Mara, Daughter of the Nile (22 page)

“Do not fear for me, my princess. I’ll think of something. Stay, I even have a talisman to protect me!” Smiling, she plunged her hand into her sash and triumphantly produced the ring, which she slipped onto her finger.

“It will bring good luck?”

“Provided I do not wear it in the wrong company,” said
Mara drily. “And now I will tell you something, though I know not if it’s wise to do so …” She hesitated, then whispered rapidly, “The ring brought you luck today, as well as me. If all goes well—if all this we have talked of tonight comes to pass, and the king rules Egypt—then you need stay here and be homesick no longer, in this land you hate.”

“They will—send me home?” whispered Inanni incredulously.

“I have Sheftu’s promise on it. There, do not look so, or everyone will guess what I have told you! It is only an ‘if,’ you know. You must not hope too hard.”

“Ah, Mara, I will try not, thank you, thank you—” Inanni tried to say more, failed, and hiding the radiance of her face beneath one of her many shawls, hurried through the door and into her chambers.

The Syrian women were still at their embroidering and chattering, but Inanni passed through their midst and went directly to her bedroom. I’m glad I told her, thought Mara. Very glad … Wrenching her mind back to her own affairs, she headed for her room. What was she going to tell that crocodile of a Nahereh? She needed time to think. Perhaps, she reflected as she pushed aside the tapestry that curtained her door, I could accuse that spying little scribe of something or other. Say he was acting suspicious, friendly to the king. She grinned as she closed the door behind her and turned into the room. Pompous little donkey! He would not last long if—

Her thoughts broke off with a jolt. Chadzar the Libyan was leaning stolidly against the far wall, waiting for her.

For a moment she felt an overpowering desire to whirl around, dash back through the door and seek safety in that crowd of Syrians until the last one went to bed. A well-developed instinct for self-preservation prevented her. If she betrayed the least sign of panic …

She heard her own voice speaking coolly, almost indifferently. “You come very early.”

“I come when I’m sent,” grunted Chadzar. “Get a cloak.”

“But I’m not ready yet. I came only to fetch the board for hounds and jackals. The Syrian expects me to entertain her until bedtime.”

“That’s none of my affair.”

He pushed away from the wall and walked forward, while Mara cast about desperately for some other excuse to delay, to gain time. He scowled at her, switching his whip impatiently against his sandal. “Make haste! Fetch a cloak!”

There was small use arguing with that restless whip and the look in that one eye, which had begun to gleam balefully in the Libyan’s pale-skinned, brutal face. Mara found her cloak and flung it about her with trembling fingers. She would have to do her planning on the way.

But there was no time to plan, no time to think. Before she could conquer her confusion she was in the chariot, sweeping through the streets of western Thebes. The ride was as wild as before, but this time Mara wished it had lasted longer. In vain she struggled to make her brain function as she stepped down into the dark courtyard beside her master’s house, moved on reluctant feet through the little side door and into the hall. The same scent of wine and perfume drifted to her nostrils, the same faint echoes of merriment to her ears.

“Cease your dawdling!” growled Chadzar, giving her a prod with the whip handle. “Think you he wants to wait forever?”

An instant later she stepped into the small tapestry-hung study and the door closed behind her.

“Well?” came the chilly voice of her master.

Mara’s hand closed convulsively over the ring. “Live forever, illustrious one!” she heard herself saying. “May thy shadow seek the light, may thy—”

“Save your pleasantries for those who wish them,” he cut in acidly. “What news have you?”

“Honored one, I have the best of news! I was successful
in preventing the king from sending away his attendants. As I promised you, every one of them was present during the interview.”

Nahereh said nothing, merely settled himself in a chair and waited. Mara hurried on.

“It was no small matter to convince my princess, I assure you. I coaxed and coaxed, and finally had to prod her a little. ‘My princess,’ I said to her—very severely, master—‘My princess, His Highness himself believes it better to allow these menials to be present during the audience. Come, they might suspect you are afraid of them!’ Of course she is afraid of them, master, but she does not like to admit it. And that won the game.”

It had, indeed, won the game, though not quite in the way Mara implied. It was the king, not Inanni, who had caught the significance of that phrase “They might suspect”—he who had suddenly decided the attendants should stay in the room. Mara saw no reason, however, to mention these things to the granite-faced Son of Set in the chair before her.

Instead she smiled as if expecting his praise, and helped herself to a sweetmeat from his golden bowl. “And so you see, I shall have this trouble no more, and there’ll be every chance to watch for that messenger—”

“You have not found him yet?”

“I cannot be sure,” she evaded. “However, I kept a watch on the scribe, as you instructed me. He’s of small use to you.”

“How so?”

“The king knows him for an enemy. What chance have I to observe anything useful with His Highness guarding every syllable, every motion—”

“I thought you said you would have every chance!”

“With the scribe gone, yes. But while he is there—”

“Do I understand,” said Nahereh ominously, “that you have come empty-handed again?”

She met his eyes and saw quite plainly that no evasion was going to work. Unless she produced some kind of information, and produced it at once, this man would sell her instantly—or do worse. Her mouth went dry with sudden fear. She had nothing to tell him—save the truth. And if she told him that …

A wild scheme darted into her mind. Could she tell him a scrap of truth—a mere scrap, convincing yet not really dangerous? If she could control it … Nay, it was too reckless, a mere gamble—

“Well?” said her master.

She heard her own quick laugh, her voice speaking. “Nay, I’m far from empty-handed, master.”

The wildest gamble! She must not think of it, with the stakes so high … But what of her own stakes in this game? In fifteen minutes she could be back in her rags, dodging some new master’s stick, tossed into oblivion like a handful of rubbish.
Look after yourself, Mara, nobody else will
. … She threw the dice.

“I have something—but I know not what to make of it. Perhaps you know that His Highness amuses himself by designing vases? Well, dozens of sketches were spread on the table there, this morning. Big ones, little ones, all inscribed and decorated. And there was one of them—” She paused, feeling herself teeter on the brink of a precipice, tingling in every nerve. To cover her dizzy fright, she turned away idly, reaching into the bowl again as she did so.

“Pray have a sweetmeat!” invited Nahereh with heavy irony.

“Thank you!” She forced a mocking grin, and her nerves quieted. She sauntered to a chair and sank down on its arm. “It seemed to me that the inscription on this one vase looked less like decoration than a message—”

“A message!” He was on his feet and standing over her before she could draw breath, jerking her up to face him.
“By Amon, you’ll cease this babbling now, and tell me what you mean!”

“I mean it was a message.” She pulled free and sat down on the chair arm again. She felt quite cool now, and recklessly sure of herself. The tingling was gone. “It was the name of a tavern. I’ll wager it’s where the rebels meet.”

Nahereh stared at her a moment. Then he whirled, fetched a writing block and reed pen from a box, and beckoned her curtly. “Copy it here.”

She took the block, swiftly sketched a vase, and began to draw hieroglyphs in a border around its lip. She could hear Nahereh’s heavy breathing as he leaned over her shoulder, then a low sound, ugly with triumph, deep in his throat.

He took the writing block, and he was smiling. “The Inn of the Falcon.”

“Nay, you have read it wrong!” gasped Mara. In dismay she stared at the hieroglyphs she had drawn, and though they blurred and swam with her fright, she could still make out that the last one was no falcon. “You have read it wrong,” she repeated, trying to steady her voice. “It is an owl, master.”

“Aye, but you’ve set it down wrong, girl, that’s the trouble. It was a natural error. No doubt you caught only a glimpse of the original, and it is easy to mistake the falcon symbol for the owl—”

“Nay, I saw it clearly! It was no glimpse, I took care to study it.”

He laughed almost amiably. “Then they, too, set it down wrong, perhaps by intention.
Hai!
Small good it did them! They meant the Inn of the Falcon, you may rely upon it. I know the place.”

“You know it?” said Mara faintly. The tingling was back—it had become a roar in her ears, as if she had stepped off the precipice and were falling sickeningly through space.

“We’ve snared them now,” he was saying, half to himself. “So the pen is their messenger! Small wonder we’ve been
puzzled … You did well to notice this. Aye, and I did well to buy you! But I’m seldom wrong. I know a clever slave when I see one. Come, choose a sweetmeat.”

“It seems hardly—credible—that a great lord like you would know aught of such an inn. I fancy it’s a dirty den, jammed with waterfront riffraff—”

“Oh, I’ve never set foot in the place. But I know of it, aye, I know of it. Stay, I must think …”

Mara drew a deep breath and bit into her sweetmeat. He knew, it was too late to wonder how. There he stood rubbing his hands, thinking how he would use his knowledge. She had better help him think—and fast.

“You will set a spy to watch this place?” she began cautiously.

“Aye. It’s their leader we want, not a rabble of underlings.”

“It will be a hard choice, master.”

“Hard?”

“To choose the spy you want.”

“Nay, that’s no problem. Stop chattering, girl, I must think.”

Mara chose another sweetmeat and strolled a little closer. “The innkeeper’s the problem. Have you thought of him? I know the breed, and I’ll wager he misses little. Especially this one. Osiris! With a plot hatching on the premises? He’ll let no stranger by him, that’s certain, as long as this leader is anywhere about. He’d throw out that scribe of yours in no time. Even the Libyan. Master, no man could get past him.”

Nahereh was listening now; his head had turned toward her. Mara licked her fingers and flashed a glance at him. “But I could,” she added.

His chilly face did not change expression, but there was thoughtful calculation in the gaze that ran over her from head to toe. “Could you, indeed?” he said.

“Why don’t you try me? I’m weary of the palace and the Canaanite. I can find the inn—I’m used to such places and
used to talking my way in and out of them. I promise I’m a match for any innkeeper.”

“What of the palace sentries?”

“I’ve made friends with a few of them already—just to pass the time.”

“You need a taste of the whip, Miss Insolence. Who said you might thus make free with my orders?”

“You never forbade me, master. What harm in smiling at a sentry? I think one of them would let me out for a visit to that inn.”

Nahereh sank into a chair and drummed his thin fingers on the arm of it. “Nay, that’s too chancy. Use my name. I’ve no doubt you know it by now.”

“Aye, Lord Nahereh,” said Mara demurely. “Your fame is far too great in Thebes to—”

He silenced her with a gesture. “Can you leave that princess of yours without her knowledge?”

“Easily.”

He rose and strode to a chest in the corner, leaving Mara giddy with relief. “Come here,” he ordered. He had unrolled a papyrus; as she approached she saw it was marked into squares and rectangles, like the rooms of a great house. “This is a plan of the palace,” he told her. “Here is the guardroom, here is your own chamber, near this stair, here are the king’s apartments. And here—” he jabbed a finger at a small square off one of the courtyards—“is a study reserved for my own use when I am at the Golden House. Do you think you could find it?”

Mara nodded. “Aye. Down this passage and to the right. It would be the third door?”

“The fourth. Now look you.” He rolled up the papyrus and thrust it back into the chest. “Go tomorrow night to the Inn of the Falcon. Go every night. You have only to give the sentry my name. I will send for you in three days, but if you learn aught before that, I want no delay in hearing of it. Go
to my study at once if you have news. If I am not there, you will find someone who will bring you to me.”

“I hope,” remarked Mara, “that this someone drives better than your Libyan.”

“It will be the Libyan.” He gave her an unpleasant smile. “What you had best hope, Impudent One, is that you can make good those boasts of yours.”

“Did you not say yourself that I was clever?”

“Aye. Only take care you do not become too clever for your own good. Now go.”

He jerked his head toward the door, and she went, trying to ignore his last remark. She was none too sure she had not already done that very thing. Still, she had won her gamble, she thought as she joined Chadzar in the hall. The margin had been slimmer than she cared to think about, but she had satisfied the stony-faced one, saved her own neck, and saved Sheftu’s too by arranging her own appointment as the spy. Moreover, she no longer need worry about Reshed, who had grown increasingly unreasonable lately. She could now walk past any sentry on the grounds by mentioning Nahereh’s name. She had planned well. The only thing she had not planned was that Nahereh should ever know the real name of the inn.

She followed Chadzar across a passageway. A servant flung open the door at its end and came hurrying toward them with a tray of empty plates. Attracted by the gust of music and laughter, Mara glanced into the room beyond him, caught a glimpse of blue-wigged ladies and courtiers grouped in a semicircle about a sumptuous table, with great platters of fruit, and a harpist playing—and just before the door swung shut, a figure darted into her range of vision, and there was a flash of golden balls.