Mara, Daughter of the Nile (28 page)

“The
Friend of the Wind
will be. She sails the following dawn.”

“That will serve. On the vessel
Friend of the Wind
.” Sheftu straightened, drawing a long breath. “If the queen’s soldiers raid that ship tomorrow night, Captain, we’ll have our proof.”

“And if little Blue Eyes does not take your bait?”

“Nay, she knows the time is running out. She could want no better chance to deliver the whole revolution to that master of hers, gold, rebels and all, and be off with her own winnings. She’ll take the bait, right enough—unless she’s innocent. Now, is there anything I’ve not thought of?”

“Nay, you would seem to have thought of everything,” said Nekonkh bitterly. “Stay, though. You’ve not told me that message from you. The one that is to reassure her.”

“Oh yes. That.” Sheftu ran his palm carefully along the gunwale. It was hot from the sun, and the grain of the wood showed clear and beautiful in the strong light. “You may tell her,” he said, “that I have not forgotten what I said last night, when I held her in my arms.”

Nekonkh regarded him a moment in silence, then turned away. “Gods of Egypt, this is an ugly business!” he snarled.

“Aye, Captain! It’s an ugly world.” Sheftu pushed away from the rail and started across the glaring decks, the other following. “Remember,” he added sharply, “you’re but the counter in this game—I choose the gambits. Is all clear now?”

“I think so. Will I meet you at the Falcon?”

“On the wharf yonder. We’ll go together.”

Nekonkh nodded sourly, scowling at an imperfectly coiled rope lying near the stern sweeps. “
Ast!
Look at that!” he roared suddenly, striding over to kick it into a sprawling pile. “By the Forty Judges, these idiots can’t do anything right! Rivermen, they call themselves.
Hai!
Swineherds, more likely—”

Leaving him manhandling the rope and cursing savagely,
Sheftu swung over the side and down the ladder. He knew how Nekonkh felt. The cheerful laughter of a pair of deckhands on the next ship grated on him like a file on stone as he dropped to the wharf, slung his cloak half over his face, and strode toward the nearest alley.

The tavern courtyard was dark and empty when Sheftu and Nekonkh pushed open the gate that night and cautiously let themselves in. They crossed the yard in silence, and Sheftu melted into the shadow of the dom palm while Nekonkh strode on to the torchlit door and disappeared inside. A moment later he thrust a hand out to signal.

Sheftu left the dom palm and moved swiftly across the paving stones and into the little entry hall, closing the door silently behind him.

“She’s here,” muttered Nekonkh.

He motioned toward the door to the big common room, which he had half shut to conceal Sheftu’s entrance. Stepping to the crack at the hinge, Sheftu peered through it. One glance told him all was well. A second showed him a lithe, familiar figure curled up in the corner booth, waiting for him. She had slipped her sandals off, as usual, and had tucked her feet under her. Her bare, brown shoulders gleamed in the torchlight, looking like carven gold in contrast to the snowy straps of her dress and the ink-black locks which fell over them. As always, she had fastened a lotus in her hair.

A hard, cold core formed inside Sheftu. With a jerk of his head he motioned Nekonkh on into the room.

“Ah! Good evening, Captain! May thy
ka
rejoice …”

It was Ashor’s voice, and almost at once his broad back appeared in front of the door crack, cutting off Sheftu’s view of the room. By the time the innkeeper moved on, Nekonkh was approaching the corner booth. As he stopped beside it, Mara’s head jerked around as if he had pulled a string.

Sheftu found that he was chewing his lip cruelly, and made himself stop. Her first, sharp, wary glance had told him much. It was the same look she had given him that day on the
Beetle
, when he had surprised her out of sleep, and it reminded him of nothing so much as a quick-drawn sword.

She had disguised it at once, this time, and appeared to be questioning Nekonkh as he edged his big body into the booth beside her. Sheftu watched him closely as he answered her. He was making a great to-do about settling himself on the mat, his eyebrows going up and down with elaborate nonchalance as he talked. Nekonkh could shrug his eyebrows as other men shrugged their shoulders. He seemed to be convincing Mara that all was as usual.

Feeling relief as to that, coupled with a restlessness of such prickling intensity that he felt he was being bitten all over by flies, Sheftu left his post and moved distractedly about the tiny entrance hall, then returned to his crack.

Even from across the room, her eyes looked blue. Sheftu leaned against the wall and let the noise and music and clatter of crockery beat against his ears, trying to pick out her quick laughter from the confusion, trying once again to fathom the strange quality of wistfulness which underlay all her swift-changing expressions, even the most sardonic, the most impudent. What was Nekonkh saying to her now? She had grown serious, frowning down at the cup she toyed with, nodding. He spoke again and laughed; and as she raised her vivid eyes to him, her whole provocative, gamin’s face lighted in an answering grin.

Suddenly Sheftu could bear no more. He fled silently out of the inn, through the dark courtyard and across the street, where he took up his waiting again in a doorway that smelled evilly of filth and rotting fish.

It seemed hours before the courtyard gate clicked open and Nekonkh emerged. Sheftu took a firm grip on himself and managed to appear casual as he joined him. “Well, Captain?”

“Mate, I did what you told me. That’s all you can ask, is it not?”

“Did she seem—did you watch her face when you dropped the bait?”

“No,” said Nekonkh woodenly.

After a moment he started down the shadowy street, and Sheftu fell in beside him. They walked in silence through the alleys and byways into the warehouse district edging the wharf. When they came to the customs dock, where their ways separated, Nekonkh faced around doggedly.

“Look you, Sashai. I know as well as you what’s at stake in this, and if the maid trips herself up—well, it’s her own doing, and I’ve naught to say for her. But if that vessel’s raided tomorrow night, mate, I could whisk her on board the
Beetle
and sail straight for the Delta. She’d be no danger to anyone, you’d never need see her again. But you could still spare her life …”

His voice trailed into silence. Sheftu was slowly shaking his head.

DARKNESS lay thick next night about a certain warehouse on the river front of eastern Thebes. Some distance away from it, at the water’s edge, a yellow glow of torchlight spilled across the wharfs from the decks of the
Friend of the
Wind
, which lay close in against the dock to receive her cargo. They were still loading her; figures moved against the light, humpbacked with burdens as they filed up the gangplank and across the deck. There were the usual thumpings and slammings and bellowed orders; above the lighted decks the tall, black mast swayed gently against the stars. Beyond, the dark length of the river wound away southward, splashed with gold here and there, wherever a torch burned.

In the gloom beside the warehouse wall, screened by a pile of fish nets and old lumber, Nekonkh heaved a sigh of impatience and tried for the fiftieth time to get comfortable on the coil of damp rope he was sitting on. Sheftu, a dim blur in the shadows beside him, seemed not to have moved for an hour; the captain wondered bitterly if he had fallen asleep. For all the anxiety Lord Sheftu exhibited, one would think he had come here merely for a breath of air.

As for Nekonkh, it had been the longest day he had ever known, and he’d made rough weather of it, alternating between bellowing ill temper and silent worry until by mid-afternoon every man in his crew was keeping a wary eye on him and his own nerves were taut as a straining hawser. He felt even more tense now, lurking here like a
kheft
at the edge of darkness …

The captain eased his shoulders back against the rough wall and tried to make his mind a blank. The reek of fish and hemp and rotting wood rose strong about him; inside the warehouse, he could hear the loud scratching and scrabbling of a rat. Beyond the edge of the pile of nets the burdened figures moved monotonously back and forth in the torchlight from the dock to the
Friend of the Wind
. Nekonkh found himself automatically checking her trim.

“Overloaded on the port side,” he muttered with gloomy satisfaction. “Cargo master’s a fool.”

Sheftu’s voice came out of the shadows, cool and ironic. “It scarcely matters, does it?”

“Of course it matters! They’ll have to shift half of those bales before they’re well into the current. What do you mean, it scarcely—”

“I mean they’ll likely not be sailing.”

Nekonkh abandoned the subject, shifting his position once again and cursing irritably at the prickling roughness of the rope.

“Patience, Captain,” soothed the other. “It cannot be long now.”

By all the gods, is he even human? thought Nekonkh. “Do you care naught for what happens to the maid?”

He got no answer. But Sheftu’s voice was a little less smooth when he spoke again. “You tied the boat where I told you to?”

“Aye. In the papyruses at the far end of the wharf. It’s ready.”

They were silent again. After a time Nekonkh twisted around to scan the black mouths of the alleys—still quiet and deserted—then squinted up at the stars. “By the beard of Ptah, if it isn’t the mark of eight by this time, I’m no riverman!” He stood up, checked the alleys one by one, then sized up the stack of bales on the dock. “Mate, they’ve all but finished loading. Look yonder. I’ll wager a sail to a
shenti
the hour’s eight—or past—”

He stood clenching his fists to keep them from trembling. It should happen now, it should have happened already—if it was to happen. He realized Sheftu had risen too, and was standing stiff and erect at his side, scarcely breathing. Still the minutes crept past, the commonplace sounds of loading went on.

By Amon, she’s won! thought Nekonkh at last. She didn’t take our cursed bait! All’s well. He opened his mouth to blurt it out—and felt Sheftu seize his arm.

“Captain! Look!”

A light shone in the mouth of one of the alleys. Nekonkh tried to blink it out of sight, pretend that it was moving the
other way, but it came on, brighter and nearer, accompanied by pounding footsteps. A knot of soldiers burst out onto the wharfs, with more at their heels—they were regulars, in green helmets. There was a shout of surprise from the loaders, a roar that answered it: “In the name of the queen!” Next moment the night was alive with running men, with torches and glinting blades and a confusion of yells as the raiders poured across the wharf and up the gangplank of the
Friend of the Wind
.

Nekonkh dug both fists into his forehead to shut out the sight. Name of Amon, she’s only a child! he thought. A waif, after all, who’s seen naught but ill luck all her life and needs friends and a chance …

“So be it. I’ve seen enough,” said Sheftu quietly.

Nekonkh had seldom in his life been afraid of anyone. But he was afraid, now, of the tall young man who stood beside him. “Mate,” he whispered hoarsely. “Let me do it. I’ll find her. I’ll have her out of Thebes tonight, I swear by—”

“You’ll follow orders, Captain!” Sheftu flung him a look that left nothing but obedience in Nekonkh’s mind. “Come, to the boat.”

He slipped out of their hiding place and Nekonkh followed. They plunged down the lane beside the warehouse, into the next dim street and then along it, parallel to the river, at a pace that left the captain no time to think or even feel. His mind had gone numb, in any case. He knew they were making for the hidden boat, that they would cross the Nile and lie in wait for Mara somewhere on the other side, intercepting her as she was starting for the inn. He knew what was to happen in some dark alley and that he could not prevent its happening. But it all seemed unreal, a nightmare from which he could not wake.

They swerved back toward the river. A few minutes later Nekonkh was dragging the boat from the concealing papyrus stalks, still moving like an automaton.

“Cast off the painter. I’ve a paddle here somewhere.”

They pushed off across the black water, and with the familiar rocking motion, the feel of the paddle in his hand, Nekonkh’s numbness began to wear off. He pulled harder and more fiercely, so that the boat shot like a live thing through the current, but the exertion failed to stop his thoughts.

“Bear to your left, Captain,” said Sheftu at last. “We’ll make for that statue on the bank.”

The fishing punt was there, moored to the great granite toe as always, and old A’ank dozed nearby. Sheftu nudged him awake, none too gently, flipped him a deben and ordered him home, then hurried up the bank.

She’s a cold-blooded little traitor, Nekonkh told himself desperately as he tied their own boat and hurried to follow. Did she give a thought to you when she decided to turn informer? Or even to Sheftu? She’s earned what’s coming. She’d have run the whole plot aground if she could. Just don’t think. Don’t look at her. Remember, don’t look at her.

“This will serve,” said Sheftu coolly. “I believe she’s coming.”

Nekonkh emerged abruptly from his preoccupation. They stood in an alley; ahead, up its murky, narrow length, he could just make out a slender, cloak-swathed figure hurrying through the shadows. Nekonkh wet his lips and glanced around him, wishing he could stop going hot and cold like a man with the fever. Sheftu had chosen his spot well. The lane was deserted, closed in by buildings that would remain dark and empty until morning. There would be no one to disturb them.

“Walk casually to meet her,” murmured Sheftu.

He strolled forward, and Nekonkh trailed after him, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs. Presently Mara drew close enough to catch sight of them, and he could hear her sharp little intake of breath as she halted. An instant later she recognized them.