As he had expected, the street beyond was quite deserted. He examined several dark nooks nearby, so he could tell her he’d done so, then strode back into the alley. The first moonbeams were beginning to sift their way into it now; out in the open, on the river, it would soon be bright enough to navigate with fair accuracy. It would be a good night to sail, Nekonkh decided, though it might not be wise to venture into those currents beyond the sand bars. They’d slip downstream a few miles and tie up until—
The captain halted and frowned about him uncertainly. Was this not the doorway . . . ? He glanced back the way he had come, wondering if he’d misjudged the distance, decided perhaps he had, and started on. Then he stopped abruptly. There in the gravel at his feet the moonlight glittered over the blade of a jeweled knife. And a cubit or two away lay a crumpled lotus.
“Mother of Amon!” whispered the captain.
The doorway was empty. The whole alley was empty. And that knife—or another—would likely be slicing his own throat before morning, if he didn’t find that slippery maid and bring her back.
“Mother of Amon and Isis and Osiris and the Sacred Cat of Bast!” he exploded. He scooped up the dagger, clamped his jaw at its fiercest, and started up the alley, running hard.
CHAPTER 22
Disaster
Three streets away, Mara was already dodging out of the passage beside the goldsmith’s shop, and running like the desert antelope along the high, curving wall which bounded the palace grounds. There was but one thing to do; and somehow, through the wild disorder of her emotions, she’d had wit enough to see it and cling fast to it. She was still spent from her storm of weeping, sore in body and mind from Sheftu’s merciless handling of her, and shaken in every nerve by the audacious—but no less passionate—kiss which had saved her life. Sheftu was lost to her beyond recall, but hardest to bear was the ironic twist that this time she was innocent—the ship’s raid was none of her doing. It was Sahure he’d caught in his gold-baited trap. But he’d refused to believe it, and thereby laid himself and the revolution open to the liveliest danger.
Mara alone, though stunned by the abruptness of her own undoing, recognized the extent of that danger. She alone knew that Nahereh knew about the Inn of the Falcon. She alone could guess that in his rage at finding nothing on the ship he might abandon all subtler tactics and storm the tavern, seizing everyone in it and trusting to later luck to find the leader. Ai, but he would already have the leader! The moment he set eyes on Sashai, the scribe, he would recognize Lord Sheftu and all would be over.
There was but one thing to do—find Nahereh, learn his plans, and then, if necessary, slip away from him somehow and carry a warning to the inn. On trembling legs Mara was speeding to do it.
The North Gate loomed ahead—Reshed’s gate. Mara clutched her ring, praying its charm would work once more, though Amon knew it had brought her anything but luck the last two days. She had not seen Reshed for four nights now, having lately used the Main Gate and the password of her master’s name for her passage in and out of the palace grounds. She knew not what temper Reshed would be in, but she had to try him. She might need desperately to get out again, later, and by that time the use of Nahereh’s name might be suicidal.
Breathless, she halted before the gate, tried in vain to quiet her pounding heart, and finally rapped three times. Reshed recognized the signal; she could hear the faint, sharp clatter of his sword as he made a startled move. An instant later the gate swung open—just far enough for his body to block the entrance.
“You!” he growled.
“Aye . . . Reshed, I’m in haste, please let me in.”
“What are you doing out, that’s what I want to know! I’ve seen naught of you tonight, not for four nights running!”
“Why, today I went out much earlier, with my princess—at another gate. And before that—ah, Reshed, I’ve wanted to come, if only to linger a moment with you and then go back again! But I could never get away from her, not even for a minute.”
“Aye, very likely! More likely, you’ve found some other simpleton to dry your tears, and let you in and out whenever you crook a finger at him!” Reshed reached out furiously and jerked her closer. “Who is it? That swell-headed sergeant at the Main Gate?”
“Nay, it isn’t, it isn’t, I’ve done no such thing! Oh, mother of truth, let me in, I can’t stand here arguing! I’m in haste, I tell you. My brother’s dying and I must get help—”
She twisted violently in his grasp but only succeeded in reversing their positions, so that it was she who stood with her back to the gate, which hung tantalizingly ajar. He still held her arm fast.
“You never had a brother,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know whom you meet, outside there, but I’ll stake my sword he’s no sick kinsman! Aye, I’ve caught on to your game, you little witch, though I’ve been cursed slow about it. You’ve made a fool of me, letting me risk my post here night after night so you could—”
“Reshed, I beg you! I swear by my ka—” Tears of despair choked off the words and changed to sobs of fury. She began to fight him like a wildcat, kicking, clawing, beating at him, spitting out her rage. “Let go of me, you stupid clod! I’ve done naught to you, you’ve got your cursed post still, haven’t you? Let me go, you devil!” Suddenly she froze, staring just beyond his shoulder. “Great Amon! Your captain . . .”
He spun around, and for just that instant his fingers loosened. An instant was all Mara needed. In a flash she had wrenched away and darted through the gate, up the Avenue of Rams, and into the Court of the Weavers, leaving him cursing bitterly behind her.
Let him curse, she thought as she sped silently along the graveled paths. He can’t leave his gate without raising an alarm, and if he does that he’ll lose his precious post and maybe his head for his part in this affair . . .
But, oh, Amon, now how was she to get out of the grounds again in case she had to?
She slowed, almost halted, in an agony of hesitation. Should she go back, try to make amends, try to— Nay, the thing was done now, there was no undoing it. Sick with apprehension, she darted on.
She reached the great Court of Storerooms, some distance beyond the stair she ordinarily climbed to the upper corridor and her own chambers. There she stopped, leaned panting against the rough-plastered wall, and tried to picture in her mind the plan of the palace Nahereh had showed her. The little study he had told her of was near this courtyard, she was sure of that. But which passage? That one, to the right. Aye, it must be, for the other led only to the guardroom; it was the one she and Inanni had walked down that day toward the audience with the queen. How long ago that seemed.
She moved quickly into the passage to the right, turned right again into a dimly lighted hall, and counted the doors as she passed them. One, two, three—four. It was that one. Without allowing herself to pause or even wonder what would happen next, she opened the door, slipped through into a torchlit, crowded room, and closed the door behind her.
Lord Nahereh turned from a group of excited soldiers and rivermen, and stared at her.
“You!” he burst out.
Mara leaned back against the door, feeling all at once spent and weary. Everyone, she thought sardonically, seems overjoyed to see me tonight. . . .
“Yes, I!” she said. “I crave your protection, master! The rebels suspect me.”
“Do they! By my ka, Amon is good, sending you here at this moment. It has saved my Libyan the trouble of finding you.” Slowly he eased down upon the table behind him, folded his arms, and studied her, a faint, chill smile touching the corners of his mouth. “Chadzar,” he murmured. “Send these men away, we need them no longer.”
The Libyan jerked his head at the soldiers and rivermen—crewmen from the Friend of the Wind, Mara guessed—and herded them out through another door. There was still one other person in the room—a quiet figure hunched in the shadows of one corner;
but Mara did not move her eyes to see who it was. As the Libyan sauntered back to his post, Lord Nahereh spoke again, his voice dripping sarcasm.
“So the rebels suspect you. How unkind of them, to repay your friendship with cruel distrust.”
“Friendship? I’ve pretended friendship, master. Did you not send me there to spy on them, learn their secrets—”
“Aye, quite right, I did. But you were so—tardy—in reporting any of those secrets that this afternoon I decided to set a spy on you, my Clever One. Only a formality, you understand. To my surprise, the man I picked seemed to be an old friend of yours already.”
“Indeed,” murmured Mara.
Lord Nahereh turned his head. “You, there! Show yourself.”
Even before she saw him, Mara knew who was gliding out of his shadowy corner. Sahure looked oddly incomplete without his golden balls, but his twisted, cynical smile was the same as ever, his tongue as oily.
“Live forever, Face of the Lily! May thy ka rejoice, may thy—”
“Ast! You son of forty devils!”
“Shocking!” murmured Lord Nahereh. “Is that any way to greet a friend?”
“He’s no friend of mine! He’s a rogue and a serpent, don’t trust a word he says, master, he’s as slippery as—”
“Then you’re two of a kind!” Nahereh’s pretense was finished now; his voice lashed like a whip. “Why did you not tell me of that ship tonight?”
“Because I knew it was a trap.”
“By Amon! You’d still lie to me?”
“Don’t believe her, Excellency,” put in Sahure. “She was there. She heard what I heard.”
“Yes, I was there, you crocodile, but I had my wits about me, and you did not! The ship was empty, master, was it not? You found no gold aboard it, did you? Nay, you didn’t! It was all a hoax, a snare set for me that I had the sense to stay away from. But this fool walked into it! Now they think I did it, and all I’ve tried to accomplish is wrecked—they’ll not even let me in the tavern after this! In fact, I hear they’ve orders to kill me on sight—”
“Ahhhhh,” breathed Lord Nahereh with satisfaction. “And just who told you that?”
Mara bit her lip until she could taste the blood. “An—an old man, who felt sorry for me.”
“Indeed. Someone whose acquaintance you made during those other visits to the inn, no doubt. Those early visits—the ones before I sent you—the ones I knew nothing about until this juggler told me.”
Gods of Egypt, I’m caught, thought Mara. I can’t wriggle out of this one, there’s no way out, no way out. . . . She parted stiff lips, but no words came rushing to her tongue from that mysterious reservoir of last-minute inspiration which had so often saved her. She stood paralyzed, wordless, and the silence drew out until it was far too long, far too late now to say anything at all, and she was lost. It was all over.
Lord Nahereh smiled icily and echoed her thoughts. “The game’s over, isn’t it? Too bad. You must have enjoyed it while it lasted. Come now! Who was this ‘old man’ who warned you?”
The silence went on.
“Excellency,” murmured Sahure. “I think perhaps it was a young man. One called Sashai. He would have warned her.”
A faint, bitter amusement touched the edges of Mara’s mind. “Not he!” she muttered.
Nahereh ignored her, turning instead to the juggler. “It is sad indeed that I was not aware earlier of your possibilities. You would have been working for me long ago. Before those soldiers came in with their useless prisoners, you were beginning to tell me of those who come regularly to this inn. Suppose you continue. Sashai. ‘The Scribe.’ Who is this scribe?”
“Excellency, no one knows. It is he who brings orders from the rebel leader—and no one knows him, either. It is said even Sashai has never seen him. But it is clear to all that our scribe is smitten with this Lily-Faced One here, this Flower of Loveliness. . . .” Sahure’s world-weary, indifferent eyes rested a moment on Mara—faintly amused, detached—as they might have rested on a stranger, a carven image, a beetle which he had chanced to crush under his sandal. “As for the others, there is a goldsmith—his name is Nefer—Ashor the innkeeper and his wife, a priest called Djedet, a riverman, Nekonkh, a baker, and several artisans. . . .”
He did it easily, casually, as if there were nothing here requiring thought or decision. He merely opened his mouth and named them off—her companions, her allies, all Sheftu’s trusted followers; those who had laughed with her and counted her one of them, who ate Miphtahyah’s stew or whispered with Sashai or played hounds and jackals night after night while they waited for orders—named them, and so murdered them, one by one. Mara stood dry mouthed, sick, and numbing all over, gazing at last into the face of treachery, with which she had been flirting so long. She could not wrench her eyes away from that unbelievable, sinuous figure with its twisted shoulder, its gestures of fluid grace. It seemed as if evil itself were loose in the room.
“Enough, enough,” Nahereh was saying absently. “We can net all those when we choose, like a school of fish. It is the scribe who interests me, this mysterious Sashai. There, juggler, is a fish who might be worth catching. In fact—I think we will cast our net . . . Chadzar!”
“Aye, master.”
“Call the soldiers back. There’ll be another raid—tonight. At once. Stay, send me only their sergeant, I’ll give my orders to him.”
“What of her?”
Nahereh’s cold eyes moved to Mara. “Later. I want plenty of time for that. Plenty of time. Send her to her chambers and post a guard by her door. Perhaps it had better be you . . . nay, I want you for this other. Put her under guard. Find a guard with a whip.” He smiled thinly at Mara. “We will meet again, Too-Clever One.”
“Come,” muttered the Libyan.
Moving like one in an ugly dream, Mara walked beside him through the other doorway, waited while he chose a burly soldier and growled instructions, went on again with her new guard through the halls, up the outside stair to the upper corridor, and at last into her own room. He left her there, standing motionless among the familiar gilded butterflies. A moment later she heard the bolt grate home, then the creak of wood as her jailor settled back against her door.
It was some moments before she became dimly aware of the sounds of movement and chatter from the next room. At first she resisted them vaguely, as one brushes away a buzzing fly. But in spite of herself the numbness began to wear away, the fog to clear from her mind. That was Inanni and the Syrian women she heard in there, talking calmly together as on any other evening, perhaps putting away their games and embroidery, yawning good night. . . .
There was another door—the one opening onto the hall from that sitting room.
No use, she thought. It’s but a step down the hall, the guard would see anyone who went in or out. He guards that one too, or might as well.
Without plan or any hope, she moved across her room and passed through the tapestry-hung door into the sitting room. She had been right, the Syrians were in the act of dispersing to their sleeping chambers. A few of them paused to look at her in mild surprise; Inanni’s face showed a flicker of swift anxiety.
“Mara! I thought you were . . . Is anything wrong?”
“My princess,” said Mara in a voice that sounded strange even to herself, “could I—speak to you a moment?”
“For as long as you like.”
Inanni murmured something to Dashtar, waved all of her women out of the room, and hurried over to Mara. “Sit you down. Your face is ashen. Shall I fetch water?”
“Nay—I’m all right—stay with me, please, my princess . . .”
Grasping blindly at Inanni’s hand, Mara sank onto a couch and to her own bewilderment, burst into despairing tears.
“Mara! Oh, oh, oh, something terrible has happened, has it not? I felt it the moment you came in here. . . . The
re, now, you shall tell me about it in a moment, don’t try yet, all’s well, all’s well. . . .”
“Oh, Amon, I’ve no time for weeping, I must stop this!” Mara brushed the tears angrily from her face, only to be overcome with fresh ones. “Everything’s tumbled about my ears, Princess, all’s over, all’s wrecked, smashed—Sheftu tried to kill me tonight. He couldn’t do it—quite—but my master can and means to and will. . . . There’s a guard outside my door now. And I must get out! I must warn them.”
As coherently as she could, she told the story—the ship, the black moment in the alley, her flight from Nekonkh, then from Reshed—and the terrible scene she had just witnessed. “Ai, Princess, that juggler is the Evil One himself! It was the way he did it—carelessly, without passion—as if lives are of no more value than onions, and naught means anything! Osiris! I knew not what evil thing I played with, I did not know it would be like this, I didn’t understand!”
“Mara, Mara . . .” Inanni stroked her hair, trembling. “Is there nothing you can do?”
“Nothing. I can’t leave these rooms. Even if I could, I’d never get outside the gates. I’m snared fast as a bird in a net.”
Inanni stilled suddenly, then seized Mara’s shoulders in both hands. “Wait. Mara, it’s possible that—it may be that I can help you to get out.”
“You what? How? What—”
“Hush, let me tell you. Do you remember Sherimi, the Syrian woman in the Court of the Weavers, the one I—”
“You’ve been seeing her, I knew that.”
“She has a family outside the gates, Mara, in the City of the Dead. Often she goes home to them each night, though if the work presses, here, she stays on until it slackens, and sleeps in a little room off the servants’ wing. She is in the palace now, I talked with her this afternoon and she said she would sleep within the walls tonight. But if she were to change her mind, if she were to rise from her couch now and go home to her family outside the gates, taking a young Syrian maid with her . . .”