Free The Book of the Seven Delights by Betina Krahn Page A

horse.
    "Mount up—move!"
    She apparently didn't react quickly enough; she was picked up by the waist and practically thrown onto a hard wooden saddle on the nearest horse. When she righted herself, Haffe handed her a set of reins and Smith smacked the rear of her mount to set it in motion. As the horse lurched, she was thrown back and barely grabbed the pommel to hold on for dear life.
    "My bags!" she called over her shoulder.
    Smith's only response was to shoot past her on his mount and lean down to grab her horses' bridle and pull it into a run.
    Behind them, Legionnaires burst out onto the balcony just in time to see their horses disappear into the gloom, and faceless predators on three different housetops sounded the alarm that their quarry was on the run.
    Shouts and gunshots spurred Smith and Abigail through the narrow, still, darkened streets. When she managed to lift her gaze, she saw the upper floors of the buildings beginning to glow with the first rays of morning sun; dawn had arrived. From mosques and minarets all over the city, a siren of voices began a haunting and already familiar call to the faithful. Her perception became a gritty kaleidoscope of shape and color as dust boiled up from the horses' hooves. Here and there, they passed through widened intersections setting shopkeepers and peddlers scattering for cover and food sellers with carts and unlit braziers careening out of the way.

    The thought kept drumming through her head that the die was cast; she would be his accomplice now in the eyes of the French Foreign Legion, even though all she had done was allow herself to be pushed out a window and dropped down a rope of bedsheets onto a horse.
    What choice had she had? They were watching her .all of them… Legionnaires… thieves…
    adventurers… cutthroats…
    That was when she saw it: the British flag, hanging from the iron grille of a street-side gate just ahead.
    Reaching for the security it represented as a man in the desert reaches for the shimmer of water on the horizon, she straightened in her saddle and pulled back on the reins. She looked back. That had to be the Consulate! It took some tugging on the reins and flapping her heels against the horse's sides to make it turn, but she was soon back at the flag-draped gate, grabbing and rattling the ironwork.
    "Hello in there! Open up—it's an emergency!"
    A turbaned fellow in a long, hooded cotton tunic headed for the gate.
    "This is the Consulate, yes?" she called as he headed for the gate. "Is this the British Consulate?" When he nodded and repeated "British Consulate," she nearly melted. "I'm from the British Museum! Let me in—quickly—please!"
    As the heavy wood and wrought iron gate swung open, she kicked her mount and it shot into the small courtyard of the consul's residence. The man swung the gate closed behind her, then hurried over to help her down.
    "I must see the Consul straightaway—it's vital," she said, handing off her horse's reins. He answered her in a mixture of English and a Berber dialect, bowing and gesturing to the front doors.
    "Inside, ma'am. Inside."
    There was no doorman at the front entrance; no one to admit or greet her. The great wooden doors opened easily, despite their massive weight. She found herself in a tiled loggia that surrounded an inner courtyard. She called, "I've come on urgent business," and, "I must see the Consul straightaway," but received no reply.
    Stepping into the dawn-shaded court at the center of the house was literally stepping into an oasis for the senses. Lush trees and flowering shrubs were grouped around stone benches and beds of blooming flowers and trellises of vining jasmine surrounded a marble fountain that sat at the juncture of paved paths. The trickling water sounded almost musical. The noise and danger of the streets seemed a million miles away.
    An unreal and somewhat disorienting sense of calm continued as she wandered down what seemed to be the main corridor of the loggia,