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Neil stared at all of them, his jaw hanging open with shock and dismay.
Adam clamped a sympathetic hand onto his shoulder. “I’ll find you a bit of rope so you can tie it on.”
“There is still the matter of the tomb that must be settled.” Zeinab studied their ragged party. “Mr. Forster-Mowbray knows where it is. He will come back for it, even if the staff is no longer there. Neferneferuaten’s treasures would be worth a fortune to him back in England.”
“Does that mean Umm Waseem should set off her charges?” Ellie suggested. “I will admit, I was hoping to see a bit more of her skills in action. Perhaps I might quiz her afterward on the relative merits of different fuse materials, if one of you is willing to translate. I have been curious about…”
The horror Neil felt at her words must have shown on his face, because Ellie trailed off as she glanced at him.
“Maybe save the fireworks tutorial for later,” Adam suggested mildly as he tossed a length of rope at Neil, who caught it only by reflex, still juggling the canvas bundle of the sword.
Sayyid gaped at her. “You might collapse the entire tomb! The whole quarry could cave in! There would be nothing left of it!”
“I suppose you are right.” Ellie sighed a little reluctantly.
“But what else can we do?” Neil pressed.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Constance replied.
The rest of the party looked at her blankly.
“You people really haven’t the foggiest notion of how these things work, do you?” Constance protested with a note of indulgent exasperation. “We have to curse the tomb!”
“Curse the tomb?” Sayyid echoed uneasily.
“But how are we supposed to do that?” Neil burst out.
Something about the look in Constance’s eyes made him feel distinctly nervous.
“With the Staff of Moses, of course,” she replied with a dangerously sweet smile.
??
Forty-Three
Ellie sat downon a rock and stretched out her legs. They ached, along with most of the rest of her. Her skirt was torn at the knee, her white blouse smudged with dirt.
She felt battered and worn-out enough to sit back and rest while Neil, Sayyid, and Zeinab argued about ancient Egyptian spells.
They were searching for the right ritual words that would protect Neferneferuaten’s tomb from the very real possibility that Julian would return to loot its treasures. Any straightforward curse might have done the job, but as Zeinab pointed out, they didn’t want to prevent the tomb fromeverbeing studied. In a future Egypt where Egyptians controlled the rights to their own heritage, the artwork and funeral goods could provide profound insight into one of the most fascinating periods of the country’s history.
Neil and Sayyid bickered over their memories of old inscriptions and papyri. Ellie could sense that something had changed between the two scholars after they fell into the quarry. The tension between them had eased, making space for them to slip back into the companionable banter that she had observed back in Saqqara.
Constance perched on a boulder just above the bedraggled Egyptologists, shamelessly eavesdropping. Ellie noticed how her eyes kept drifting over to Neil as he pushed his bent glasses back up on his nose and cited Lepsius.
Jemmahor cleaned the rifle she had claimed for herself from among the firearms left discarded on the ridge. “I always liked the plague of frogs,” she offered helpfully as she pulled a twisted rag from the barrel. “But it would be even better if instead of raining, the frogs actually built up inside of you until you choked on them.”
Sayyid and Neil gaped at her with horror. Umm Waseem chuckled darkly where she reclined against her black canvas bag. It looked less full than it had before, but Ellie still felt a quiet sense of awe that the cackling old smuggler was using a mound of TNT for a pillow.
Adam dropped down beside Ellie heavily, wincing at the aches and bruises that covered his body. His machete was back in the sheath at his belt.
“How are your ribs feeling now?” Ellie demanded.
“I mean—they’ve been better,” Adam admitted with a wince. “But I gave back worse.”
Ellie flashed him an admiring smile. “I am certain the Al-Saboor family will be cursing your name for generations.”
His gaze flashed with amusement before growing more serious again. “Pretty sure I tried to tell you to get off that damned ridge.”
