for disappointment, having polished her in my memory, but no, what I’d 1 8 8
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imagined was still here, the poised litheness, the lips and cheekbones worthy of a Cleopatra, the lustrous dark eyes. Women are flowers, giving grace to the world, and Astiza was a lotus.
She’d aged, however. Not poorly—it’s a mistake to think age an insult to women, because her beauty simply had more character—but her eyes had deepened, as if she’d seen or felt things she would prefer she hadn’t. I wondered if I’d changed the same way: how long since I’d looked in a glass? I touched my hand to stubble and was conscious, suddenly, of my travel-stained clothes. Her own gown was dust-dyed, and divided for riding. She wore cavalry boots, small enough that perhaps they’d been borrowed from some drummer. She was slim, a dancer’s body, but again, we’d all narrowed. Her waist was cinched by a silk rope, holding a small curved dagger and a leather pouch. A water skin was on the rock.
I hesitated, my rehearsals forgotten. It was as if she’d risen from the dead. Finally, “I sent men asking.” It sounded like an apology, awkward and without eloquence—but I
“Do you have my ring?”
It was a cool way to begin. I took it out, the ruby bright. She plucked like a bird and slipped it quickly into the pouch at her side, as if it were hot. She still thinks it cursed, I thought.
“I’ll use it as an offering,” she said.
“To Isis?”
“To all of Them, including Thoth.”
“I feared you dead. It’s like a miracle. You look like a spirit or an angel.”
“Do you have the seraphim?”
Her distance was disconcerting. “I find you through hell and high water and all you want is jewelry?”
“We need them.” She was straining not to show emotion, I realized.
“We?”
“Ethan, I was saved by Alessandro.”
Well, there was a sharp little knife in the ribs. She’d been cling-t h e
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ing to the balloon’s trailing tether, Silano locked around her so she couldn’t climb, and finally she had cut the rope with my tomahawk so the airship could float out of musket range. I’d failed to haul her into the basket, or get rid of the nobleman-sorcerer who’d once been her lover. So were they a couple again? If so, I was damned if I could understand why they’d sent for me. If all they wanted were gold trin-kets, I could have mailed the things. “You were almost killed by that bastard. The only reason you didn’t get away is because he wouldn’t let go.”
She looked away over the valley, her tone hollow. “I don’t remember our landing, just the fall. The last thing I remember is your face, looking down from the lip of the basket. It was the most awful thing I’ve had to do in my life. As I cut the tether I saw a hundred emotions in your eyes.”
“Horror, if I recall.”
“Fear, shame, regret, anger, longing, sorrow . . . and relief.” I was going to protest but instead I flushed, because it was true.
“When I swung that tomahawk I freed you, Ethan, from the burden thrust upon you: safeguarding the Book of Thoth. I freed you of me. Yet you didn’t go to America.”
“You can’t cut the rope that binds us with a hatchet, Astiza.” So she turned back and looked at me again, her gaze fierce, her body trembling, and I knew it was all she could do to keep from flying into my arms. Why was she hesitating? Once again I understood nothing. And I couldn’t reach out either, because there was an invisible wall of duty and regret we had to break down first. We couldn’t properly begin because we had too much to say.
“When I woke, a month had passed and I was with Silano, nursed in secret. The savants had given him research quarters in Cairo. As he mended his broken hip he continued to read every scrap of ancient writing that could be scoured for him. He’s assembled trunks and trunks of books. I even saw him picking through blackened manu-scripts that must have come from Enoch’s burned library. He hadn’t given up, not for an instant. He knew we hadn’t emerged from the pyramid with anything useful, and he suspected the book had been 1 9 0
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carried elsewhere. So once again I became his ally so I could use
“You said you expected me to go to America.”
“I doubted, I admit. I knew you might run. Then we heard rumors about inquiries being made, and my heart quickened. Silano had Bonaparte jail the real messenger and sent his own man in his place to Jerusalem to discourage you. Yet it didn’t work. And as the count began to piece together a new plan, and Najac left to spy on you, I realized that fate was conspiring to bring us all together again. We’re going to solve this mystery, Ethan, and find the book.”
“Why? Don’t you just want to bury it again?”
“It can also be used for good. Ancient Egypt was once a paradise of peace and learning. The world could be that way again.”
“Astiza, you’ve seen our world. Or has the fall knocked all sense out of you?”
“There’s a church on the rise just above us, ruins now. It marks where Moses may once have sat, gazing at his Promised Land, knowing that for all his sacrifice he himself could never enter it. Your culture’s old god was a cruel
