Alex was silent. She was aware of that fact.
“If you are caught while attempting to escape, even if your feelings for Blackwell are not discovered, Jebal will kill you. Trust me, Alex. There will be no forgiveness.”
Alex shivered.
“And if he ever learns you are running away with another man, it will be a slow, cruel, violent death. Do you understand me, Alex?”
Alex nodded, She hadn’t eaten anything that morning, and now her stomach was distinctly upset. “Will you help me? So I succeed? So I do not fail?” She laid her hand on his bare, sinewed forearm.
He sighed. “You don’t have to manipulate me, Alex. You know I’d do anything for you—anything you asked—in the end.”
Alex hesitated, because his gaze was so knowing and so direct. “That’s good. Because we should turn right here.”
“No, we should continue straight ahead to return to the palace.”
“We’re not returning to the palace, not yet.” Her heart beat hard.
“And just where is it you wish to go?” Murad asked very cautiously.
“I want to go to the quarries,” Alex said.
19
ATWENTY-TON BLOCKof stone had been blasted out of the quarry earlier with gunpowder. A hundred men were in the act of maneuvering the rock slab onto a huge man-drawn sledge. When the quarry foreman gave the command, every slave threw his entire weight against the block of stone, attempting to lift it up. The men groaned. Some wept. Xavier strained against the rough stone, tears streaming down his face, blinding him. Whips cracked.
“Up,” the foreman shouted. “Up, heave it up.”
Xavier grunted, throwing the entire weight of his body into the task of lifting up the huge slab of rock. The whips hissed again. Someone cried out in pain. Men grunted and groaned. The block moved fractionally upward. Immediately Turks were rushing forward and rolling smaller wooden blocks underneath it so that the stone rested a few feet off of the ground.
“Halt!” the foreman shouted.“Delwatee!”
The slaves collapsed onto the ground. Xavier sat with his back against one of the smaller blocks, gasping for breath, every muscle in his body quivering with fatigue and tension. Beside him, Timmy panted harshly. Xavier glanced past Timmy at Tubbs, who sat with his eyes closed and his head back, gasping for air like a fish out of water. The sun was broiling hot, beating down on their hatless heads and too bare bodies. Xavier felt as if every inch of skin on his body were badly burned, and his back, crisscrossed with welts and abrasions, continued to torment him.
Xavier turned to look at the Spaniard whom he had carried all the way from Tripoli. The man was useless. He’d had no strength to exert to aid his fellow captives in moving the twenty-ton stone; his presence had been just that, a presence, nothing more. Yet Kadar and the quarry foreman, Valdez, had shown no human mercy or compassion, and they had insisted he labor alongside the others. Now the Spaniard sat almost bonelessly in a heap upon the ground, eyes wide, staring vacantly toward the line of black hills on the horizon just south of the quarry.
Xavier closed his eyes briefly, his pulse beginning to subside. God, he was tired, and his body hurt so badly—and it was only midmorning. How could anyone survive such grueling labor?
Xavier turned to the Spaniard. The man remained motionless, and Xavier felt a frisson of fear. “Are you all right,amigo mio?”Xavier asked. He had yet to learn the name of the man whose life he had saved.
The Spaniard did not move, nor did he reply—as if he hadn’t even heard Xavier.
Xavier became concerned. He hesitated, then reached out to touch the man’s thin shoulder. “My friend?”
The Spaniard slumped forward, face-first, into the gravel and dirt.
Xavier leapt to his feet, surprised that he even had the strength to do so. He knelt beside the Spaniard, automatically touching him. His skin was warm and wet. But his body was oddly still.
Xavier turned him over onto his back.
Tubbs came forward and knelt beside him. “Captain, sir?”
Xavier stared down at the Spaniard, who lay still, his eyes open and sightless. “He’s dead,” he said, feeling bile rising up in him.
“He was doomed from the start,” Tubbs said quietly.
“Doomed? Yes, he was doomed—from the moment he became a captive in Barbary.” Xavier tried to tamp down the anger rising up so rapidly inside him. He stood up. The Turkish soldiers guarding the slaves tensed, and one man raised a whip threateningly. Xavier stared coldly. “Tell Valdez that we have a dead man here.”
The Turk gazed at Xavier for a long moment, to prove that he was not taking orders from a slave, and then he turned and spat. If he noticed or even cared that the Spaniard was dead, he gave no sign. He spoke briefly to another solider, who turned and walked away. Xavier looked past the guards. Kadar had returned to Tripoli hours ago, but the foreman, Valdez, sat in the shade of a tent, smoking a pipe while a young male slave fanned him with large palm fronds.
