And so I turned to climb the castle steps and rescue my son and the woman (I realized with a jolt that I had unconsciously come to think of her this way) who was, for all practical purposes, my wife.
The climb was familiar, taking me up to the reception hall where I’d met Astiza. I passed with disquiet a side tunnel that I remembered led to Omar’s torture chamber. Then I opened the wooden door, pushed aside the concealing tapestry, and entered the throne room. This, I guessed, was close to the harem. The royal chair and pillows were as I remembered them, shadowy in the darkness. Even the African cat was there, locked for the night in its brass cage. I could see the fire of its eyes as I quickly passed through, and the beast made a rumbling purr. I wondered if Dragut’s dragon was lurking about, too, a lizard with the appetite of a polar bear.
In the rear of the cage a third eye gleamed, and I realized a smaller cage held Yussef’s turban and emerald, ably protected by his cat. Even the leopard earned his keep.
At the far end I slipped out into a quiet hallway hung with old brass medieval shields. There was a forbidding stillness to the castle as if the building was waiting, and I puzzled that I hadn’t encountered more guards. It was midnight, yes, but was I really this lucky? Where was everyone?
Up a flight of marble stairs—I must be at the top of the palace now—and there a eunuch doorman, conveniently asleep in the depth of night. There was a flask nearby, and if he was caught in this dereliction he’d no doubt be bastinadoed on the soles of his feet, or hung from a hook on the castle wall. I hesitated, thinking of killing him, but couldn’t do it to a man already cruelly castrated. Instead I tore a drapery and jumped, clouted his head, gagged him, and tied him tight. Another sharp clout put a stop to his squirming.
Then I went to the wood and brass harem door and listened. No trill of female laughter; the harem was asleep. I was ready to smash its lock with a pistol ball if need be, but instead this door opened, too. Clearly, Yussef was either not expecting an imminent American attack—or had faith in his eunuch guards. I slipped inside cautiously, not wanting to risk a riot by startling the girls. Could I find the duo I was looking for? If we could just creep away, I hardly cared about the mirror. It couldn’t really work after all this time, could it?
But it had, burning that Spanish ship. As it could burn ours.
The harem was empty, too.
I passed through an antechamber and entered the lovely harem court, far more opulent than the merchant’s attic I’d once broken into in Cairo. This room had a central pool and a domed roof pierced by inserts of colored glass. In daytime, a rainbow of colors would filter down. Pillars ran around the chamber’s periphery to form an arcade beneath and balcony above, and doorways opened to what I presumed were the separate bedrooms and kitchen of the women who lived here. Flowers filled a score of vases, and lotus petals floated in the pool. The place smelled of perfume and incense. What would it be like when the concubines lounged and laughed, the beauties of a dozen nationalities just lightly clothed? Limbs dangling in the pool, breasts casually exposed, gossiping as they brushed each other’s glossy hair, smooth shoulders, sweet hips, their great almond eyes lined with kohl, their lips picked out with…
Focus, Ethan!
You’re worrying about just one woman now.
And suddenly I had company. There was the light tread of a slipper behind me to which I might have turned, but at the same instant there was a growl ahead, the bass rumble of a heavy muzzle flecked with saliva and blood. Sokar! The grip on my pistol was suddenly slick as I realized why the castle was so quiet. I’d walked into a trap.
“Ethan, Ethan, so predictable,” Aurora’s voice came from the shadows where the dog regarded me with its piss-yellow eyes. “We’ve been waiting for weeks.” And there emerged the wolflike bulk of her brutish mastiff, head lowered, shoulders bunched.
“We were going to let you turn the mirror on your own navy,” another voice said behind me. Dragut! “You could have proved yourself to us, Gage. But now, we’ll just try it on you.” His tone was anticipatory as a gun muzzle as wide as a dog’s mouth nudged my back. “Please don’t move, because I’m holding your friend’s blunderbuss. If my finger slips, the blast will cut you in two.”
“Hell of a mess in this pretty pool.”
“We’ve slaves enough to lick it clean, if necessary.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Aurora stepped into better light, holding my longrifle in a hand that also grasped Sokar’s leash. In her other fist was a second leash, this one tied to two figures coming miserably into view. The line led to a leather collar around the neck of Astiza, whose eyes were flickering to search for a means to fight back. And then from her to little Horus, who was walking with a limp and looked tearstained and traumatized.
He brightened a little as he recognized me across the pool. “Papa! Dog bit me!”
I wanted to shoot the damned beast right then, but if I did the blunderbuss would go off and Astiza and Harry would be finished. My naval pistol was damned inaccurate at that distance anyway, and the one I’d taken from the dead guards no better. I might shoot and miss.
“Serves you right for stabbing my foot, you wretched cretin,” Aurora snapped.
Her foot still bore a bandage, I saw, and I couldn’t help but smile. The apple didn’t fall so far from the tree, did it? Less than three and Harry already made me puff with pride. First he’d stabbed a little mouse, and then a bigger rat!
“That dog won’t frighten you much longer,” I called.
“No, it won’t,” Aurora said, “because you’ve doomed your bastard to the most hideous kind of slavery. This slut who spawned him is going to be roasted by the reflected rays of the sun. You can watch her catch on fire, Ethan, just before we test the mirror on you. That’s what you get for killing Osiris! Then we’ll let whatever boat dropped you here come in close to rescue your blackened husk, and set them ablaze as well. Bright as a bonfire.”
“You really should have been a dramatist.”
“A month ago I offered you the world and myself. And now? We only had to wait for you to come. Omar sent word that he had intruders. That eunuch you trussed was playacting. Janissary guards let you stupidly slip by. Any friends foolish enough to accompany you should already be dead. Everything you touch turns to disaster, and every person you befriend comes to grief. You do not control the lightning but are lightning yourself, a bolt of misery everywhere you alight.”
“Which explains why I’m more than a little baffled by your attraction to me. Of course, you’re not exactly a Saint Nick yourself.”
“Oh, I will be revered, never doubt. Winners are always honored by posterity. The most powerful become gods and goddesses. It’s the ruthless who are worshipped.”
“Brave words when you sic a mongrel on a near infant and have me outnumbered a hundred to one. You’ve never been anything but a bully, Aurora. Too much the tart to ever win a real man, a dabbler in the wilderness dependent on her brother, a female with the mothering skills of a Gorgon, and a sportsman with the shooting expertise of an English fop.”
She stiffened, her habit when hearing the truth. “You saw me shoot this gun in Canada!” And she held up my own beloved rifle. It had traveled perhaps fifteen thousand miles since its forging in Jerusalem, and my heart quickened when I saw it. “I can outshoot any man in this fortress!”