The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [78]
But the idea brought him dangerously close to panicking, and he forced himself to lie still and breathe steadily. The gag rasped his lips. There was no saliva left on it or in his mouth, which felt as if it were filled with sand.
The air was close and hot and the smell . . . Every culture has its own distinctive collections of odors, varying with social class and personal idiosyncrasies, but easily distinguished by someone who has made a study of them. Cooking odors were particularly distinctive. Even with his eyes closed he could tell whether he was in an English manor house or a cottage kitchen, an Egyptian coffeehouse or a German bierstube. This room wasn’t a kitchen, but it was a room, not a cave or a storage shed. It held the indefinable but unmistakable smell of Egypt, but at one time it had been occupied by someone with European taste—expensive taste, at that. He couldn’t name the perfume, but he had encountered it before.
The surface on which he lay was softer than a floor, even one covered by a rug or matting. It gave slightly when he moved and made a faint rustling sound. A bed, then, or at least some kind of mattress.
He lay quiet and held his breath, listening. There were other sounds, some faint and far off and undistinguishable, some small and near at hand. A mouse, reassured by his stillness, ventured out on little clawed feet and began to gnaw on something. Insects whined and buzzed. The sound he had half-hoped, half-feared to hear, that of another pair of straining human lungs, was not audible. Had they carried David off too, or had they left him dead or wounded on the floor of the temple?
Since there was nothing else he could do, he willed himself to sleep. He hadn’t supposed the meditation techniques taught him by the old fakir in Cairo would work under these conditions; but his eyelids were drooping when a new sound brought him to full wakefulness. There was a line of light in front of him, lower down, at what must be floor level. It widened into a rectangle.
She slipped quickly into the room and closed the door. The lamp she carried was dim and flickering, just a strip of rag floating in oil, but after the darkness it half blinded him. She put the lamp on a table and sat down on the bed next to him. She wore red roses in her hair this time, and silver shone at her wrists.
“I brought you water,” she said softly. “But you must give me your word you will not call out if I remove the gag. You would not be heard outside these walls, but I would be punished if they knew I had come here.”
She waited for his nod before she slit the cloth with a knife she took from her sash. The relief was enormous, but his throat was so dry he could not speak until after she had raised his head and dribbled water from a clay cup between his lips.
“Thank you,” he gasped.
“Always the proper English manners!” Her full mouth curved in a sardonic smile. She held the cup to his lips again and then lowered his head onto the mattress.
“You can’t replace the gag now that you’ve cut it,” he said softly. “Will they blame you? I don’t want—”
Her ringed hand left a smarting path across his face. He shook his head dizzily.
“Sorry. Was I talking too . . .”
“Don’t do that! ” She bent over him and imprisoned his face between her hands. It was not a caress; her fingertips dug into his aching temples. “Don’t care about me. Why were you fool enough to let them catch you? I tried to warn you.”
“You did?”
She let go of his head and raised her hand. He braced himself for another slap. Instead she ran the tip of one finger slowly across his lips. “Do you know what brought me here?” she asked.
Several possibilities occurred to him, but it would not have been politic to mention any of them. He said, choosing his words with care, “The tenderness of your heart,