way through the semi-dark corridors.
We passed a lighted area, and I saw three girls, bare-breasted, wearing only floor-length, silk shifts, taking turns rubbing each other with some kind of oil. It would have been nice to stop and watch, but I followed the Berber girl as she hurried on soft babouches to another part of the house.
Motioning for me to hide in the shadows of a mirhab, an alcove-type recess facing in the direction of Mecca, she entered a room, and a moment later another girl came out and padded away down the corridor.
The Berber girl motioned to me again, appearing in the doorway, and I entered the room to see Marina slipping into her clothes.
Her eyes widened in astonishment when she saw me. I took her in my arms and grinned down at her.
“You didn’t really think I was going to leave you here, did you, honey?” I asked.
She clung to me, relief flooding her eyes and she nodded. “Yes,” she confessed. “Yes, I did. The way you acted and everything. That hurt more than being a prisoner here.”
I patted her fanny. “I couldn’t leave you here,” I said. “I need you and you need me. We’re a team, doll.”
She nodded happily, and I turned to the Berber girl. Once again she was wearing that pleased-with-herself look, an actual smirk this time. She seemed almost too pleased, and suddenly I felt the hair at the back of my neck start to rise.
It was an unfailing, instinctive signal I had long ago learned never to disregard.
“Which way, now?” I asked her and she started out with a short motion of her hand.
I followed with Marina behind me.
El Ahmid’s girl led us down a rear flight of stone steps into a kind of covered patio that led alongside the back of the building.
I noticed there were arched alcoves every ten feet or so along the wall.
She halted at the bottom of the steps and pointed to the dark structure at the other end of the long, covered patio.
“That is the stable,” she whispered. “You will find two horses saddled and waiting inside.”
“You go ahead,” I said. “We’ll follow.”
“No,” she answered, stepping back. “I can go no further.”
“Why not?” I asked, grimly watching her.
“I... I might be seen here,” she answered.
It was a phony answer and I thought of her smug expression again. Maybe she was more of a schemer than I’d suspected. Perhaps she was not only going to rid herself of a threat but add a little insurance for getting back as El Ahmid’s favorite.
I grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back with one hand while clapping my other hand over her mouth.
“Start walking,” I hissed. “You first.”
She tried to shake her head, but I was holding her so tight she couldn’t even do that. Her eyes rolled sideways, showing the whites in helpless fright.
I shoved her out ahead of me at arm’s length and started moving alongside the wall. We walked slowly and she tried to twist away. I tightened my grip and she stopped struggling. Her body was trembling beneath my vise-like hold as we passed the first alcove, then the second, then another and still another.
We were half-way to the stables, and I wondered if my intuition had sent out a false alarm this time when it happened, frighteningly fast even for my being on the alert.
We were but a pace from the next recessed alcove when the man leaped out, a long doubled-edge sword in his hand. He swung it with both hands as he leaped from the alcove, not stopping to look. Obviously, he was certain of what he’d find.
The tremendous swing almost cut the girl in half. I felt her body slam against mine and felt more than heard the sharp gasp of death that sucked from her mouth.
I let go and she collapsed instantly. I was diving over her, my hands reaching for the guard’s throat before he could bring his blade back. I dug in silently, quickly and efficiently.
He clawed at my hands for a moment but I had him solidly. His eyes bulged, his hands fell away and I lowered him to the ground, dropping him half-over the girl.
I’d guessed correctly.
She had set it up with one of the guards, and it didn’t take much imagination to see how she’d planned to have it work out.
He would have killed us both within moments. After that she would have started to scream the alarm. By the time anyone arrived at the scene we’d be two dead bodies, and both she and the guard would go up in El Ahmid’s eyes.
If she’d just led us to safety, there’d possibly be questions raised as to how I’d escaped. This way she could embellish the whole tiling with a story of how I’d slipped into the women’s quarters and snatched Marina out before her very eyes. She’d followed us downstairs and screamed the alarm, and it would be so neat and pat.
Only it hadn’t worked out that way, and I saw Marina staring transfixed at the two bodies. I scooped up the guard’s heavy double-edge sword and grabbed Marina’s hand, yanking her out of her shocked trance.
“This way,” I hissed, pulling her along.