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Neil took in her expression and groaned.
Constance cast a final look at the age-worn sculptures in the wall—the steward of the nomarch of Ta-Wer and his wife, their features worn away by the millennia. Her gaze dropped to where the fingers of the two statues were still delicately entwined.
“They’re holding hands,” she observed with a pang of surprise.
“Yes.” Neil’s tone was a little solemn and awkward. “They do that sometimes.”
Even though the sculptures were deeply weathered with age, obscuring much of their detail, the time-worn gesture was oddly poignant.
“How long do you think they have been like that?” Constance pressed.
“Around four thousand years.”
Constance’s heart squeezed with a poignant sympathy. “He must have loved her very much,” she said with feeling.
Neil frowned as he adjusted his spectacles.
She grabbed his hand and gave it a tug. “Now come along. We have a boat to steal.”
“Don’t you meanbuy?” Neil pleaded, stumbling after her.
?
Constance tucked up her skirts as she set off along the cliffs. The ragged landscape was not as impenetrable as it had looked from the boat. A little scrambling over the rocks and a shuffle along a few narrow ledges brought them near the top of the escarpment, where a perfectly serviceable goat path wended across the heights. There were only a few places where she had to leap across a small chasm along the way.
Haranguing Neil into following her took rather more effort.
She steered them to the narrow, low-lying band of green farmland that lay at a dip in the ridge to the south. The cotton fields were broken up by a cluster of humble houses and a rickety dock that ran out into the water, where Constance had picked out the shape of a tidy little single-sail felucca.
The boat looked somewhat less tidy as they drew nearer to it. The hull had not been painted in some time, and the sail was patched in places. The craft was also listing a bit to port.
Constance spotted the farmer in a field near the dock, his blue galabeya tucked up around his knees.
“I don’t suppose you speak any Masri?” she asked as Neil joined her.
“A bit?” Neil replied, huffing from the exertion of the climb. “I mean—I’ve picked up a few things, but Sayyid is always telling me that my pronunciation is—”
“It’ll do.” Constance hooked her arm through his elbow and dragged him over to the farmer.
The fellow was only a few years older than Constance, with wide brown eyes and sun-weathered skin. He straightened as they approached, staring at them as though he half suspected they were a mirage.
The way Neil stared back at him was hardly better.
“Say hello.” Constance nudged him with her elbow.
“Right,” Neil squeaked nervously. “Er… salâmu 'alaykum!”
“Waleikum as-salâm,” the farmer replied skeptically.
“Tell him that he has a very nice farm,” Constance prompted.
“Why?” Neil retorted, clearly bewildered.
“You can’t just start right into bargaining. You have to soften him up first!”
“Bargaining?” Neil echoed with alarm. “Who said anything about bargaining?”
“How else do you think we are going to acquire the boat, if we are not stealing it?” Constance threw up her hands.
