Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air (6 page)

“Italy has invaded Ethiopia, not Germany,” Iskinder said. “I do not see you have any moral obligation to aid Mussolini.”

“True,” Willi said. He shot Jerry a look that was almost challenging. “Then I’ll heat up some soup for our guest while you tend to his injury. You had best let Jerry have a look at it. He practically has an aid station in that shaving kit of his.”

“Come in my bedroom,” Jerry said. “And I’ll have a look. You should be safe enough here.” He watched Iskinder get to his feet stiffly, almost as carefully as Jerry always did, and waited while Iskinder went into the bedroom first. Willi had his back to him searching out canned soup from the cupboard. “Willi,” he began.

Willi didn’t look around. “Which soup? Does he keep Halal?”

“He’s Christian,” Jerry said. “So whatever there is.” Anything else he needed to say would have to wait, and so he followed Iskinder into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

“You trust him,” Iskinder said.

“With this.”

Iskinder nodded. It was, after all, only his life at stake. Jerry felt a surge of pride. Iskinder put his life in his hands just as he had during the war, wordlessly, as though it were nothing. It was a lot to live up to. But now…

Iskinder sat down on the edge of the bed gingerly, his careful movements betraying the pain his face didn’t show. Jerry rummaged in his shaving kit for scissors and iodine. “Take the gallibaya off,” he said. “Let’s see how this looks.”

“Not as bad as it feels, I promise,” Iskinder said. Beneath the tattered robe he wore shirt and pants. He unbuttoned the shirt awkwardly.

He’d lost a great deal of weight, Jerry thought, his collar bones standing out starkly. A pad of bandages was wrapped around his chest, covering ribs and passing just beneath his arm. Two bulges stood out in the wrappings, one on his right side below his arm and the other at his sternum.

“God, Iskinder,” Jerry breathed. If he’d been stabbed just at the sternum it was a wonder he was alive.

“That’s not the wound.” Iskinder shook his head, slipping his hand down among the bandages gingerly. “But rather the cause of it. There’s more than one reason I came to Alexandria, and the guns are only part of it.” Wincing, he sought beneath the folds, then drew forth the object which had lain bound against his breast like an amulet from the wrappings of a mummy. He held it out to Jerry wordlessly, and Jerry caught his breath.

The gold shone in the dim lamplight. It was a medallion fully five inches long and nearly four inches wide, the pectoral ornament from a necklace, the archaeologist in him thought even while he reached out a hand to take it carefully. Warm from Iskinder’s body, it almost glowed, alive in his hands. Isis stretched her wings in the center, the vulture wings spread in benediction over all, Mut the mother granting protection and blessing. Four cabochon Indian rubies gleamed, set in the ruddy gold characteristic of the early Hellenistic period, almost rose gold. Exquisite. Amazing. Jerry lacked words. He turned it over reverentially, tracing the hieroglyphics on the reverse. Yes, a pectoral. He could see how it had hung, the inscription against the wearer’s skin.

“Blessed is Isis, Mother of the World,” he read, his fingers tracing each warm shape. “Blessed is Berenice the mother of the young god in this the first year of his reign.” And there was the cartouche. Jerry read it aloud, speaking the Horus Name and the Nebty Name and the Golden Horus Name, all the names of a pharaoh. “The Strong Youth Whose Might is Great, Who His Father Has Raised to the Throne.” He’d seen that cartouche many times before. “Ptolemy II Philadelphus.”

Jerry took a deep breath. A pectoral ornament, inscribed this way… “A gift from the young pharaoh to his mother,” he said. He looked at Iskinder keenly. “What’s its provenance?” This had never been in a tomb, never been underground. It was alive.

Iskinder smiled thinly. “It has been part of our coronation regalia since the fifteenth century. Before that…” He spread his hands. “There is a document from that era that catalogs it, purporting to be a copy of a much older scroll that was degenerating. Whether that is so or not, I cannot say. Perhaps so. Perhaps it was invented in the fifteenth century to make a fantastic story for the piece. But the document is indeed fifteenth century. The Emperor has had it authenticated by scholars from Oxford. This is the relevant text.” He searched through the pocket of his shirt and handed a piece of paper to Jerry.

The translation was modern and neatly typewritten. “I place the necklace of Queen Berenice into the keeping of Drusilla of Mauritania as part of her bride portion, once belonging to her grandmother the great Cleopatra, that she may carry the protection of Isis in her new place and that Isis may grant blessings upon her marriage. I, Demetria the Adoratrice of Isis, give this to her keeping with her mother’s blessing.”

Iskinder shrugged. “Purportedly, the Emperor descends from Cleopatra via her granddaughter Drusilla of Mauritania, who married one of the Herods in the first century. I say purportedly, as that depends on the accuracy of documents that are not nearly that old, and which may have been concocted to shore up the legitimacy of kings several centuries ago. But to the best of our knowledge…”

“Anyone who concocted a forgery in the fifteenth century couldn’t have read the cartouche,” Jerry said sharply. “Hieroglyphics weren’t deciphered until 1822. They wouldn’t have known it was the necklace of Queen Berenice. It could be anyone’s. Any Ptolemaic queen.”

“True,” Iskinder said.

Jerry rested his hand on the gold. Taken from Alexandria as part of Augustus’ loot, sent to Numidia with Cleopatra Selene’s dowry, given to her daughter as a wedding gift from the Temple of Isis that Selene established in Mauritania… And then a long trail down the centuries, treasured by women and men alike, given hand to hand from Jerusalem to Palmyra, and at last to Aksum in northern Ethiopia, gold like blood flowing through many veins to rest at last against Iskinder’s heart.

“But it isn’t,” he said. “It’s the real thing.” His voice was sure and strong.

“It’s the second oldest piece in our coronation regalia,” Iskinder said. “The Emperor gave it to me for safekeeping. It must not fall into the hands of the Italians.”

No second Rome. The pectoral did not want it. No second Rome, no second captivity, taken away from those of its blood to ornament a conqueror’s triumph. Blood and gold, blood of the Ptolemies, steaming on a temple floor where Roman swords had shed it while a young priestess knelt in horror, the pectoral safe against her chest….

Jerry blinked. Iskinder reached out and took it, cradling it in his hand. Iskinder’s blood, a prince of Ethiopia who now brought it back to Alexandria.

Alive. Protective. Wakened by Iskinder’s blood shed upon it, the assassin’s knife turning against a ruby and sparing his heart…

“You’re right,” Jerry said simply. “It mustn’t. What do you need me to do?”

December 27, 1935

L
ewis leaned against the window of the suite’s main room, staring down onto the plaza and its massive fountain. Cars crept past, honking at each other and at the pedestrians darting between them, the old-fashioned gas streetlights giving everything a yellow tinge. They would be heading to the air show’s opening reception soon — there would be some sort of tribute to the French flyers, of course, and a rumor had spread through the hangar before he left that the Air Marshal was planning to donate some of the show proceeds to the flyers’ families, but the reception and the dance that followed would go on as planned. He didn’t feel particularly guilty about that — every flyer lived with that chance, and they’d all learned during the war to put the deaths into their own little box and move on — but he couldn’t help his sorrow. This was no way to start the show.

“You’re thinking you should have been able to warn them.”

He turned away from the window to see Stasi Sorley standing in the doorway. Mitch’s wife was dressed to the nines, her jet-black hair neatly waved beneath a pair of silver and rhinestone clips, her face white with powder and her lips a vivid scarlet that matched her nails. The black satin bias-cut evening gown made the most of her skinny figure, but the shoes that peeped from beneath the hem were sturdy dancer’s pumps: she was still planning to enjoy the evening, he thought, and felt his heart lift a little. And she was right, too.

“What’s the use of being a clairvoyant if you don’t see something like that coming?” He did his best to keep his voice light, but the glance from her dark eyes suggested she saw right through him.

Stasi waved her unlit cigarette at him, and he reached automatically for his lighter.  Neither he nor Alma smoked much, but when Stasi was around, it was only polite to be prepared.  She released a cloud of smoke, her eyes slitting in pleasure, and slipped the long jet holder from her lips. “Darling, be grateful you didn’t know.”

“But —”

“What would you have done?” she asked, her voice gentle. “Gone and told the Tower or the French pilots — what? That they were going to crash? That there was something wrong with the plane? Almost certainly they wouldn’t have believed you, and even if they had, you’d have had to explain how you knew. And that would have been rather awkward, to say the least.”

She was right, of course. He could just imagine what the French pilots would have said — could imagine what he himself would have said, in the same circumstances, and he was a part of the Aedificatori Templii, a lodge member and a trained clairvoyant who believed in such things. He would still have taken his chances and flown.

Stasi nodded as though she’d read his mind. “You see, darling, sometimes things work out for the best. The powers don’t give us pointless knowledge.”

“I suppose,” Lewis said, but his mood felt lighter. He’d stopped at the nearest church, San Giovanni Evangelista, on his way back from the airfield to light a candle and say a prayer for the dead; he’d stop there again tomorrow, and add another candle for thanks.

The door to the suite’s smaller bedroom opened, and Mitchell Sorley came into the living room, a rather sheepish grin on his face. “Sorry. I had to get Douglas settled.”

Stasi raised her voice to carry to the next room.  “If Douglas doesn’t settle, there won’t be any pastries tomorrow. Or the next installment of Queen Esther versus the Barbarians.”

Lewis blinked. He was fairly sure he didn’t remember that from his confirmation classes, but with the Old Testament you never really knew.

“I think Elena has them well in hand,” Mitch said. Like Stasi, he was dressed to kill, the beautiful, conservatively cut tuxedo emphasizing the breadth of his shoulders and tactfully blurring the thickening of his ex-athlete’s body. Behind him, Tiny Foster looked even taller and more gangly than usual in his first real evening suit, a fleck of blood on the point of his chin where he’d been extra determined with his razor. Lewis suppressed a smile, remembering when he had been that young, and glanced at his watch. Alma should be ready now, surely.

At that moment, the hall door opened, and Alma slipped inside, her smile apologetic. “Sorry.  Is Dora taken care of?”

“Elena’s got them,” Mitch said again.

Lewis nodded, his eyes on Alma. Floyd Odlum had paid them well enough that she’d bought a new long dress for the trip, ordered and fitted on a couple of her trips to Los Angeles. This one was heavy, old-gold satin only a shade or two darker than her blonde hair, cut to flatter her figure, more generous now after Dora’s birth, with the skirt sweeping into a tiny train. It was decidedly unfussy, deceptively plain, and it made her look like a million dollars. She held out her gloved hands, cocking her head just slightly in the subtlest of questions, and he took them with a nod and his most reassuring smile.

“You look like a movie star.”

 She grinned, the familiar smile somehow only enhancing the resemblance, and nudged him in the ribs. “You don’t look too bad yourself, Ramon.”

Lewis could feel himself blush. Alma had decided recently that he looked like movie star Ramon Navarro, which — they both had wavy hair that required a lot of brilliantine to keep it under control, but that was about it, as far as Lewis was concerned. He had a new jacket himself, a subdued black number with a fancy white vest, copying the Prince of Wales rather than Hollywood, but he thought he looked all right. Of course, the invitation had specified formal dress, which he suspected was Italian for white tie, but Henry had assured him that tuxedos were acceptable for the flyers.

“Are we ready?” Mitch asked. He had Stasi’s black wrap in hand, ready to drape it over her bare shoulders, and Lewis reached hastily for Alma’s mink. It was really too warm for the Italian winter, but she loved its luxury, and he loved to see her in it. The fifth member of their Lodge, Jerry Ballard, had won it for her during the Great Passenger Derby, and Lewis felt a little twinge at his absence. But Jerry was on the archeological dig he’d been planning for the last three years: he wouldn’t trade that for anything.

“As ready as we’re going to be,” Alma said cheerfully, and turned for Lewis to drape the fur over her shoulders. “It should be quite a party.”

T
he reception was held in a palace — apparently a real one, though the current owner had renounced his title in favor of a position in Mussolini’s government. It didn’t seem to make any difference in the ex-count’s housekeeping: the cars were directed around the circular drive by uniformed men, their boots and belts polished to a shine that reflected the headlights, and there were actual footmen in white wigs and powder-blue satin coats who rushed to open the doors and direct them into the marble-tiled halls. There were maids in black dresses and little white caps to take the women’s coats, and Alma avoided Stasi’s eye as they paused in the powder room to primp for their entrance, afraid that she would break out in unseemly giggles. She checked her reflection a final time — nothing more she could do — and squared her shoulders.

“Ready?”

“Of course, darling,” Stasi answered, tossing her head, but Alma wasn’t deceived.