The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [94]
“How can you joke about it?” Her blue eyes shone with tears of rage and compassion.
“The only alternative is to curse God. Neither does any good.” His hands lingered as he adjusted the hood of her cloak over her bright head. “Let me try once more.”
“You are not going in there alone, Ramses,” David announced.
“You can keep watch. Wait for me here.”
“If you aren’t out in five minutes I’ll come after you,” Nefret said.
He was out in less than five minutes. “Nothing,” he reported. “No one saw her, no one would admit knowing her.”
“I’ll try another place,” David said heroically. His face was pinched with disgust.
“No. I haven’t the stomach for more either,” Ramses admitted. “The word will spread now—and one of the words I mentioned was ‘reward.’ I didn’t suppose any of them would dare speak up before the others. Come, let’s get out of this.”
When they reached the riverbank David had found a new source of worry. “Aunt Amelia will want to know where we were. What shall we tell her?”
“That we went to the Luxor garden for a cup of tea,” Nefret said. “We’ll go there now, so it won’t be a lie.”
She was more composed now, her face pensive instead of angry. After they had found a table and ordered tea, she said, “I did make a mess of things, didn’t I?”
“Not necessarily,” Ramses said. “One never knows; an impulsive word from you may have had more effect than my methods.”
“I won’t ask what methods you used.” She smiled at him and took his bandaged hand gently in hers. “I’ve been wanting to ask you about this—and a few other things. You must have hit someone very hard to do so much damage.”
“There were two of them,” Ramses said, wondering what she was getting at.
“In the house, you mean? You took on both of them at once? That was very brave of you.”
“Not very.”
“And what was Layla doing while you fought two men?”
Her eyes were wide and innocent and as blue as the sea, and that was where she had maneuvered him—between the devil and the deep blue sea. He tried to think of a convincing lie and failed miserably; he couldn’t remember precisely how much he had told them, but he must have said enough to get that quick, intuitive mind of hers on the right track.
“Precisely what you suspect,” he said with a sigh. “At least that was what she intended to do. Don’t despise me, Nefret, I got there in time to prevent it. How the devil do you know these things?”
Her fingers stroked his wrist, sending tremors all the way up his arm. “I know you, my boy.”
“Don’t let your emotions get the better of you, Nefret. There’s Mother. I might have known she’d track us down.” His mother was advancing with her usual brisk stride; there was only time for him to add with a faint smile, “I hadn’t much choice, dear. If you ever found out I had slunk away and left her, you’d have used my skin for a rug.”
:
I have never succumbed to the lazy Eastern habit of sleeping in the afternoon, but I firmly believe that an active mind is in need of brief intervals of relaxation. After we had returned home after our busy, if fruitless, investigations, I lay down on my bed and picked up a book.
I was roused from the meditative state into which I had fallen by sounds that made me start up with heart pounding. Steel ringing on steel—raised voices—the sounds of mortal combat! Rushing to the door, as I believed, I found myself tugging at the window shutters, which I had closed against the heat of the afternoon sun.
This momentary confusion was soon overcome and I emerged into the courtyard, where I stood transfixed. The sight was terrible: Ramses and David, barefooted, stripped to trousers and shirt, striking fiercely at one another with the long knives used by the Tourag. Mute and motionless with horror, I saw Ramses’s knife drive home against David’s breast.
The paralysis broke. I shrieked.
“Good afternoon, Mother,” said Ramses. “I am sorry if we woke you. Confound it, David, you were holding back. Again.”
David rubbed