“Ben Franklin said the man who loves himself will have no rival,” I chimed in.
“Ah, the amusing Monsieur Franklin. Certainly I’m more faithful to myself than either of you have been to me! How many chances for partnership did I give you, Gage? How many warnings? Yet you betrayed me, again and again and again.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“I’d like to watch you beg before the end.” And I would have, if I thought it would do a lick of good.
“But I’m afraid that destiny tugs at me, too. I’m accompanying Bonaparte back to France, where I can study the book more deeply, and he’s not a man to sit still. Nor is it safe to stray from the main army. I’m afraid we will not meet again, Monsieur Gage.”
“Do you believe in ghosts, Silano?”
“I’m afraid my interest in the supernatural does not extend to superstition.”
“You will, when I come after you.”
He laughed. “And after you give me a good fright, perhaps we’ll play a game of cards! In the meantime I’ll let you turn into one. Or a mummy. Maybe I’ll have someone dig you out in a few weeks so I can prop you in a corner like Omar.”
“Alessandro, we do not deserve this!” Astiza cried.
There was a long silence. We could not see his face. Then, quietly,
“Yes you do. You broke my heart.”
And with that, we were left alone to fry.
Astiza and I faced each other, me south and she north, so that our cheeks could be equally roasted between dawn and sunset. It’s cold in the desert at night and for the first few minutes after the sun broke 2 9 4
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the horizon, the warmth was not unpleasant. Then, as pink left the sky and it turned to summer’s milk, the temperature began to rise, accentuated by the reflecting sand. My ear began to burn. I heard the first rustlings of insects.
“Ethan, I’m afraid,” whispered Astiza, who was six feet from me.
“We’ll black out,” I promised, without conviction.
“Isis, call to me our friends! Give us help!” Isis didn’t reply. “It won’t hurt after a while,” I said.
Instead, the pain increased. I soon had a headache, and my tongue thickened. Astiza was quietly moaning. Even in the best of circumstances the summer sun in Egypt hammers one’s head. Now I felt like Jericho’s anvil. I was reminded all too sharply of the flight that Ashraf and I made into the desert a year before. That time, at least, we’d been mounted and my Mameluke friend had known how to find water.
The sand grew hotter. Every inch of skin could feel the rising heat, and yet I couldn’t wiggle. There were sharp pricks, like bites, but I couldn’t tell if something was already eating me or it was merely the heat gnawing into my sensations. The brain has a way of amplifying pain with dread.
Did I mention that gambling is a vice?
Sweat had half blinded me, stinging, but soon was leached out, leaving salt. My entire head felt like it was swelling. My vision blurred from the glare, and Astiza’s own head seemed as much a blob as someone recognizable.
Was it even noon yet? I didn’t think so. I heard a faint rumble.
Was the fighting starting again? Maybe it would rain, as at the City of Ghosts.
No, the heat rose, in great shimmering waves. Astiza sobbed for a while, but then fell silent. I prayed she’d passed out. I was waiting for the same, that slow slide into unconsciousness and death, but the desert wanted to punish me. On and on the temperature climbed. My chin was burning. My teeth were frying in their sockets. My eyes were swelling shut.
Then I saw something scuttle by.
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It was black, and I groaned inwardly. Soldiers had told me that scorpion stings were particularly painful. “Like a hundred bees at once,” one had said. “No, no, like holding a hot coal to the skin!” chimed in another. “More closely like acid in the eye!” offered another.
“A hammer to the thumb!”
More scuttling. Another one. The scorpions were approaching us, then backing off. I couldn’t hear any signaling, but they seemed to pile into packs like wolves.
I hoped their assault would not wake Astiza up. I pledged to try as hard as I could not to scream. The rumbling was getting louder.
Now one arthropod came near, a monster in my ruined vision, as huge as the crocodile from this perspective. It seemed to be contemplating me with the dull, cold instinctive calculation of its tiny brain.
Its cocked tail twitched, as if aiming. And then . . .
Slam! I jerked as much as my entrapment would let me. A dusty boot had come down, obliterating the creature. It twisted, grinding the scorpion into the dust, and then I heard a familiar voice.
“By the beard of the Prophet, can you never look after yourself, Ethan?”
