Chapter 23
Four camels trudged through the desert.
They’d gotten a later start than Ezra would have liked—the boat ride across the Nile was agonizingly slow, and once they met up with their mounts on the other side, their guide actually tried to lead them on a tour, pausing at ruins to recite encyclopedic entries he’d clearly memorized.
Biz tried to hurry things along with sweet talk and piastres, with moderate success.
By the time they reached the Valley of the Kings, the late-afternoon light was as golden as a bite from a honeycomb, dripping down the faces of the surrounding cliffs.
The day’s heat was retreating, as were many of the archaeological teams who’d set up camp in the area.
Their tents reminded Ezra of huddled seagulls come together to fight over a cracker.
Most of the men milling about the camps were European.
The locals, wearing galabeyas, tended to sit on the outskirts, sipping tea from tin cups by the yawning entrances of the tombs they’d been hired to unearth.
Their hands were coated in grave-dirt. Faces too.
“Bit crowded, isn’t it?” Vincent made a face as they plodded past a gramophone playing “Clair de Lune.” In the distance, a donkey brayed along.
Ezra grunted as well. “Everyone wants to be the next Howard Carter.” Somehow, the archaeologist who’d discovered King Tutankhamun’s tomb had escaped the worst of its curse. His rise to fame, and fortune, had put him on par with gods in Oxford’s antiquities department.
“Are you surprised?” Biz chimed in from the back of her camel. She looked like a travel advertisement: with her parasol and white lace gloves that were in no way suited to digging up a hidden tomb.
“Disenchanted is all,” her fiancé replied.
Their guide muttered something in breathy Arabic that Ezra couldn’t bring himself to repeat.
Then the man turned and gave a smile that matched the sliver of moon hovering above the surrounding mountains.
“Do not worry, effendi. I am following your map.” He held up the fourth piece of paper that Biz had tried her frottage technique on.
It should have been Celia’s. Ezra tried to swat aside this thought, same as he’d dismissed all the others.
If she’d really wanted it—wanted him—she would have turned up at the Winter Palace.
She’d run off with a handful of trinkets instead.
It was Vincent who’d stayed.
Vincent who’d promised to wait.
Their earlier kisses still burned on Ezra’s lips.
It made his insides feel almost as shimmery as the air around them.
It made him want to spur his mount forward as they climbed a winding path into the wadis.
But the hill was perilously steep, and, in all likelihood, the camel would try to bite back.
So they spent another hour in plodding silence as the sun sank into the serpentine hills.
Sunset colors saturated the cliffs—ambers and rose golds accenting mountaintops that Ezra recognized from his copy of the map.
They were close to the scattered stars.
But, of course, they weren’t the only ones.
Hugo and Everett hadn’t chosen to be invisible this time. Their tent stood proudly in the clearing—empty except for another guide who busied himself with dinner preparations. The magicians themselves? Well, they had disappeared. No doubt into one of the many caves that pocked the surrounding hills.
Ezra studied his map as they dismounted. The constellation suddenly seemed much more scattered than it had before.
“Shall we?” Vincent held up a lantern. Its glass looked clunky, compared to the brightness of Celia’s locket.
Biz grabbed her own light from the side of her kneeling camel, hitched her skirts, and started up one of the many small paths leading away from the encampment. Ezra ran after her. It was easy to catch up, given how Biz’s gown hampered her.
“I think it’s best if I go first, Biz.”
“Right.” She paused, her eyes going a harsher shade of green as she held up her lantern. “Do you know where you’re going?”
I should. Ezra swallowed, his hand wrinkling around the map…
His mother had etched it out. For him. This was the land of his ancestors.
These sands had been his first true lullaby.
The more Ezra studied the surrounding landscape, the more it moved him, tugging the edges of memory.
He’d walked these hills before. With Nour.
She’d brought him here as a very young child, hadn’t she?
He could only remember snatches of the visit.
How they’d stood together in an entrance chamber piled high with treasures.
His mut had held his hand so tightly that Ezra could almost count how many bones lay inside.
“I think I can find my way,” he said slowly.
“Right, then.” His sister waved at the path. “Go ahead.”
Yet Ezra did not move. “It’s just—I don’t want you to get hurt—”
“Wait.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not trying to send me back to camp, are you?”
“Elizabeth—”
“Ezra.”
Vincent, wisely, halted a few steps behind his fiancée.
The rolled-up sleeves of his safari suit showed tanned forearms, and his hair was suitably tousled after their camel ride.
“Are we going to stand around exchanging our Christian names or are we going to hunt for this treasure? Need I remind you that Hugo is almost half a day ahead of us.”
Biz’s nostrils flared—the way they always did when she was letting off steam, as George used to say. “I would like to hunt for this treasure, thank you very much. Ezra is the one holding things up.”
“Bad things could happen, Bitty—”
“Don’t you dare Bitty me. I’m not a little girl anymore! I can take care of myself.” She planted her hands on her hips and shot a wild glance at Vincent. “That goes for both of you. Anyway, why are you trying to send me back and not him? He’s the one who complains when he gets sand in his shoes!”
Her fiancé let out a noise of protest. “It’s just so… sandy!”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, Biz. It’s me. It’s—” Ezra faltered.
“I thought we’d gotten past all this,” his sister broke in. “I thought we’d moved on.”
So many people had moved on. Ezra’s mother was gone. George too. Their father had always been absent, in the ways that mattered. Celia had fled. Even Vincent was standing too far away to reach, awkwardly scuffing the sand with his boot.
“You’re all I have left, Elizabeth.”
“And if you send me away, you’ll have nothing,” she replied, sharp as a tack.
“We’ll both lose.” Her face flushed, not with rage exactly, and certainly not with embarrassment.
This feeling seemed rawer. “I’m older than you and George were when you went off to war.
I will not be left behind. Not again. I’ll claw my way up these cliffs with a toothpick if I have to. ”
“Always the toothpicks!” Vincent exclaimed under his breath.
“They’re very handy accessories,” Biz replied.
“Now I know what to get you for your birthday, at least.” Her fiancé managed a jaunty grin. “C’mon, Bright. She’s right. Odds are she’ll save both our skins and serve Hugo’s balls on a silver platter.”
The hills around them were quickly losing their color, thanks to the sinking sun. The sky to the west had gone fresh-wound red. The rest was bruised. The air between Ezra and his sister felt especially heavy.
They were running out of time.
“All right,” he relented.
Biz broke out into a smile. Lighter and brighter than anything he’d seen cross her face these past few days.
Their group started back up the path through the wadi.
It split several times. Ezra paused at the first fork in the trail, trying to feel the right way inside of him.
He wished he had that golden pyramid compass—the one that started this whole business.
But it was all too likely that Hugo had it instead.
That, right now, it was guiding the magician exactly where he needed to go…
“Is something wrong?”
Night had fallen in earnest, and the shadows did an eerie dance as Vincent held up his lantern. Biz’s face took on a carved appearance. Ezra shut his eyes and focused on the image of the golden pyramid—not as it had sat in the British Museum, but before. He pictured his mut holding the relic.
“I’ve been here, I think… as a child,” he admitted to the others. “But the memory is fuzzy…”
“I see it!” There was a rustling sound as Vincent drew closer, followed by the tiniest prick of pain on Ezra’s scalp. The other young man had pulled the memory out the way one might pluck a hair. “Here! Clear as day! Looks like your mother chose the left fork.”
Vincent passed the lantern to Ezra and held the shining strand aloft, following whatever memory he could see inside.
It led them straight to the mouth of a cave.
The entrance was well hidden, disguised by a large boulder.
They would’ve missed it entirely if not for the remembrance Vincent was holding.
Had the other magicians found the opening as well?
It was dark. Unassuming. The kind of space a wild animal might call home.
Ezra half expected to find jackals curled up in the deeper shadows, but instead, the cave crawled on, broken cobwebs fluttering against lamplight.
Footprints jigsawed the sand beneath them.
Someone had passed this way.
Recently.
Ezra handed the lantern off to Biz. He no longer needed it.
Light had started searing down his edges.
Spiders shrank back into bald corners. Biz and Vincent made similar movements, but their shadows stayed true.
This wasn’t the rage that had consumed Ezra in the pyramid.
His sessions with Celia had paid off—for now at least.
He was here.
He was focused.
He was drawing so much closer to the truth of himself.