Forty-Four
E llie slumped against the warm, sturdy back of her riding companion, her eyelids drooping.
“Wake up, Ellie!” Constance said cheerfully, reaching back to tap her on the shoulder. “You’re about to fall off the camel.”
She yanked herself upright, blinking painfully as she held loosely to Constance’s waist. The day had sunk into early evening. They had been riding since dawn, returning along the same desert route that had brought them to the royal wadi of Tell al-Amarna. The addition of Neil and Constance to the party had made them two animals short, so the ladies had been paired up.
Jemmahor rode with Umm Waseem, her confiscated rifle proudly slung over her back. She kept up a running commentary in indignant Masri as they crossed the fifty miles of desert. Ellie heard the word ingilyzy often enough to guess that the apprentice midwife was still railing against the way in which Jacobs had used her as a hostage.
“What does ‘ibn kalb’ mean?” she called over to Neil.
“Er—son of a dog, I believe,” Neil returned awkwardly.
Sayyid snorted. He wore a kaffiyeh scarf around his head, loaned to him by Yusuf after the Bedouin cast a sympathetic look at Sayyid’s bald spot.
Adam rode up to join them. He looked perfectly at ease seated on his enormous camel. Though perhaps not quite as dashing as their exceptionally handsome Bedouin guides, with his bruises and stubble, Ellie still drank in the sight of him like water.
He caught her looking and flashed her a grin.
“We are here,” Zeinab announced, bringing her camel to a stop.
Ellie pulled her gaze from Adam to see that the camp of the Ibn Rashid lay before them. Three new tents had joined the assemblage, reminding Ellie that there was to be a wedding that night. The celebrations were clearly already in full swing, based on the music and the smell of roasted lamb that drifted to her across the evening air.
Lanterns had been lit against the approaching dusk, and a band of children played in the scrubby grass beyond the tents. The clear, high sound of their laughter rang through the evening air like small bells.
The figures clustered in front of the sheikh’s tent were already cast in shadow against the setting sun. One of them detached itself from the others to approach the incoming riders. Something about the tall, exceptionally well-tailored form struck Ellie as oddly familiar.
“Goodness!” Ellie exclaimed, straightening as she held onto Constance’s waist. “Isn’t that your grandmother’s dragoman?”
“Oh drat!” Constance blurted out. “It certainly looks like him.”
Mr. Mahjoud stepped into the light. His elegant ivory suit was set off by a bright red silk waistcoat—and the leather strap of a scabbard hung across his back.
“But is he wearing a sword?” Ellie asked with surprise.
“It is ceremonial. For the wedding,” Zeinab explained.
“That’s what you think,” Constance returned skeptically—and then stiffened as a smaller figure stepped into the light from behind the dragoman.
The form was distinctly feminine and slightly stout with age. Folds of midnight blue silk studded with golden embroidery peered out from under a dark traveling cloak… and Ellie was fairly certain she could feel the force of a penetrating, mildly sardonic glare from across the hundred yards of desert that still separated them.
“Er…” Ellie began awkwardly. “It would appear that he is accompanied by your grandmother.”
The word Constance used in response was significantly less polite than ‘drat.’
?
A few minutes later, Ellie inelegantly dismounted her groaning camel and brushed out her skirts. She hurried over to join Constance where she stood before the petite, regal, and extremely intimidating Maharajkumari Padma Devi.
“Aai!” Constance called out with forced brightness. “What a lovely surprise to see you here!”
“And how convenient that you have arrived,” Padma replied dryly, “as Mr. Mahjoud and I were just about to mount up to pursue you.”
Ellie swallowed against a dry throat as Constance plastered a desperate smile on her face.
“Is that right?” Constance asked with a bit of a squeak.
“Mr. Mahjoud, do let Samir know that we shall not be requiring his assistance after all.” Padma made a little wave of her hand in the direction of a trio of flawless Arabian stallions, which were being held in place by a tall, leanly muscular Bedouin gentleman in his mid-forties. His perfectly trimmed beard was spiked with silver while fine lines accented his golden eyes. Beneath his gently wind-tossed robes, his figure was straight and powerful.
He was possibly even more mouthwateringly attractive than Mustafa. He was also bristling with weapons—two daggers at his belt, a rifle over his shoulder, and a pistol in a holster under his arm.
“And who did you say that was?” Constance asked distantly as she drank up the sight.
“Samir is Sheikh Salah Mohammed’s younger brother,” Padma replied.
For a brief moment, Ellie wondered that Constance’s grandmother was already on comfortable terms with a remote Bedouin chief… but then, nothing ought to surprise her when it came to Kumari Padma’s cords of influence. Either she had already been acquainted with the sheikh through some arcane network of royal obligation, or she had simply marched up to his tent and bowled him over with her natural authority.
Mr. Mahjoud reached Samir and delivered his message. With perfect grace, Samir swung himself into the saddle and led the three horses away at a gallop.
Ellie only realized she was still gaping after him when Padma continued speaking.
“Now that’s settled,” she began neatly, “shall we talk about why you ran off without any word after being shot at by a pack of villains?”
“I sent a telegram!” Constance protested stoutly. “And we didn’t ‘run off.’ We were with a party of organized professionals.”
Padma raised a single eloquent eyebrow and allowed her gaze to brush over the company behind them.
Zeinab and the other Egyptian ladies were already gone, striding purposefully toward the brightly lit women’s tent. Instead, there was Neil, wobbling as he stumbled free of his camel. He still wore his bent glasses and open, tattered waistcoat, his brown hair sticking out at odd angles. The canvas bundle of Julian’s sword was tied awkwardly against his back with a length of rope.
Sayyid rubbed a nerve-wracked hand over his exhausted features, dark circles showing under his eyes.
Adam had slung an arm around the neck of his camel, scratching happily at its ears. “Who’s a good girl?” he cooed as the camel brayed. The skinny yellow dog ran in happy circles around his legs.
Ellie’s cheeks flushed. “But how did you even know where to find us?”
“When you disappeared amid flustered accounts of nefarious villains and a dash of sporadic gunfire, Mr. Mahjoud promptly reported the incident to me,” Padma replied archly. “Whereupon I joined him and proceeded to track you.”
Ellie’s eyes shifted involuntarily to Mr. Mahjoud, who had returned to Padma’s side. He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Ellie and Constance with a seething disapproval.
She wondered how many new favors Constance must now owe her grandmother. Somehow, Ellie felt certain that Constance would not be let off simply because Padma’s rescue had not strictly turned out to be necessary.
“Now, then,” Padma cut in authoritatively. “Shall you tell me what, precisely, the pair of you have been up to for the last four days?”
?
Padma herded Ellie and Constance to the women’s tent, leaving Neil, Adam, and Sayyid to answer the enthusiastic calls of the Bedouin gentlemen gathered around the fires, where they were greeted like returning family.
With a great deal of laughing and chatter, Ellie was deposited beside a platter loaded with roast lamb and rice dotted with dried fruits and herbs. The Bedouin ladies were beautifully decked out in elegantly embroidered gowns and hijabs accented by layers of brightly jingling jewelry.
The bride—the sheikh’s grandniece Fatimah—sat raised up over the other ladies, swathed in silk robes that glimmered with gilded embroidery as the older women fussed over her.
The food was plucked up and carried off to make room for dancing by the time Constance reached the end of her explanation.
“And so you see, Aai,” Constance continued, pitching her voice louder to be heard over the oud and drums. “The entire situation was entirely under control.”
“Indeed,” Padma blithely agreed, sipping her tea. “Entirely under control, from the part where you were thrown off a boat to the bit where Umm Waseem nearly had to blow a mountain down on top of you.”
Ellie’s gaze flickered over to where the old smuggler and munitions expert had joined the dancers, shaking her hips with remarkable agility.
“Of course I would have preferred to inform Mr. Mahjoud of our plans,” Constance pressed. “But we could hardly go back to Saqqara to fetch him with Julian and his mercenaries on the lookout for us! Really, we made the most sensible choices we could, given the circumstances. After all, I am not some child who requires coddling whenever things become difficult. I am nearly twenty-four!”
“I am quite aware of your increasingly advanced age, Kondi.” Padma’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Tell me—amid all of your adventures this week, have you made any further progress toward finding yourself a husband?”
Constance’s mouth firmly closed.
“Perhaps it is worth noting that the gentleman Lady Sabita preferred for Constance turned out to be an absolute bounder,” Ellie burst out testily. “And that Constance might be best left to judge any new prospects for herself in her own good time!”
Ellie had largely remained quiet during Constance’s account of their recent adventures, except when she had piped in to offer her personal theories about the impact of the Pharaoh Neferneferuaten on the development of the Abrahamic religions. Padma had cut that off just when Ellie was getting rolling.
The kumari was paying very close attention to her now, which left Ellie feeling like a butterfly pinned to a museum display board. She stiffened, refusing to be intimidated.
“Marriage is not always to a woman’s benefit,” she observed stoutly. “In fact, I should say that as an institution, it is currently so broken that I wonder why any woman would willingly enter into it, regardless of the quality of the gentleman involved!”
Ellie’s outburst came out a mite higher in volume than she had strictly intended—only so that it might be heard over the happy ululations of the Bedouin ladies trilling out the zagharit, of course.
Zeinab’s head turned from within the dancers, her green eyes locking thoughtfully onto Ellie before she was carried past by the current of celebrating ladies.
Beside Ellie, Constance’s face flashed with quick sympathy.
Padma’s gaze was harder to read. “I would not permit my granddaughter to marry a bounder, Miss Mallory,” she declared in a voice both as firm as stone and unimpeachably regal.
Jemmahor bounced over, her cheeks flushed pink. Her hair curled with a touch of well-earned perspiration at her forehead, where her hijab had fallen back a little.
“Come on, you two!” she ordered happily, holding out her hands. “You can’t possibly sit and gossip through the whole party like a pair of aunties!”
Constance shot a nervous look at her grandmother, but Padma only gave them a little wave, apparently dismissing them—at least for now.
Jemmahor grasped Ellie and Constance’s hands, hauling them up into the bouncing, shimmying mass of dancers, who let out a trill of delight at the new additions to their celebration.
?
An hour later, Ellie was herded out into the shadowy dusk to watch the men perform the Ardah. The Bedouin ladies had donned their abayas, many of which were richly decorated with silver sequins and elegant fringe. Their eyes were laughing and happy over their veils.
The gentlemen lined up outside their tent, their own wedding finery illuminated by a blaze of torches and lanterns. Each of them held some sort of weapon—mostly swords, though Ellie also spotted a few rifles.
The drum began to beat, the bass of it pulsing with the thrum of her heart as she watched from among the row of seated women. She had been separated from Constance and Padma in the rush outside but spotted them a little further down the line.
Constance was watching Ellie’s brother.
The Bedouin had co-opted their guests into the display. Neil held a sword—but not the distinct twist-welded iron of his legendary blade. Ellie supposed that was for the best, as it might have an unanticipated effect on the party if it were to suddenly burst into flames. Neil held his borrowed weapon out in front of him as though afraid he was going to slice himself with it. An older gentleman beside him took pity and helped him adjust his grip.
His sword now somewhat more properly positioned, Neil’s gaze rose—rather unerringly, Ellie thought—to where Constance sat among the women.
Adam stepped into place in the line, and Ellie’s eyes found him just as unerringly.
He had taken out his machete. The men around him were laughing, clearly making jokes about its relatively smaller size. Someone handed him a shamshir, the curved blade gleaming in the light of the rising moon.
Another of the sheikh’s remarkably attractive relations started to sing, calling out lines of poetry as the drum beat rose.
The men began to move, their swords rising and flashing as they swept out and down. The blades twisted in their hands as the song rose into the evening sky, echoing softly off the unchanging stones that framed the camp.
Zeinab dropped beside Ellie without waiting for an invitation. The light fabric of her abaya pooled on the carpet that had been set out for them. Her eyes settled on the men.
Sayyid clearly knew the dance, joining it with a smile on his face. He fit in very well, despite being a city scholar among a band of herders and warriors. One would never guess that earlier that morning, he had wielded the power of a prophet to bury a revolutionary secret beneath the sand.
Ellie wondered if he even realized how much of a hero he was.
Neil was obviously struggling to keep up, nearly fumbling his sword, but he kept at it with a slightly desperate determination. The sight warmed her heart, even as her feelings for her hapless, scholarly brother remained a bit complicated. He had done some very foolish things over the last few days—and some very brave ones as well.
Ellie found herself wondering whether perhaps the complications went back even further… whether maybe she had been more hurt by Neil in the past than she had allowed herself to recognize.
But to be hurt, one had to care. And over all that had happened since she arrived in Egypt, Ellie had been reminded that she cared about Neil a very great deal. That it would be worth muddling through what had gone wrong between them instead of pretending that none of it really mattered.
Her gaze shifted down the line to where Adam wielded his borrowed sword with easy instinct, the blade flashing in his hand as though he had been born to it. A lop-sided grin brightened his unshaven face.
Something wrenched painfully in Ellie’s chest at the sight.
“I think I have realized why the two of you have been mooning over each other like a pair of lost puppies,” Zeinab quietly observed.
Ellie startled at the sound of her voice, having momentarily forgotten the other woman was there. “Lost puppies!” she protested.
“You are in love with him,” Zeinab continued relentlessly.
The pain in Ellie’s chest tightened, threaded through with worry, fear, and a wild, desperate longing. The bone-deep feeling snuck up on her like a bandit with a power that threatened to overwhelm her.
Zeinab’s gaze lingered on Adam as he swung his sword in the wrong direction, then corrected himself with a laugh, the men around him smiling. “But you will not marry him. Because marriage in your world is a monster.”
“How did you…” Ellie’s voice trailed off, and she drew in a careful, unsteady breath. “It’s… we’re…” She swallowed thickly. “It’s complicated .”
“Complicated.” Zeinab echoed the word like a curse. Her tone shifted. “Of course, marriage is far from good in Egypt. Our mullahs say that it is the will of Allah that women be subservient to men. But that is not what I read in the Quran. My Quran declares that Allah made men and women to be equals. Waman ya?mal mina l-?ali ? ati min dhakarin aw untha wahuwa mu'minun fa-ulaika yadkhul?na l-janata,” she recited. “‘For whoever does right, whether man or woman, and is a believer, will enter Heaven.’”
The song of the men drifted to them on a night breeze scented with acacia blossoms. Stars pricked to life against the deep velvet of the twilight sky overhead.
“Tell me, Miss Mallory,” Zeinab continued. “Which truth should I live? Their truth? Or the one that holds between me and my Lord?”
Her words were quiet. The Bedouin women scattered around them did not hear, comfortably wrapped up in their happy gossip as they watched the Ardah.
Zeinab waited for an answer. Ellie gave the only one she possibly could.
“Yours,” Ellie replied.
“ Mine ,” Zeinab confirmed, her green eyes flashing with determination. “I know the mullahs have law and custom on their side. I know that my truth does not save the women who are forced into marriages with men who misuse them. Some might even say that it changes nothing—but they would be wrong .”
Ellie’s heart skipped strangely in her chest. Zeinab’s tone sounded dangerous in a way that tugged at her like a golden thread.
“Your Bates is a good man. An honorable man,” Zeinab added meaningfully. “It is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that he is devoted to you exactly as you are, even when it is troublesome for him—and you have chosen a path with no shortage of trouble,” she noted dryly. “But the trouble that this world would thrust upon you—the trouble of the choice you think you must make between this man and what you believe in… That is not complicated . That is tyranny .”
A sense of wild, strange potential whispered through Ellie, notching up the low drumbeat of her heart.
“What are you saying?” she asked, her voice careful.
“I am saying that if you wish to change the world, you must first know what you mean for it to become.” Zeinab’s words snapped with quiet ferocity. “When you find your own truth—yours and God’s—and live it in spite of those who would confine you… now you are dangerous. Because you know what ought to be. Because you seize it for yourself from the teeth of their injustice, even as the world howls that you must not.”
Ellie felt as though she were teetering at the edge of a precipice. Behind her lay the world she had known, while before her stretched… something else . Something she was only beginning to imagine.
She realized that her hands were shaking. She tucked them carefully around her bruised ribs.
“What could that even look like?” she asked, her breath tight.
“Only the two of you can decide that,” Zeinab returned authoritatively.
“But… what if the rest of the world thinks it’s wrong?” Ellie pressed back urgently.
“Do I go about telling everyone I meet that I am a revolutionary?” Zeinab scoffed. “Running up to the doors of tyranny to bang on them with your sword is a man’s way of doing battle.” Her eyes glittered. “Women take the hinges off.”
Ellie snorted with laughter. The sound burst from her involuntarily and was loud enough that a few of the other women glanced over, their eyes warm with wry surprise over their veils.
Zeinab’s gaze shifted to the figure of her husband, where he gracefully swept out his borrowed sword. “Of course, you cannot keep it from the people who truly love you. And they may worry, because they care about your happiness. But once they understand that this is your truth, they will accept it.”
Ellie glanced over at Neil as he far less gracefully worked to keep up, his face brightened by a tired, involuntary grin. “Do you really believe that?”
“I do,” Zeinab solemnly replied. Her expression shifted, going over more dry. “Unless they are bigots, in which case they may change their hearts or go away.”
This time Ellie’s laugh simply spilled out, and something loosened inside of her—a tight, heavy knot that she had been carrying around without realizing it. As it unraveled, the night around her grew wider, sprawling out across a moon-silvered desert rife with possibilities.
Her gaze locked on Adam where he danced among the line of men, tracing the graceful sweep of his arm as his sword flashed in the torchlight. “What if we want different things?”
“Do you think only suffragists have that problem?” Zeinab retorted. “That is part of every relationship, even those among friends. We work it out together as best we can. That is all we can ever do.”
“Can it really be that simple?” Ellie demanded cautiously.
Zeinab rolled her eyes. “There is nothing remotely simple about it. But I think you and Mr. Bates will manage.”
She stood, the black folds of her abaya shifting into place around her. She was not a large woman, but in that moment, kissed by the distant lamplight against the rich shadows of the dusk, she looked like something out of myth.
Her green eyes shone with a quiet fire as she looked down at Ellie, and her words rang with low, furious power. “The oppressors take enough from us already. Do not dare let them take your heart as well.”
A thrill burst through Ellie’s nerves with the electric force of a firework.
The men sang their ancient song of war and honor as the women laughed in the shadows. The stars glittered overhead as the wind danced across the sand-scoured verge of the desert… and everything quietly changed.
Ellie rose as though drawn by an invisible cord that pulled her toward both the awakening night and the man who danced across from her.
Zeinab’s lip twisted with a warm hint of mischief. “Don’t stay out too late,” she warned and strolled away.
The dance was finished. At the finale, a zagharit swelled up from the line of women, their trilling celebration rising into the velvet sky.
Ellie’s gaze unerringly picked out the battered, golden-haired American mingling with the crowd of victorious men. As though he could sense her across the yards that separated them, Adam turned, his blue eyes finding her among the shadows.
Though exhaustion still tugged at her, a quicksilver steel came into her spine as she lifted her head and knowingly—pointedly—tipped her chin toward the vast silence of the desert that lay beyond the warm embrace of the lamplight.
Without waiting for his reaction, she set off across the rock-strewn sand, slipping into the cobalt shadows of the dusk.