Page 20 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"Which is why the marks matter," Thibault said. "The crescent. The tear. The sight. They are the signs of the blood. Three times we followed them and three times we were wrong. Every sign points back to this city now, and to the house of Dawud ibn Yusuf al-Idrissi."

"The daughter," Oger said.

"She is guarding something. She would not fight like that for nothing." Géraud drank. "Or she is the thing being guarded."

"Then how do we take her?" Rainaud asked. "She will not be caught in an alley twice."

"No more blades in alleys." Géraud held out his cup without looking, and the girl filled it. "If she cannot be beaten, she must be made slow. A little poppy in her cup, a pinch in her water at the well or the bathhouse. A slow woman can be followed. A sleeping woman can be carried."

"And if she leads us nowhere?"

"Then we learn every door she walks through. Every house, every friend, every old woman she visits. Somewhere behind one of those doors is what we came for."

Thibault shook his head. "This is not straightforward."

"Nothing FitzOsbern asks of us ever is."

The name settled over the room. Oger looked at the floor. Aubert found something of great interest in the tiles.

"FitzOsbern will not care how hard it was," Thibault said quietly. "He will only care that we crossed half the world and came home with empty hands."

Géraud did not answer at once. He had seen what became of the last man who returned to Normandy with excuses. He had stood at that man's graveside.

"Then we do not go home empty-handed. And we do not go home late." He set the cup down. "The autumn storms will close the sea within weeks. If we are not aboard ship before then, we winter here with the Norsemen breathing down our necks, and FitzOsbern waits until spring. He will not wait until spring."

He turned to Aubert.

"You will find these Norsemen. Learn where they sleep, who they meet, and why they have come. Stay out of sight. If one of them so much as buys bread, I want to know which baker."

Aubert nodded, wincing as the movement pulled at his split lip.

"And the rest of you will watch the merchant's house, day and night. The moment another chance comes, we find the pendant, and it goes back to Normandy with us." He looked at each of them in turn. "And this time, so does the woman."

Behind the screen, the song ended. In the silence that followed, the young woman at his side rose, took up the empty jug and went to fill it, and none of them watched her go.

***

Funduq al-Zaytun

THE FUNDUQ AL-ZAYTUN stood in the Andalusian quarter of Fez, a short walk from the river. It was named for the old olive tree that grew in the middle of its courtyard, older than the building and some said older than the city.

It was an honest place, as such places went. The ground floor was given over to storerooms and stabling, so that the courtyard smelled always of mules, straw and spice sacks. Above it rose two stories of plain rooms opening onto a carved wooden gallery, where travelers could lean on the rail and watch the comings and goings below. Traders from al-Andalus lodged there, and salt men from the south, and cloth merchants. The keeper was a stout, cheerful man named Yahya who had decided within a day that the northerners were good for business, since they paid on time and ate like three men apiece.

That evening they ate like four.

Yahya's cook had outdone herself. Low tables were set out beneath the olive tree and the dishes kept coming. There was flat bread still warm from the oven, and bowls of green olives glistening with oil. A whole lamb had been roasted slowly with cumin and coriander until the meat fell from the bone. A stew of chicken came fragrant with saffron and sweet with honey and almonds, and a great mound of steamed couscous was heaped with vegetables and broth. Then came dates from the southern oases, fresh figs split open, and small pastries of almond and honey that Mathias claimed for himself before anyone else could reach them.

They had been adjusting slowly. Brother Aiden had drilled the customs into them during those long evenings in Orkney, and the lessons had mostly held. They washed their hands at the ewer before sitting. They ate from the shared dishes with their right hands only, tearing the bread to scoop the stew.

There was no ale. That had been the hardest lesson of all. Instead they drank cold water drawn from the courtyard well and a sweet sharbat made from pomegranate syrup, which Mathias drank by the jug and declared finer than any mead in Orkney.

"Ye said that about the figs yesterday," Njal said.

"And I was right about the figs."

Around them the funduq was never quiet. Mules shifted and complained in the stables. A salt trader argued loudly over the price of a room. Over it all, as the light faded, the call to prayer rose from the minarets across the city, one voice and then another and another, until the whole sky seemed full of it.

Even in their enjoyment the men kept their discipline. No more than two went out into the city at once, and never without telling Njal where. They were always back before the gates of the funduq were barred for the night. One man sat on the gallery above the entrance at all hours with his sword close by, watching the door. Those who were tired slept in turns. They were far from home in a city they barely knew, and every one of them remembered why they had come.