Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air (38 page)

She picked it up before she could change her mind, scooping it into her pocket as though it were sticky, as though it were cold as ice. Then she quietly went back into the sitting room.

He had not drawn the curtains. She clasped the catch through the fold of the curtains. The nineteenth century latch was sticky, and she pushed down with all her strength before it yielded, a scraping sound loud in the stillness.

Stasi froze.

The sounds in the bath continued unabated.

She swung the balcony doors wide. Night blew in, the curtains swaying in the breeze, the sounds of the busy street coming up.

Hurriedly she crossed the room and listened a moment at the hall door. Silent. This was the single critical moment. The splashing in the bath intensified, as though he were getting out.

And then the moment was past. She was out in the hall, pulling the door shut behind her. It would be best to relock it. No hurry. No panic. The pin did the job, turning the tumblers with only a little effort. Stasi slid the pin back into her finger waves and walked calmly down the middle of the hall to the stairs. She went down one floor, then back to her own room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

The book was on the table, the ice melting slowly into the gin.

She went into the bedroom and slid the ring out of her pocket, trying not to touch it. She dropped it into the little velvet bag with the cameos Mitch had given her and pulled the silk drawstring tight, then dropped it into the box.

Deep breaths. Twelve minutes until eleven. Her watch said that all in all six minutes had elapsed. Six minutes since she left. Only six.

Her heart was pounding so loudly it seemed a miracle it couldn’t be heard all over Palermo.

But no. Of course not. She sat down in the chair and picked up the book, taking a very long sip of the gin. And now to wait. Perhaps nothing would actually happen tonight. Perhaps he would go straight to bed without noticing. She doubted that. It was not the kind of thing that would be forgotten, and in any event she had amply established when and how it disappeared. As soon as he stepped out of the bath he would see the balcony doors open.

It was twenty-three minutes before she heard commotion, twenty-five before there was a knock on her door. Stasi put her book back down on the table and went to the door, pausing behind it as a woman should when alone in a hotel after eleven at night. “Yes?”

“Signora Sorley, it is I, Signore Balderacci, the concierge.”

She opened the door, permitting a faint frown. “Yes, Signore?”

There was an Italian policeman with him, a handsome young man with a pencil mustache. Signore Balderacci looked harried, sweat standing out on his forehead. “Signora Sorley, is all well with you?”

Stasi looked perplexed. “Of course. Should it not be?”

The policeman had less delicacy. “Signora, we regret to disturb you, but there has been a robbery in this hotel. The suite directly above yours has been burgled. I must ask you, have you heard anything unusual this evening?”

“No, not at all!” Stasi put one hand to her breast. “Burgled?”

“I’m afraid we must ask to see your balcony.” The policeman went past her, Signore Balderacci trailing after.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

Stasi gave him a little shrug, as if to sympathize with the unreasonableness of the world.

The policeman glared at the closed curtains. “Have you had the curtains closed, Signora?”

“Yes.” Stasi came to stand beside him. “Since the children went to bed. I’ve been sitting here reading.”

The policeman opened the curtains and made a great production of examining the latch to the balcony doors. “And the doors closed and locked?”

“Of course,” Stasi said. “It’s very noisy. All those bars.”

He opened the doors and stepped outside, glancing around.

“What has happened?” Stasi asked Signore Balderacci.

“The room above… It is terrible! Never before have we had such a thing in this hotel!” He dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief.

The policeman considered different angles, leaning out over the wrought iron of the railing and looking both up and down. “A nimble man might do it,” he said.

“Do what?” Stasi asked.

“Climb up from the street?” Balderacci said with amazement. “Impossible! It is a busy street. There are restaurants and nightclubs! Someone would see! A man cannot just climb up the side of a building without anyone noticing!”

“Down from the roof,” the policeman said, glancing back at them. “We will check there next.” He turned to Stasi. “Signora, I hate to trouble you, but will you check and make sure your jewels are not missing?”

“Missing?” Stasi put her hand to her breast in alarm. “Surely not! Why I have been in the suite the entire time! So have the children!”

“I regret to say that the gentleman upstairs had also not left the suite,” Balderacci said. “It happened while he was in the bath.”

“Have you been in a separate room from your valuables?” the policeman asked.

“Yes.” Stasi widened her eyes. “When I put the children to bed I was in their room for some time, and I have been in the sitting room since. You don’t think…” Her voice trailed off.

“You must check, Signora,” the policeman said solemnly.

They followed her into the bedroom and watched her take out the elaborate ivory jewel box. “I don’t have much here, thank goodness!” Stasi said. “My watch and some pearls. And some unset cameos my husband just bought me.” She opened the box, holding it out under the light, watch and pearls and the little velvet bag. “Oh thank goodness! It’s all there!”

“You are fortunate, Signora,” the policeman said with a little bow. “I wonder if you heard anything?”

“No, nothing in particular,” Stasi said, wide eyed. “You mean to tell me a man was climbing around just outside my room? A cat burglar? I thought they existed only in the movies!”

“I regret that is not true,” the policeman said.

“How terrifying!”

“We shall catch our thief,” he replied. “Come, Signore Balderacci. The next thing is the roof. Perhaps there is a rope or something he left behind.”

“A rope on the roof! Of my hotel!”

“It’s very Agatha Christie,” Stasi said. “Or is it Dorothy Sayers? I can’t stand Lord Peter Wimsey, can you? Or rather it’s not Peter I mind but Harriet.”

The policeman looked unimpressed with this digression into British detection. “The roof, Balderacci.”

“Yes, yes. I am so sorry we disturbed you, Signora.”

“It’s quite all right. I’m so relieved to know that you are on the case,” Stasi said. “How terribly exciting! To think that a cat burglar was climbing around outside my room! I don’t know what my husband will say!”

“I don’t know what the owner will say,” Balderacci said miserably as he followed the policeman out. “A cat burglar! It will be in the papers.”

“And people will flock to the hotel,” Stasi promised. “It’s a fascinating story.”

“Signore Hess is not amused,” Balderacci said. “To think this should happen! We have never had anything of the kind before!”

“I suppose the jewels were very valuable?”

The policeman turned back. “Signore? The roof?”

“Excuse me, Signora Sorley,” the concierge said with a little bow.

“Of course.” Stasi closed the door behind him and locked it firmly. Then she went to put the ivory jewel box away. She did not open the velvet bag. There was no need to handle it. Valuable, yes, but of course not in any conventional sense. It was only silver, a band like a wedding band with runes around it, a skull between those meaning death and rebirth. Birth and growth and war and sacrifice and death and rebirth, a ring without end, an oath to bind life upon life… No, she would not touch it. She would leave it where it was.

Its loss would certainly give Hess something to think about besides the whereabouts of the Gilchrist Aviation team, and if he was hunting a cat burglar all over Palermo, he would have no time for Göring’s missing nephew.

And perhaps, just perhaps, one day they would need the ring.

January 4, 1936

T
he catacombs beneath the city were vast, and with no guidance except Willi’s compass, the best they could do was attempt to take tunnels that rose. Most, unfortunately, dead-ended. It seemed to Jerry that they had been walking for days, and he wished that they’d had the foresight to bring supplies, or at least a canteen of water. It would be entirely ironic to die of thirst in a cistern.

It was the sound of running water that alerted them. “Listen!” Willi said, holding up a hand.

There was the faint sound of water trickling, just a small sound, but amplified by the acoustics of the tunnels.

“I think it’s this way,” Hussein said. He shone the light over the floor. There was a dark streak at the bottom of one of the sewer tunnels, the tiny burble where it flowed over a lip of stone between one section and another.

“It must be coming from a drain above,” Jerry said. “Any chance of rain today?”

“Not that I heard,” Willi replied.

“Good.” Jerry wasn’t certain how much water would come this way in the event of one of Alexandria’s brief cloud-bursting thunderstorms. Possibly a good deal more than they would want. A little trickle like this was probably coming from a storm drain, from an open hydrant, or perhaps even watering the garden in one of the walled houses.

“If we follow it,” Hussein began.

“Yes,” Jerry said. “A way back to the surface.”

They followed the trickle, climbing an ascending series of Roman sewers until at last they could climb no more. The water ran down a vertical wall from a tunnel above, a stone pipe no more than three feet in diameter.

“Damn,” Jerry said. It was at least eight feet to the top, and it was impossible to see what was above that. And yet the sound of the water was louder. “Willi,” he said, “Switch off the flashlight.”

Willi didn’t ask why. He was too experienced an archaeologist for that. The darkness as he turned the light off was absolute.

Or not. Some faint light came in from above, a bar of darkness less intense to one side of the hole above.

“There’s an outlet!” Hussein said excitedly. “I’m going to climb up there!”

“How?”

“Like a mountain climber,” Hussein said, bracing hands and feet on either side of the tunnel. “I can do it. I’ve done it in a pyramid, for what it’s worth.” He grinned as Willi turned the light back on so that he could see better. “Just give me a boost, if you wouldn’t mind, Dr. Radke.”

“With pleasure,” Willi said.

Jerry watched as Hussein wriggled athletically up, noting that his expensive trousers were almost certainly ruined. Well, a pair of trousers was cheap price for the Soma by any reckoning!

“It’s a storm drain,” Hussein called down. “In the side of a street. Hello there! Hello!” The last was shouted in Arabic, trying to get the attention of some passerby. “Down here! In the drain! God be praised we are stuck! Will you get the cover off, good man? Or will you call a policeman who can?”

Willi sighed. “Well,” he said. “That is that.”

It took quite some time to get someone with the city waterworks out who could remove the cast iron cover over the drain and let down a harness to get Jerry, and quite tactfully Willi, out of the hole. At last Jerry stood blinking on the sidewalk amid the small crowd of the curious who had gathered while Hussein explained their adventure in rapid and voluble Arabic. The light seemed very bright even though it was full night. He stood on the sidewalk in front of a three story bank building with balconies on the second floor across the street from more imposing buildings, a sidestreet that he did not recognize.

“Where are we?” he asked Hussein.

“Across the street from the university,” Hussein said. “That’s the back of the dental school. My father practices at the hospital just around the corner. I’m explaining that we’re archaeologists and we got lost. Archaeologists have just slightly more sense than mad dogs.” He smiled, and Jerry couldn’t help but laugh.

“That sounds excellent,” he said. “You’ve done invaluable work today.”

“Thank you,” Hussein said. There was a cheer as the waterworks man reclosed the drain with warnings to all to stay out of the sewers of Alexandria. He lowered his voice. “For a moment, when we were there…” His voice trailed off and he met Jerry’s eyes solemnly. “For a moment when you made the promise, I saw the headdress settle on you, the striped lappets of a priest. I think you are its guardian now. Its priest. The Heirophant.”

“Yes,” Jerry said. This weight sat on him heavily still, the weight of the dedication on his shoulders, Heirophant of Alexander today as perhaps he had been before. He couldn’t help asking Willi, “What did you see?”

“I saw nothing but you,” Willi said, but his eyes made it a tenderness.

Jerry stood in the warm night air of Alexandria and let the crowd go around him, the pulse of the City, Magus and priest.

January 5, 1936

A
lma woke to the sound of a baby crying, and sat up, ready to console Dora, before she remembered where she was. Mitch was already awake and dressed, talking quietly at the tent’s entrance with a woman who’d brought a bowl of something that steamed gently in the cool morning air. Lewis was stirring, too, and Alma pushed aside the heavy blanket and shook out her shoes carefully before she moved to join Mitch.

“They’re loading up the wagons,” he said. “Colonel Robinson wants to send us and the fuel off with the first group.” He held out the bowl. It was full of what looked like porridge topped with a reddish oil, and smelled of garlic and onions. There were three wooden spoons as well, and Alma took one, tasting gingerly. It was a bit like grits with chilis and butter, and she took a larger mouthful, knowing she’d need a full belly.

“When does he want to leave?”

“As close to sun-up as he can manage,” Mitch said. He gave a lopsided smile. “It’s not like we’ve got all that much to pack.”