He stares at me, then shakes his head and keeps walking. “You’re so strange.”
In spite of the temperate weather, I’ve sweated through the back of my shirt by the time we cross the medina toward the palatial compound that dominates the city center. The narrow paths are crowded with stalls, chickens wandering between them, occasionally startling with a squawk and aborted attempt at flight. Men with long beards sit on unmarked barrels, drinking black coffee in the shade of the mosque that adjoins the square. As we pass, I peer at a few of the stalls. The goods laid out encompass every conceivable area of commerce—textiles and firearms and whittled flutes and sacks of loose tea leaves on ornate carpets. Gourds strung along the walkways make hollow music against each other whenever brushed. A woman with her face covered is collecting golden oil from a roughhewn stone press. A few vendors, without customers to occupy them, shout prices at us as we pass. One man selling an astonishing variety of seeds, nuts, and dried fruit from baskets so large I could comfortably curl up in any of them starts chattering at me in a language I don’t understand. I feel rude ignoring him, so I give a little wave, but Monty slaps my hand out of the air. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Remember, pirates. Stolen.”
“They’re dates.”
“Pirate dates.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. It’s hard to work out just how dangerous and piratical this city actually is when Monty seems prone to theatrics, but I don’t have enough actual knowledge to judge for myself.
On the other side of the market, we enter the palace through a series of narrow hallways. The passage opens into a breezy courtyard, lined with vaulted colonnades and domed by intricately carved ceilings. The pillars look like soft taffy twisted by children’s hands, and the walls are tiled in green and gold. In the center, a fountain burbles pleasantly, and potted ferns tumble from the upper balconies.
On the opposite side of the courtyard, two men with cutlasses guard a doorway, and though my instinct upon seeing armed soldiers with biceps the circumference of my waist is to go the opposite direction, Monty walks straight up to them with a smile. “Hello, gents.”
If he expected them to recognize him, he must be sorely disappointed.
The taller of the two men says something in a language I don’t understand—couldn’t even identify, but assume it’s the same as what’s written on the city walls—and Monty answers him in French. “We are friends of the Crown and Cleaver. We’re looking for Felicity Montague.”
The guards don’t move. Neither does Monty. Even his smile doesn’t slip. I glance at him, trying to work out what silent standoff is playing out.
The taller guard finally speaks, first in his language, then in French. “Your ink.”
“Yes, I’ve got it,” Monty replies, too loudly.
“I need to see it.”
Monty squints at him. “Do you, though?”
“Does he need a passport?” I hiss to Monty in English. It’s the only relevant ink I can think of.
The guard laughs, and I have a sense he understands me, though he continues in French. “You can show me now, or I can carve our crest into your corpses.”
My heartbeat skips, and I immediately reevaluate just how dangerous this beautiful city is. “Monty—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupts, though he’s still looking at the guard.
“What does he need? Just give it to him!” I’m ready to turn and run should either of these guards even look as though they’re contemplating drawing their cutlasses. What is my sister mixed up in that the first level of access involves armed men throwing around threats about disfiguring our murdered bodies? Why didn’t I ask more questions on the walk here? Though even knowing pirates were involved, How many cutlasses will there be? would never have occurred to me. It also never occurred to me, I realize, to ask Monty for any sort of identification that he is in actuality my brother—suddenly I have a vision of an elaborate con involving leading an unsuspecting English nobleman to a foreign country under false pretenses, then robbing him blind, holding him for ransom, and eventually slitting his throat, all because he was lonely for a family.
It could happen.
The second guard is staring at me now, and I realize how fast I’m breathing, and how little air seems to be getting into my lungs. I’m working myself up again with nothing but my own fictions. God, Adrian, pull yourself together.
Monty glances at me as well, and I must be more obviously falling apart than I thought, for he turns to the guards and says, “All right, yes, fine, here’s my ink.”
To my astonishment—more accurately, horror—my brother then turns his back to the enormous men with very sharp swords and drops his trousers. It’s so presentational and deliberate I’m not sure whether I should look or not. Both guards certainly do. Though less at his buttocks and more at the blue symbol inked there, a crown overtop a blade.
“Finished?” Monty asks without turning around.
“A moment.” Monty has his back to the men and no way of seeing that the guards are no longer staring at his ass and have simply left him peacocking while they laugh behind their hands.
He finally glances over his shoulder, realizes he’s being made the fool, and straightens, pulling his trousers up. “For God’s sake.”
The guards are still laughing, but one of them manages to get out, “Who is it you said you’re looking for?”
“Felicity Montague. She’s under the protection of your commodore. Last we heard, she was living here.”
The guards confer for a moment, then instruct us to stay where we are while one of them disappears through the door.
Monty catches me staring at him as he pulls up his trousers. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I was nineteen, all right?” he says. His neck has gone red. “It seemed funny at the time.”
“I’m nineteen, and I don’t think it’s funny.”
“Yes, well, some of us use bawdy humor as a way of coping with our emotional turmoil.”
He’s still struggling with his buttons when the guard reappears, now with two more men and three women flanking him, all outfitted in similar liveries. It doesn’t look like a welcoming committee—more like a militia. I take a step back without meaning to.
Monty frowns. “What’s going on?”
The tall guard says something in their language, and points between us. Before I understand what’s happening, one of the men has grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back with such force it steals my breath. I try to pull away, but he hooks a foot around my knees and yanks them out from under me. I slam into the ground, my chin striking the mosaic stone. Another guard has a hold of Monty, who is trying to both finish doing up his trousers and resist capture, two activities that are fundamentally incompatible. I lose sight of him as the man holding me grabs my neck, pushing my face into the ground, and another forces a beam over my shoulders. There’s a concave to fit over my neck, and manacles on the ends that they clamp my hands into, and dear God, what sort of medieval nightmare have I fallen into where men with cutlasses chain me to a pillory? They’re going to execute us. They’re chaining us to blocks to chop our heads off.