by Anna Butler
The antiquities shop was in a distant corner of the Khan el-Khalili, far inside the tangle of twisting, narrow alleys. By the time we emerged, dusk had fallen over the city and filled the alleyway with a plum-purple twilight. Most of the shops opted for old-fashioned brass lanterns rather than aether globes, and the wavering candles inside barely touched the gloom. Before we entered the shop, the cramped lanes had been crowded with a few tourists and many local people in their traditional garb: galabeyyas for the men and billowing black chadors, like draperies, for the women. Now the alley was empty.
As we passed a sweetmeat store, the owner slammed closed the shutters inside, a booming clash of wood against stone. My heart gave a great bound in my chest, and every sense was heightened. Hushed voices sounded behind the shutters, and the smell of honey, cardamom, and caramel seeped out to fill the alley with sweetness.
Todd’s head had whipped around at the sound. He had his pistol in his hand. He scowled at me. “This isn’t right. Stay alert. And stay close.”
“Trouble?” I shifted the lantern box to my left shoulder and pulled my pistol from its holster, thumbing it on. The aether chamber glowed blue-green.
“Something’s coming our way.” Todd’s gaze darted around at the gathering shadows between the shops where the alley intersected with crisscrossing lanes, and his obvious readiness prompted a little knot to curl in my stomach and lie heavy as lead. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We started down the lane. We walked quickly, but didn’t run. In the near distance came a rushing sound with a soft pounding underneath it. It grew louder. Closer.
The lead weight in my gut twisted and curled some more.
“Get ready to use that gun,” Todd said, terse but calm. “Wait till I tell you.”
We were at a crossroads when they came at us, boiling out of the shadows of the intersecting alley, whirling and spinning.
Dervishes.
I reacted without thought, turning in a flash to face them coming at me, Todd at my back. Behind the crowd, a man’s voice was raised in a chanted prayer. The dervishes didn’t appear to notice that we were there and for an instant—only a few seconds really, though it felt like long minutes—they spun past us, jostling and crowding in, whirligigs with billowing robes, eyes half-closed and arms outstretched for balance.
I was pushed and prodded at as they went past in a haze of faces. The slap-slap-slap of their slippered feet on the rough pavement and the voice of the singer echoed in my ears, in a cycling cadence of booming and fading, booming and fading. I half turned to be aligned with the flow of bodies, and lost my balance against their gyratory rushing when something hot prodded me hard in the left arm. I whirled myself then, leaping a small step to one side to steady myself again, breath coming hard and fast. The hair on my neck lifted as cold ice washed over me.
Beside me, Todd yelled, shooting his pistol into the air. The aether and phlogiston ignited with a roar of white flame that exploded the darkness into a lightning flash so bright it hurt the eyes. And then the crowd was past us, across the junction of alleyways, rotating and dancing up the one opposite from where they’d entered.
My chest heaved, aching to get some air into it. I just couldn’t catch my breath. They’d been close. So close. That noise… that odd whooshing noise in my ears… as if I’d pressed a seashell to my ear, washing in a rushing tsunami of sound. Another breath pulled in against the thumping behind my ribs. And another. And my eyes, my damned damaged eyes, suddenly so acute that my mind replayed every detail they’d seen: the billowing dark robes with flashes of colored cotton beneath, scarlet and blue and green, the odd, flowerpot-shaped felt hats, the quiet ecstasy on the dancers’ smooth faces, the glint of cold silver.
I’d dropped the box of lanterns when the crowd had rushed at us. Lucky, that. When everything went a bit wavery and the warmth running down my left arm dripped red from the tips of my fingers, the box was very handy as a seat.
I sat down before I fell down.
Chapter 18
“THIS IS El Khawaga Pasha, Captain, the head of the Khedive’s security service.” Todd stood aside and allowed the man closer to my bed.
It was the day after our little adventure in the souk. The previous evening I had been thrust into my bed at Shepheard’s Hotel and told to stay there until further notice. Both Todd and the doctor he’d called to the hotel had insisted I take it easy for a day or two.
“You are a very lucky man.” Doctor Elserafie had made neat work of stitching the six-inch long knife slash on my upper left arm, once Todd had deactivated and removed the armband Sam had put in place. “You lost too much blood. You could have bled to death. A day or two to rest and regain your strength is little enough to pay to have survived.”
The knife hadn’t been used in a slashing motion, to injure, but had been a stab at my chest. I had turned at just the right moment. The blade meant for my heart had punched into the metallic armband instead and, deflected, had skidded up my arm to my shoulder with some force, laying the flesh open almost to the bone. I was bloody lucky it had been an old-fashioned steel blade and not a photonic knife. That would have taken my arm off.
Lucky. The Lancaster Luck.
Todd had stanched the blood while blowing a police whistle so loudly that three panicky Aegyptian policemen had come at a run from three different alleyways. After that, my memories were hazy—an odd tremor affecting my arms and legs, my heels tap-tap-tapping on the ground, a confused montage of tumbling images, faces looming up at me out of fog, voices waxing and waning as if someone were playing with the volume control on a Marconi device. The voices, Todd’s especially, vibrated with anger, and the faces were grave with concern. I remember Todd shouting, then pressing a pad against my arm despite my complaints that it bloody well hurts, damn it! and stop that! Todd getting me to my feet and hauling me off to a nearby alley, as far as they could get the Khedive’s autocar into the souk, Todd bracing me against every stumble as I floundered along. Todd had been the proverbial strong tower, even when, as he said later, I’d irritated him to death by demanding that someone bring along the box of lanterns. I didn’t remember being so insistent, but since the box was currently sitting in a corner of my hotel room, I could only assume Todd was a truthful and tolerant man.
The Pasha—thin, elegant, and, as I discovered in the course of our discussion, a graduate of Cambridge—had oversight of the investigation. He greeted me with civility, conveying the Khedive’s greetings and apologies, although the latter were offered in the rather cold, reserved tone that suggested every atom of the humiliation great men feel when forced to say sorry to the lower orders. Noblesse oblige and all that. Sticks in the craw, some days.
“His excellency, the Khedive, has taken the attack on you as a personal affront, Captain,” he said after our first polite exchange of courtesies. “He has commissioned me to find the malefactors. You can have every confidence in our commitment to bringing them to punishment.”
Gratifying, I was sure.
He viewed the wound and frowned at the line of stitches up my arm. The bruise where the knife had hit with such force was a spectacular deep maroony purple in the shape of the armband, shading down to Prussian blue at shoulder and elbow. He listened carefully to my recollection of the “incident,” as he called it, and then questioned me on every detail of what I remembered. His definition of questioned, you understand, classified putting a man to the rack as a gentle inquiry. He was very polite about it.
“It is as Mr. Todd told me last night, Captain Lancaster, when you were sleeping,” the Pasha said when we’d gone over it all twice. “A few more details, perhaps, of your assailants that you noticed and he did not, which is as I would expect. No two men see exactly the same thing.”
“Were they real Sufi dervishes?” I asked. “I understood the sect is generally very peaceable.”
He held out one hand, palm down, and tilted it from side to side. “We do not yet know, Captain. Dervish procession
s and ceremonies are common enough, and if they were real, it’s likely they were on their way to a place where they could dance a full tanoura, a Sufi observance. The difficulty is, as you suggest, they do not usually harbor violent attackers in their midst. However, there are other considerations. It is not unknown for the few remaining Urabis, for instance, to hide themselves in crowds to cause trouble. Do you know of them?”
I nodded. The Imperium had crushed the Urabi nationalist uprising almost twenty years before, the last attempt of Aegypt to free itself of European influence. The country had been quiet ever since, with only small, isolated incidents that might be classified as rebellion.
“Well, then, you will understand that some still remain, nursing hopes and grievances. A tanoura gives them, or any other malcontent, opportunity for evildoing while eyes are elsewhere, focused on the dervishes. And a European visitor such as yourself… well, that makes you a target.”
That was not quite so gratifying.
When the Pasha had departed with more polite expressions of concern and esteem, carrying my respectful greetings back to his master and promising to keep us apprised of progress with his investigation, I turned to Todd. “Did you get any sense of being watched?”
“No.” Todd pulled a chair up to my bedside and made himself comfortable. For all that, one hand stayed on the grips of his aether pistol. “Did you?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t noticed anything untoward. Conscious that I was in a strange place amid strange sights and an unknown people? Yes, of course, and enjoying every moment of that. But not that I was an object of scrutiny above and beyond the interest they’d have in any other foreigner, not that I was a target.
I curled my hands into the bedcovers and sank back on the piled-up pillows behind me. My arm throbbed and ached. I tensed right up to try and still it, but the shaking was deep in my bones.
Todd frowned. “I called Mr. Hawkins last night. He was a bit put out at the news.”
We grimaced at each other in mutual commiseration. A “put out” Sam Hawkins would make Genghis Khan think twice and tiptoe back to Mongolia.
“We’ve kicked security up a notch. I’ve got a couple of our men on the door outside. No one gets in past them without we know who it is and why they’re here.”
I scowled down at my lap and shuffled to make myself more comfortable against the pillows behind my back. “I can’t imagine why anyone would attack me as me, if you see what I mean. The Pasha’s probably right that it was a random blow at the Imperial oppressor.” I made myself relax against the pillows. Todd tutted between his teeth and pulled the bedcovers up higher. “I’m really quite warm, Todd. I just can’t stop shaking.”
“You’ll be fine when you get some sleep. The doctor said the blood loss would make you a bit light-headed for a day or two. Maybe I should have made his nibs wait until tomorrow. He was a bit insistent-like.”
My laugh sounded too shaky, damn it. “I didn’t know that it felt like this to be a target.” I disentangled one hand from the covers. It trembled. “It’s not like I should be one, the way that Ned… Professor Winter, I mean, is. He’s important. I’m not.”
“That reminds me. Mr. Edward wasn’t very happy either. He didn’t yell.” Todd looked pained, grimacing as if he had a stomachache. “Wish he had. He sounded just like his father. And you never, ever want the Gallowglass mad with you, Captain, believe me.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“I’m not exactly smelling of roses here. I let you get damaged.”
“I’d have bled to death if you hadn’t been there. Did I say thank you? Because I know exactly how much I owe you, Todd, and I am deeply in your debt.”
Todd sighed. “It’s my job, sir, and it doesn’t outweigh letting you get stabbed in the first place. Never mind. I’ll be delivering you back to Abydos in one piece or dying in the attempt. Mr. Edward was quite clear on that point.” He gave me a toothy grin. “Try to stay alive, Captain. I really don’t want to disappoint Mr. Edward again.”
It was nice that Ned was concerned about me. Heartwarming. I lay back and allowed that shy little organ to bask in the thought that I was loved. I didn’t particularly like being knifed by passing assassins, but I could very much live with being loved by Ned Winter. That made a lot of things worthwhile.
Slowly the shivering eased off. Loss of blood. Yes, that would do as an explanation.
I DIDN’T return to Abydos until the morning of Christmas Eve, two days later than planned.
Doctor Elserafie had insisted on a few days of rest and recuperation and was most reluctant to allow me to fly back with one arm out of commission. He repeated this advice on Christmas Eve, not long after the Cairo dawn was signaled by the call to prayer being tunefully wailed from a nearby minaret, warbling its way into my room through the shutters.
“It was cut, not bloody amputated! It won’t kill me to fly.” I jerked my head at Todd, indicating the door. “We’re going this morning. Get our stuff.”
Elserafie took two rapid steps backward, miming consternation and alarm and holding up his hands. Heart of a lion, obviously, when faced with a little firm dissent from his patients. Todd, however, merely nodded and smiled at the doctor in a way that was far more ferocious than my little growl.
The good doctor had tutting in disapproval down to a T. He checked the stitches in my arm, rewrapped the wound with fresh bandages, sighed heavily, and conceded that there was no sign of infection. So long as I kept the wound clean and dry, wore a sling, and had someone take out the stitches in ten days, I should be fine. He then washed his hands of me, literally and metaphorically, and departed with his dudgeon somewhere in the stratosphere and only slightly mollified by the prompt payment of his bill.
“All the same,” Todd said, collecting all my belongings onto the bed while I struggled to get dressed one-handed. “I was thinking of borrowing the Khedive’s motor launch and taking you back to Abydos in that.”
I am sorry to say that I rolled my eyes so hard I gave myself a headache. “Good Lord, by the time this expedition leaves Aegypt, that poor man will be sitting in his empty palace in his second-best pair of drawers and thanking heaven you at least left him his smalls.”
“They wouldn’t fit. Probably wouldn’t work out anyway… no. It would take a couple of days to get upriver, and I’m not happy about leaving the two-seater here. If we have to get everyone up to Abydos in a hurry, we’ll need it to get you back here to fly the Brunel.” He hefted the baggage onto a porter’s trolley. “Let’s go, then. The sooner we get there, the sooner Mr. Edward can take over nursemaiding you.”
“You’re coming with me to Abydos?”
“I was told to deliver you, personal-like.” Todd signaled to the two Gallowglass guards who’d spent the past three days sitting outside my hotel room door. They collected the bags and packages, then led the way down to the hotel lobby, looking reassuringly hard and competent. “I’m likely to get my head handed to me on a platter when we get there, but hook or crook, Captain, you’ll get back to Abydos in one piece.” He glanced at me and grinned. “Provided you don’t crash us on the way there.”
I was very tempted to forget to tell him to fasten his seat belt, then loop the loop somewhere around Beni Mazar. See how smug he’d be then, trying to fly on his own.
EVERYONE… WELL, everyone who mattered, was waiting at the landing strip when we arrived just after lunch.
Ned threw aside any idea of discretion and enveloped me in a massive hug the instant I got out of the two-seater. I considered yelping, quietly, because my arm was rather sore, but seriously, a hug from Ned or making a manly fuss over a little pain? I hugged him back.
“Oh, Rafe, Rafe.” He held me so close I could feel his heart beating, and his breath was hot against my ear. He trembled more than an old man struck with palsy. “I thought…. Oh, Rafe, I was so frightened when Todd called….”
“I’m fine. Really. It wasn’t that serious.”
“Huh.” He tighten
ed the hug and gave me a little shake before stepping back, smiling. His smile looked strained.
Ned was replaced by Hugh. He was very pale, and although he didn’t hug me, I rather got the impression he wanted to. He raised his arms as if to essay an embrace, but he let them fall again. His gaze raked over me from head to foot instead. His sigh was audible. “At least you aren’t covered in more bandages than one of Mr. Edward’s mummies. We didn’t know what to expect.”
In other circumstances I might have rolled my eyes. But that would be circumstances where this gratifying, caring reception didn’t come from people I was, well, fond of. Instead I said, “It probably sounded worse than it was. I’m going to have a very interesting scar, though.”
I’m not sure that was as reassuring as I intended. Both Ned and Hugh grimaced, and the intense stare Sam Hawkins had trained on me from the instant my feet touched the ground deepened into a black scowl.
Todd cut in just then. “We think the captain turned side-on just as the knifeman struck. The blade hit his security armband, Mr. Hawkins, and that absorbed most of the damage.”
A tactical error, drawing attention to himself like that. Sam turned the scowl on him, and Ned was ice personified. Todd, his expression suddenly blank, came to attention, his gaze fixed on the cliffs on the far horizon.