The gorgio dropped three pieces of silver into the woman's palm. It was a beautiful palm, a beautiful hand, Will noticed as she closed it into a fist. Dark and slender, but strong, not fragile looking, as slender hands tended to be. She wore rings on every finger, and gold and silver bangles on her wrists, which made tinkling music every time she moved.
"Thank you," she told the pale-skinned man. "When the predictions come true, tell your friends. And be sure they ask for Sarafina when they come."
He backed away, nodding, thanking her profusely, but never turning his back on her all the way out. As soon as his feet touched the ground outside her wagon-tent, he crossed himself and ran away.
The gorgios might deny it, Sarafina thought, but they were every bit as superstitious as the Gypsies. Will thought it was odd that he could hear what she was thinking as well as what she said aloud. It was almost as if he had retreated into her mind to escape the pain, instead of his own.
But he was distracted from the odd notion by her smile. She smiled slowly, and it transformed her face from dark and sullen and exotic to something of sheer, glowing beauty. He loved her. Everything about her, from her smooth olive-bronze skin to the masses of raven hair curling wildly over her back and shoulders. He loved her lips, how full they were, how ripe. He loved her eyes, gleaming onyx gemstones, set very wide beneath heavy brows most women would pluck down to nothing.
She tucked the coins into the heavy drawstring pouch that dangled from one of the colorful sashes at her waist. "Ten already this week," she whispered, as she leaned over the table to drop a black silk scarf over the crystal globe that held court in its center. The "table" was an upturned wooden crate covered in more silk scarves, as was the chair. The chair on the other side of the table, the one for the customers, was also a crate, but an undressed one. She wasn't about to have one of them sitting on her silk.
Andre. She was thinking of Andre now.
It gave Will a bitter pang to realize it, to feel the little leap of her heart when she thought of the man, but he stayed with her all the same, like a shadow hidden within her own. She left the tent, her strong, bare feet padding down the fold-up steps of the wagon, then pressing onto the cool brown earth as she crossed the camp. Will loved tagging along when she went outside, because the camp was such a fascinating sight; concentric circles of painted wagons and tents, and odd combinations of the two. Bells and prisms hung from most of them. At the center was a communal fire, though many smaller ones burned here and there. The center was where people met. There was often music, dancing. The women in their brightly colored skirts, with their countless scarves trailing them like comet tails as they whirled. The men with their tight-fitting trousers, and red and gold vests. The musicians with their violins and tambourines and pipes.
They were a beautiful, vibrant people, these Gypsies. He didn't know where they were. He was uncertain when they were. Not that it mattered, since they were mere figments of his imagination.
Too vivid, too detailed, to be real.
Many greeted Sarafina as she passed. The younger ones bowed respectfully, while the elders looked upon her as an equal. She was spectacular, walking with her head high and her hips swaying, proud of who she was.
She was a gifted seer, and she used that gift to bring wealth to the tribe. That earned her the honor and respect of the group, just as it did her far less worthy sister. But Will worried about the woman. Lately, she'd been feeling poorly, and her gifts of prophecy refused to tell her why.
The fire in the center of the camp jumped and danced, yellow-orange flames spreading a pool of light in the midst of the pitch-black ocean of night. The wood smoke smelled good, warm and tangy and familiar. Many of the people had gathered around the fire that night, listening as the old ones told tales. Stories of adventures and the misdeeds of their youth brought gasps and then laughter from those gathered around to hear.
Sarafina loved these people. They were her family, and family was all that mattered to her. And they loved her in return. Except, of course, for her sister. Katerina was her own blood, but she had hated her sister from the moment Sarafina had drawn her first breath. Sarafina liked to pretend the feeling was mutual.
It wasn't. Her sister's hatred ate at her like a cancer.
Katerina's vardo stood on the opposite side of the camp from Sarafina's, as was always the case wherever the tribe made camp. As Sarafina approached it, leaving the light of the fire far behind, a dark form emerged from the wagon, turned and hurried away into the shadows. A man, Will thought, but he was gone before giving either of them more than a brief glance.
Sarafina stepped up and reached for the door flap, and the bells attached to it tinkled as she drew it open and stepped inside.
Her sister looked up at her with an expectant smile that turned to a grimace the moment she saw who it was. They were so different, the two of them. Katerina's black hair was long and perfectly straight. Her eyes were small, close set and round. They looked like cold pebbles. Shark's eyes.
"Did you think your lover had returned, Katerina?" Sarafina asked with an edge in her voice. "So sorry to disappoint you."
"You've done nothing but disappoint me from the day our mother died giving birth to you, little sister. Why begin apologizing for it now?"
The words stung. Will could feel Sarafina's pain as acutely as she herself felt it. But her heart had toughened and formed calluses over the years, thanks to her sister's constant attacks. It didn't hurt as much as it would have once.
Smiling, Fina lifted her coin pouch in her palm, bouncing it slightly so the coins inside jangled. "Ten gorgios have come to see me this week. Ten, Katerina. Twice as many as have sought you out for divination."
Her sister shrugged. "Your wagon is nearer the road than mine."
"They ask for me by name," Sarafina countered. "They come to me because I am the most skilled seer in this camp, and because word of my abilities has spread throughout the town. I'll have still more of them crossing my palm with silver next week. And I predict you'll have even fewer."
"Bah! By the week after that, when not one of your false predictions has come to pass, they'll see that your only talent lies in deception, and they'll begin seeking my counsel instead." Katerina tossed her hair. "We both know the truth. Not only am I the more gifted diviner, I am the rightful Shuvani of this tribe, Sarafina."
Will cringed inwardly when he heard that, knowing there was not much that could make Sarafina angrier.
No one got away with calling her gift into question, much less questioning her status as one of the tribe's two wise women. Most tribes had only one. There was no question that this tribe would have had only one, as well, had Sarafina been firstborn.
"Thanks to your false predictions, the whites will likely brand all Gypsies liars and cheats," Katerina went on. "And we'll be forced to move on, because of you, yet again."
"My predictions are not lies! I am a far better seer than you, and you know it."
"Not so great a seer, I think. Or you would know the identity of the man who just left my vardo."
The words were a blow that knocked the very breath out of Sarafina's chest. She looked around her sister's tented wagon, even as Will whispered to her to be calm, to resist rising to her sister's bait. But he knew she couldn't hear him. She never could.
The sleeping pallet was untidy, the blankets upon it rumpled and askew. The table in the corner, not a crate like Sarafina's, but a real table that had belonged to their mother, held no crystal, no cards, but a blazing oil lamp, two tin cups and a wine jug lying, uncorked, on its side.
Katerina's soft laughter brought her sister's head around fast.
"He's far too good for you, you know. But he knows now that a real woman desires him."
"Are you saying it was Andre I saw creeping away from here as I approached?"
Will thought that if Katerina valued her life, she would deny it.
"Of course it was Andre. He's the handsomest, the strongest, the wealthiest man in the camp. I couldn't very well let you have him."
"Bi lacho bitch!" Fina shrieked the words even as she lunged forward. She brought her hand across her sister's face, nails slashing her cheek.
Katerina didn't even pause to give note to the pain. She lurched forward, eyes blazing, arms flailing. The two collided, tumbled to the floor and rolled in a tangle of skirts and scarves, ring bedecked hands and bangled arms. They hit the table, and it tipped over. The oil lamp shattered, and the oil spread in a pool of blue flame. Panic rose in Will's chest as they pummeled and bit and clawed each other, both of them shrieking.
Will tried to shout a warning. He focused everything in him on Sarafina and on shouting one word. Fire!
Sarafina shoved her sister off her in one mighty thrust, looking around as if she'd heard something. Will realized, though, that a crowd had gathered outside the tent, probably drawn by the commotion of the fight. They were shouting at her, too. He had no way of knowing which voice she had heard. It didn't matter-not now. He saw her face change as she realized the entire wagon was ablaze.
"Look what you've done!" Katerina screamed. "We'll burn alive because of you!"
Sarafina looked for a way out, but the fire was licking at the sides of the tent all around them. Then, suddenly, someone plunged in through the flames. A form, swathed in blankets. He dropped his makeshift cloak. It was Andre, his dark eyes blazing.
"Wrap yourselves in blankets," he ordered. "Quickly!"
Both women hastened to obey, as Andre grabbed the water vessel from near Katerina's bed and doused them with it. Then he retrieved his own blanket from the floor. "Run, right through here," he said, pointing. "You must run as fast as you can. If you hesitate, you will die." He gathered Katerina in his left arm, Sarafina in his right. Will braced himself, all but holding his breath. "Now!" Andre shouted.
Sarafina closed her eyes and plunged into the wall of fire. There was searing heat on her face and on her feet, but only briefly. An instant of torture, and then she was falling to the cool earth.
She landed hard. Wrestling free of the dampened blanket, she sat up, the fire blazing behind her. Will was nearly limp with relief that she was all right.
Most of the tribe surrounded her, looking down at her and her sister, who had landed close beside her, in stark disapproval as the flames lit their soot-streaked faces. Will knew that Sarafina's dignity was deeply wounded, as was, perhaps, her standing with the tribe.
"It was all her!" Katerina shouted, scrambling to her feet. "She accused me of trying to steal her man and attacked me. By the Gods, all I have is gone!" she cried, waving a helpless arm at the leaping flames.
People gasped, muttered, shook their heads in pity as Katerina's tent and her every possession burned to cinders before their eyes.
"She lies," Sarafina said. "It was she who began this. I only finished it."
Andre bent to help her to her feet, pausing a moment to study her face, then pulling her close to him. His arms went around her, holding her intimately, tightly. Will writhed with jealousy.
"Oh, Sarafina, tell me you don't believe that I could be tempted to another. It's you I love. You I'll take as wife. No one else."
Sarafina stared at him, and she suddenly understood that her sister had lied to her. Katerina was only trying to plant seeds of doubt that would grow to destroy the love she and Andre shared, she told herself. Someone had crept away from Katerina's vardo tonight, but it hadn't been Andre.
Will shook his head slowly, whispering in his mind, in her mind, "Oh, Sarafina, don't be such a fool."
Sarafina glared at her sister in triumph, but then she went still at the look Katerina returned. It was cold, steely and deadly.
Before she could begin to understand what that look might mean, there was a horrifying scream that rent the night from somewhere beyond the camp.
Everyone went stiff and still for one brief moment, as if the sound had turned them all to stone.
"No. For the love of Devel, not again," someone whispered. Will thought it was Gervaise, the reigning chieftain of the tribe. He didn't know what Gervaise meant and wondered if he was about to find out.
But before he could learn anything further, he was shocked out of the fantasy by the sensation of his lungs slowly filling with ice water.
A hand clasped him by his hair and jerked his head out of the tub of frigid water. Will dragged in a desperate, hungry breath, before that hand shoved his head into the tub again, holding him under.
His hands were bound together behind his back, his legs bound at the ankles. His body screamed with pain, pain he had managed to escape only moments before. But all that dulled beside the stabbing need in his lungs as they spasmed in search of air. Small red explosions danced behind his tightly closed eyes. He was going to pass out, and then he would drown.
The hand jerked him out of the water again, and even as Will sucked in greedy, noisy breaths, slammed him down into a small, ladder-back chair.
Water ran from his hair and face, soaking his ragged, filthy shirt.
A bearded man wearing a spotless white headdress lifted Will's chin and stared down at him, then spoke to one of the guards, using one of the tribal dialects in which Will was fluent, though he had managed to keep that fact from them...thus far.
"He has returned to his body. You may resume the torture now."
"Why should we waste our time? He will only leave again when the pain becomes too much for him. How does he do it? Where does he go?"
The first man shrugged, crossing the floor of the cave to where a fire had been burning earlier. It was now a bed of glowing coals. They'd placed long iron rods in the embers, and it was one of these the man pulled out, using a piece of fabric as a makeshift pot holder. The hotter end was neon-orange and reminded Will of the beer sign hanging in his favorite bar back home.
"Now, Colonel Stone," the man said, speaking heavily accented English. "You will tell me what I wish to know."
"I've told you already," he said softly, though it hurt like hell to talk, because of his split, swollen lips and the dryness of his throat. "There are no American spies in your training camps."
There were, actually. There were thirteen, to be exact, and Will knew who they were, what names they were using and what camps they had infiltrated. They would have received word of his capture by now. They would remember their training, and they would know exactly what to do, where to go, when to meet there for extraction. It would take them another forty-eight hours to get out of harm's way, he thought.
Judging the passage of time was tricky, given the circumstances.
He had to hold out until the men were safely out of the country.
"If there are no spies, then how do the Americans always seem to know our plans?''
Will didn't shrug. The movement would have hurt too much. "Technology?"
The man laid the cherry-red end of the iron flat across Will's chest. The pain was beyond bearing, and he tipped his head back and grated his teeth against it, while the smell of his own burning flesh choked him.
Even when the rod was lifted away, the pain remained. Burning, scorching pain deep inside him. He closed his eyes, tried to find that place inside his mind where he'd been hiding before. That place where the pain couldn't reach him. He saw the woman, standing far in the distant reaches of his subconscious. Sarafina, the dark, exotic fantasy woman who lived out her tales in his mind so vividly that she swept him away from the torture, the pain.
He'd stumbled upon her quite by accident, when they had beaten him nearly unconscious. He'd been hovering on the edge of oblivion when he'd seen her in his mind's eye. Just her eyes, glowing black eyes. He found himself focusing on those eyes, getting caught in them, sinking slowly into their black-water depths, into darkness. He'd felt himself sinking deeper, and as he did, the pain vanished. Once it fell away behind him, he emerged on the other side, in some other place and time, as a silent, invisible observer of the woman's life.
Ever since that first time, he'd found he could use the pain to find that place again. The trick was to just give himself over to the agony, not to fight it, but to embrace it. And then he would close his eyes and search for hers. All he had to do was find her eyes, stare into them, and he would sink again into her world, where the pain couldn't reach him.
She was pure fantasy, as was her story. He knew that. But she was also his salvation. And the salvation of those thirteen Americans who would be tortured to death unless he kept their names secret.
So he closed his eyes as they placed the hot brands on his skin. He relaxed his jaw and tried not to fight the pain. He let the pain drive him closer to her, closer, until she turned and faced him. Her eyes opened wide as he fixed his upon them and rushed willingly into their cool black depths. Then he was completely immersed, having left his body far, far behind. He swam, every stroke taking him farther. And he wondered if one of these times his captors would do him the favor of simply killing him, so that he could remain in that other place. But would it remain, opening, welcoming him inside? His own custom-imagined heaven? Or would it vanish as his brain cells slowly died?
At this point, he wasn't certain he cared.