Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [129]
“Of course. It was a good thought, Daoud.”
The young woman lingered, watching Daoud as he seated himself cross-legged before the tray. She was the same one who had followed us the day before, and I began to suspect it had not been Selim’s charming smiles that had interested her. Attraction of that sort is absolutely unaccountable! Daoud was a fine figure of a man, but he was completely impervious to sidelong glances and fluttering lashes.
After the woman had reluctantly withdrawn, I told Selim and Daoud about Nefret.
“Then she is well,” Daoud said between bites. “It is good.”
“Not good,” Selim growled. “She is afraid and alone. Sitt Hakim, we must get her away from there.”
“I agree,” I said. “And we have no time to lose. In less than five days’ time we must commit ourselves publicly to the usurper or denounce him publicly. Nefret is in an even more invidious position. I see only one way out of this. We must, all of us, escape and join Tarek.”
“Oh, quite,” said Emerson, with excessive sarcasm. “As simple as that.”
“It won’t be at all simple, but it must be accomplished. The trouble with you, Emerson, is that you are spoiling for a fight. That is the last thing we want. Many innocent lives would be lost, including, perhaps, our own. If we come out in support of Tarek, it might be enough to tip the scales in his favor.”
Emerson flung down the chunk of meat on which he had been gnawing, à la Henry the Eighth, and fixed me with a fishy stare. “I suppose you have a plan?”
“Several. The greatest difficulty, as I see it, is getting Nefret—and of course Daria—away. Once that is accomplished, we six can make a break for it.”
“Make a break,” Emerson repeated slowly.
“Overpower the guards, bind and gag them, and head straight along the Great Road to the northern pass. Audacity, speed, and those weapons Daoud so wisely retained should carry us through.”
Emerson’s eyes bulged. He let out a strange gurgling sound. His face turned red. His shoulders began to shake. I was about to administer a restorative slap when I realized he was not having a fit of spleen. He was laughing.
“I see nothing to laugh at,” I said indignantly.
“No, you wouldn’t.” Emerson wiped tears of mirth away with the back of his hand.
Selim’s eyes were bulging too, but not, I thought, with amusement. “Oh, Sitt,” he began.
“It is a good plan,” said Daoud.
“A very good plan,” Emerson agreed. “Don’t ask questions, Selim, they will only inspire her to wilder flights of fancy. She is at her best with a broad canvas. We will fill in the details as we go along.”
We would have to do that, since it was impossible to anticipate every contingency that might arise.
The fact is that I had not thought the matter through. (I had no intention of admitting this to Emerson, who had not thought it through either.) What was, after all, our primary aim (aside from saving our own skins)? To overthrow the usurper and place Tarek back on his throne. Ramses had spoken glibly of starting and winning a revolution, but the memory of the trusting faces of the villagers had been haunting me. They would take up arms for us and for Tarek; and they would be slaughtered. There had to be a better way.
My most serious error had been my failure to anticipate the deadly peril that threatened Nefret. It was not peril of death, but of something worse—the annihilation of her personality and her will. Watching her flawlessly perform the Invocation to Isis should have prepared me, but not until I saw her haunted eyes and heard her faltering speech did I realize the seriousness of the matter. For once Ramses had had a clearer vision than I. He had argued vehemently in favor of his plan of trying to reach Nefret’s apartments by scaling the cliff or finding a way through the temple, and had only yielded to my counterarguments after I agreed to ask Nefret to put a lamp in an appropriate window. He had promised he would not take that route unless he found a safe way of doing it, but I knew perfectly well that once he was out of my sight he would do precisely as he liked