Mara, Daughter of the Nile (29 page)

“Sheftu!” Her voice was low, but it held only surprise and pleasure—no fear. She moved swiftly to join them, looking from one to the other in amusement. “What is this, pray? An ambush?”

“One might call it so,” answered Sheftu silkily. “Come. I want a word with you.” He took her arm and guided her to a recessed doorway, while Nekonkh drifted a little apart, where he could watch both ends of the alley. He could hear Mara’s uneasy little laugh.

“Have all the words you wish, but why choose this place? At the inn we could—”

“You’ll not be going to the inn tonight.”

“Why will I not?” She hesitated, and her tone changed. “Sheftu, you’re acting—strange. Is aught amiss?”

“Aye. Much is amiss. The vessel
Friend of the Wind
was raided tonight by the queen’s soldiers.”

She gave a gasp Nekonkh could have sworn was genuine. “Osiris! With all the gold aboard her?
Aiii
—when you traveled the Shores of the Night to bring it back … Nay, they can’t, they mustn’t! Those—” Her voice broke with fury, and for a moment her language reeked of Menfe’s waterfront. “But shall we do naught but wail of it, for the love of Amon? We must do something! You must do something, Sheftu, you’re the leader—”

“Aye, a brilliant leader!” Sheftu’s voice remained quiet, but the whiplash Nekonkh had been dreading came into it now. “I’ve saved Egypt with one hand and destroyed her with the other—by trusting a maid as faithless as the wind!”

“Mother of the gods!” whispered Mara. “You think—I did it.”

“My lovely Mara, no doubt exists.”

“But I didn’t do it! I didn’t, I didn’t! There must have been another who listened, I didn’t do it! Sheftu—the juggler!
Ai
, that’s who it was! He was there—ask Nekonkh!—he heard everything. It was that babbling Sahure, may the
Devourer take him, I knew he’d betray us before we’d done with him, did I not tell you, warn you?”

“I was certain you would place the blame elsewhere.”

“
Ast!
Sheftu, you’re blind! You’ve ever been blind about that rogue, and look you now—all the gold gone, the plans ruined—”

“Mara,” said Sheftu softly. “There was no gold on the ship.”

There was a sudden silence. Nekonkh edged toward them without knowing what he did. He was beginning to feel as if he could not breathe. Suppose it were Sahure? It could have been, it was possible, even probable! Then by all the gods!

“Stay away from her, Captain!” ordered Sheftu.

Mara drew a soft, irregular breath. “Why,” she whispered, “should the captain stay away from me?”

“Because he has revealed an unfortunate weakness where you’re concerned,” said Sheftu. He moved closer to her. For the first time he was failing to hide the strain he was under; Nekonkh could see the tension in his shoulders, and his voice had grown harsh and thick. “This affair is between you and me, little one, do you understand? Let me make it quite clear to you. There was no gold on the ship, nor was it our ship. The news was false. It was a trap, Mara. And you walked into it.”

“Sheftu, I did not betray you. I swear by my
ka
.”

“
Ast!
Be silent! I know all about you. All! I know you’re a slave in the queen’s pay, and have been since you took ship with us in Menfe. I know you lied to me then, and have lied to me every day I’ve known you, and would go on lying until the end of time if it would get you what you want! Your master believed you, didn’t he? I know of that, too—how cleverly you’ve played both sides, waiting, holding back, until last night you thought you’d chosen certain victory …”

Mara was slowly, almost imperceptibly, backing away from him, though she seemed scarcely to move or even breathe. Suddenly she whirled to run. Just as suddenly, Sheftu’s hand shot out and seized her wrist In a flash he had doubled her arm behind her and jerked her close to him. He held a gleaming knife in his other hand.

“Not this time, little one,” he said softly.

His rough handling had caused the cloak to fall away from her hair, and the fragrance of lotuses now drifted through the alley. Nekonkh, flattened stiffly against the building opposite, tried to look away and couldn’t. His eyes were fastened on the knife blade, and he became gradually aware that it was trembling.

“How have you kept
him
satisfied, I wonder?” whispered Sheftu. “That master of yours, whoever he is. What have you told him? How much have you told him?”

Mara, too, was staring at the knife, shrinking away from it as far as his grip would let her. “Sheftu,” she breathed. “You can’t do it—you can’t—”

“Ah, can I not? Who will ever know—or care?”

She looked up at him suddenly. And then Nekonkh witnessed a very strange thing. Instead of shrinking from the knife, she flung herself close against Sheftu, twined her free arm about his neck and kissed him on the mouth.

What happened next was never clear in Nekonkh’s mind. He was aware of a strangled oath from Sheftu, the clatter of a knife hitting the gravel, and felt Mara hurtle against him as if she had been thrown. Instinctively Nekonkh wrapped his arms about her and whirled so that his own body shielded her.

“Take her, Captain!” gasped a voice that might have been Lord Sheftu’s. “Take her out of Thebes, out of Egypt, anywhere; but let me never see her again!”

Hasty footsteps plunged away up the alley, pounded around a corner, and were gone.

When Nekonkh’s head cleared a little, he found that he
was cursing steadily and idiotically, under his breath, still clutching Mara tight in his arms. He stopped, wet his shaking lips, and loosened his hold to peer down at her. She was weeping stormily, he did not know whether in anger or in fright.

“Is all well with you, little one?” he muttered. “He didn’t harm you?”

She shook her head, burrowed harder against his chest and continued to sob. He held her uneasily, patting her shoulder now and then and growling vague comfort under his breath. He was not used to weeping maidens and had no idea what one did for them. But he felt dimly that it would be best to let her weep her fill.

Presently the storm subsided a little, and after a moment she stirred and lifted her head. “Nekonkh—where is he?”

“Gone, little one. Likely halfway to the Falcon by this time.”

“He’ll go there?”

“Aye, I think so. He’ll want to make sure all’s well, and besides …”

“Besides what?”

“Well, little one,” said Nekonkh gruffly, “I think he’ll be warning them about you.”

“Ordering them to murder me on sight, I’ll wager,” she burst out. “Just on the chance you’ll not take me far enough to the ends of the earth—”

“Aye, just on the chance, just on the chance,” he soothed. “But we’ll not founder on that sand bar until we hit it. I must take you away, little one, you know that, don’t you?” She stirred fretfully against him, and he dropped his arms, studying her profile in the gloom. “Look you, maid. How much of that was true—what he accused you of?”

“Oh …” Her hand had wandered to the crushed lotus in her hair. She pulled it out, looked at it a moment, and dropped it to the ground. “All of it, Nekonkh. Save about the ship. Sahure told that, he must have, because I never
did, I never even meant to! I swear I’ve told naught—” She broke off, seemed to hold her breath a moment. “At least not much—” She suddenly went on. “As for the rest, can I be blamed for that? I didn’t ask to be sold! But mother of truth, it was a chance to be free, perhaps rich! What did I know about the king then? I’d not even met Sheftu! Once I did, then I wished I’d never seen that cursed master of mine, but—Nekonkh, I’ve told him naught that matters, I’ve but played hounds and jackals with him. I had to do that, didn’t I? If I’d not done it, he’d have thrown me back in the gutter …”

Ai
, she’s just a child, Nekonkh was thinking. A little waif in a cursed ugly world, and none to befriend her. “No matter, it’s past now,” he muttered, patting her awkwardly. “We’ll have a fine voyage, clean to Crete if you like. Crete’s a good land, little one—an island. A mite odd and foreign, but pleasant, and lively enough even for you. They’ve acrobats there—men and maids both—who dance about under the horns of bulls and leap over their backs so that you’ve never seen the like. You’ll be no slave, either, and I’ll wager you could sell that ring of yours for a hundred gold
deben
…
Ai
, come, little Blue Eye, Crete’s the place. Let’s be out of this dark alley—”

“You’re good to me, Nekonkh,” whispered Mara. “And I’ll come, but—” She hesitated, resisting when he tried to draw her forward.

“What’s amiss now, maid?”

“Nekonkh—how do we know he’s gone? He might be waiting, just yonder around the corner! Or he might have changed his mind and come back …”

“Nay, don’t worry. He’s gone.”

“
Ai
, how can you be sure?”

“Now, then, if it’ll ease your mind, I’ll make certain of it. Come, stand in the doorway here. It’ll take but a moment.”

Guiding her gently into the niche, the captain walked up the alley in the direction Sheftu had taken. He knew he
would find no one. Her fears were needless, but he well understood them and meant to humor every one if it would help her. The winds had tossed her craft enough, he thought belligerently, in her seventeen short years. It was time somebody steered a straight course for her.

As he had expected, the street beyond was quite deserted. He examined several dark nooks nearby, so he could tell her he’d done so, then strode back into the alley. The first moonbeams were beginning to sift their way into it now; out in the open, on the river, it would soon be bright enough to navigate with fair accuracy. It would be a good night to sail, Nekonkh decided, though it might not be wise to venture into those currents beyond the sand bars. They’d slip downstream a few miles and tie up until—

The captain halted and frowned about him uncertainly. Was this not the doorway …? He glanced back the way he had come, wondering if he’d misjudged the distance, decided perhaps he had, and started on. Then he stopped abruptly. There in the gravel at his feet the moonlight glittered over the blade of a jeweled knife. And a cubit or two away lay a crumpled lotus.

“Mother of Amon!” whispered the captain.

The doorway was empty. The whole alley was empty. And that knife—or another—would likely be slicing his own throat before morning, if he didn’t find that slippery maid and bring her back.

“Mother of Amon and Isis and Osiris and the Sacred Cat of Bast!” he exploded. He scooped up the dagger, clamped his jaw at its fiercest, and started up the alley, running hard.

THREE STREETS AWAY, Mara was already dodging out of the passage beside the goldsmith’s shop, and running like the desert antelope along the high, curving wall which bounded the palace grounds. There was but one thing to do; and somehow, through the wild disorder of her emotions, she’d had wit enough to see it and cling fast to it. She was still spent from her storm of weeping, sore in body and mind from Sheftu’s merciless handling of her, and shaken in every nerve by the audacious—but no less passionate—kiss which had saved her life. Sheftu was lost to her beyond recall, but hardest to bear was the ironic twist that this time she was innocent—the ship’s raid was none of her doing. It was Sahure he’d caught in his gold-baited trap. But he’d refused to believe it, and thereby laid himself and the revolution open to the liveliest danger.

Mara alone, though stunned by the abruptness of her own undoing, recognized the extent of that danger. She alone knew that Nahereh knew about the Inn of the Falcon. She alone could guess that in his rage at finding nothing on the ship he might abandon all subtler tactics and storm the tavern, seizing everyone in it and trusting to later luck to find the leader.
Ai
, but he would already have the leader! The moment he set eyes on Sashai, the scribe, he would recognize Lord Sheftu and all would be over.

There was but one thing to do—find Nahereh, learn his plans, and then, if necessary, slip away from him somehow
and carry a warning to the inn. On trembling legs Mara was speeding to do it.

The North Gate loomed ahead—Reshed’s gate. Mara clutched her ring, praying its charm would work once more, though Amon knew it had brought her anything but luck the last two days. She had not seen Reshed for four nights now, having lately used the Main Gate and the password of her master’s name for her passage in and out of the palace grounds. She knew not what temper Reshed would be in, but she had to try him. She might need desperately to get out again, later, and by that time the use of Nahereh’s name might be suicidal.

Breathless, she halted before the gate, tried in vain to quiet her pounding heart, and finally rapped three times. Reshed recognized the signal; she could hear the faint, sharp clatter of his sword as he made a startled move. An instant later the gate swung open—just far enough for his body to block the entrance.

“You!” he growled.

“Aye … Reshed, I’m in haste, please let me in.”

“What are you doing
out
, that’s what I want to know! I’ve seen naught of you tonight, not for four nights running!”

“Why, today I went out much earlier, with my princess—at another gate. And before that—ah, Reshed, I’ve wanted to come, if only to linger a moment with you and then go back again! But I could never get away from her, not even for a minute.”

“Aye, very likely! More likely, you’ve found some other simpleton to dry your tears, and let you in and out whenever you crook a finger at him!” Reshed reached out furiously and jerked her closer. “Who is it? That swell-headed sergeant at the Main Gate?”

“Nay, it isn’t, it isn’t, I’ve done no such thing! Oh, mother of truth, let me in, I can’t stand here arguing! I’m in haste, I tell you. My brother’s dying and I must get help—”

She twisted violently in his grasp but only succeeded in reversing their positions, so that it was she who stood with her back to the gate, which hung tantalizingly ajar. He still held her arm fast.

“You never had a brother,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know whom you meet, outside there, but I’ll stake my sword he’s no sick kinsman! Aye, I’ve caught on to your game, you little witch, though I’ve been cursed slow about it. You’ve made a fool of me, letting me risk my post here night after night so you could—”