"Legion A"Lex and Tealson du Mer," Legion answered.
"Who sent ye?"
Legion straightened his shoulders. "Conar McGregor."
From out of the tall gra.s.s, men ventured forth, most with pikes or rusty broadswords clutched in their fists. Scarves
covered their faces, revealing only their eyes. One man came to stand before Legion and Teal. "It is in his memory we have gathered."
Legion smiled, recognizing the barman"s voice. "And it is in his name we ask to join you."
"Welcome, Lord Legion. We are the men of the Dark Overlord of the Wind."
* * * Legion was in Ionary for more than five months. In service to Tohre, he traveled from Jedry to the capitol at Derbenille where, at the keep of Ravenswood, he was pa.s.sed in secret a roster of cities throughout the seven kingdoms where the Dark Overlord"s men could be contacted.
"This will be vitally important to Brelan when he returns," Legion told Teal. "He can contact these men and perhaps we can find a way to overthrow Tohre and his bunch."
Teal did not reply. He doubted any bunch of ragtag farmers and shopkeepers could do what princes and warriors had not been able to do during the rebellion.
Upon arriving home to Boreas, Legion had a surprise waiting for him. He was stunned to find his wife big with child.
"How?" Legion gasped.
"I believe it might have been something I ate," Liza said with a serious face. "Or perhaps something you ate. I can"t remember which."
Legion threw his arms around his lady. "By the G.o.ds, you knew when I left, didn"t you?"
"Aye, but I knew you"d worry so I didn"t tell you." Easing away from him, she looked into his bearded face. "I did not know the negotiations would keep you so long from my side."
"You could have sent word and I would have been home quicker."
Liza did not tell him she doubted Tohre would have allowed him to return sooner. Instead, she laid her cheek against his wide chest. "I am so glad you are here."
Legion tensed. "You are well, are you not?" he asked, his heart suddenly pounding.
"But I have missed your arms and needed your body beside me in our bed. I do not sleep well when you are away."
"I"ll not leave again," he swore, and as he did, he felt the babe move against his abdomen. He drew in a quick breath and looked down at the mound of her belly. "It will be a son," he said, his gaze shifting to her face.
"Perhaps."
"It will," he said with conviction. "We will have a son."
Her love gleaming in her eyes, Liza stroked his dear face. "If that is your heart"s desire, how can the G.o.ds not make it so?"
Legion again pulled her into his embrace. Never had he known such overwhelming bliss. "There is much I have to tell you, Liza. You will be heartened at what I have found in Ionary."
* * * "You have a son," Cayn told Legion. The Serenian healer"s face beamed with pleasure. "And a l.u.s.ty son at that!" For a moment, King Legion A"Lex"s throat closed up with joy. "Is she all right?" "Our lady is fine." Cayn put a heavily wrinkled hand on his monarch"s shoulder. "What will you name your new Prince?"
"She"s chosen Jarad, I think." He grinned. "Can I see her?"
"She is sleeping, but go on in. If you wake her, I"ll pluck out the hairs on your beard, one by one!" He laughed.
Gezelle opened the door for Legion as he scratched lightly on the panel. Her face was tired. "She had little trouble, Highness."
He patted the girl"s cheek. "And when will we be seeing the little one you carry?"
Gezelle blushed. Her marriage to Sean Cruise, a Chalean in Legion"s personal guard, had been a spur of the moment union. Both lonely, neither with a family, they had rushed into marriage. A month later, she"d found herself with child. Although she was fond of Sean, her real affections had been taken long ago by a man she knew she could never have. Prince Chand Wynth of Oceania. When she learned Chand had been taken to the Labyrinth, Gezelle had been inconsolable for days. Meeting Sean a few weeks later, having him flirt outrageously with her, court her with such single-minded purpose, had gone a long way in helping her deal with Chand"s predicament.
"Soon enough, I would imagine," Gezelle said, patting her rounded belly. "Sean keeps asking every day when hisson will be joining us."
"I know the feeling, Madame!"
"He"s picked the name Petra." She frowned, then shrugged. "But we"ll call him Christos."
Legion laughed. The child, if a boy, would be named whatever this stalwart girl wanted him to be named. "Would you tell Marsh to send word to Ivor to let Teal know he"s a new G.o.d-uncle."
"He"ll be pleased." She turned to go, then thought of what she had wanted to ask for more than a week. "Has there been any word from Lord Brelan?"
Legion shook his head. "Give him time, "Zelle."
"I worry about them."
"One in particular, I would think."
Gezelle"s face turned red. "Aboutall of them, Highness." She sniffed when she heard his snort of disbelief.
"Stop teasing her, Legion," Liza said as he closed the door.
His face lost the smile that had been hovering over it. "Did I wake you?"
"I wasn"t sleeping. Have you seen him, yet?" She tried to push herself up.
"No, you don"t!" He pulled the covers up to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and sat beside her. "You are to rest."
"Have you seen him?" she repeated. She laid her hand on his cheek.
Legion turned his lips into her palm. "Not yet." He looked up at her through the heavy sweep of his lashes. "My loving thanks for our son, Milady."
" "Twas my pleasure, Milord."
Legion claimed his wife"s lips with a sweet, tender caress, pulling back to gaze into her warm green eyes. "I love you."
Her lips were warm against his own. "As I love you."
"Forever?" he teased, easing the back of his hand down her flushed cheeks.
"And a day."
In the distance, a ragged bolt of lightning sped to earth and a mighty echo of thunder shook the windows of the King"s Master Suite.
Chapter 3.
Holm looked at the saucy tavern wench who brought him ale. He let his attention wonder down her neatly turned backside wiggling beneath the scarlet skirts of her dress and over her more-than-ample cleavage. "Good tips tonight, sweeting?" he asked, smiling.
The woman"s ageless eyes leapt to his; her red lips formed a teasing pout. She looked him up and down and apparently liked what she saw, for her pout stretched into a seductive smile. "Depends on what kind of tips you mean, Captain," she said saucily, one shapely brow raised in challenge.
Holm laughed, sending her a hardy smack as she swayed past. He felt a tightening in his groin the instant he touched her and drew back his hand as though he had been seared with a red-hot flame. His manhood reminded him that he was still very much a man and that it wouldn"t mind bedding the wench, but the controlling part of him brushed away such a pa.s.sing fancy, for Holm"s wife was as dear to him as the air he breathed. And just as necessary. In the years they had been married, and that numbered some thirty-odd now, he had never once strayed from his lady or the vows he"d made on his joining day.
Women like this beauty were a copper a dozen; women like his Mary were few and far between.
"You"d better keep her, then," the wench said as though she had read his mind.
Holm stared at her as she walked away, peering at him over the perfection of one creamy shoulder.
"What time be it, Cap"n?" Gilbert Tarnes asked, wiping his mouth on the already dirty sleeve of his tunic.
Taking out his pocket watch, Holm squinted to see the numbers. d.a.m.n, he thought with frustration, it was getting harder and harder to see the thing anymore. Old age had many disadvantages-losing your eyesight was among the most aggravating. He sighed and replaced the watch in his vest pocket. "Quarter past seven. Three hours to sailing."
"Not soon enough for me." Tarnes, first mate of theBoreas Queen, sniffed as he looked around the alehouse.
Holm smiled. "In a hurry, are you?"
"You might say so," another young man answered, grinning.
"He"s yet to be blooded," another man remarked, tousling the young man"s hair.
Holm marveled at the resemblance between the two men. Wyn Luz could have pa.s.sed for Coron McGregor"s brother instead of his nephew. Despite the dark brown dye hiding the bright blond of his hair, and the deep tans the sea had granted them, the two were still stamped with the indelible McGregor lineage; it was a wonder no one at the alehouse had noticed.
"We do have enough men?" Wyn asked.
Holm sighed and answered, as he had many times before. "Aye, brat. We have enough."
A crew was already on board theBoreas Queen. A hand-picked crew who knew where they were going and why. A crew loyal to Holm, but even more importantly, to the McGregor family.
"I win!" a cheerful voice called from the next table.
Holm swung his gaze to where Dyllon McGregor was sitting with three of the other crew members, one of them Andre Belvoir, former Master-at-Arms of Norus Keep in Serenia. Despite the dark brown dye, a rather rakish black eye patch over his perfectly good left eye, and the juice of many mulberries used to darken a skin that refused to darken naturally with the sun, Dyllon did not look like the sea pirate he thought himself to be. Instead, he looked, Holm reflected, a little like a child at play. His one unconcealed blue eye twinkled as he raked in his winnings.
"Boys must be boys," Coron said dryly.
"You do have the charts?" Wyn asked, drawing Holm"s attention.
Holm could have turned the boy over his knee and fired his backside. "Aye," he mumbled, patiently, remembering whose boy this was. "I have the sea charts that will lead us through those treacherous coral reefs you been worrying about since you came on board. And aye, I have the necessary additional instructions needed to decipher them charts, and aye, I have all the other necessary instructions your uncle, Lord Brelan, left with me." He looked at the boy from beneath s.h.a.ggy white brows. "Any more useless questions you need to be asking?"
Wyn blushed and turned to his uncle Coron, who looked at him with a blank, carefully bland, gaze. "No, sir."
"Good!" Holm snarled. "Then be done with your questions, lad!"
"It"s the waiting that"s getting to me," Wyn confessed, red-faced and sheepish as he glanced up at Mister Tarnes" snort.
"You"ve never been one for patience," Coron reminded him.
Holm tipped back his tumbler of ale to drain it. He slapped the tankard on the table and wiped the foam from his upper lip with the back of his hand. "Seems to me," he said as he folded his arms over his wide expanse of chest, "that none of you younguns have much in the way of patience."
Dyllon laughed as he joined them, tossing his winnings in his palm. "Must be a family trait!"
Looking at the three young men sitting across the plank table from him, Holm couldn"t help but remember another youth who"d had such a minimum of patience. The youngest of these three bore an uncanny resemblance to that long-gone youth, and was, in fact, that man"s son. Looking at Wyn was like looking back in time. The son was almost as old as the father had been when the young Prince had come to Holm"s daughter"s aid.
"What"s wrong, Captain?" Wyn asked.
"Nothing!" Holm snapped, looking away from the probing blue eyes that were identical to Conar McGregor"s twinkling azure mirth.
Coron glanced at his brother; Dyllon smiled back sadly. Both men knew of whom the captain had been thinking. It was hard not to think of Conar when his son bore such a resemblance to him. It was sometimes difficult not to call Wyn by his father"s seldom-heard name.
"We have business to see to, men," Holm said, coming to his feet. "Best we be about it!"
Coron felt an unease he couldn"t rid himself of.
"They"ll be giving you no trouble," one of the patrons at a nearby table called out. He came unsteadily to his feet and hitched up his belt, jabbed a thumb into his scrawny chest. "Most of them be like me, ex-inmates from the colonies. They know when to let well enough alone."
"Aye," came scattered replies.
"The rest," the drunk added, looking about as though taking measure of the room, "couldn"t give a rat"s a.r.s.e what happens to the likes of ye."
Coron wasn"t so sure. The McGregor line had more than their share of enemies. If any of the men recognized them, it could be over before it began. Few men were looking their way, and those who were, glanced hastily away as his eyes challenged them. He and Dyllon and Wyn had spent these last years in Chrystallus with their aunt Dyreil, but the three had firsthand knowledge of what had been done to the royal families of the Seven Kingdoms. If the Tribunal had spies among these men, the game would be up. If the Domination could get their hands on them, the last of Conar"s true bloodline would be extinguished.
"Don"t ye be worrying, Your Grace," a man called from the back of the tavern. "We ain"t seen ye."
"Seen who?" another called.
"Them fellows from theBoreas Queen."
"Did she sail in here? I ain"t seen her. Have ye?"