Mr Impossible (35 page)

She gazed up at
him, and for that moment, in the darkness with its faint, flickering
candlelight, it seemed she’d entered the underworld and this
was no mere mortal who straddled her but a demigod.

He smiled and moved
into her, so slowly, so deliberately. Ah, but deep, deep, where she
needed him.

“
Like this?”
he said. “In you like this?”

“
Yes,”
she said. She moved, taking him in deeper still. “And like
this.”

He moved inside her
slowly this time, as though they had all eternity. Slowly she moved
with him, relishing the heat and the rolling swell of pleasure. She
was his and he hers for this time. She was in no hurry to reach the
ending and the separation that must follow.

He bent and kissed
the top of her cheekbone, so tenderly she thought her heart would
break. But her heart beat on, harder and faster. The slow pleasure
swelled into pulsing need, and then she was lost again in the storm.
But now he was with her, and the tempest was rich and wild and
wondrous. She plunged into it with him in the same way she’d
plunged with him into pyramids, into danger. The world lit up in
showers of gold, and it spilled through her and around her, a
happiness like a glimpse of a perfect hereafter. He gave a low cry,
and shuddered once, and a liquid heat filled her.

The storm slid
away, and he sank down upon her, and she sank, too, into a welcoming
quiet and peace.* * *

THE INSTANT HE
returned to himself, Rupert knew what he’d done.

This made twice
he’d behaved like an adolescent with his first lover.

The first time,
he’d made a great hurry of the business, as though it was the
only and last chance he’d ever have and death was coming in the
next breath.

The second time,
he’d managed the bare essentials of pleasuring her, only to
forget himself at the crucial moment.

He’d not only
fallen on top of her, great clumsy oaf that he was—and she
lying on a thin mat, on a stony floor—but he’d spilled
his seed
inside her
.

Idiot, idiot. Great
dumb ox.

What if—

Never mind.
Worrying accomplished nothing.

He lifted himself
off her and scooped her into his arms. He slid up to a sitting
position and arranged her upon his lap. She laid her head upon his
shoulder, and he felt her breath on his skin. He stroked her hair,
glistening ruby and garnet in the candlelight. His gaze wandered
lower, and he saw ruby and garnet there as well.

He smiled,
forgetting his grievance with himself for the moment. That part had
surprised her.

She was a woman of
experience, yes, but not very much experience and that little not
very good.

The thought
restored his humor. It was like having all the benefits of a virgin
without any of the drawbacks, he told himself.

And as to his
mistake—well, the damage was done and couldn’t be undone.
He could only take care of her. This he was well-equipped to do. He
relaxed, leant back against the wall, and promptly fell asleep.* * *

“
WAKE UP!
WAKE up!”

A frantic whisper
in the darkness. Someone shoving at him.

Rupert quickly
shook off sleep. “What?” he said. “What?”

“
Someone’s
out there and I—Hush!”

Rupert listened.

Voices. Men’s
voices. Their guards? He rose and started pulling on his clothes.

“
There are a
number of them,” she whispered. “I went out to check on
Hermione, because she was complaining again. I heard them outside. I
don’t know if they heard her. But I know they’re looking
for us.”

“
Well, it’s
about time somebody—”

Her hand clamped
over his mouth. “I heard them because they were arguing—about
whether to kill you or hold you for ransom. We have to hide.”

Rupert pulled her
hand away. He hurriedly wrapped the sash round his waist, found his
pistol, and shoved it into the sash. “We can’t hide,”
he said. “For one—”

“
Don’t
talk, just listen,” she said. “That rumble you think is a
whisper carries.” She pushed him. “Back. The inmost
chamber.”

He didn’t
know where “back” was. Either the candle had burnt out or
she’d wisely extinguished it. The darkness was impenetrable.
But she grabbed his hand and led, and she seemed to know what she was
about.

It didn’t
take as long this time to get to the end.

The dead end.

“
We’re
going to be trapped,” he muttered. “Which is what I was
trying to tell you. Unless you’ve discovered a secret passage.”

“
Not
exactly,” she said.

“
Then what?”
He felt the walls and found a recess.

Then he remembered:
the French diagrams she’d lectured about earlier.
A shaft
would be marked with an entrance, actual or symbolic, like this
recess
.

She tugged on his
arm. “Not the center recess. This way.”

“
We’re
going to hide in a burial shaft,” he said. “That’s
your cunning plan.”

“
There’s
no other way out,” she said. “I explored the entire
chamber earlier, because I’d read that some of the The-ban
tombs are labyrinths. This isn’t.”

While she spoke,
she was pulling him to the left. “Hurry,” she said.

Rupert could hear
the voices now, distorted, seemingly distant. But he knew they were
not very far away. This was not like the interior of a pyramid. With
torches or lanterns, the men would be here in minutes.

He wanted to stand
and fight, and he would have done, if he’d had some idea of the
odds. But there was no way of knowing how many men there were, or how
dispersed. Three might come inside while another ten or twenty waited
outside. And if they killed him, what would become of her?

“
You’d
better let me go first,” he said, though reason rebelled at the
prospect: a narrow burial shaft, a small space at the bottom with
room for a coffin and not much else, most likely. Anyone who wished
them dead would have no difficulty arranging it.

“
No, let me,”
she said. “I know where it is. Oh, do hurry. I can hear them.
Get down. It’s safer to crawl. Someone’s excavated…
ah, here it is. Can you feel it?”

She caught his hand
and curved it over the edge of an opening. “There,” she
said. “It’s clear to the bottom. I checked earlier.”

“
I’m
going first,” he said.* * *

THE SHAFT WAS
steeply angled. Rupert went down backward, and half slid to the
bottom. She followed closely, using the same method. The sepulchral
chamber was surprisingly large. But the floor was covered with
rubble, and a disagreeably familiar smell signaled ancient dead in
the vicinity.

He’d no time
to dwell on the dead, though. Mrs. Pembroke had hardly reached the
bottom when he heard the voices. He pulled her back, well out of
range of the shaft.

A light shone where
they’d been standing a moment before, and voices called down in
Arabic.

Rupert loaded his
pistol.

A new voice spoke,
in French with a thick accent this time. There was nothing to fear,
the voice said. He and his friends had come to rescue the English
lady and gentleman. Since sunset, when the wind died down, everyone
in Asyut had been looking for them.

Rupert touched Mrs.
Pembroke’s lips, signaling silence, and by cautious inches drew
her farther away from the shaft—until they came up against a
corner of wall.

Nowhere else to go.

He moved to stand
in front of her.

No sound for the
longest time.but his breathing and hers. The others, above, were
listening, too, no doubt, for signs of life. But they must come a
good deal closer to hear any.

At last someone
spoke. Then someone else. They seemed to be arguing. Rupert caught
the words:
Ingleezi, jinn
, and
afreet
.

Were they talking
about him?

Tom had used tall
tales about Rupert’s supposed magical powers to persuade
Minya’s
kashef
to cooperate. The boy had greatly
embellished various incidents that had occurred during the journey
upriver, citing these as “evidence” of his master’s
close personal relationship with supernatural pow-ers. Apparently,
Rupert possessed as well a fearsome skill in administering “the
eye”—the calling down of curses and calamities upon those
who gave offense.

On the other hand,
the men might merely be continuing the argument about whether to
shoot him or cut off his head, or debating whether to sell the
English lady into slavery or rape and kill her. They’d
mentioned demons only because such beings were known to haunt burial
chambers.

He turned and put
his mouth close to Mrs. Pembroke’s ear. “What are they
saying?”

“
The tomb is
haunted,” she whispered. “Why climb down when the demons
or hunger will soon drive us out? says one school of thought. The
other fears we’ll find a way out. They seem—” She
broke off because the row above them had ceased.

Rupert heard
movement at the top of the shaft, a rustling and scraping. Someone
had decided to risk demons, evidently. He cocked his pistol.

Even before he
emerged into the chamber, the man was easy to see. He had a torch in
his hand as well as being lit by the torches or lanterns above, but
he hadn’t yet spotted Rupert and Mrs. Pembroke in the shadows.
From the sounds of it, another fellow was close behind him.

Rupert took aim.

Then something flew
past him, and the man crumpled to the floor.

Mrs. Pembroke
pressed a hard, irregular object against Rupert’s side. A chunk
of rubble.

She said nothing,
but Rupert understood. He bent and picked up several chunks of rubble
from the floor. When the villain’s associate started into the
chamber, Rupert threw as hard as he could. The man fell.

Someone called
down.

While those above
called to their unconscious comrades, Rupert hurried to one of the
bodies, grabbed the feet, and dragged him deeper into the tomb. Mrs.
Pembroke did the same without being told.

By gad, she was a
wonderful female.

Rocks instead of
firearms. Near-silent destruction.

Much more effective
than shooting pistols—balls ricocheting off stone walls—and
very possibly bringing the entire crumbling structure down upon their
heads.

Those from above
would hear at most the clatter of rocks—which could be falling
rubble. They couldn’t be sure what was below: their prey or
hungry ghouls.

Now several voices
called for Amin and Omar.

Under the noise,
Rupert said, “If they come to—”

“
Help me get
these two into the sarcophagus,” she whispered.

“
The
sarc—What?”

“
I can’t
kill a man in cold blood,” she said. “We’ve nothing
strong enough to tie them with. It’s right here. The lid’s
broken.”

The men’s
torches lay where they’d dropped them, one still burning
feebly. It illuminated very little. At first Rupert couldn’t
discern the sarcophagus. But she’d already started dragging one
of the inert men. Rupert did likewise, guided by the sound of her
panting.

Getting the men
into the coffin was easy enough. Keeping them in was another matter.
Rupert heaved a few pieces of the broken lid on top. That at least
would slow them down.

He doubted they’d
be considerate enough to remain unconscious until their friends gave
up and went away.

He doubted the
friends would give up and go away.

Maybe it was wiser
to simply kill this pair now and improve the odds. A knife would do
it quietly enough.

Rupert’s
entire being recoiled. He’d never yet killed anybody, and like
her, found the notion of doing so in cold blood abhorrent.

Then she said, “I
was wrong.”