The powder horn and shot bag were there, so I began to load, cursing a rifle’s laborious ramming for the first time.
Measure, pour, wadding, ball. My hand was trembling. Astiza and Silano spun by me. The count was turning red from her choking but he had her hair and was twisting to get at her. Starter ram, now the hammering with the longer one . . . damn! The pair had crashed against the balcony railing, breaking part of it free. Fire rose below.
The attached mummy continued its dance. The count twisted Astiza to his front, shielding himself as he eyed my rifle and struggled to lift his pistol clear. Smoke thickened against the ceiling. My one shot had to be perfect! He’d pulled the wrappings off his own throat and was tightening them on hers. He lifted his gun.
I threw out the ramrod, put a pinch of powder in the pan, my barrel coming up, Silano firing but his aim spoiled by Astiza, whom he twisted to hurl into the flames, just enough to expose his neck as they strained . . .
“He’s going to burn me!”
I fired.
The ball hit his throat.
His scream was a bloody gargle. His eyes went wide in shock and pain.
And then he smashed through the balcony railing and down into the flames below, taking my woman with him.
“Astiza!”
It was the plunge from the balloon all over again. She gave a cry and was gone.
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w i l l i a m d i e t r i c h
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I ran to the end of the study and peered down, expecting to see her in flames. But no, the mummy had snagged on one of the broken balustrades, its rib cage and dried muscles still tight after millennia.
Astiza was hanging by its linen wrappings, her feet kicking above the hot fire.
Count Silano had disappeared into the holocaust, writhing on the makeshift pyre. The book was at his breast.
To hell with the cursed book!
I grasped the bandages, hauled, got her arm, and pulled her up. I wasn’t going to let her drop with Silano again! As I dragged her across the lip of the balcony Omar broke free and fell, turning into a torch as his linens caught the flames. He banged down to burn with his master. I looked. His broken limbs were moving, as in agony! Was he somehow still alive? Or was it a trick of the heat?
He’d not been a curse but a savior. Thoth had smiled on us after all.
And the book? As Silano’s clothes burned away, I could see the scroll curling on his dissolving chest. The flames were growing hotter as the count’s flesh bubbled, and I backed away.
Astiza and I clung. There were church bells, shouts, a clatter of heavy wagons. The Paris fire brigade would be here soon. By the time they arrived, the secrets men had coveted for thousands of years would have turned to ash.
“Can you walk?” I asked her. “We don’t have much time. We have to flee.”
“The book!”
“It’s gone with Silano.”
She was weeping. For what, I wasn’t sure.
Below, I heard the carriage doors being opened and water pumped.
We slowly limped to the door we’d entered by, bloody and singed, stepping over a mess of glass, fluid, bone, books, and ruined papers.
The hall was smoky. For a moment I hoped the fire would push any pursuers away until we could make our escape.
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But no, a platoon of sentries was pounding down the hall.
“That’s him! That’s the one!” It was an annoyingly familiar voice I hadn’t heard for a year and a half. “He owes me rent!” Madame Durrell! My former landlady in Paris, who I fled in unseemly circumstances, had been the red- haired mystery woman who’d haunted the periphery of my vision since I’d returned to Paris.
She’d never been a believer in my character and at our parting had accused me of attempted rape. I’d deny it, but really, all you had to do is look at her. The pyramids are younger than Madame Durrell, and in better shape, too.
“Am I never to be free of you?” I groaned.
“You will when you pay what you owe me!”
“Creditors have better memories than debtors,” Ben liked to say.
