Conan knew how he would have entered the scarlet tent, had he chosen to steal the rubies with the camp aroused. A glance told him no one was watching, and he quickly slipped behind Jondra’s pavilion. Down the back of the tent a long slit had been made. Parting it a fingerwidth, he peered in. Tamira knelt within, rooting among the cushions. With a muffled laugh she drew out the sparkling length of the necklace. The tiara was gripped in her other hand.
Soundlessly Conan slipped through the slit. The first announcement of his presence Tamira received was his hand closing over her mouth. His free arm encircled her, pinning her arms and lifting her before she had time to do more than gasp into his palm. She had dropped the gems, he saw, but that was the end of his moment of peace. Tamira exploded into a wriggling, kicking, biting bundle. And footsteps were approaching the front of the tent.
With a muttered oath the Cimmerian ducked back through the slit with his struggling burden. Behind the tent was no place to stop, however, not if someone was going to enter the tent, not with Tamira as likely as not to scream that he had been thieving. Cursing under his breath, he scrambled down the stony slope until he found a clump of scrub brush that hid them from the camp. There he tried to set her down, but she kicked him fiercely on the ankle, rocks slid beneath his foot, and he found himself on the ground with Tamira beneath him, her eyes starting from her head from the force of the fall.
“You great oaf!” she wheezed after a moment. “Do you try to break my ribs?”
“I did not kick myself,” he growled. “I thought we agreed to leave in the night. What were you doing in Jondra’s tent?”
“Nothing was said about the rubies,” she retorted. “I haven’t changed my plans for them, even if you have. Perhaps,” she finished angrily, “you find what Jondra gives you more valuable than rubies, but as I am not a man I have a different view of the matter.”
“Leave Jondra out of this,” he snapped. “And do not try to change the subject. You have a horse waiting this very instant.”
Tamira shifted uneasily beneath him, and her eyes slid away from his. “I wanted to be ready,” she muttered. “For the night.”
“Do you think I’m a fool,” he said, “that I take you for a fool? The saddle cannot escape discovery till nightfall. But if someone planned to steal the rubies and leave the camp within the turn of a glass … . You could not have been planning such a thing, could you?”
“They would not have held you to blame.” Her tone was sullenly excusatory. “Jondra would not blame you if she found you with the rubies in your pouch. And if she did, it would be less than you deserve.”
“Jondra,” he breathed. “Always Jondra. What is it to you whose bed I share? You and I are not lovers.”
Tamira’s large brown eyes grew even wider. Scarlet suffused her cheeks, and her mouth worked for a long moment before sound finally came out. “We most certainly are not!” she gasped. “How dare you suggest such a thing? Let me up! Get off me, you great ox! Let me up, I say!” Her small fists punctuated her words, pounding at his shoulders, but suddenly her fingers had tangled in his hair, and she was pressing her lips to his.
Conan blinked once in surprise, then returned her kiss with as much fervor as she was putting into it. “Don’t think this will convince me to stay,” he said when they broke apart for air. “I’m not such a fool.”
“If you stop,” she moaned, “then you are a fool.”
With one last silent reminder that he would not be a fool, Conan gave up talk and thought alike for pleasures at once simpler and more complex.
Chapter 13
He was not a fool, Conan told himself once more as he guided his horse along a trail halfway up a nameless peak on the fringe of the Kezankians. If he kept saying it, he thought he might convince himself in time. Before and behind him stretched the hunting party, all mounted and many leading pack animals, wending their way deeper into the hillman domains. The sun stood barely above the horizon. They had left the camp in the hills before the first glimmer of dawn. The ox-carts with the wounded would be on their way back to Shadizar.
Lost in his own thoughts, Conan was surprised to find that Jondra had reined aside to await him. He had not spoken to her since she turned her back on him, but he noted that at least she was smiling now.
She drew her horse in beside his. The trail was wide enough for the animals to walk abreast. “The day is fine, is it not?” she said brightly.
Conan merely looked at her.
“I hoped you would come to me in the night. No, I promised myself I would not say that.” Shyly she peered at him through lowered lashes. “I knew you could not leave me. That is … I thought … you did stay because of me, did you not?”
“I did,” he said glumly, but she appeared not to notice his tone.
“I knew it,” she said, her smile even more radiant than before. “Tonight we will put the past behind us once and for all.” With that she galloped up the line of mounted men to resume her place at their head.
Conan growled deep in his throat.
“What did she want?” Tamira demanded, guiding her mount up beside his. It was the same bay mare she had chosen out for her flight. She glared jealously after the noblewoman.
“Nothing of consequence,” Conan replied.
The young woman thief grunted contemptuously. ‘‘’Tis likely she thinks you are still here because of the over-generous charms she displays so freely. But you came because of me. Didn’t you?”
“I came for you,” Conan told her. “But unless you want to see how strongly Jondra wields a switch, you had best not let her see us talking too often.”
“Let her but try.”
“Then you intend to explain to her that you are not Lyana the handmaiden, but Tamira the thief?”