Hot Arabian Nights

Kamal swore. ‘Do not take me for a fool. Ever since you arrived here, you have been determined to undermine me, systematically removing my supporters from the Council, interfering in countless petty matters of state, questioning my Treasurer and examining my accounts. You travel to our villages with that English woman trailing behind you to whip up support—as if you needed to—and now I discover you have been interrogating a man who...’

‘Has been helping you misappropriate my diamonds.’ Azhar waited, but Kamal said nothing. ‘I know all about the whole sordid scheme,’ he said. ‘Not only has the Chief Overseer confessed fully to his role—’

‘But has implicated me in order to save his own skin,’ Kamal interrupted with a sneer. ‘By the heavens, Azhar, is it not obvious! If there has been any pilfering...’

‘The scale of the theft goes far beyond pilfering.’

Kamal waved his hand impatiently. ‘You cannot possibly think that I would be involved in this.’

‘And you cannot possibly grasp how very much I have wanted to prove you innocent.’

Something in his voice put fear in Kamal’s eyes. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Brother...’

Azhar shook his arm free. ‘I came here intending to abdicate,’ he said. ‘I came here with the sole purpose of handing Qaryma over to you. You think I cannot resist claiming the crown and power. How wrong you are, Kamal. How very, very wrong. I wanted you to have it because you deserved it more, wanted it more.’

‘Then give it to me, I still want it. Free yourself from the burden, leave Qaryma in my hands.’

‘No. You have forfeited any right to be trusted with the safekeeping of the kingdom.’ With cold precision, Azhar ticked off the facts he had uncovered. Sick at heart, he watched as Kamal’s bravado turned to blustering rage, removing any faint hope that he would do the honourable thing and confess his guilt.

‘I hope you are not expecting me to apologise,’ Kamal spat at the end of the damning summation. ‘For ten years, I have remained here doing our father’s bidding while you indulged your selfish desire to see the world, making your personal fortune, earning your pathetically important reputation. For ten years I have served our father, this kingdom and these people, and for what? A few diamonds are as nothing compared to what I am owed for my sacrifice.’

That the ‘few diamonds’ amounted to a significant part of Qaryma’s wealth was beside the point. It had never, for Azhar, been the value of the stolen goods which mattered, but the greed and the lies which motivated the crime. ‘You had ten years in which to prove yourself worthy,’ he said. ‘Ten years to prove to our father that you were fit to be his heir.’

‘Do you think I did not try?’ Kamal replied with a snarl. ‘I reminded you when you returned that you were always his favourite. Do you think I said that to flatter you? Oh, yes, in the early days he was angry enough with you to turn to me, but he made it clear even then that I was second best. He never trusted me. Always, he watched me and questioned me. Always, he made it clear that I was but a poor substitute. And later—’ Kamal broke off abruptly.

‘Later?’ Azhar repeated. His brother shrugged. ‘What happened later?’ Azhar persisted.

Kamal snorted with derision. ‘I thought you might have guessed, since you pride yourself on your astuteness. Didn’t you ask yourself how we knew where to send that summons, Azhar? Didn’t you ask yourself why, when he knew he was dying, our dear father did not summon his nominated heir earlier, why he settled for making me acting Regent instead?’

‘I did ask,’ Azhar said with a horrible sense of premonition. ‘I remember very clearly that I asked you, Kamal, when I first arrived here in Qaryma, why our father insisted the summons was sent after his death.’

‘And I told you that it was because he believed you wouldn’t return while he was alive,’ Kamal replied. ‘Which was true enough, but far from the whole truth. Our dear father knew all about your houses in Europe and Damascus and Cairo. He was so secretly proud of you, his wealthy, successful trader son, he arranged to have bulletins on your progress sent every six months.’

Azhar felt faint. He sat down on the throne, gazing at his brother in disbelief.

Witnessing the effect of his words, Kamal continued with renewed malice. ‘When he became ill he asked me to send for you. I told him that I had done so, and then I am afraid I informed him that your response had been singularly disappointing. You would not come to Qaryma, I told him. You made it clear that you never wanted to see Father again. He was most upset, as you can imagine. And bitterly disappointed.’

Azhar clenched his fists so tightly his nails dug into his palms, drawing blood. ‘So you gave him no choice but to appoint you his Regent, which was your plan all along.’

‘Not quite. My plan was to make him so angry he disowned you completely and named me his heir.’

‘But he didn’t.’ Azhar got to his feet once more. ‘I thought my father bequeathed me Qaryma to punish me for leaving. I see now that he did it to keep the kingdom safe from your treacherous clutches. He knew—or he must have strongly suspected—that you lied about the first summons, why else would he insist the second was made in the presence of Council?’

‘The act of a dying autocrat, no more,’ Kamal protested. ‘He cannot possibly have guessed that I...’

‘...deceived him. He must have,’ Azhar interrupted, his mind racing. ‘To swallow his pride, to be prepared to make the first move to heal the rift between us, my father must have feared greatly for Qaryma’s future at your hands. It must have cost him dearly to be forced to appoint you Regent.’

‘It was my right. It was my right.’

Kamal, fists clenched, expression sulky, took a hasty step forward. Azhar put a restraining hand on his brother’s chest. ‘Attempt to strike me,’ he said with icy calmness, ‘and we will be spared the need to secure the services of an executioner to despatch you for a treasonable act, for I will throttle you myself with my bare hands.’

He would never mete out such draconian punishment, but Kamal did not know that. The colour drained from his face, his knees gave way and he crumpled, prostrate on the tiled floor below the throne, sobbing and begging for mercy, just as the Chief Overseer had done an hour previously.

‘Get up,’ Azhar said, sickened.

‘What will you do with me? I am your brother, your only brother of true royal blood, you cannot possibly mean to...’

But Azhar had had enough. ‘You have brought nothing but shame and dishonour to our royal lineage,’ he hissed, white with fury. ‘I came here willing to overlook your weaknesses, to help you to become the King that Qaryma deserves, and you have done nothing but lie to me, cheat me, deceive me. I came here, Kamal, to give you what you wanted most because I thought you deserved it, and because it is the last thing that I wanted. You have not only done your best to ruin our kingdom, you have destroyed my life in the process. Get out! Get out and do not dare show your face to me again. I will decide your fate when I am ready.’

Kamal hesitated, but whatever he saw in Azhar’s face persuaded him that further pleas for mercy would fall on stony ground. Deliberately refraining from bowing, he turned his back and left the kiosk, head defiantly high. Azhar watched him go, waiting for the door to close behind him, another moment for the garden door to close, and then he slumped down on the throne, dropping his head into his hands. Ten years ago, he had been on the other side of that door when it had slammed shut. Now, he was on the inside. Not just inside but locked inside. For ever.

Chapter Ten (#ub915ee44-d9cc-576a-82bc-32f661f6b28f)

Wearily rubbing her neck and rolling her shoulders, for she had been working since first light, Julia took a sliver of melon from her untouched luncheon tray. Outside, the sky was newly washed by yesterday’s storm, a celestial blue with not a single cloud to mar it. Though she had any number of loose ends to tie up in order to complete Daniel’s treatise, and despite Daniel’s watch ticking away remorselessly, almost reproachfully, Julia decided that she was going to steal some of the remaining time for herself, and start work on capturing the hidden garden in the Fourth Court.

* * *

Half an hour later, bathed and changed into her favourite tunic of lemon muslin, pale-green trousers and matching slippers, Julia turned the key in the door which connected the two gardens. It was like stepping into a perfumed bath, scented by all the familiar flowers and herbs of home, mingling with the exotic, more heady scents of the desert. She closed her eyes, trying to fix every single element in her head in the elusive hope that one day she would be able to recapture it, perhaps even recreate it in a garden of her own. But for the moment she would try to preserve it in watercolours.

Azhar was sitting on a stone bench in the shade of an archway where roses grew in wild profusion. He was staring out over the parapet at the desert, lost in his own thoughts, and did not see her. He was dressed in white silk, his formal robes, though he had cast off his cloak and headdress. His hair, recently cropped, sat like a silk cap on his head, the ruthlessly short cut drawing attention to the sharp planes of his cheeks. The starkness of his beauty stole her breath away, but the bleakness of his expression twisted her heart. Setting her painting equipment on to the path, she stepped lightly forward, joining him on the bench.

‘Julia.’

Azhar put his arm around her, tilting her head on to his shoulder, pulling her tight against him. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest. The soap he used was scented with lemons. Through the silk of his tunic, his skin was warm. Their legs were touching, thigh to knee. She shifted her foot to rest her slipper against his boot, and he stirred, kissing the top of her head, releasing her but only to push back her headdress, to run his fingers through her hair, and then to kiss her slowly, lingeringly, with a hint of desperation, before releasing her a second time.

‘Julia. How did you know I would be here?’

‘I didn’t. I came to paint.’ She smoothed out the frown which furrowed his brow.

‘The first time I showed you this garden—this secret garden—you said you thought it would give my father solace, a private place of refuge. I didn’t understand you then, but I do now.’

‘What has happened, Azhar?’ she asked, already dreading the answer.

He shook his head, the sensuous curve of his mouth turned down in an expression of such pain that she almost couldn’t bear to look at it. ‘Kamal?’ she whispered, taking his hand.

His fingers gripped hers painfully as he nodded. ‘I realised last night that I could put it off no longer,’ he said harshly. ‘That cursed watch I brought you. So little time left to set matters to rights, I thought. And now...’ His voice cracked. ‘Now I have all the time in the world.’

‘You have decided to stay?’

He swallowed hard. ‘I have no choice.’

She listened as he recounted his interview with Kamal, biting back indignant exclamations, while a deep, burning anger at the weak, selfish, unworthy man who called himself Azhar’s brother grew inexorably.

‘He was completely unrepentant,’ Azhar finished. ‘He seemed to think that the diamonds were some sort of legitimate compensation for his regency.’

‘How do you intend to deal with him?’

Azhar shook his head dejectedly. ‘It will bring shame and dishonour to our royal name if I publicly accuse him, and shame and dishonour upon myself if I do not.’