Page 96 of Tomb of the Sun King

“Are you certain they’re bruised and not broken?” Ellie pressed worriedly.

“Sure.”

Ellie narrowed her eyes skeptically. “How can you know that?”

“Because I’ve done both a few times before,” he replied. “We can take a full inventory later. Right now, can you help me get these damned ropes off?”

Ellie thought about what such an inventory might entail were she to conduct it on him. The notion set her toes tingling—but Adam was still waiting for her, frowning with impatience.

“Oh! Right!” She came behind him to tug at the ropes. “They won’t budge!”

“Maybe I can slide out of them,” Adam countered, wriggling again.

“You’re making it worse!”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve got it,” Adam assured her.

“You pulling on them is why they are so dashed tight!” Ellie shot back.

“Why don’t you use this?” asked the tall, slender young woman from their team of rescuers. Her English was musically accented, and she still had a stolen rifle slung over her shoulder.

At the sound of her voice, Sayyid’s head snapped up from where he had slumped down with exhausted shock by the rocks. His eyes widened with uncomfortable recognition.

“Just a moment…” he began—and then dropped his jaw as the girl whipped an enormous blade from beneath her cloak.

“You got my knife!” Adam exclaimed happily.

“Thank you,” Ellie said as the young woman handed her Adam’s machete. She sliced it through the ropes around Adam’s wrists, and Adam shook out his arms with a groan.

He took his blade back with a look of sublime relief, then shoved the knife into its sheath and pulled her into a slightly gentler hug.

Ellie soaked up the sheer relief of his arms before looking past him to their clustered rescuers. “But whoareall of you?”

The green-eyed woman who had threatened Jacobs stepped forward and unhooked her niqab. The fabric fell away from her face, revealing the features of Zeinab Al-Ahmed.

“Habibti?!” Sayyid blurted in shock as he stared at his wife. “But how are you… What is this… Who are all these…”

“Hello, Mr. Al-Ahmed!” the tall young woman with the stolen rifle announced happily. She plucked off her veil to reveal the features of a girl of perhaps nineteen with a long, straight nose and a wide smile.

“Jemmahor?!” Sayyid blurted, staring aghast at her before shifting his horrified gaze back to his wife. “You brought yourapprenticeto a knife fight?”

“We may discuss all of this when we are not running for our lives,” Zeinab snapped in reply. “Those ropes will not hold that cold-eyed snake for long. Get on that horse. Mr. Bates, I assume you can ride as well?”

Adam’s expression was stubborn. “What about Constance and Fairfax? Somebody’s gotta find out where they’ve been taken.”

“And it will not be you,” Zeinab retorted flatly. “Umm Waseem will see to it.”

She gestured to the short, sturdy older woman who had bossed Jacobs around in the courtyard—likely so that Zeinab would not reveal herself by her voice and provoke an outburst from her husband, Ellie realized.

“Aywa, aywa,” Umm Waseem replied with a dismissive wave. She went back to chatting to a cluster of the other veiled women with no apparent display of urgency.

“Umm Waseem’s family are fishermen,” Jemmahor reported in a conspiratorial tone. “Which is a nicer way of saying that they are smugglers. These other ladies are her cousins here in Luxor. She has cousins everywhere and is very good at sneaking about. She will be able to find where they have taken your friends.”

“Oh!” Ellie replied, unsure how to respond. She wondered who else besides a sharp-eyed old smuggler Zeinab had been consorting with—and why she had followed them to Luxor.

Based on the blanched, dismayed way that Sayyid continued to stare at his wife, he hadn’t the foggiest notion of the answers to those questions, either.

Umm Waseem’s cousins broke up, mounting the assortment of donkeys. The women perched on the animals with their legs tucked neatly to one side, and then scattered, slipping off in various directions.

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