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They had left the fields behind for an arid path through rubble-strewn desert. The Colossi of Memnon receded behind them. The ruins of an empire sprawled across the dry ground to either side in little more than tumbled piles of rubble.
Ellie’s chest still seethed with a tight mix of conflicted feeling. It prompted her to be more frank than she might normally have been with a relatively new acquaintance.
“Are you ever so angry that you feel like you could just…explode?”
Sayyid’s smile was both sympathetic and a little sad. “You sound like my wife.”
Ellie tapped her donkey back into motion, conscious once more of their distance from the rest of the party. “I like your wife.”
Sayyid burst out with a laugh. He looked a little surprised by it, and shook his head as he rode beside her.
They rejoined the party just as the rugged track turned onto a wide, well-paved road.
Not a road, Ellie corrected herself with a sense of wonder. She was looking at a processional way built thousands of years ago for the enormous structure nestled at the foot of the soaring cliffs—the funerary temple of the pharaoh Hatshepsut.
A soaring tribute to a woman who had turned herself into a king, the temple was partially ruined but still impressive, rising like an elaborate wedding cake in three grand tiers that framed a broad central staircase. Shadowy enclaves to either side of the steps were fronted by surviving rows of elegant columns.
“Does anyone have any perfume?” Mrs. Swingley complained. “My donkey smells absolutely awful.”
“I don’t want to hire one of those grifters to talk about the art again,” her husband complained. “Half of them don’t speak English properly, and I bet they’re just making up who all the animal-headed people are.”
Ellie realized her teeth were grinding together.
“Heeeey.” Adam deliberately let his donkey fall back beside her. “Those big statues back there were pretty great. Want to tell me all the things you know about them?”
Ellie shot him a grateful look as her burst of temper diffused.
Constance slowed to join them. “We only have to put up with them until we reach the temple,” she whispered loudly.
The structure grew in scale and impressiveness the nearer they came to it. Once they reached the base of the steps, the tourists drifted over to a makeshift souvenir shop nearby. It was more or less a rug thrown down by the stairs, which was covered with an assortment of cheap trinkets. A group of women sat beside it, gossiping with each other as they ignored the foreigners. They wore the black cloaks and headscarves that Ellie had seen all over Egypt, along with niqab veils that covered the lower half of their faces.
It looked like she and the others were the first visitors to reach the temple that day, but Ellie could see a closed carriage approaching on the processional way behind them, likely carrying another batch of sightseers.
She supposed she should be grateful there weren’t more of them. During the peak of Egypt’s tourist season in the winter, the temple would have been crawling with tourists, making her mission far more complicated.
Adam studied the three enormous levels of the building a little ruefully. “Looks a lot bigger up close than it does from a distance.”
“Should we expect to run into anyofficial forces?” Constance asked.
“She means archaeologists,” Ellie clarified at Sayyid’s confused look.
“Édouard Naville has been leading the work here for the last several years,” Sayyid offered. “But his season ended in April. I shouldn’t expect to see any of his people about.”
Ellie glanced at Neil, who stood a little apart from the rest of them. He had been unusually quiet all morning—or since they had left Saqqara, really. Not that she could blame him. Neil hadn’t asked for any of this—not losing his job and being railroaded into a trip to Luxor… or learning that his sister was involved with his trouble-making best friend.
Adam might have talked things through with Neil back at Saqqara—for better or worse—but Ellie knew her own reckoning with her brother still awaited her. She’d frankly been avoiding it because Neil was sure to have questions that she had no idea how to answer.
“We should split up,” Constance declared authoritatively, “so that we can cover the temple more efficiently. Ellie, why don’t you and Adam examine the lower level? Sayyid could take the center while Stuffy and I manage the top. That way, we are maximizing our Egyptologists.”
The lower level of the temple was lined with colonnades framing shadowy, intimate recesses. Ellie’s thoughts snapped irresistibly to just what she and Adam might get up to while searching those hidden alcoves for clues.
No,she thought quickly, suppressing a groan. She couldn’t explore any shadowy recesses with Adam—not when he remained so conflicted about the liberties they had already taken with each other.
If Ellie had given any outward sign of her confusion, Constance didn’t notice. Her gaze had locked onto Ellie’s brother, darkening with a special—anddeeplyalarming—glint of interest.
There were plenty of shadowy recesses at the top of the temple as well.
“Wait!” Ellie blurted out in protest as she searched frantically for a reasonable excuse to overturn Constance’s plan.
