Tomb of the Sun King, page 25
part #2 of Raiders of the Arcana Series
Or was something else going on?
Ellie had caught on to Jacobs’ tension and hesitation as well. She shot Adam a puzzled glance, even as she looked ready to dive behind the sun altar with Sayyid.
“Ya Reis?” Al-Saboor the First prompted with an uneasy look at his boss.
Before Jacobs could answer, the shadows in the antechamber came to life.
Black-cloaked forms spilled from behind piles of ruined stone. Others leapt down from the lower portions of the sun chapel walls. One of the first to appear spun from behind a column to grab a handful of Jacobs’ hair and press a small, thin silver blade to his jugular.
Adam realized that all of them were women—and not just any women. It was the ladies from the souvenir stand at the base of the temple, cloaked from head to toe in Egypt’s ubiquitous black abayas. Their faces were veiled, but the one holding a scalpel to Jacobs’ throat sported a pair of angry green eyes that struck Adam as oddly… familiar.
She muttered something at Jacobs’ ear, her voice too low for Adam to make out—but whatever she said must’ve been damned threatening, because it made Jacobs drop Adam’s machete.
The other black-cloaked women were armed with what looked mostly like an assortment of kitchen knives—damned sharp kitchen knives.
Faced with three blades leveled at various parts of his body, Beardy dropped his cudgel. Ears let a tall, slender woman pull his rifle from his hands, prompted by another who stood at his back, prodding her knife into his spine. The taller one immediately leveled the gun at Muscles, cocking it with clear expertise.
Though Adam couldn’t see her face behind her black half-veil, he was oddly certain that she was smiling.
Muscles slowly raised his hands over his head.
Ralph had already thrown his own arms up, flashing his veiled ambushers a nervous smile as he held his rifle over his head.
Adam counted nine ladies all together. They held themselves with a silent, determined readiness.
A short, stout woman stepped out from behind the others. Based on the deep lines around her near-black eyes, she was probably someone’s grandma. She spoke a line of quick Masri that had the air of an order.
“She says to go stand against the wall,” Al-Saboor the First called out in translation.
He had somehow scrambled into the antechamber, where he crouched behind a jumble of rock like someone expecting an explosion.
Jacobs was stiff with seething, dangerous frustration—but the scalpel at his jugular didn’t waver. “Do it,” he barked flatly.
The rest of the Al-Saboors shuffled morosely over to the wall of the courtyard, where the women engaged in a quick, huddled conversation that resulted in the sudden appearance of a small pile of scarves and belts from under their black cloaks.
The Al-Saboors were rapidly bound. All the while, the green-eyed woman kept her blade at Jacobs’ throat, her body as poised and ready as a cat.
At another murmured prompt from her, Jacobs held out his wrists. The gesture was calm—but Adam could see the wicked tension that seethed through his figure.
The grandma tied Jacobs with a fisherman’s expertise, and then the willowy girl with the rifle was there, directing him to stand by the Al-Saboors with a casual wiggle of the muzzle.
Jacobs joined his thugs, black eyes flashing with rage—and Adam found himself swept up in a sea of quick-moving women. They hurried Sayyid and Ellie along as well, carrying them to the stairs like a flood of black water.
𓇶
Twenty
Carried along in a current of cloaked ladies, Ellie stumbled into the open air of the temple. The German picnickers had thankfully moved on, leaving the space deserted.
The harsh bark of Jacobs’ voice sounded from the sun court. The green-eyed woman who had held the scalpel to his throat hissed out a command to the others, pointing across the courtyard.
“Yalla!” one of the nearest women said, waving at Ellie urgently.
They dashed past the piles of rubble and the broken columns into the ruins of another chapel, where Ellie could see signs of past excavation work. Beyond that, Hatshepsut’s temple ended in a steep, rocky slope scattered with red-brown scree. The women shooed Ellie onto it, and she half-skidded down into the shadow of the enormous cliff that loomed over the site.
A cluster of donkeys and four impatient-looking horses waited for them at the bottom, minded by a diminutive woman in another niqab and black cloak, who popped up urgently as they appeared.
Ellie’s rescuers hurried over to join her in the shadows of the cliff, holding a rapid conference in Masri. Their urgent tones and hand gestures left Ellie wondering just how well-planned their actions had been.
She turned to Adam, taking in his split lip and bruised jaw. She could vividly recall the way the light had glinted off his machete as Jacobs held the blade to his throat. Had Jacobs not hesitated—had he moved just a few seconds faster…
“I could have lost you!” Ellie burst out as she threw her arms around Adam’s chest. She clutched him tightly around his bound arms as she buried her face in the warmth of his shoulder.
“Not that I mind this,” Adam commented with a wince, “but could you make it just a little less tight?”
Ellie held him back as she made an urgent assessment of his person. “What is it? Where are you hurt?”
“Arms. Face. Probably bruised a couple of ribs,” Adam replied.
“Are you certain they’re bruised and not broken?” Ellie pressed worriedly.
“Sure.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes skeptically. “How can you know that?”
“Because I’ve done both a few times before,” he replied. “We can take a full inventory later. Right now, can you help me get these damned ropes off?”
Ellie thought about what such an inventory might entail were she to conduct it on him. The notion set her toes tingling—but Adam was still waiting for her, frowning with impatience.
“Oh! Right!” She came behind him to tug at the ropes. “They won’t budge!”
“Maybe I can slide out of them,” Adam countered, wriggling again.
“You’re making it worse!”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve got it,” Adam assured her.
“You pulling on them is why they are so dashed tight!” Ellie shot back.
“Why don’t you use this?” asked the tall, slender young woman from their team of rescuers. Her English was musically accented, and she still had a stolen rifle slung over her shoulder.
At the sound of her voice, Sayyid’s head snapped up from where he had slumped down with exhausted shock by the rocks. His eyes widened with uncomfortable recognition.
“Just a moment…” he began—and then dropped his jaw as the girl whipped an enormous blade from beneath her cloak.
“You got my knife!” Adam exclaimed happily.
“Thank you,” Ellie said as the young woman handed her Adam’s machete. She sliced it through the ropes around Adam’s wrists, and Adam shook out his arms with a groan.
He took his blade back with a look of sublime relief, then shoved the knife into its sheath and pulled her into a slightly gentler hug.
Ellie soaked up the sheer relief of his arms before looking past him to their clustered rescuers. “But who are all of you?”
The green-eyed woman who had threatened Jacobs stepped forward and unhooked her niqab. The fabric fell away from her face, revealing the features of Zeinab Al-Ahmed.
“Habibti?!” Sayyid blurted in shock as he stared at his wife. “But how are you… What is this… Who are all these…”
“Hello, Mr. Al-Ahmed!” the tall young woman with the stolen rifle announced happily. She plucked off her veil to reveal the features of a girl of perhaps nineteen with a long, straight nose and a wide smile.
“Jemmahor?!” Sayyid blurted, staring aghast at her before shifting his horrified gaze back to his wife. “You brought your apprentice to a knife fight?”
“We may discuss all of this when we are not running for our lives,” Zeinab snapped in reply. “Those ropes will not hold that cold-eyed snake for long. Get on that horse. Mr. Bates, I assume you can ride as well?”
Adam’s expression was stubborn. “What about Constance and Fairfax? Somebody’s gotta find out where they’ve been taken.”
“And it will not be you,” Zeinab retorted flatly. “Umm Waseem will see to it.”
She gestured to the short, sturdy older woman who had bossed Jacobs around in the courtyard—likely so that Zeinab would not reveal herself by her voice and provoke an outburst from her husband, Ellie realized.
“Aywa, aywa,” Umm Waseem replied with a dismissive wave. She went back to chatting to a cluster of the other veiled women with no apparent display of urgency.
“Umm Waseem’s family are fishermen,” Jemmahor reported in a conspiratorial tone. “Which is a nicer way of saying that they are smugglers. These other ladies are her cousins here in Luxor. She has cousins everywhere and is very good at sneaking about. She will be able to find where they have taken your friends.”
“Oh!” Ellie replied, unsure how to respond. She wondered who else besides a sharp-eyed old smuggler Zeinab had been consorting with—and why she had followed them to Luxor.
Based on the blanched, dismayed way that Sayyid continued to stare at his wife, he hadn’t the foggiest notion of the answers to those questions, either.
Umm Waseem’s cousins broke up, mounting the assortment of donkeys. The women perched on the animals with their legs tucked neatly to one side, and then scattered, slipping off in various directions.
Umm Waseem trotted over, comfortably settled on her own donkey. She had slung a black canvas satchel over the back of her saddle. Stopping beside them, she raised an expectant eyebrow.
Zeinab and her apprentice had already mounted, as had Sayyid—though he looked far from happy about it. Only Ellie and Adam remained standing, with a single horse waiting nearby.
“Go with Jemmahor,” Zeinab ordered, motioning Ellie sharply toward the tall apprentice midwife.
“She rides with me,” Adam shot back, fixing Zeinab with a glare.
Zeinab rolled her eyes. “Wear out the horse if you like—just do it quickly!”
“Get up, Princess.” Adam offered Ellie his hand.
Ellie let him boost her into the saddle, perching on it sideways and clinging to the horn for dear life. Adam hauled himself up behind her. Ellie heard him let out a hiss of discomfort at the movement.
His substantial weight slid into place at her back, landing her more or less on his lap. An iron arm clamped firmly around her waist. With his other hand, he reached around her for the reins. He urged the animal into motion, and the horse jolted beneath them as it followed the others.
They climbed a trail that looked like little more than an ancient, dusty runoff. It wended steeply up into the range of ragged hills and deep wadis that sprawled across the desert. Adam’s warm hold on Ellie took away some of the nervousness she would normally feel at riding. She let herself melt back against the solid wall of his chest with a wash of relief.
There was no sign of pursuit from Jacobs and his men. It seemed that the rescue party had managed to slip away before their enemies cut themselves loose.
They reached the top of the trail and rode out onto a narrow path that offered a sprawling view of the surrounding countryside. Ellie glanced down to her left, where the mountain fell away precipitously into a long, arid valley. A packed-earth road ran along the base. A scattering of dark, gated rectangles set into the walls of the cliffs sparked her recognition.
“That’s the Valley of the Kings!” Ellie burst out. “We’re riding right above the Valley of the Kings! Adam, look!”
She leaned forward for a better view, heedless of how it compromised her balance in the saddle. The horse huffed in protest, and Adam hauled her back into place.
“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same,” he replied uncomfortably.
Ellie glanced back at him. He was looking a bit green, his knuckles white where they clutched the reins.
“Oh dear!” she exclaimed with sudden understanding. “We are just a tad high up, aren’t we?”
“Kinda trying not to think about that,” Adam noted. “I don’t want to fall out of the saddle.” He paused. “Or puke down your shirt.”
Ellie flashed him a sympathetic smile before leaning back against him once more, studying the wonders of the valley more sedately as they rode past.
“What do you think that was all about back in the temple?” she asked. “I can’t say I know Jacobs particularly well, but I’m not sure I would ever have thought him the sort to… well, hesitate at the use of violence to achieve his aims.”
“Maybe his bosses told him he can’t kill anybody this time around,” Adam offered. “He could be on some kind of probation for things going south back in British Honduras.”
“But being willing to kill people seems like precisely the reason one would hire a man like Jacobs in the first place,” Ellie pointed out. “What could he possibly offer on the hunt for a powerful arcanum if he’s forbidden from using violence?”
“I don’t know, Princess,” Adam replied with a frown she could hear in his voice. “The whole thing just seemed a little… weird.”
Even with Jacobs’ inexplicable reluctance to shoot them, they had still come far too close to disaster. The notion of just how bad things might have gone swept over Ellie and left her feeling a little shaky.
She soaked up the reassuring warmth of Adam’s presence, which was strong and steady despite his bruises.
“I still can’t quite believe that Neil gave us away,” she said after a little while.
“I can,” Adam replied.
Ellie twisted back to frown at him.
“Not like that,” Adam corrected. “I meant… Fairfax has always been a bit of a homebody. You can tempt him into the odd adventure, but he likes knowing he’s got someplace steady to go back to.” He paused as he guided the horse through a turn. “I think that dig was his steady place here in Egypt, and we kinda blew it up on him. It doesn’t surprise me that he’d scramble a bit to get it back.”
“But I told him that Julian was involved,” Ellie countered, unable to keep the hurt from her tone.
“For a smart guy,” Adam replied, “your brother can be a real idiot sometimes.”
Ellie leaned back against him once more as the ruddy peaks and rifts of the mountains unfolded around them.
“If it’s any consolation,” Adam added, “I know you’re pretty much always right.”
“Only ‘pretty much?’”
“You’ve got dubious taste in surveyors.” Adam spread his strong fingers out across her stomach in a caress that belied his light tone.
Ellie wove her grip with his own, holding his hand tightly. “I have the best taste in surveyors,” she countered firmly.
𓇶
Twenty-One
Their winding path slowly descended through the sprawling hills, and they emerged on a windswept desert plain. The green of the inundation was just visible in the distance. The sprawling, arid landscape closer by was interrupted only by a squat, thick-walled cluster of buildings marked by low arches and an elegant dome. An iron cross over the gate revealed that the structures must belong to a community of Egypt’s Christian minority, the Copts.
The buildings were obviously old. A wooden door set by the gate cracked open as they approached, and a young woman in a black headscarf and robes peered out at them wide-eyed. Her attire was near enough to what one might see in a Catholic convent for Ellie to recognize her as a nun.
“Ya Jemmahor!” Zeinab called impatiently.
“Wait here,” Jemmahor instructed.
As she swung down from her horse, the sleeve of her cloak slipped up, revealing a small blue tattoo of an even-sided cross on the inside of her wrist. The mark identified the young woman as a Copt herself.
Zeinab’s apprentice exchanged a few quick words with the nun at the door, speaking a language that sounded quite different from Masri. The tongue of Egypt’s Copts was thought to be the nearest living language to that of Ancient Egypt, and this was the first time Ellie had the privilege of hearing it spoken aloud.
She was hearing it quite loudly, as Jemmahor was gesticulating enthusiastically while the nun squeaked out replies with obvious surprise and alarm. Zeinab looked on the verge of rolling her eyes.
The exchange apparently reached a satisfactory conclusion, as the nun ducked back inside and the big gate swung slowly open on heavy iron hinges.
The rescue party paraded into a simple packed-earth courtyard framed by the convent buildings and a low stable. Other nuns popped into the narrow doorways set into the thick walls or peered from small windows.
An older woman hurried out to meet them, the lines at the corners of her eyes creased with worry.
“That’s my aunt,” Jemmahor announced cheerfully from beside Ellie and Adam’s horse. “She is abbess here at the convent of St. Hilaria. Don’t worry—she will be very happy to see me.”
The abbess did not look particularly happy. She looked more as though she was wondering where she was going to put an assortment of unexpected guests, including two strange men and a foreign woman.
Jemmahor ran over to her and enthusiastically kissed her cheeks, rattling on in excited Coptic.
Adam slipped down from the saddle in a maneuver that would have had Ellie plummeting backwards over the rear of the horse. He managed it with grace, save for a slight wince as the twist pulled at his bruised ribs, then turned and offered his arms to Ellie.
She hesitated. “Isn’t it going to hurt if you try to catch me?”
Adam raised an eloquent eyebrow.
Ellie frowned back at him with barely concealed frustration. “I ought to be capable of getting down from a horse on my own!”
“You don’t ride,” Adam pointed out.
“I’m from London!” Ellie protested. “Why would I ride when I can take a perfectly docile tram?”
