Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters [164]
“We aren’t out of this yet. Have a spear and pray you won’t need to use it. I’d feel better if we had something more effective, though. Amenislo, do you know where Merasen hid the weapons he stole from us?”
“No,” Amenislo bleated, wringing his hands. “We cannot look for them. We must go, but I do not know where. The Sitt Hakim did not tell me what to do next!”
Ramses couldn’t fault the man, though at that moment he was a perfect image of a dithering coward. He had risked himself every day spying for Tarek in the enemy’s camp, and those fat perfumed hands had struck hard when they had to. Ramses gave him a slap on the back. “You’ve done brilliantly so far, Amenislo. What about the entrance to the underground passages? All the great houses have them. Do you know where this one is located?”
“Yes.” Amenislo looked less despondent. “I was often a guest of my brother Tarek when he lived here. It is a good plan. If we can get to it. There are other guards.”
They ran into two of these unfortunates at the top of the stairs that led up from the cells. Ramses wasn’t able to prevent Amenislo from running one of them through while he stared in surprise at the count’s raised sword. Moroney took care of the other one with a blow that would have done Emerson credit. It seemed to cheer him up quite a lot.
“This way,” Amenislo panted. “Hurry, hurry.”
Ramses rather hoped they would run into Merasen. In his present mood he would have been tempted to emulate the bloodthirsty count and run the little swine through. However, the private part of the house was deserted.
“He is at the palace, preparing for the ceremony,” Amenislo replied to Ramses’s question. “Come, hurry!”
Ramses made him wait while he made a quick search of Merasen’s rooms. There was no sign of the weapons. Either they were well hidden or Merasen had taken them with him to the palace. He wondered uneasily what Merasen planned to do with them. The boy couldn’t hit the traditional barn door, and his men had had no chance to practice with the weapons. But if one fired straight into a mob of people, one was bound to hit something.
Amenislo snatched up a lamp and led the way into the back part of the villa. The chamber into which he took them was like the others, and the catch worked the same way.
“All right, Amenislo, so far so good, as we say. Is there a way from here to my parents’ rooms?”
“Give Ramses a little more time, Emerson,” I urged.
“We haven’t any more time.” Emerson adjusted his wig and slipped his arms through the pleated sleeves of a robe. “In less than four hours Tarek will try to force the pass and the rekkit will rise to support him. With all due respect, my dear, your scheme of denouncing Zekare at the ceremony has one fatal flaw. It might win the day for Tarek, but at the cost of many lives.”
“But Emerson, Ramses is—”
He came to me and took me by the shoulders. “I know, my dear. I know. But Ramses would be the first to urge this course of action. I only hesitated to propose it before because of Nefret. Now that we have our girl with us again, we must act, whatever the consequences.”
“I am going with you,” I said, reaching for my parasol.
“No, Peabody. If ever there was a one-man job, this is it. You will have to keep Nefret out of the way of the servants and conceal my absence as long as is possible.”
We were all gathered in my sleeping chamber. Nefret, dressed in trousers and a coat, a black wig covering her hair, sat on the side of the bed. It wasn’t much of a disguise, but it had served to deceive our attendants thus far. Only one of them had expressed surprise at encountering me in the garden when she had just seen me entering the servants’ area. My only reply was a mysterious smile.
We wouldn’t be able to put them off much longer, though. They had brought a variety of elegant garments—and several black wigs in various styles—and only their fear of our wrath had prevented them from entering the room and trying to get us into our costumes.
“I don’t see how we can conceal your absence after you have marched out the