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“They’re dung beetles,” Adam replied. “So they eat… er, what you’d more or less expect.”
Ellie repressed a laugh. It came out as a snort.
“One would think that lot might have qualified.” Jemmahor punctuated the remark with a rude gesture at the fleeing party of villains. “Well! At least Umm Waseem did not have to blow the ridge down on us!”
“What?!” Neil exclaimed, his stomach lurching.
“Don’t worry,” Jemmahor assured him. “It was only a last resort.” She paused, frowning thoughtfully. “Though I suppose we did come rather close to that, didn’t we?”
Neil vividly imagined several thousand tons of exploded rock cascading down the mountain to crush them. He thought he might be ill.
Umm Waseem hopped down from the rocks nearby, moving with a nimbleness that defied her advanced age. Her black canvas bag was slung over her shoulder. Neil regarded her with a deep and extremely wary respect.
Ellie gave the was-scepter a final longing look and held it out to Sayyid. “Here.”
Sayyid blanched. “Absolutely not. I will be quite happy never to touch that thing again, thank you.”
“Is that it, then?” Neil asked hopefully.
“Not entirely.” Constance shoved a long, heavy bundle at him, wrapped up in a piece of canvas.
Neil fumbled it as he caught it, and a bit of the fabric fell away, revealing a hilt of gold-wrapped bone.
“Dyrnwn?!” He immediately tried to shove it back at her. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“You won it in a fair battle,” Constance replied as though the matter should have been obvious.
“I did not!” Neil protested. “Mr. Forster-Mowbray just dropped it when you knocked him over! That’s not winning anything! And anyway, I haven’t the foggiest notion of how to use it! Bates should have it!” He jabbed a finger at his broad-shouldered friend.
“I’m good with my knife,” Adam replied comfortably.
“Sayyid?” Neil pleaded hopefully.
“Absolutely not,” Sayyid returned stoutly.
Neil’s ire rose at the utter lack of support he was receiving. “Well, then I don’t see why we can’t leave it right here on the mountain.”
“Isn’t it an object of enormous historical importance?” Constance reminded him with an innocent blink of her exceptional eyelashes. “One of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain or some such thing?”
Ellie fixed Neil with an outraged glare. “You want to leave one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain on a mountain?!”
“What else am I supposed to do with it?” Neil burst out.
“Bring it back to England and give it to an institution of public learning, perhaps?” Ellie returned impatiently. “It’s one of our own this time—you can do that.”
“Except if he does, Julian’s high-and-mighty forebearers will probably just show up to claim it again,” Adam reasoned.
“Well, then, I suppose Neil will just have to hold on to it for a while,” Ellie conceded.
“I don’t want to hold on to it!” Neil shouted. “It bursts into flames!”
“Only when you take it by the hilt,” Constance returned comfortably. “Why do you think I wrapped it up for you?”
“And most likely when one is engaged in battle,” Ellie mused.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Constance pushed back. “It’s not like Julian could have been in many battles before now.”
“Be kinda handy if you could just use it to spark up a campfire,” Adam offered. “Or get your cigar going.”
