Tomb of the Sun King, page 27
part #2 of Raiders of the Arcana Series
“Not to give any offense, but we did not come here for you,” Jemmahor pointed out with a slightly apologetic look. “We are here to stop those Englishmen from making off with the Staff of Musa.”
“Or the contents of another tomb.” Zeinab’s green eyes were hard. “They have stolen enough of Egypt’s treasures already.”
“We already know where they’re going to go,” Adam added. “And that’s the tombs at Akhenaten’s capital city. We’ll have a hell of a better chance reaching Neil and Constance while The Mustache is distracted with tomb hunting than we will on a boat in the middle of the Nile.”
“Mr. Bates is right.” Zeinab gave Adam a look of wary respect.
“But do we even know whether the staff can be found in the lady pharaoh’s tomb?” Jemmahor pressed.
“I can’t say for certain,” Ellie admitted. “The only connections we have are the presence of a ring with the name of Moseh in Mutnedjmet’s jewelry box and the inscription’s mention of the Was-Scepter of Khemenu.”
“But would not the staff have left Egypt with Moses?” Jemmahor pressed. “It was with him when he parted the Red Sea and afterward while the people wandered in the desert. Why would it have been returned to Egypt? What would have been left here for Musa or his followers?”
“It does not matter,” Zeinab concluded flatly. “Mr. Forster-Mowbray believes that some object of great power lies in this lost pharaoh’s tomb, and if there is even a chance that he is right, we must intervene.”
The space after her words was thick with the question of whether anyone would object.
Jemmahor’s eyes shone with excitement at the prospect.
Adam’s expression was grim but determined.
Sayyid stared at his wife as though she stood on the far side of a great gulf—and had turned to walk away from him.
“Bismillah,” Umm Waseem concluded without opening her eyes.
Ellie wondered how much of the exchange the older woman had understood, given that so far she hadn’t uttered a word of English. Did she know she was agreeing to stop a cabal of thieves from raiding the tomb of a mysterious pharaoh? Or was she simply on board for whatever trouble Zeinab led them into?
“If we’re hoping to stage an ambush, we’re going to want to get there first,” Adam pointed out.
“They are traveling by boat,” Zeinab said thoughtfully. “If we take the train to Dayrout, we will only need to go a few miles downstream and cross the river. We would certainly outpace them that way.”
“El atr 'atal fe Asyut,” Umm Waseem announced pleasantly.
“What’d she say?” Adam asked.
“She says the train is out at Asyut,” Jemmahor translated with a look of surprised admiration.
“And how does she know that?” Zeinab cast a narrow-eyed glance at the older woman.
“Do you really want to know?” Jemmahor shot back wryly.
Umm Waseem wheezed out a dark, happy chuckle.
“Asyut!” Zeinab bit out the word with frustration.
“From what I remember of the map, that still leaves us about fifty miles short of Tell al-Amarna,” Adam noted.
Zeinab stood. “It doesn’t matter. I can get us there in time.”
“How?” Ellie asked, curious.
“By calling in a favor,” Zeinab replied.
Her tone made it sound like a threat.
𓇶
Twenty-Two
As the battered carriage rattled uncomfortably away from the temple at Deir al-Bahari, Constance Tyrrell made an unflinching assessment of her circumstances.
Up to now, Constance’s existence had been fairly dull and predictable. Her mother, Lady Sabita, liked to go to dinner parties and meet up with friends for tea. Her father, Sir Robert, got very excited about numbers and balance sheets, to the point where they frequently distracted him from such lesser concerns as food or conversation.
Constance had been on holiday in Paris and Bruges. She had never been to India, though it constituted a quarter of her heritage, with both her mother and grandmother having been born there.
She took her tea with an excess of cream and sugar, because one needn’t worry about one’s figure if one simply refused to stop moving. She had recently begun jiu jitsu classes with some of the ladies in Ellie’s suffrage club and had learned how to use the momentum of an opponent to toss him onto the floor. She had tried the move out in the dojo on the rebellious daughter of an MP—a girl easily twice Constance’s weight—and it had worked splendidly.
She had been itching for an opportunity to practice it ‘in the field,’ as they say.
Constance’s days were otherwise filled with the activities one expected of a young woman of good breeding and substantial fortune. She paid visits, shopped, and did a bit of charity work, mostly reading aloud to children in the recovery ward of the hospital.
Constance adored children, as they were usually willing accomplices in mischief and subterfuge—tendencies she encouraged through carefully curating the books she selected for them.
Yet she had always known the world had greater things in store for her—and that it was only a matter of time before she found her way to them. When she did, she would be sure to be ready for it. That rock-hard faith was likely why she had been drawn to Ellie. As a skinny, freckled child, Ellie had quietly blazed with a sense that she would not be confined by other people’s expectations.
Joining her parents on their move to Egypt had been Constance’s first real step toward the exciting life that she knew she was destined for, and she had taken hold of it with both hands. She had loved the weeks she had spent immersing herself in Cairo’s unique spirit, from stumbling across a Byzantine mosaic in an old Coptic church to finding an alley that housed nothing but rows of glassblowers.
Then Lady Sabita and Sir Robert had made their devastating announcement—that she must choose a husband before her next birthday. Constance’s world had abruptly narrowed as the possibilities she had dreamed of as a girl slipped away like smoke. For the first time in her life, she had tasted the threat of despair. Though she fought against it, striving for optimism, she could still feel it lurking at the periphery of her awareness like a patient demon hiding in the shadows.
Her current circumstances, at least, were far from boring—even if they were something less than salubrious. She knew she shouldn’t feel entirely thrilled to be trapped in a decrepit carriage with a villain set on becoming her husband, but she had prepared for years for the possibility that someday a real adventure would find her—and now that time was most certainly here.
The carriage lurched beneath her. It was thoroughly run down, with its springs all but gone—if they had ever been there to begin with. The black box of it made the heat of the afternoon even thicker, which was likely why the Egyptians themselves showed no interest in carriages, preferring to ride or be carried about in a sedan chair.
The sweating, ginger-haired professor sat to her left. He studied the clay tablet greedily as he turned it in his hands, but he clearly couldn’t just read the thing offhand.
Julian’s two thugs sat across from her. They were obviously related—one with a scar on his cheek and the other with a missing front tooth. Both kept glancing sideways at Neil, apparently determining him to be the most likely source of trouble.
Constance resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the notion that Stuffy was the greatest threat in the carriage. Meanwhile, she had two knives secured about her person and a set of lockpicks hidden in a special pocket in her corset. She was fairly certain that, if necessary, she could use the ribbon belting the waist of her lawn dress as a garrote.
Sandwiched between the two mercenaries, Neil looked absolutely rotten. Constance had little sympathy for him. He really ought to feel rotten. He had sold out his allies in the hopes that a bit of abject groveling would save his job with a batch of fellows that anyone could see were up to no good. Admittedly, Neil had never picked up an adventure novel in his life, so perhaps he really was that ignorant of how these things worked, but she was still thoroughly furious with him.
Julian occupied the space to Constance’s right. As Constance glanced at him, he flashed her a nervous smile. He seemed desperate to present their current situation as perfectly chummy and not-at-all something Constance ought to feel worried about.
“This isn’t quite the excursion I might have planned for us,” Julian said, “but I hope you don’t feel terribly… er, inconvenienced.”
Constance slipped into a role that she was very good at playing—that of the pretty young thing who hadn’t a clue what was going on but was still quite certain of the consideration and charm that were her due. She mustered up an appropriately indignant glare.
“I should say that it is all very irregular!” she declared. “I never expected to find you running about with a bunch of fellows who use guns and fisticuffs!”
Julian had the grace to blanch at her words. “There was this wretchedly complicated incident at the Saqqara dig the other day, my dear,” he explained awkwardly. “And so it seemed prudent to bring along a little additional… personal security?”
Constance was grateful that Julian still hadn’t the foggiest notion that she had actually been in Mutnedjmet’s tomb when he had ordered his thugs to shoot at her friends. She was tempted to share that interesting fact with him, if only to enjoy the horrified look on his face. Sadly, prudence dictated that she keep it to herself—for now.
She felt a snap of worry for Ellie, Adam, and Sayyid. They had been in an admittedly tight spot when she had left, for all that Adam had urged her onward when she had posed her silent question to him about insinuating herself into Julian’s retinue. Constance had wondered if she ought to stay behind herself instead and try to use her knives and jiu jitsu skills to even the odds—but that would have left Neil entirely at Julian’s mercy.
Not that he really deserved to be rescued, after acting like such a dolt.
There was also the mysterious tablet Neil and Ellie had found in the temple to consider. Constance assumed it must be a map that would lead the villains directly to the location of the lost pharaoh’s tomb. No one had bothered to say as much during the confrontation in the sun chapel—but really, what else could it be?
Constance couldn’t allow Julian to keep it and get his hands on the Staff of Moses. She hadn’t been a particularly attentive Sunday School student, but she did recall the plagues of the Exodus, as they fed into her admittedly Gothic tastes. Leaving the power to unleash death, disease, and darkness on the world in the hands of the self-important grandson of a duke was simply out of the question. At the moment, she was the person best positioned to stop that from happening.
She had to trust that Ellie and the others would find a way out of their predicament while she focused on her own mission.
Steal the tablet. Save the dolt—if she was feeling generous. And maybe see if she could squeeze more information out of Julian about who was really pulling the strings of this whole affair.
Because if Constance knew one thing for certain, it was that Julian Forster-Mowbray would never have come up with something like this on his own.
⸻
The carriage jolted to a stop at a rickety wharf on the broad bank of the Nile. Julian helped Constance down. Neil lingered behind her, sunk in a gloomy reverie. The gap-toothed thug snapped him out of it with a kick, and Neil scrambled down, flashing a guilty look at Constance.
Dawson followed with his eyes still glued to the tablet like a child gloating over a prize.
They filed onto a little launch, where an Egyptian fellow in a ragged galabeya and turban rowed them out into the river. The boat bounced over the gently rippling water to the stern of the elegant dahabeeyah that Constance had seen earlier that morning, anchored just downriver from the Luxor docks. The ship was perhaps sixty feet in length with a twenty-foot beam. Sparkling windows lined the sides, opening into rows of cabins, while the upper floor was taken up by an expansive open-air salon shaded by a red-and-white-striped canvas awning.
Their ferry steered up to a small platform that extended from the rear of the boat. A pair of crewmen caught them there, holding the launch in place as they disembarked.
Neil lingered beside Constance after he stumbled onto the landing. He was slump-shouldered with guilt. The two bored-looking mercenaries hovered at his back.
“Connie, I…” he began.
“Not now,” Constance snapped impatiently under her breath.
“Welcome to the Isis,” Julian announced grandly as he turned back to her—though his eyes revealed a flash of nervousness over his elegant mustache.
“It’s very nice,” Constance said dismissively, slipping into her role. “But is there any lemonade?”
“Lemonade! Yes, of course!” Julian hurriedly assured her. “You there! Reis!” he called out to an older, better-dressed fellow who had stopped to speak to the other crewmen—the ship’s captain, based on the title Julian had used for him, however condescendingly.
The reis schooled his features into an expression of barely tolerant courtesy.
“We need a suite prepared for my guest,” Julian rattled authoritatively. “And see that she is brought some lemonade. On ice, this time! I don’t know why anyone would think it acceptable to present a glass of lemonade without it.”
He turned to Constance, picking up her hand and planting a dry kiss on the back of it. “I shall be with you shortly, my dear, after I have taken care of the tiniest little bit of business. Dry stuff, but needs must. Dawson, have those Al-Saboors escort Fairfax to the study and see that he’s settled.”
Dawson looked up from the tablet and shot a panicked look from Julian to the two thugs. “But I don’t speak any—”
Julian cut him off, already walking away and clearly not really listening. “And do be sure to provide any… encouragement that Fairfax might require to be helpful with the translation.”
Neil went over even more pale, throwing Constance a panicky look. She returned it with a glare that she hoped communicated something along the lines of quit mucking about and play along until I say otherwise.
“Er… Come? Go?” Dawson attempted awkwardly as the two thugs stared at him.
“You could try ‘yalla,’” Constance offered tiredly.
“Yalla?” Dawson echoed hopefully.
The scarred fellow shot his gap-toothed cousin a look. The cousin shrugged, and the pair plucked Neil up by his arms and propelled him into the hall, Dawson scurrying ahead of them.
“Sitt el Kol?” one of the remaining crewmen prompted with nervous courtesy. He gestured into the hallway, presumably toward the room being readied for her.
Wood creaked behind her. Constance glanced back to see the ferry rowing slowly to the shore.
She refused to let the sight intimidate her. Instead, she felt the subtle pressure of the knife against her thigh, the lockpicks between her bosoms, and the capable strength of her own bare hands. No, she had not been deserted here. She was a threat these men had just unwittingly carried on board—and she would not forget it.
“Do lead on, my good fellow,” she declared firmly, and followed him into the gloom.
𓇶
Twenty-Three
Neil Fairfax sat in an elegantly appointed gentleman’s study, complete with fine Turkish carpets, cozy armchairs, and piles of books—and wondered if he had ever felt quite so abjectly awful in his entire life.
He was trapped on a boat in the middle of the Nile, surrounded by casually murderous thugs. He had left his sister, his best friend, and a colleague that he had come to care about very deeply in the hands of the most intimidating and obviously violent person he had ever encountered. Now he was charged with translating a clue to one of the most important mysteries in Egyptian history so that his villainous boss could try to steal from it.
And it was all his fault.
He should have trusted Ellie when she told him that Julian Forster-Mowbray was up to no good. Instead, Neil had stubbornly insisted on living in a different world—one where the designated representative of a respected scholarly organization would never have turned out to be capable of kidnapping and murder. One where people laughed at the notion of reasonably sane gentlemen committing acts of violence in the name of chasing down an object everyone knew to be a myth.
But Neil couldn’t blame all of this on his ex-employer. His own stupid, stubborn decisions had led him to be imprisoned in a well-lit library on Julian’s graceful dahabeeyah, ill with worry over what might have happened to his sister and his friends. He was the one who had written that stupid, foolish note to Julian at Saqqara, slipping a coin to one of Sayyid’s neighbors’ children to deliver it to the excavation.
He had been so worried about his blasted job and his academic reputation. Of course, it had seemed like an entirely reasonable course of action at the time—but he’d been wrong. Julian Forster-Mowbray really had been in league with a batch of artifact-thieving villains, and Neil had led them right to the tablet—and to the people he cared about.
Memories tormented him—of Ellie, slight and freckled, popping up beside his desk to pepper him with questions about Persian etymologies. Of Adam at Cambridge, the brash American cowboy who tossed viscounts into rivers and befriended a bespectacled scholarship student as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
And what about Sayyid? The man was a brilliant Egyptologist, a deeply skilled conservator, and a natural leader. They had worked side-by-side, debating techniques and challenging each other’s scholarly conclusions for two years now. Sayyid had come to be far more than just a foreman to him, and so Neil was only a little surprised to realize that he was just as twisted up in knots about the man as he was about Adam.
