It was easy, far too easy, to kill and come to enjoy it. Bad enough. But to find sensual satisfaction in the torture of a boy whose greatest sin was stupid honesty—no. There were, Methos thought, limits.
Ah yes, and limits to questioning, too. The aides were finally falling silent.
Free at last.
But King Apophis snapped without warning, “Are you a spy?”
Methos almost fell into the trap of too strong a denial. Instead, he merely smiled. “As I stated when you asked if I was a magician: If I were, what good to admit it? And if I were not, what good to deny it?”
King Apophis snorted. “And as I said, clever. Too clever to be wasted. Go do… whatever for now.” He did not bother adding the obvious: Don’t try to leave Avaris. “I think I will yet find uses for you.”
Only in your fancies, King Apophis, only in your fancies.
Methos bowed, received royal permission to leave, and left.
So now. He’d escaped yet another trap. And he had sowed the seeds of misinformation as best as he could. Time now to take advantage of whatever free time he was allowed and feel out the moods at court.
And in the process, look for some weaknesses that just might be exploited.
“Ha, here you are!”
Methos started at the sudden shout and sharp inner warning of another Immortal, then stifled a sigh. The last person he wished to see right now was Prince Khyan.
But before he could make any excuses, Khyan was propelling a warm, soft body full into his arms, saying, laughing, “Here! A gift!”
Methos drew back enough to see that it was, indeed, a woman who had just been all but thrown at him. A young woman, at second glance, though with the air of someone who had suffered so much she no longer cared about youth or even life. Slender, fine-boned, an Egyptian slave, no doubt. What he could see of her lowered head, the sweet curve of a cheek, implied a lovely face, and Methos gently tipped her head up again with a hand—only to force him self not to make the slightest of starts, the slightest sound of surprise.
Her face had, indeed, been lovely. Once. Now the scar of a badly healed burn scored its angry way down one cheek and on down the side of her throat.
“I know she’s flawed,” Khyan said coarsely, “but not where it matters! Blow out the lamp before you strip her, and you’ll find all that a man needs to find! Trust me, it’s all there!”
Used goods, and damaged as well.
But there was such dull sadness to the woman that he couldn’t mock her, even in thought.
Nor, Methos realized, could he refuse the gift; Khyan would, one way or another, casually kill her, and possibly come after him, too, for the insult.
“I thank you, Prince Khyan,” Methos said with a bow. “Woman, come.”
“That’s right!” Khyan yelled after them. “Try her out! She’s a hard worker, that one!”
The woman flinched ever so slightly, and Methos glanced at her. “I won’t give you back to him,” he said experimentally, and she flashed him a glance of such gratitude that something deep within his being winced.
Oh, I don’t need another complication, I really don’t.
“Enter,” Methos said as they reached his room, and closed the door behind them.
She stood motionless, clearly waiting for the assault.
Methos sighed. “I know what you’re expecting, but I, for one, am not in the mood for an attack. Let’s take this from step one, shall we? I am Methos. You are…?”
“Whatever you wish to call me, lord.”
“Oh no, don’t start that! I don’t like talking to an image. And I don’t think you’re a fool, either.”
“My lord?”
“You surely have a name. Something your relatives—”
“I have none, lord. None living.”
“Ah. Well then, something you call yourself. I am not going to name you like a pet!”
That roused the faintest spark of humor in her eyes. Which were, he noted, now that there was a touch of life to them, really rather lovely. And that scar… well, it wasn’t truly all that terrible.
“I am Nebet, Lord Methos.”
Her voice wasn’t unpleasant, either, low and almost husky. A pity she was a gift from Prince Khyan, and as such probably more dangerous than sweet Tiaa. “And what,” Methos wondered aloud, “am I to do with you?”
Her glance was so startled that he gave a short laugh. “Aside from the obvious, that is.”
“That is for my lord to decide.”
A great deal of simmering hatred lay beneath the docile words. “You were not born a slave,” Methos hazarded.
Another startled glance. “No, my lord. I… had the misfortune of being in the path of a raid by our noble over-lords.”
Careful, my dear. That tone bordered on the treasonous. Not that I would betray you. Certainly not to King Apophis. “And is that where you got—where you were injured?”
“No, my lord. That came after.”
Something not said made Methos ask, “Prince Khyan?”
Nebet would not quite meet his gaze. “He… is touched by the gods, my lord, and does not always see the world as do other men.”
“What did he do, Nebet?”
Her voice was too calm, too controlled. “He thought me a demon. And in his horror at the realization, threw the first weapon that came to hand. It was a lighted oil lamp.” She shrugged. “I lived.”
“I will not return you to him,” Methos repeated, and this time meant it.
Nebet said nothing at first. Then, moving to the bed, she asked flatly, “My lord?”
So very easy to take what was being offered—more so since the thought that she dared not resist added a certain spice…
No. There really are limits, Methos told himself sternly. “You don’t need to—”
“If my lord does as the prince suggested, extinguishes the lamp, he need not see—”
“Just how cruel do you think me?”
But she could hardly know that, or anything else, about him, so instead of arguing, he moved to her side and very, very gently kissed her. For the barest of instants, it was like kissing a statue. Then her lips softened against his.
When Methos stepped back, Nebet stood, eyes shut. “Did you enjoy that, my lord?”
“What—”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Yes!”
“Very well.” Nebet sat down on the bed, staring up at him without blinking. “Now, my lord, will you please extinguish the lamp?”
“No.”
“But, my lord—”
“No, I said! I wish to see what I have here.”
She said nothing more, only continued to stare rigidly at him as she stood again, slid her simple gown off her shoulders, and let it pool on the floor. “There, my lord. Does the sight please you?”
The angry red scar continued down her neck, cruelly marring the smooth roundness of one breast as well. But after the first stunned moment, Methos thought as he had before that these were ugly marks, yes, but not so utterly terrible at that. Not so terrible that a sensible, sane man wouldn’t see beyond the scars to the loveliness that was still there.
Not all her scars, though, were visible. When Methos, not certain what next step to take, reached out to touch her shoulder, he felt her quickly suppressed shiver. And for a moment he wanted to simply turn and walk away from this new, unwanted problem.
Instead, he said, a little more harshly than he’d intended, “I won’t savage you. Dress yourself, woman.”
She grabbed at her gown in a spasm of alarm. “You said you wouldn’t give me back to him.”
“I did. And I won’t.”
Hastily struggling back into the gown, Nebet moved to his side, touching his arm with a chilly hand, one that almost didn’t tremble. “I’m sorry, my lord. I… I have known too much brutality.”
“I’m not blaming you for your life.”
“I know you would be gentle with me; I would like to please you—”
“Nebet,” he said, rather surprising himself at the gentleness suddenly in his voice, “I am… older than I look, and I’ve traveled far enough to have seen some truly terrible sights. Those? No.”
“My lord…?”
“Those are scars, only that. They may change the way some people—shallow people—look at you, but they only touch part of the surface, not the true Nebet. I think that were conditions more normal…”
Methos hesitated, hunting for the proper words, and Nebet finished for him, “Were I not a slave?”
“Precisely. Were that the case, I suspect you’d have had a chance by now to understand what I’m trying to say.”
“I think I do. And I think that the… scars really aren’t so important to you.”
“Oh, Nebet! If you’d seen some of the things I’ve seen—” And done, over the centuries. “No,” he finished shortly, “they are not.”
“And I… I think…” She paused, as though revealing anything from behind the psychic wall she’d built about herself was painful.
“Go on. Speak as you will. I won’t betray you.”
“I think, my lord, that there is more kindness hidden deep within than you would ever admit.”
He flinched. “You know nothing about me.”
“I know what I’ve just seen and heard. You could have taken me, yes, or simply thrown me away. Instead… Come, my lord.” Her hand closed about his, still a little chilly, perhaps, still not quite steady, but decisive in its grip. “Come. Let me learn more of you.”
So be it. Gently, as though unwrapping a precious gift, he drew the gown from her body. Lying on his back, relaxed as much as was possible, he let her be the explorer, her hands tentative at first, then more and more certain, wandering over his lean, sleekly muscled self until at last Methos could no longer endure to lie still. Taking her in his arms, he began to make love to her as slowly and carefully as though she were one of those fragile, all-but-transparent alabaster figurines.
But in the middle of it, she caught him fiercely with arms and legs wrapped about him. “I will not break!” Nebet cried. “Love me, my lord, yes! I will not break!”
Eyes open, he saw her face all at once transformed by passion, turned wild and joyous and free, and his heart caught in his throat at this sudden, wondrous, unexpected beauty.
But later, Methos slept with the proverbial one eye open. Not everyone wanted a reminder that there were such things as joy and freedom out there beyond a slave’s reach. And he was not yet sure if, even after all that tender care, she wasn’t going to try knifing him in the dark.
Instead, he realized after a bit that she was silently weeping.
“Nebet?”
No, she was sound asleep. Weeping in her sleep. “Nebet?” Methos asked again, touching her shoulder. “What is it?”
Her eyes opened. She looked at him blearily, not really quite awake. “Dreaming…” Nebet murmured, “was dreaming… of happiness.”
She fell back into sleep, leaving him staring.
Happiness. The thought that it should be so rare that she would weep over it cut through him like a blade.
You cannot get involved. You must not get involved.
And birds must not fly.
They couldn’t, a dark corner of his mind told him, if their wings were cut off.
I should have stayed in Albion. Stupid, suicidal princes or no, I should have stayed in Albion.
Chapter Fifteen
New York City, Midtown:
The Present
MacLeod glanced at Methos as they made their way down crowded, noisy Third Avenue. “Remembering something?”
“Someone,” Methos corrected. “Someone, in fact, whom I haven’t thought about for… well, let’s just say for one hell of a long time.”
After a few seconds of silence, it became obvious that he wasn’t going to volunteer anything more. MacLeod said only a delicately bland, “Some of us, as I’ve pointed out before, have more to remember than others, Old One.”
“And more to consider. Duncan, Young One, this is a city of, what is it now, over eight million?”
Both eyebrows raised at that “Young One,” MacLeod agreed, “Something like that.”
“Then how do you propose that we find one man, even a man who is one of us, out of all that? Particularly a man the local police, who are far from inefficient, haven’t been able to locate?”
But MacLeod’s attention was suddenly caught by a flash of motion from a storefront—ah, an appliance store, with a television set turned to… “Oh dear God.”
Methos joined him at the store window. “Ah. Another killing.”
“Another two. Look at that.” The news bulletin, with what MacLeod thought of as ultimate ghoulishness, was showing photographs of two smiling young people, a fresh-faced girl and boy, evidently taken from a school yearbook, superimposed over the murder scene. “What were they? Seventeen, maybe? No more than eighteen. Mortal lives are brief enough, but these two—they didn’t even get a chance. What’s next, Methos, babies?”
“Ah, and we’re blaming ourselves for being Immortal, aren’t we? Repeat after me, MacLeod: ‘It’s not my fault.’”
“It is our fault that lunatic’s still out there!”
He heard the softest of impatient sighs from Methos. “No. It is not.”
On the screen, the angry face of the mayor was speaking into the microphones thrust into his face, clearly raging at the police commissioner: “Why hasn’t something been done about this?”
“Something is going to be done,” MacLeod said shortly.
“Whoa. Where are you going?”
MacLeod grinned without humor. “Even Young Ones can pick up some wisdom. Where else does one go in this city to do some solid research? To the New York Public Library.”
“Oh, of course! We’ll just look under Psychotic Killers, comma, Hyksos.”
“We’11 look,” MacLeod said, well aware that Methos had probably already figured out where this was leading, “in the police reports of ritual murders. There has to be some sort of pattern.”
“One that the police haven’t already noticed?”
“How could they?”
Methos blinked, brought up short. “Ah, good point,” he agreed after the briefest of pauses. “How could they possibly know to link the murders to the arrival of one seemingly unspectacular bronze sword in New York? Assuming that said link is there, naturally.”
“Which the dates on those reports will tell us.”
Methos’s wave of a hand was melodramatic. “I yield to your youthful wisdom. Lead on.”
He had given in, MacLeod thought, with amazing speed.
Almost as though he really had already figured all this out. Or perhaps didn’t need to figure it out at all?
And that absolute callousness… granted, Methos had lived so long he must have witnessed every possible aspect of the human psyche. But still… the image of that sweet young girl’s face… how could anyone not be moved by the thought of that poor girl, yes, and her family?
Will I ever grow so utterly indifferent? God no, I refuse to even think that.
But how much might he have already lost of himself in these four hundred years? Yes, and not even have realized it?
I refuse to consider that, as well.
Brave words. But the sense of something not quite right pursued MacLeod all the way down to Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street. There, an unexpected flash of memory conjured up an image of that site as it had looked a hundred years ago. No handsome Beaux Arts building back then, no steps flanked by those two supercilious stone lions. Back then, there had been only the high walls of the city’s main reservoir.
For all I know, Methos remembers this place before anyone built anything at all—assuming that he somehow made it to the New World back in the once-upon-a-time days.
Methos, however, was being his usual enigmatic self, volunteering not a hint. He said nothing as they entered the elegant main hall, nothing as they walked
down the echo ing marble corridor to the main reference desk. There, MacLeod, pouring on the charm, told the dour young woman behind the desk, “My friend and I are writers researching a recent crime story.”
The charm worked enough to force an almost-smile out of her. But she said almost smugly, “Wrong building. You want the Mid-Manhattan branch two blocks south.”
As MacLeod and Methos left, Methos still said not a word. Still, MacLeod could almost feel his amusement. But they entered the Mid-Manhattan branch—a solid, more down-to-earth structure than the main building—without further incident. Working their way through a swarm of earnest students and office workers on research missions, MacLeod and Methos made a brief stop just past the main entrance. There, the row of computers that served as electronic directories pointed them in the right direction: Periodicals, second floor.
And in a remarkably short time, the two of them were seated with a mound of recent newspapers and magazines.
Convenient, MacLeod thought. But then, a great many items in this affair are quickly turning convenient. Maybe even a wee bit too convenient?
At that thought, MacLeod slammed a book shut with more vehemence than he’d intended. Heads turned and Methos made a startled gesture that could only have been an aborted reach for a sword hilt.
“What,” he asked MacLeod, “was that about?”
“Coincidental, isn’t it? A little too coincidental?”
Methos’s face held only a detached amusement. “What is?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just that in this city of over eight million, the one man who has firsthand knowledge of the Hyksos, and a Hyksos Immortal the man just happens to have known three thousand years ago, turn up at the same time.”
“Coincidences are fascinating phenomena, aren’t they? Do you know that if Marcus Antonius—that’s Mark Antony—”
“I know who he is. Methos, is this some sort of plot? Is this, all of this, part of one of your devious plans?”
Methos’s eyes were suddenly utterly cold. “My friend, were I, as you put it, working some vast, intricate plan, I assure you, it would not depend on someone as totally unpredictable and unstable as a psychotic murderer.”
“Which isn’t really an answer.”
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