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“I suppose I must,” Sayyid retorted. “It is not as though you would ever figure it out for yourself!”
The words stung like the crack of a whip.
Sayyid dropped his head, exhaustion slumping his shoulders. He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose and drew in a long, uneven breath.
The air of the quarry went even more still. The firebird bone flickered again, threatening to plunge them once more into that abysmal darkness. Neil forced himself to give the bone another energetic shake, even as his cheeks flushed with shame.
When Sayyid finally looked at him, his face was drawn into lines of tired sadness. “Before you, I was just a foreman. Sometimes all I could do was staff the dig—ensure that everyone arrived on schedule, oversee dismissals, and administer pay. On other excavations, I might do more—run the washing stations. Set procedures for sifting spoil. Stabilize artifacts before their removal and transport. Whatever the archaeologist in charge didn’t want to be bothered with.”
His expression tightened. “I know how to document finds. Record texts and artwork. Analyze stratigraphy and context. To the other men I have worked for, those skills were a convenience—like finding a dog who already knows how to fetch your slippers.”
Sayyid’s voice snapped with an old bitterness. “My father was not a pasha. I could never have gone to one of your universities. But even if I had, it would not have mattered—because I am not an Englishman. I am an Egyptian, and Egyptians are not archaeologists—no matter that it isourhistory the world is digging up.Ourlanguage on the walls.Ourancestors in the sarcophagi. I could only—ever—bethe help.” He flung the words out like stones. “The best I could hope to do was correct the foolish, stubborn errors of my ‘betters’ without letting on that I knew more than they did—which would see me fired from my position forforgetting my place. Thenyoucome along.”
He jabbed an accusing finger at Neil, who flinched back from it.
“You, who are so fresh-faced at all of this that it is laughable—but you don’t evenpretendto know what you are doing!” Sayyid burst out. “You just throw yourself onto my mercy, asking me a thousand questions—‘Sayyid, what about suffix pronouns? Which adhesive do I use to stabilize plaster? Where should we site the spoil heap?’ And before I know what is happening, I am working alongside you as though I was your…”
He stopped short, choking on what would have come next.
So Neil said it for him.
“Partner,” he filled in quietly.
Sayyid dropped onto one of the broken pillars, putting his head in his hands. “But I am not your partner!” he bit out, his voice uneven. “Perhaps you actually listen to me when we get into an argument. You might even admit that you’re wrong and then laugh about it like it means nothing for me to have corrected you. You stand back and let me lead on excavation procedure and conservation—but you are still the Englishman. You are the one with the university education, and the letters after your name, and the concession that grants you permission to excavate.” He looked up, his eyes glistening. “My father had a university degree and letters after his name. But it did not matter, because he was still an Egyptian. And that killed him. Slowly, quietly… a little bit day after day until there was nothing left of the great man—only an old shadow who faded away.”
Sayyid looked down at his hands—brown and strong, worn with callouses and capable of enormous delicacy. A tear slipped down his cheek, disappearing into the dark curls of his beard. “I thought it would be easier if I simply kept myself from expecting anything more… but you ruined that.”
Neil’s heart wrenched with a pain that felt like falling—like the lurch of finally realizing just how much of a fool he had been.
How could he not have seen it? He had been perfectly well aware of both Sayyid’s brilliance and the enormous gulf between their stations—and their opportunities. Why hadn’t herealized?
Because he hadn’t been paying attention… just as he’d failed with Ellie. Only with Ellie, at least Neil had recognized that shediddream of more—even if he guiltily relegated it to the realm of the impossible.
He had never stopped to imagine what Sayyid might have dreamed of, even after working side-by-side with him for two years. He had been too swept up in the joy of putting his skills and knowledge into practice alongside someone whose intellect so perfectly matched and challenged his own.
“I wanted to pretend it didn’t matter,” he said softly, feeling the ache of regret like a hollow space inside of him. “It was easier to pretend it didn’t matter—because I was happy. Working with you like that made me happy.”
Neil drew in a breath and made himself confess the rest of it.
“Thinking of you as my friend made me happy.” He lifted his gaze to Sayyid across the dry, still distance that separated them. “Was I just lying to myself?”
Sayyid stared down at his hands. “No,” he replied hoarsely.
Neil blinked. There were tears in his eyes. He pushed one away with the back of his hand, his throat tight. “Well, this is embarrassing.”
He had been aiming to sound reasonable and collected but didn’t entirely succeed. The tears kept coming, and a deeper fear twisted inside his chest until the truth finally spilled from his lips. “How can I fix it?”
Sayyid finally looked up at him. “Join the revolution?” he suggested with a shadow of his old wry humor.
Neil coughed out a laugh. “You’ve been listening to your wife.”
A sad twist of a smile crossed Sayyid’s face. “Not enough, apparently.”
The silence that followed whispered from between the endless rows of marching columns. Neil remembered that they were going to die here—he and Sayyid both—while the people they loved faced who-knew-what dangers on the mountain above. Dangers that Neil had brought down on them with his own foolish choices.
Frantic worry and guilt-laden helplessness rose inside of him until he thought he would choke, and Neil pushed to his feet.
“We have to help them! There must besomethingwe can do!” He threw his hand out over the softly glittering stumps of limestone. “Couldn’t we take out more of the pillars? Bring the whole mountain down?”
