The Healer's Warrior (21 page)

Tareq was silent. He swallowed, fighting away the urge to burst into tears in front of Jem’ya. Overwhelmed, and unable to accept her kindness, Tareq responded by turning around to leave. “I’m freeing you. Please. You can go home now.”  He pulled at the door handle.

Jem’ya rushed over and grabbed the crook of his arm. “Tareq, I know that you would prefer that I stay.” Tareq stopped moving, but didn’t turn. “Now that I’m free, I’m making the choice to stay here and support my friend who is in mourning.”

Tareq’s hand dropped away from the door handle. He faced her. “Even though I wasn’t there for you when you were mourning?”

She shook her head. “You were there. I didn’t want to accept you, but you were always there. Let me do the same for you.”

His gaze intensified. “Jem’ya, I am in debt to you until the end of my life. I don’t need anything from you. I will
not
take anything else from you.”

“Then give me something.”

“Anything.”

“Give me a hug.”

His brows relaxed.
“A hug?”

“Wrap your arms around me, Tareq.” She gazed up into his amber eyes. He was tense and immobile. “Hold me,” she said. “The way you did before.”

Tareq felt his eyes watering again. He surrendered to her request. Initially, he embraced Jem’ya so that he could hide his face at her fragrant neck. When Jem’ya’s graceful arms encircled his waist and her palms rubbed up and down his back, he discovered how her request for a hug was really her gift of warmth and comfort to him. He needed exactly that sensation: Jem’ya soft and warm in his arms. Such a vulnerable moment was what Tareq usually avoided. He was surprised to find that when he released her five minutes later he came away with more inner strength than he’d ever built up from a victory in combat. “How long will you stay with me?”

“As long as you’d like.”

Tareq shook his head. “That would be too lengthy for you,” he said softly.

Her stomach fluttered. “I’ll stay until the end of the week. Okay?” She saw a small sparkle light his eyes. “If you need to
talk,
or you need a healing session, or if you just need some company, I’m here.”

Tareq thanked Jem’ya with a kiss on the palm of one of her blessed hands and returned to his room. He sat on the edge of the left side of his large bed. He’d intended to go to sleep after saying his goodbyes to Qadir and to Jem’ya. Sleep was his escape from sadness and thinking. The sadness retreated a few steps because Jem’ya was going to stay with him a while. His thoughts, however, kept racing.  Jem’ya’s decision to support him made him both relieved and suspicious. Her manner had changed drastically. Could she really be so selfless? Didn’t she resent him? Was she staying in order to exact revenge? He felt guilty to even think Jem’ya was capable of… he wasn’t sure what.

As Tareq sat on his bed, eyeing the floor and the wall as he reviewed the past few hours, days, weeks, months and years of his life, he had the strange sense that he was being watched. The tiny hairs on the back of his neck straightened. He didn’t turn suddenly. He listened carefully, as his combat trainer had taught him. Every sound became magnified; especially the sound of his own breathing. He listened hard for footsteps or the rustle of clothing. There was silence, yet he felt a presence in the room. That’s when he saw the shadow moving across the wall in front of him. The shadow grew taller and the shape sharpened. A head and shoulders, then an arm rising.

Tareq threw himself to the ground just as a dagger meant for his heart cut through the air and then buried its five-inch blade into the wall’s white plaster. Tareq reached for the handle of the sword underneath his bed. He drew the sword and jumped to his feet to face the masked assassin. The man was holding a sword of his own. He wore pants and a long sleeved shirt made of thick burlap. The pants were soiled at the knees and the elbows of the shirt were threadbare. On his face was a brass mask designed to cover his eyes and his nose. The bottom half of his face was covered by a wide strip of tan burlap tied behind his head.

“Do you dare?” Tareq growled.

The intruder was breathing heavily. He adjusted his grip on his sword but didn’t advance.

Tareq rushed toward him suddenly, hoping to push the man off balance. Their swords slammed together with a sharp metallic clatter. Tareq shoved hard against the assassin’s weapon but it moved back only a few inches. Yesterday evening’s attack of painful spasms had taken its toll on Tareq’s body. He was tiring quickly. Realizing the other man’s strength and determination, Tareq jumped back.
“Guards!
Intruder!”
Tareq yelled for assistance.

He ducked and dodged the blade of the panicked assassin and a sword fight commenced. Tareq tried to stand his ground but he was being driven backward. The assassin was quick, strong, and desperate to kill the new king and escape alive. Tareq’s shoulder was burning with the effort of slashing and stabbing the heavy sword at his assailant. When his back touched the wall, Tareq knew that in a matter of seconds he could be fatally wounded. For an instant, Tareq accepted his own death.
Everyone would be free of me, and I’d see Qadir and my mother again.
 

Four royal guards rushed into the room. The assassin froze at the sight of the armed warriors. Seeing that there was no time to finish the deed, the masked man hurled his sword at the throat of the closest guard and ran for the balcony. The guard deflected the sword with the iron cuff on his thick forearm. Tareq swiftly slid his sword across the marble floor at the assassin. The sword zipped across the floor, spinning as it reached the man’s heels. The blade slid under his raised right foot and before his path. His left foot stepped on the slick blade, he lost traction, and he was sent tumbling forward. His body slammed to the ground, knocking the air out of his lungs, leaving him stunned. Tareq stalked over to him and yanked the intruder to his feet by his black ponytail. Tareq grabbed the man’s throat and pushed him all the way out to the balcony. 

“No! No!” he gurgled.

Tareq forced him against the railing until he was leaning precariously backward. “My brother has not even been dead two days! You come into my home when I am mourning? You slither into my home like a snake and threaten my life and my family’s safety?!”

The assassin struggled for air. “Have mercy on me, your Highness.” Tareq could see his wide bloodshot eyes through the holes of the metal mask.

It occurred to Tareq that possibly more assassins had breached the security of his palace, putting his family in danger.
Auntie and Jem’ya are my family now.
Tareq nodded at one of the guards. “All the guards need to be on alert. This palace needs to be scoured for anymore snakes like this one.” He squeezed the man’s throat harder. “Jem’ya and Bahja’s rooms are priority.”

“Yes, Commander.”
Two of the guards bowed and left to relay the orders. The other two remained in Tareq’s room, vigilant.

“Who hired you?”  Tareq lessened his grip on his neck to hear the answer.

“
Alshafar
.”

“
Nassim
Alshafar
?
The silk trader?”

The intruder nodded. “He needed a mercenary. He wanted revenge because the forbiddance of slaves has cost him a good deal of money.”

Tareq’s skin burned with anger. That man,
Alshafar
, had walked in his father’s funeral.
I should have known that any close friend of my father’s would be an enemy of mine
. Tareq was fed up and disgusted with the greed in his kingdom. “You’re a mercenary. You’d kill
anyone
for coins?” he spat. “Give me one good reason why I should allow you to live!”

Two palace guards barged into Jem’ya’s bedroom and frightened her to tears. She thought they were going to kill her. The trauma of being startled awake in her village by violent screams and strangers shouting in Samician had not gone away. Jem’ya trembled and watched as one guard grunted something at her in Samician and then both guards tore through her room looking for something. After their search came up empty they nodded at each other. One man stood in the doorway to keep surveillance of the hall and the other man stood out on the balcony, sword ready. Jem’ya began to calm down. “W-What’s going on? What happened?”

“For safety,” the bearded guard on the balcony answered in broken Arabic.

“I’m not safe? Are we being attacked?”

“Attack the king. Yes.”

Her throat tightened. “Tareq was attacked?”

He nodded. “A man climb the room and…” He made a chopping motion with his sword.

Jem’ya clutched at her thudding heart.
“Oh my God.”
She began to feel lightheaded. “Was he wounded?”

“Not knowing. Sorry.”

“I need to see him.” She bolted for the door.

The guard in the doorway turned around and held up his hand. “No. Not safe, Miss.”

“I’m his healer. I need to see him. I have to. It’s my duty. Please, I just want to see him. I could save him!”

The guard knit his eyebrows in confusion. “Not safe. Sit, please.”

Jem’ya turned away and prayed under her breath, for Tareq and for herself.  She was in a state of panic, reliving the distress of the battle at
Tikso
, and experiencing the stress of the current emergency. Ever since Tareq became king, her intuition had predicted he would be in danger. Could she have warned Tareq somehow? Maybe he was badly wounded. God might perform a miracle healing through her if she could just be with Tareq in his time of need.
I cannot miss the chance to save a life again.
Jem’ya walked back to the doorway and began to frantically speak a random string of Samician, Arabic and
Rwujan
words to the guard. He became very confused as he attempted to decipher what she was saying. He was hearing words he recognized, words he didn’t recognize at all, and words he knew, and he was trying to piece it all together into something coherent to help the hysterical young lady. That’s when Jem’ya made a run for it.

“My family, your Highness!”
The assassin rasped. “I have a wife, six children, my sick mother, my in-laws and myself to feed.”

As the man talked on, Tareq noticed that his voice sounded vaguely familiar.

“I know that I am going against the will of Allah who has fated you to be our king. God will damn me. But I could not watch my family turn to skin and bone,” he sputtered.

“Who are you?” Tareq demanded.

The assassin went silent. Tareq began to tear off the fabric covering his mouth.

“No! Forgive me, your Highness! Forgive me! Let me keep a shred of dignity!”

Tareq yanked away the metal mask. Stunned, Tareq released his grip on the assassin’s throat.
“
You
.”
Standing before him was Kaliq, the man he told never to step foot in his kingdom again, the warrior that was in his squadron when they arrived at
Tikso
, the warrior that wounded a tribesman without his orders, the reason the battle began, the cause of the fight that left Tareq the murderer of Jem’ya’s brother and hated by her family. Tareq took a step back. His eyes stung with rage.

Kaliq stood panting, fearful. “Your Highness,” he stammered, “I know I have been intolerably disobedient, but—”

Tareq delivered a right hook to
Kaliq’s
face, and then couldn’t stop punching. Blow after blow, hit after hit, Tareq kept going, and the guards did not stop him. Tareq didn’t hear
Kaliq’s
shouting or feel the pain in his knuckles or in the muscles of his arms and back. Kaliq was covered in bruises and blood, semiconscious and swollen, curled into a ball on the balcony floor when Tareq finally let off of him.

King Tareq looked at the blood on the back of his hands and felt dizzy. He left the balcony and went into the bathroom and washed the blood away. The skin on his knuckles was broken and bruising. He wiped the tears from his face, walked out of his bathroom and stared out at Kaliq moaning in pain on the ground. Tareq picked up a coin purse from his bedside table and returned to the balcony. Kaliq flinched as he neared. Tareq squat down in front of him. He pried open
Kaliq’s
hand and stuffed the coin purse into it. “Spend
every cent
on your family or I’ll kill you myself.”