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By Root 1195 0

“Don’t be deceived,” the procurer said, his lips barely moving. “When he is drunk on brandy, he boasts of what he did. Are you aware that your first meeting with the child was no accident? That it was he who arranged it—who taught her to call you Father—who paid Kalaan to bring her and her mother to your house in order to shame you before your parents and the woman you loved? Ah. I see you are aware of that. But do you know that he had told a certain honorable gentleman who also loved the lady of what he planned to do? It was because of your cousin that the gentleman was waiting for her when she fled the house that day; he comforted her, confirmed the lies that had been told about you, and persuaded her to marry him with the promise that he would make no demands on her and would set her free if and when she wished. He had made her believe he was ill and might not live many months. An unconvincing story, to be sure, but I am told she is impetuous by nature.”

“We will not speak of her.”

El-Gharbi clapped his ringed hands over his painted mouth, like a child who has talked out of turn. His eyes were bright with malicious amusement. “So finally I have told you something you did not know. Why does he hate you so much?”

Ramses shook his head. El-Gharbi’s latest disclosure had left him stunned; he was afraid to speak for fear he would say more than he ought.

“Very well,” the procurer said. “You walk among naked daggers, Brother of Demons. Be on your guard. Your cousin has even fewer scruples than I.”

He clapped his hands. The draperies covering the door were drawn aside by a servant. The interview was over. Ramses got to his feet. “Thank you for the warning. I can’t help wondering . . .”

“Why I take the trouble to warn you? Because I hope you will spare me trouble. And because you are honest and young and very beautiful.”

Ramses raised shaggy gray eyebrows and the grotesque figure shook with silent laughter. “These eyes of mine see below the surface, Brother of Demons. Now go with Musa; he will show you to a less public entrance than the one you used. I trust your discretion as you must trust mine. Allah yisallimak. You will need his protection, I think.”

Ramses followed the silent servant along the dimly lit passages. His brain felt numbed as he struggled to assimilate the information el-Gharbi had flung at him like a series of missiles. For years he had agonized over that hasty marriage of Nefret’s, dismissing his suspicions of Percy’s involvement as wishful thinking and wounded vanity, and, worse than vanity, the fear that she had given herself to him that night out of pity, after he had finally betrayed his love and his need of her. Nefret did nothing by halves; affection and compassion and the wholehearted generosity that were so much part of her would have produced a convincing imitation of ardor, even to a man who had not wanted her as desperately as he had done.

But el-Gharbi’s disclosure had to be true, it had come straight from Percy himself. Unless the procurer was lying, for some obscure reason of his own. . . .

True or false, the story had been told him for a reason, and he doubted el-Gharbi’s motives were altruistic.

Could it be true, though? He knew Nefret too well to doubt that it might have happened that way. Five minutes before they came downstairs that morning, she had been in his arms, returning his kisses. Then to be faced with the diabolically constructed web of evidence that branded him guilty of a crime she held to be worse than murder . . . He could remember only too well the sickening, breath-stopping effect of that accusation on himself, innocent though he knew himself to be.

And he had let her go. He’d had other responsibilities—the child, his parents, the imminent danger to the child’s mother—but he had reacted as irrationally as Nefret had done, and for the same very childish and very human reasons: hurt and anger and a sense of betrayal. They had both behaved like love-struck lunatics, but it would have come out all right in the end, if Percy hadn’t taken a hand.

What had el-Gharbi tried