Page 17 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

Torstein made himself look away from the terraces. He measured Njal's words and knew them to be true. Meeting the merchant was his highest priority. If the woman truly was his destiny, then he would find her again but not this night.

"Aye," he said, reluctantly. "Ye're right."

"I am often right. But ye rarely listen," Njal replied.

They turned back toward the souk together, Mathias already talking about the price of leather and the hard bargain of the man who had sold it to him. Njal just grunted but now and then he would glance at Torstein with a knowing smile.

Torstein glanced back once more at the rooftops before the lane curved and took them from sight.

***

SAMIRA DID NOT RUN the whole way home, though every part of her wanted to. Running through the souk at that hour would draw eyes, and eyes were the last thing she needed tonight. So she walked, fast and controlled, her pulse still hammering long after her breathing had steadied, the ghost-weight of the koummya's grip still printed into her palm.

She had lost the crowd behind her within a hundred paces of the alley, doubling back twice through the cloth merchants' row the way Zohra had drilled into her. Never a straight line, habibti. A straight line is a gift you give to anyone following you. Somewhere in the doubling back she had lost Torstein too, though she had not meant to look for him in the first place. She told herself that twice, walking home, and did not entirely believe it either time.

The house was the same as it always was, the fountain's low murmur and jasmine thick on the evening air. But something was wrong with the ordinary sounds tonight. Too many voices. Too much movement in the courtyard for this hour.

Zohra was the first to see her, and the relief that broke across the woman's face lasted only as long as it took her to cross the courtyard, at which point it curdled into anger.

"Where in the name of every merciful thing have you been?" It was not a question. Zohra's hand closed hard around Samira's wrist, checking it the way she always checked, pulse first, then the rest of her, eyes moving fast and clinical over every visible inch. "You vanished from the compound without a word to anyone. No guard, no maid, not even Tiziri, who would have gone with you had you only asked. I have had the household searching every lane between here and the tanners' quarter for the better part of an hour."

"I did not vanish, I was—"

"Your father was a breath away from sending armed men into the souk after dark to find you." Dawud had come out onto the gallery above, and even from that distance Samira could see the fear and worry behind the mask of composure. He came down the stairs quickly for a man his age. "Samira?"

"I was attacked." She said it plainly. "Three men, in the lane behind the dyers' street. Cloaked. Faces wrapped. I was alone, and it was over before I understood what was happening, and once I was clear of them my only thought was to get home."

The courtyard went very quiet.

Zohra's grip on her wrist tightened once, then let go entirely, and something moved behind the woman's eyes.

"Attacked how," Zohra said. Careful. Level.

"They wanted to know what I keep for the merchant guilds. I have never dealt with the guilds in my life, Zohra, I told them so twice." Her jaw tightened. "They knew my father's name. One of them said the man who fathered you, as though it were a threat they meant to make good."

Dawud had gone very still.

"And you are unhurt," he said. Not quite a question either.

"I am unhurt. There was a fourth man, waiting behind me, out of my sight." She hesitated, unsure why the next part felt harder to say than the rest. "A foreigner saw him before I did. Northman. He fought beside me until the others broke and ran."

Zohra's gaze flicked to Dawud. It lasted only a moment, the barest exchange, gone before Samira could be certain she had seen it at all, but she caught it.

"Father." Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to. "What was that look?"

Dawud did not pretend not to understand her.

He glanced once at Zohra, a question, and Zohra answered it with the smallest nod, as if giving permission. Then he turned and went into the house without a word, leaving Samira and Zohra alone in the courtyard with the fountain running quietly between them.

"Zohra." Samira turned to her. "You have known something. All this time."

"I have known a great many things all this time, habibti. That is rather the nature of being old." But there was no lightness in it tonight. Zohra's hand found Samira's shoulder, and the grip was gentler than the one on her wrist had been, and far more tired. "Come inside. Whatever your father is about to show you, I would rather you sit for it."

***

DAWUD RETURNED WITH the cedar chest carried in both arms and set it on the table with a care that made Samira's chest go tight before he had even reached for the key.

"Your mother's things," he said. Then, for the first time, he did not stop there. "I told you once I would show you when the time was right. I do not know that I ever believed the time would come. I think some part of me hoped it would not have to."