Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [20]
He stopped laughing. Ace started laughing.
Sedjet knelt, stroked the sand with his hands, long fingers sifting through the grains. ‘We may have left it too late,’ he said. ‘Anything the bandits left behind may have been swallowed by the desert.’
Ace shaded her face with her hands, slowly swivelling her gaze around the valley. It was a narrow crack between eroded cliffs, the water-hole an oval smear at the very bottom. The mud she had rolled in on the day she arrived was hard and cracked now, fired into wavy shapes by the sun.
There was nothing out of the ordinary, just rocks and sand. Nothing to indicate that a dimensional portal had ripped open the air and disgorged a woman from the future. Even the animals were gone, hiding from the noon.
Suddenly the TARDIS did not materialize.
‘It’s been a fortnight,’ said Ace. ‘They would have found me by now if they were here in Akhetaten.’
40
‘Perhaps the bandits kidnapped them,’ said Sedjet. ‘Or maybe they just went on their way.’ He wandered over to a boulder and sat down in its shade.
‘There’s nothing here.’
Ace was shaking her head. ‘They wouldn’t just leave me here.’ There was an itchy panic in her stomach. ‘They must not be able to find me. But they’ll come. They’ll come for me.’
‘Maybe they think you’re dead,’ said Sedjet.
Ace turned to squint at him. He looked up at her, his doe-eyes round, staring. He seemed to be looking at every part of her body at once.
‘What’re you thinking about?’ she said, after a while.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
Ace shook her head again. ‘I’m just going to have to wait it out. The Professor says patience is a virtue, right?’ She stalked the sand, agitatedly, wanting to find something she’d missed. ‘Patience.’
She felt Sedjet’s eyes on her movement. Don’t say anything, she prayed silently, don’t say anything at all.
Ace wasn’t sure which of the nobles was hosting the party. She probably wasn’t the only one; everyone was plastered. Someone fell out of one of the boats with a massive splash, and his friends hauled him back aboard, laughing, before the crocodiles could get him.
She was lying back in the canoe, working her way through a whole roast chicken. Sedjet stood in the prow, a throwing-stick raised in one hand. He wore only a kilt, and his muscles rippled, glistening in the morning light.
It had been a pretty typical party, one of dozens she’d been to over the last two months. They’d been up all night, stuffing themselves with food, drinking beer and wine because Nile water was full of mud and parasites. She was one of several foreigners at the party; the Pharaoh’s predecessor had been busy conquering the world, and business and people had flowed back into Egypt from its new colonies.
The smell of perfume and lamplight clung to Ace’s white dress. In one of the boats, a lone musician still played a flute, blind eyes half closed with fatigue and booze.
A dozen waterfowl jumped into the sky from a clump of rushes, frightened out by a gang of servants. Sedjet hurled his stick with surprising precision, given the amount of wine he’d drunk, and a bird shrieked and hit the water.
A servant came splashing out through the shallows to collect it.
The big man turned those doe-eyes of his on Ace, hoping for her approval.
She waved at Sedjet, and he gave her a littleboy smile. She had last seen Sedjet’s wife snoring on the mansion floor, someone’s pet monkey eating dates off her back.
41
There was a whoop and a giggle, and someone else’s boat collided with them. Sedjet stooped, grabbing at the sides of the canoe to keep his balance.
‘Tell us another story, Tepy!’ chorused the half-dozen men and women on board.
Ace rolled her eyes. Sometimes she didn’t care for the weight of history at her back, going over it again and again. But she was singing for her supper.
‘Where did I get up to last night?’
‘You were being held prisoner by the traitor.’
‘Oh, yes. That’s right.’ Ace pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.
London