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But on some levels, intentional or not, his words were manipulative as hell.
“You first,” I whispered, turning my head to rest it on his shoulder. Lex really had great shoulders, solid and strong, even without the crisply tailored suits. He would make a really great leader of warriors.
“Me first, what?”
“You promise to stop doing dangerous things, taking transatlantic flights to unsafe places—”
“Mag.” The sardonic note he put into my name told me we were done with the puppy-dog eyes for now.
“…move to the suburbs, ditch the sports car….”
He sighed and leaned his weight into me, hard enough to nudge me fully back into my own seat.
“Then maybe,” I finished, silently laughing at his scowl as I straightened, “maybe we’ll talk a deal.”
The scowl didn’t falter. “I know you can handle yourself, but I’m just not hardwired to leave it at that. Maybe it goes back to cavemen killing saber-toothed tigers that threatened the camp, but there’s something in men that makes us want—need—to protect our women.”
Our women? Instead of jumping into that frying pan, I chose the proverbial fire. “A lot has changed since then. For one thing, those cavemen probably worshipped a goddess.”
“In the good old days before testosterone screwed up the world, right?” Sarcasm clearly intended.
“I never said testosterone didn’t have its uses.” And whoa—I sure didn’t mean that to sound quite as seductive as it did. I saw it immediately in the way his expression stilled, his eyes darkened to a whiskey color, his breath caught. He glanced quickly toward the tiny clock display over the rearview mirror.
Worse—I did, too.
The heat that washed through me had nothing to do with summer in the city, and everything to do with my body’s dissatisfaction at having gone so long without his kisses. Maybe my heart was wary. But the rest of me…
“I’ve gotta go,” I murmured, turning the air conditioner dial to full blue.
To his credit, Lex managed in three long, deep breaths to regain his mask of disinterest. He released the parking brake and shifted into Drive. “Yes. Security gets more complicated every day.”
“I’ll call you when I have a hotel room.”
“Please do.” But before he pulled out of the space, he turned his head to look at me full-on again. “And wear the ring, Maggi. Let me do that much for you.”
And really, what could it hurt? “‘Wear the ring,’ please,” I prompted softly.
“Please,” he repeated, and the edge of his mouth quirked before he eased onto the gas. “With sugar on top.”
So what the hell? I slid the band fully onto my finger, as if it belonged there. “Fine. But it’s all about not rocking the Egyptians’ boat, right?” I clarified. “It has nothing to do with making Rhys Pritchard uncomfortable?”
“I like Rhys.” Lex sounded waaay too innocent for my tastes. “I’m sure neither of us would want to make the other one uncomfortable.”
Yeah. Like guys thought that way. The same gender that came up with the concept of a pissing contest. “Uh-huh.”
But I was stuck. I’d already agreed to wear the ring.
The other player in this triangle, Rhys Pritchard, was my prize at the end of the long process of my arrival in Cairo—a metal staircase onto the hot tarmac, a bus to the terminal, customs, a temporary visa, and an increasing awareness of all the head scarves and galabiya and Arabic being spoken around me.
It was great to see a familiar face.
I surged toward him as best I could amid the crowd and saw that he was making the effort to shoulder his way to me, too. The closer he got, the better he looked. Rhys has a coloring I would normally call “black Irish,” except that he’s Welsh. Dark, unkempt hair. Bright-blue eyes. Lanky—what he has on Lex in height he loses in breadth. But here in Egypt, Rhys had gained a secret weapon—sunshine. His U.K. complexion, though still pale by swarthy Egyptian standards, had been gilded by the Mediterranean sun. A touch of pink on his nose and cheeks made his eyes seem to glow.
Or maybe that was just pleasure at seeing me.
“Maggi!” he exclaimed, his smile wide and welcoming. I reached for him—
But he stopped short. “Let me look at you.”
“Only if you return the favor,” I warned, eyeing him up and down. He wore his usual faded jeans and a slightly wrinkled, long-sleeved jersey that had been washed too often. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I told you—I dodged the car that tried to run me down.” From the scrapes on his hands, where he’d landed, I judged he’d had only modest success in that. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except for what it might signify.”
“That you’ve found a lead about the…you-know-what.”
The Isis Grail.
He nodded, a moment of complete accord—and I hugged him. After the briefest hesitation, his long arms wrapped around me, no matter where we were. Mmm. He felt stronger than he had back in France, where we’d enjoyed a mild flirtation and the start of a powerful friendship. He smelled faintly of the sea.
That was Rhys for you. No nefarious associations. Totally supportive of my grail quest, since his mother had also descended from a line of Grailkeepers. Classic nice guy. Wholly, wonderfully uncomplicated…
Except for his having been a priest, once. Actually, still—as he’d be the first to point out, ordination is even more permanent in the Catholic Church than marriage. But he no longer worked for them. The Catholic Church that is.
Okay, so that part was complicated.
He pulled back first, ducking his head only in part to take my suitcase. “Ah. That is…do be careful, Maggi. The Egyptians don’t approve of PDAs.”
I blinked at him. “Personal digital assistants?”
“They don’t approve of public displays.” Of affection.
Oh.
I looked around us and did, in fact, intercept a few glares aimed our way. I also saw a pair of men beside us, hugging and then kissing each other on each cheek. “Really?”
“Not between the sexes,” he chided, grinning. “Not even if it’s obvious that the couple’s…” His grin faded. “Oh.”
He’d just noticed the wedding ring.
“It’s fake,” I assured him, fast. “I’m supposed to attract less harassment this way.”
“Most of the women on the project do the same thing.” Rhys sounded relieved as he supported Lex’s story.
Having him there eased the foreignness of this place. Between a few necessary stops—the public bathrooms, and an in-airport bank to change money—we caught up on the basic niceties. How my great-aunt and his recent boss had been when he left Paris—she was well. How my parents had been when I left New York—also good. Everything but the goddess grails, which needed privacy, and the topic of me and Lex, which was just plain awkward.
In the meantime, for a country where we weren’t supposed to hold hands or even walk too close, the other travelers sure crowded us against each other.
“Here,” said Rhys, as another passenger bumped me in passing. “You’ll want to keep this on you.”
I took the matchbook he handed me. In swirling Arabic letters it said something I couldn’t possibly read. But in smaller text, beneath that, it said Hotle Athens, Alexandria.
“It’s for if we get separated,” Rhys explained over the bustle and push. “This is where most of the people on the project have been staying. Show it to a cabdriver or a policeman, and they can get you safely back.”
“Like a kindergartner with a sign pinned to my shirt?”
“Something like that, yes.” By now we’d reached the doors out onto the afternoon sidewalk. Despite that the sidewalk was covered, for shade, we stepped into a blast of dusty, nose-searing heat—
And chaos.
Men rushed us from five different directions at once, getting in our faces, shouting at us in Arabic with snippets of English: “Cab?”
“Good ride!”
“Take care of you!”
“La’,” said Rhys, speaking more firmly than usual.
And a dark man with a bushy moustache snatched my suitcase right out of his hands! Rhys reached for it, but I got it first, yanking with all my strength. The man let go, shouting his displeasure, and I stumbled backward from the lack of resistance—right into someone else’s hand on my butt. When I spun to face that one, he smiled proudly and held out a hand, as if for a tip. That’s when I felt someone pull at the laptop case over my shoulder.
“La’la’la’!” said Rhys again, louder, but intimidation isn’t his thing.
Me, I spun to face the man who had my laptop and, hands full, I kicked at him. Not an hour in this country and already I was resorting to violence.
“La’!” I said, whatever the hell it meant.
Somehow he jumped clear of my kick, which was maybe for the best. Annoying or not, these men didn’t seem to be trying to hurt us, or even rob us. Even the luggage snatching seemed to be a twisted sales technique. The same thing was happening to other travelers up and down the sidewalk.
Most important, my throat wasn’t tightening with any kind of warning.
Still, I’d had enough gestures, offers, pleas and definitely enough gropes! We were surrounded, the hot, already suffocating air thick with garlic breath and sweaty bodies and pushing, grabbing men shouting foreign words with only moments of English clarity: “Give ride!” or “Help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” I insisted, first in English and then in French, and bumped into Rhys. “La’ isn’t working,” I complained. “What’s Egyptian for piss off?”
Two of the men shouted louder and gestured more rudely. Apparently they understood and disapproved, despite that they were harassing us.
I was about to show them some freakin’ disapproval….
That’s when a suited, square-shouldered, swarthy man stepped up to the fray. He made a small motion with his right hand, like scooping something away from him, and the others immediately drew back.
Why did I think this couldn’t be good?
“Try imshee,” the gentleman suggested in cultured, British-accented English—to Rhys. “It often works.”
I said, “And that really means…?”
Finally he looked at me—and smiled, charming as any sheikh hero in a romance novel. “My dear lady, it means get lost.”
Close enough. Although they’d already backed off, I glared at the remaining hawkers and said, “Imshee!”
Several turned away from us, gesturing that we weren’t worth the trouble. The ones who remained, hands still outstretched for my luggage, weren’t getting as close.
But was that because of the word, or the man?
The still-crowded sidewalk by no means became an oasis of calm. But at least I could actually look around us. A handful of mosques and minarets cut the smoggy, uneven skyline of dusty stone skyscrapers. Cement was winning the war against a stretch of grass here and a cluster of palm trees there; the plaster facade above us read Cairo Airport, followed by Arabic lettering. The stench of heat and car exhaust was dizzying. A cacophony of horns mixed with shouts and music from open car windows…but okay, that part just sounded like New York.
This may once have been the land of the goddess Isis, but it sure looked like a land of men now. Men’s values. Men’s importance. I couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.
I turned back to grudgingly thank the man who’d helped us.
He was gone.
Then Rhys caught my elbow and ran with me across a road snarled with traffic, toward an open parking lot, and I let the matter go. Sort of.
By the time we’d let the worst of the heat out of his borrowed car’s open doors, I’d made at least one decision. “Can we stop somewhere on the way to Alexandria?”
“Absolutely.” Rhys started the car, a battered, dusty, blue Chevy Metro. Something that resembled air-conditioning sputtered from its vents. “Museums? Pyramids?”
Well, of course I wanted to see the pyramids—who wouldn’t? But, “I want to go shopping,” I told him, and didn’t smile at his double take. Damn it, I hadn’t yet made it off airport property, and already I was awash in testosterone. Women with veils. Guards with assault weapons. Double standards.
Hopefully I wouldn’t run into actual violence this time around, not like my last grail quest. The Comitatus didn’t know I was here, after all.
But just in case they found out…
“I want to buy a sword.”
Chapter 3
Isis may not have been anywhere near the airport, but she made multiple appearances in Cairo’s ancient shopping bazaar, the Khan el-Khalili. The labyrinth of narrow medieval streets and plazas snaking between four-and five-story buildings burst at the seams with goods, wares and of course souvenirs. Here I saw Isis and many of her fellow gods on T-shirts and postcards. I saw her painted on papyrus and ceramics, on figurines of varying sizes, on jewelry.
“Pretty lady try on necklace,” shouted one turbaned man from outside a souk, or store, that sold jewelry. And sure enough, the handful of necklaces he held up included not only scarabs and sphinxes and Eye-of-Horus design called an udjat, but ankhs and pendants with a circle topped by a half circle, like horns. Those last two were major Isis symbols.
“Rings for rings,” called the woman behind him. Veiled. In this suffocating heat. “Pretty things.”
People shouted. Chickens squawked. Children laughed and dodged past shoppers—or begged. The way both handcrafted and plastic-wrapped merchandise spilled out into the already littered streets, and bright banners draped across the open area above us to provide shade and color, I found myself increasingly glad I didn’t suffer claustrophobia. With claustrophobia, this would be hell.
Instead, it was fun, if ovenlike. The smells of spices, incense, perfumes and produce—mountains of oranges and bananas and white garlic bulbs—overwhelmed the lingering scent of diesel like an exotic time travel. Quite a few merchants dressed as their predecessors must have for hundreds of years.
“Welcome to Egypt!”
“Where you from?”
“No charge for looking!”
Leaning close to Rhys, I raised my voice. “Are you sure they sell swords here?”
“I’m told they sell everything here.” He readjusted the laptop case, which we’d decided not to risk leaving in the car. “Legend has it some of the most ancient Christian scrolls were recovered at a bazaar like this.”
I smiled at his clear envy; he’d become increasingly interested in the early history of the church since he’d gone civilian. “Good luck finding some more of them.”
“You want swords?” asked a little boy with huge black eyes, suddenly ahead of us. “Here was once the metalworker’s bazaar. I show you swords—come!”
So what the hell, we followed.
The first shop he brought us to had only swords with animal-horn handles, not exactly what I wanted. The next sported highly decorative weapons that looked fit for Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights, but were actually letter openers made out of tin. And the third one—
Just right. The third souk displayed a collection of real blades laid on silk-lined tables and hung from rope outside the shop. The inside walls displayed them one above the next.
Steel blades. Fighting swords.
Rhys slipped our miniature guide some coins—baksheesh, don’t you know—and I went shopping.
It’s not like I’m an expert on swords. Most of my experience before this summer came from practicing tai chi forms with a straight, double-edged saber. It’s used not so much for fighting as for an extension of one’s self in a fluid, moving meditation. But that practice came in damned useful when the Comitatus attacked Lex and me with ceremonial daggers.
Apparently society members had nothing against guns for your average peons, but knives were used for attacks of any ritual significance. I hoped I’d risen to that much esteem, anyway.
Mainly because I hate guns.
Some of the swords inside this hot little souk I could immediately reject. Almost half of them were just too large for me to comfortably wield, much less carry with any discretion. Just as many were curve-bladed scimitars, high on style, low on personal practicality. But some…
Several dozen straight-bladed swords beckoned me to pick them up, test their heft, swing them.
The grizzled shopkeeper stepped back to give me as much space as he could, which wasn’t much. Luckily, tai chi is all about control over oneself and, when swords are involved, one’s blade.
I barely heard the merchant’s explanation of the benefits of this piece or that—Toledo steel here, Damascus there, replicas of swords belonging to sheikhs and knights. I was too busy listening to the swords themselves.
I tried a sword with too thick of a grip, then one with a basket hilt, like a rapier, which felt awkward to me. I tried one that turned out to be way too long, and another that weighed too much. Rhys said something about being right back, and I nodded, but mostly I was lifting swords, holding them over my head, spinning with them, thrusting them at full arm’s length…trying to find my perfect extension.
For the first week or so after Lex’s attack I’d avoided practicing, and not just because I’d wrenched my wrist in the fight. Every time I’d picked up my sword, I would remember exactly what it felt like to thrust a blade into another human being. Through skin. Into muscle, ligaments, bone. And yes, it was sickening. That’s the point. It’s not that I regretted doing it—those men had given me no other choice when they tried to kill someone I cared about. But I regretted having been in a situation that demanded it.
Then my sifu had suggested that I either choose to swim across the blood or to drown in it. That was when I’d reclaimed my practice, my extension. It didn’t happen right away—but by now, I could lose myself in the slow dance of forms that is pure tai chi without the guilt.
Embracing the moon.
Black dragon whipping its tail.
Dusting into the wind.
I was halfway through a routine, stepping slowly from one movement to the next, before I realized this was it. The sword I held had great weight, great balance. It was the one I wanted, the one that wanted me. Lowering it, I saw that it had a slim blade with a stylish brass S hilt and, intriguingly, a pattern within the hand-beaten steel that reminded me of snake scales. Snakes are a universal goddess symbol, not just for Melusine or Eve or the Minoans. This was perfect.
Wiping my face on my sleeve, I turned to ask the shopkeeper the cost—and was surprised to see that sometime during the last couple of swords, he’d vanished.
How odd. Worse, my throat tightened in warning. Because of that, I had my blade up and ready as I turned toward the front of the shop—and stopped short.
The sharp tip of a scimitar hovered, a mere breath from my tardy throat.
The man who held the sword, swarthy and square-shouldered, was the man who’d helped us at the airport. He still wore the suit. But now, weirdly enough, he had a protective, Eye-of-Horus design painted in blue on his cheek.
“Well, witch,” he said. “Let us see how good you are.”
And he swung.
Had he just called me a witch?
Thank heavens for practice. If I’d had to actually think about anything at that moment, I may have ended up as shish kebab.
Instead, my new sword leaped upward almost before I knew I was moving it. The two blades collided with a steel clash that echoed through the souk.
One steel clash.
That was all I needed.
Tai chi is all about passive resistance, resolving everything into its opposite. Softness against strength. Yielding and overcoming. To meet this man’s force with more force would be foolish, him being so much bigger and clearly more aggressive than me. Instead, I met it with concession, sliding my blade around his.
He did the work of thrusting. His mistake, since my blade remained in the space he was thrusting against. The only reason it merely scratched his arm, instead of stabbing him, was my reluctance to have it yanked from my hand.
I’d drawn first blood, all the same.
He drew breath in a quick hiss. “What kind of fighting is that?”
“Maybe I fight like a girl,” I said. Warned.
When he drew back to swing again, my blade continued to rest against his. When he sliced the air with his scimitar, my sword coiled around his and struck a second time across the light sleeve on his forearm.
Another stripe of blood.
I was the one who demanded, “Would you stop that?”
“I?” The bastard groped outward with his left hand, picked up one of the display swords and, with a sharp jerk, flipped its scabbard to the stone floor. Such a guy. When in doubt, up the weaponry.
Crap.
Now I had two blades to deal with, using only one. My sword couldn’t flow around both of them, and I’m no two-handed fencer, so I had to make myself flow around the man instead. Try to. Wouldn’t you know I’d be wearing a skirt for this, gauzy but long—dress is very conservative in Arabic countries. At least I had on boots.
The cluttered walls loomed in, too close.
When the man rushed me, I had no choice but to back up—fast—rather than take the full force of his attack. Even as I pivoted out of his way, letting him push past me, I stumbled against another table of merchandise. When he charged again, I dived under his weapons to avoid them both.
Gauzy skirt material twisted around my legs, and sand from the floor grated across my skin. Luckily, I managed to roll to my feet—barely—before hitting the opposite wall of this small souk. My skirt tore under one foot. A dagger fell behind me. “What the hell is your problem?”
He swung with his right-hand sword. With my empty hand, I caught his from behind and encouraged it in the direction it was already going as I dodged, throwing him off balance.
He stumbled.
“Why did you call me a witch?” I demanded.
Catching himself, he now sliced the left-hand blade toward me. I blocked it with my own weapon, one ringing impact and then silent adherence, sinuously winding my blade about his.
That didn’t protect me from the first sword, his scimitar. It flashed upward too quickly. To dodge it, I would either have to drop my sword or—
No way was I dropping my sword. Instead, I sank into an almost impossibly low crouch—without having stretched first, which I would regret—and ducked under his elbow. The scimitar whipped through the air above me. But it missed.
I tried to bob quickly back to my feet, behind my attacker and away from the immediate threat and his weapons, but I’d stepped on my damn skirt, which yanked me off balance long enough for the bastard to bodycheck me.
That was unexpected—which was why it worked. He rushed at me, filling my vision with his shoulder, his elbow. I meant to dance backward myself, like riding a wave. Let him do the work. Let him expend the effort.
But wham! Too soon, my back met a sword-covered wall. The back of my head slammed against a hard scabbard. And Sinbad’s swinging elbow knocked the breath right out of me.
I sank, fingers curling desperately around the grip of my own sword. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it.
As if lifting it were even possible, at that moment.
My damp knees hit the gritty floor, and I folded forward, catching myself with one hand, one fist.
Don’t drop it!
Breathe!
My body obeyed the first command, but not the second. I fought the physical panic that comes from having breath knocked away and arched my neck, straining my face upward.
The stranger’s hulking body loomed above me.
“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated in his impeccable British. “And you will take your friend with you.”
My chest tightened, and my view of him began to waver. Goddess help me….
Maybe it was Isis, or Melusine, or just that universal, maternal force of goddessness that answered my prayer. Or maybe it was just timing.
Hot, exotic air filled my lungs with a rush. And with it came power.