Free No Brighter Dream: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 3 by Katherine Kingsley Page B

Ali to return.
    The night wore on, and he grew angrier by the hour, swearing that if Ali wanted to be eaten by wolves or whatever hungry predator was out there, it was no concern of his. And if Ali didn’t wish to hear the story of the next constellation on the bedtime list, that was no concern of his either.
    If there was one thing he could not abide, it was an ungrateful, temperamental child.
    Ali barely spoke to Andre over the next three days, she was so annoyed with him. When she did have to speak, it was in short, curt phrases, but he didn’t appear to notice, going about his business in his usual fashion and behaving as if she didn’t exist, which only made her angrier.
    He was an unfeeling monster like his friend Brutus, she told herself, stirring the superb soup she’d made for the evening meal with fish freshly caught in the nearby sea.
    He was cold and insensitive, with not a drop of emotion in his smallest toe. He was … Ali’s head lifted as a commotion in the distance claimed her attention. Two horses rode hard toward the camp, kicking up a great cloud of dust. The camels and cows that had been peacefully grazing in the pasture scattered in alarm.
    She stood, wondering who might be coming in such a fashion as not to respect the grazing rights of the Yourooks.
    A man in European dress pulled up and abruptly dismounted. “Lord Banesbury,” he demanded, and then followed it with something Ali couldn’t understand.
    She bowed respectfully. “I do not speak your language, effendi. I beg your pardon.”
    The second man, who wore white Arab robes, brought a crop down on her shoulders. “Your master, fool,” he said in badly accented Turkish. “Where is he?”
    “He is in the ruins,” she said, fighting back the sudden sting of tears. It had been so long since anyone had beaten her that she’d forgotten how much it hurt. “I can summon him if you wish. Would you take refreshment?”
    The Arab nodded. “Give it first to the lord. He is a very great Englishman, come from Rhodes on the queen’s urgent business.”
    Ali looked at the Englishman. He didn’t look like a great lord to her, certainly nothing like her master, whom one could mistake for nothing else. But she bowed obligingly enough.
    “Effendi,” she said, pouring him ayran, thinned yogurt with a little salt added. He took it without thanks. Ali poured some for the Arab. “Your names, effendi, that I might tell Banesbury?”
    “Tell him Lord Weselley is here. My name is of no matter to you.”
    Ali bowed again and took off at lightning speed, racing past the acropolis, the basilica, making directly for the necropolis, where she knew Andre was working that day.
    “Handray,” she said, pulling up among the standing tombs and sarcophagi, breathing hard from having run all the way up the hill.
    “So, brat. You are speaking to me again,” Andre said, looking up from the inscriptions he was copying. “Now maybe you’d care to tell me what it is that set off your temper?”
    “Never mind that,” she said, still panting. “You have visitors—a great Englishman, his name is Lord Weselley. It is urgent, something about your queen.”
    He frowned. “Oh, God, not Thomas Weselley, of all insufferable people. I suppose he has that damned Syrian with him too.”
    “His companion is an Arab of some sort, yes.”
    Andre swore fluently under his breath, and Ali sighed. She was beginning to think she was never going to break him of the habit.
    “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it,” Andre said. “Damn!”
    “You do not like him, Handray? I am glad, for I do not like him, either.”
    “I loathe him,” Andre replied, abandoning his task. “He, Ali, is precisely the sort of English person I cannot abide. But he’s an historian too, and works with the same people I work with, so I’m forced on occasion to tolerate him.”
    “Is he a great lord?” she asked. “His servant says he is, but I do not think so, myself.”
    “He is what is