Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air

by Melissa Scott

  “Not that I think Floyd’s going to care,” Alma said. “He needs to sell a bunch of them if he doesn’t get that government contract.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  Lewis blinked. “The count?”

  “No, Floyd! Of course I mean the count.”

  Lewis shrugged, still keeping his arms around her. “I don’t really have an opinion. I don’t know anything about him. Why?”

  “No funny feelings?”

  “No.”

  Alma sighed, leaning harder against him, and he shifted to take her weight. “He’s up to something. I’m sure of that.”

  “Probably. Most of these guys are — they’ve got something they want from the show.” Lewis kissed the smooth skin of her neck. “And he doesn’t know what to do with a woman who runs her own company.”

  Alma breathed a laugh. “Ok, you got me. That was annoying. But he got better.”

  “He’d better.” Lewis kissed her neck again, following the tendon down to the pale and faintly freckled skin of her shoulder.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “Don’t worry.” Lewis brought his hands up, cupping her breasts, and she made a small pleased sound, then turned so that she could kiss him properly, gloved hands winding around his neck, then dropping to loosen his tie.

  “Bed?”

  “Bed.”

  Alma smiled and turned so that he could work the zipper of her gown. Lewis tugged it down, and she let it fall to puddle at her feet, leaving her in stockings and garter belt, and brassiere, with the gloves and high heels looking sexier than any pin-up girl. Lewis drew a breath, shrugging hastily out of jacket and vest, and Alma rolled one glove and then the other down below her elbow. She tugged them off finger by finger, the thin leather clinging, and Lewis shrugged out of his suspenders. Alma took a step backward, still smiling, settled on the edge of the bed and reached down to unbuckle her right shoe. It was suddenly too much, more than he could bear to wait another minute, and he stepped quickly over her dress, hands on her shoulders to press her back against the covers.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, spreading her knees, and reached for his buttons. She drew him down to her, smothering any sound he might have made in kisses.

  Alexandria, Egypt

  December 28, 1935

  Jerry woke in the hour before dawn. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was, and then it returned to him. He was sleeping beside Willi in his bed because he’d given Iskinder his room. And with that thought alarm crowded in — had something happened? Had Iskinder called out? Had the door to the apartment opened?

  Jerry propped himself up on one elbow, reaching for his glasses. The flat was quiet. Beside him Willi slumbered on. Whatever sound had waked him had been so quiet or so benevolent seeming that it had not disturbed him. Music. It had been faint music, like a radio out in the street. The bedroom window was cracked, but it opened over the alleyway. Jerry sat up cautiously, reaching for his artificial leg and strapping it on in the dark with the ease of long practice. Willi didn’t stir.

  He pulled his pajama leg down over stump and leg and got up carefully, listening at the door to the living room before he opened it. Silence. He opened the door. Everything was quiet, no light leaking beneath the drawn shades at the window. The door was firmly locked. Jerry tried the door to his own bedroom and it opened easily. Iskinder was sleeping in his bed, his soft breathing audible as his chest rose and fell. Jerry closed the door carefully.

  What had waked him? What music? He went to the living room window and opened the shade and then the sash, letting the quiet of the Alexandrian night sweep over him. There was a faint breeze, and it seemed to him that it brought the scent of roses, though there were none he knew of that grew near.

  Music in the street, as of a procession…

  That was Plutarch. On the night before the last battle, Antony dreamed of a procession, the god departing Alexandria with flute and tambour.

  A chill ran down his spine. Was this what he dreamed then? Some fantasy gleaned from old histories of the city, old portents of doom awakened by the pectoral ornament? And yet this was not that. This was not doom. It did not frighten. Perhaps it was not doom, but calling.

  Jerry stood in the window looking out at the night. Above the rooftops Orion hung with his belt of light, the stars of winter shining brightly. Sirius the dog star gleamed, Sothis whose rising had heralded the turning of the year to ancient Egyptians. Almost he heard the faintest thread of music wafting with the scent of roses on the breeze, as though they were not dead gods in old books, spirits long departed, but living. In this moment, all was real.

  Jerry folded his hands at his breast in prayer. Agathos Daimon, he said silently, Spirit of the City, do I blaspheme to seek the Soma?

  Not you, his heart replied. Never you.

  Willi went out to the bakery and returned with croissants as flaky and buttery as any in Paris. By the time he got back Jerry had made coffee and Iskinder was awake, sitting at the little table in Jerry’s dressing gown. Without his usual impeccable suits the changes in him were even more evident, and Jerry frowned into his coffee. “We have to figure out what to do with you,” he said to Iskinder.

  Iskinder smiled. “As though I were a misdirected parcel? No, my friend, my work is clear. I must contact the warehouse owner that my emperor arranged to take delivery of the guns no matter how dangerous that may be. And it will be dangerous. I was attacked in Cairo and my companion was killed.” He took a drink of his coffee. “I came to you because of my other charge, and I will leave that item with you. I’d like for you to take it out of the country and keep it safe for me.”

  Willi and Jerry spoke at the same time. “Other charge?” Willi asked.

  “That’s impossible,” Jerry said.

  Iskinder put his head to the side. “Why?”

  “I’m an archaeologist with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My bags will be checked and I will be too when I depart — checked carefully — because of the history of artifact smuggling. Egypt has cracked down on archaeologists and foreign museums treating Egypt as their personal treasure hunting playground. It’s happened too often and too egregiously. Millions of dollars of treasures have been carried out of Egypt illegally, not to mention thousands of critical artifacts. There is no way in the world I am getting on a ship with that pectoral in my luggage! And if I’m caught trying to smuggle it out, do you think anyone will believe the wild story that an Ethiopian prince gave it to me out of the goodness of his heart rather than that I found it in Alexandria? It’s a Ptolemaic pectoral! If I’m caught trying to take it out of the country at the very least it will be the end of my career.”

  “A Ptolemaic pectoral?” Willi asked.

  “It belongs to the Ethiopian government,” Jerry said. “Iskinder is trying to keep it out of Italian hands.” He shook his head. “No, it’s going to have to stay in Alexandria. In a bank vault, would be my choice. It can stay there until this is over.”

  “A bank vault is no safety if Egypt falls to the Italians,” Iskinder said.

  “Egypt is a British protectorate.”

  Iskinder met Jerry’s eyes steadily. “Do you truly think that is going to mean anything?”

  “That’s unthinkable,” Jerry said.

  “Is it?”

  “That means another Great War. I can’t imagine…” But he could. He could imagine. It was an alarmist fever dream, an impossible, horrible worst case scenario that defied logic. Yes, there would be skirmishes, border incidents between great powers and small, but not another war like the War to End All Wars. Certainly not anytime soon. The peace that followed the Napoleonic Wars had lasted nearly a century. Surely the peace following the Great War could do better than fifteen years!

  Iskinder was watching him, an expression both abstracted and compassionate on his face. “Jerry, the war has already started. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Willi said. “Yes, H
itler is a saber-rattler. But his government isn’t going to last more than another year or so. They’re crazy! You do not even know what bizarre theories they put forth in archaeology! All of the world’s great civilizations were founded by a bunch of Aryan supermen from Tibet who had supernatural powers. It’s insane. Any minute this house of cards they are building will collapse and we will be back where we were. And yes, that is not pretty. We have the Depression and unemployment and inflation and all the rest. But the world will not change. Things like that do not happen. Massive empires like the British Empire take centuries to build and centuries to end. The idea that the Italians will waltz into North Africa, or for that matter that Germans will, is absurd. The British Empire is a fact of life. Hundreds of years — yes, perhaps you will sell me that in five hundred years being a British protectorate will mean nothing. But it is the largest and most powerful empire the world has ever known.”

  “So was Persia,” Jerry said. A chill touched his back like a cold hand. “And it collapsed in ten years.” Here, in Alexandria, he could not ignore that truth. “And the cities that had been Persian protectorates for centuries were cast adrift to make their way in the new world that followed.”

  “In thirty years there will be no colonial empires,” Iskinder said. “Do you not see what is happening in India?”

  “Protests, yes. Some agitation. But India has been rebelling over and over since the 1750s. What makes you think they will succeed now?” Willi said.

  “Because there will be no troops to spare to quell it,” Iskinder said. “These empires European powers have built in Africa will crumble. And that is why Ethiopia is important in the grand scheme of things. We are the last independent black African nation. We are the last sovereign people. If we endure, we are a model for all those to come, a stable center. And if we fall, the way forward will be much more difficult, not just for us but for all the peoples of Africa.” He looked at Jerry. “This is the first struggle in a very great battle and I do not think I will see the end of it. But I have sworn that this ornament will not go to Rome as spoils of war. I need you to keep it safe for me.”

  “I will keep it safe,” Jerry said slowly. “I have no idea how yet. But I promise I will do it.”

  There seemed no choice but to leave Iskinder in the flat while he and Willi went to work, as little as Jerry liked that. Iskinder couldn’t come with them, and given that they’d found the Roman street the day before, Jerry had to be there and the dig had to go on. If he did anything else it would be terribly suspicious.

  “You must go,” Iskinder said, “or you will call attention by your absence. I do not think anyone following me saw us last night, and they have no reason to think that I know you. I will be safe enough here today.”

  “With my pistol,” Jerry said.

  Iskinder grinned, something of his usual humor in his face. “I won’t say no to that!”

  “Be careful,” Jerry said.

  “Believe me, I mean to be,” Iskinder replied. “I intend to spend the day lying low. I will not go out or even look out the window.” He took the pistol from Jerry.

  “You could probably use the rest,” Jerry said.

  “What, just because I have been hunted from Aswan to Alexandria? Child’s play, old man!” Iskinder laughed, and Jerry thought that he was considerably heartened by friendship, even if so far Jerry had done nothing to actually improve his situation.

  “We’ll bring in dinner,” Willi said.

  “I shall be as quiet as the proverbial mouse,” Iskinder promised.

  The morning was clear and cool, not quite sixty degrees, under a blue sky seamed with a few high clouds, a good day for flying. Jerry tipped his hat back, looking up. And there he was thinking like an aviator rather than an archaeologist. He’d spent more time than he ever imagined around flyers since he’d taken up with Gil nearly twenty years ago now, and though Gil was long dead those friendships remained. He hoped Alma and Mitch were having a good time at the airshow in Italy. Alma had sounded so pleased and excited in her last letter, bubbling her love of the Catalina flying boat she was going to show for Consolidated. Jerry hoped everything went off perfectly. Nobody deserved happiness and success more than Al.

  Young Mohammad Hussein was just unlocking the fence when they arrived. “Good morning, doctors,” he said cheerfully. “Trench four this morning?”

  Jerry nodded. “Trench four all the way down to the level of the Roman street we found yesterday. Let’s see if we have more street or if we’re on one side or the other of it.”

  Hussein put the keys back in his pocket and swung the gate open. “It’s going to take a while. Trench four is less than a meter deep right now.”

  “Then it does,” Jerry said. “And it might be worthwhile to take trench three down too, just to the south of trench four. If we’re into the block itself, that should put us a good ten meters from the street, and so into the interior of whatever building faced it.”

  Willi shook his head. “How very convenient that these people laid everything out in nice neat blocks to fit your grid!”

  “They did, actually,” Jerry said. “We even know who did it. An architect named Dinocrates of Rhodes laid Alexandria out between 331 and 325 BC, and he used a regular grid with streets intersecting at right angles, with large avenues comparable to Haussmann’s Paris boulevards to carry main traffic through the city. The first Ptolemy, Ptolemy Soter, built to Dinocrates’ plan. There was some variation in later years, some irregularity introduced by parks and by the Bruscheum wall, but basically Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria was built as a series of square blocks. So if we can orient ourselves to Dinocrates’ plan, we can make very educated guesses about where things are.”

  “Sadly that does not work with everything,” Hussein said. “Or there are many treasures we would already have found.”

  Willi looked at Jerry, one eyebrow quirking, but said nothing.

  “If this street is the one that ran either in front of or behind the Pylon of Isis, we can get an idea from trench three,” Jerry said to Hussein.

  He nodded. “If it’s a building, then we’re on the wrong side of the Roman street. We’re in the building facing the pylon.”

  “Exactly,” Jerry said. “So that’s the workmen’s priority today.”

  Jerry spent the entire morning pacing. There were, after all, no artifacts to examine from the deepening trenches except for a broken clay pipe belonging to the Mameluk period. Eight hundred years old, it might have warranted a second glance if it had been found anywhere besides Egypt. In Egypt that was practically yesterday. It went into a neatly labeled box to contribute to the stratigraphy of the site, but that was all.

  The noon break was wearing away when Willi came up. “I have been thinking,” he said, “that if you do not need me right away I might go to the European grocer while they are open. Of course if that is inappropriate…” He spoke in full hearing of the workmen and Hussein, like a man who is profoundly bored with his work and wishes to find an excuse to slack for an hour or two, but his meaning was clear. He would check on Iskinder and take him some lunch.

  “I suppose,” Jerry said, trying to sound like a boss who knows a man means to slack but can think of no good reason to refuse the request. “But come straight back afterwards.”

  “Of course,” Willi said, and tipped his hat. “I’ll be back soon.”

  It did make him feel better to know that Willi was checking on Iskinder, Jerry thought, sitting down in the shade again as the workmen got up from their lunches and started back to trenches three and four. He propped his leg up on a box. It had done him no good to pace. Patience was a virtue in this work…

  “Dr. Ballard!” Hussein called, taking his hat off and waving it from the far side of trench three. “You will want to come here!”

  Jerry got up as fast as was practical. He heard the scrape of the shovels on stone. “Is it the Roman street?” If so, that meant it was a north/south street rather than an east/west one, and that
meant there were four possible directions they should be digging in…

  “I do not think so,” Hussein said, bending over the trench. “It is too high.”

  At least two feet higher than the Roman street, and more like three, Jerry thought, stumping to the edge of the trench. And the sound of metal on stone was different. “Switch to trowels,” he said, wishing he could climb down and do it himself.

  Hussein seemed to have read his thought, as he did so eagerly, smoothing away the dirt from the surface with his hands. There were no squared corners, no space between cobbles, just a rough, broken surface of granite, the slightly pinkish granite from Aswan that the Ptolemies had brought at great expense down the Nile for monuments and foundations.

  “Something large,” Jerry said aloud. “A broken door frame or a lintel or…”

  “…or a broken pylon,” Hussein said, looking up with a grin.

  “Clear to the edges,” Jerry said, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Let’s see if there’s a polished face with an inscription.”

  It was late afternoon before they found an edge. By that time the general shape of the block had become apparent, a wedge of broken stone roughly three meters across, cracked along a natural fracture. Hussein had helped Jerry down into the trench, something he hated to ask for, but he hated far more to stand on the sidelines unable to touch his find. Hussein, for his part, had not commented on Jerry’s infirmity. He was a very polite young man, unlike the graduate students Jerry had supervised in Hawaii the previous summer who had been overbearing to the local workmen and dismissive of him.

  He surveyed the broken surface, then wiped his forehead on a pristine handkerchief produced from his coat pocket. “What do you think broke the granite this way, Professor Ballard?”

  “Earthquake, I should think,” Jerry said. He ran his hand over the rough stone, black and silver veins running through pink rock, a truly beautiful stone and difficult to cut because of its hardness. “There were several that damaged Alexandria in the late Roman period.”