Ali-Jehan looked at him, then looked down at the camp, surveying the outer edges, the horse and camel lines. “Perhaps.” He turned back to Gareth. “Why?”

Gareth explained his thinking, his putative strategy. A smile slowly spread across Ali-Jehan’s face. At the end, he nodded. “This we will do.”

They scrambled back down the dune, then Ali-Jehan picked two men, two of his extended family, and carefully explained what he wanted them to do.

Gareth and Ali-Jehan resumed thir position on the dune, and watched, patient and still, while the two tribesmen successfully carried out their mission.

It was another hour before the leader of the El-Jiri Berbers walked into their midst. He and Ali-Jehan exchanged elaborate greetings at some length, then set formality aside and got down to business.

Gareth was introduced and joined them.

Half an hour later, the El-Jiri leader smiled-a gesture that foretold death for someone. He nodded to Ali-Jehan. “It is good. We will do as you say. I must return to my men and pass the word. You will see when we are ready.”

Ali-Jehan smiled a similarly chilling smile. “And then we will rid our lands of these minions of the snake.”

Gareth watched the two Berber sheiks take leave of each other, watched the El-Jiri leader stride off through the dunes.

The unrolling of his strategy had gone more smoothly than he’d thought. With luck, the execution would be equally successful.


Emily was standing chatting about the cook-pots when the men, who had been absent for most of the day, rode back into camp-victorious.

There was no need to wonder at the outcome of their day’s adventures-the whoops, the prancing horses, the face-splitting grins were declaration enough.

Other Berbers arrived with them, including a leader who Ali-Jehan took to introduce to Anya. Relegated as usual to the company of the women, Emily heard only that the newcomer was the sheik of the El-Jiri.

Puzzled, she exchanged a glance with Arnia, beside her. “Weren’t the El-Jiri the Berber tribe who attacked us yesterday?”

Arnia nodded. “It seems they turned against the cultists.”

This time, however, there were wounded. Emily went to help tend them. From those she helped care for she gained a better description of what had happened.

Assassins. The word made her blood run cold. She’d heard too many tales of the viciousness of the cult’s most hardened followers. As she understood it, there had been more cultists, mostly assassins, than all the Berbers combined, but with Gareth commanding a joint attack-quite how he’d managed to get the two normally bickering Berber tribes to work together she didn’t hear-but all together and well directed, they’d triumphed.

Half the cultists had died, and the other half…they were the El-Jiri’s reward.

When she clearly didn’t understand what that meant, the woman whose husband she was helping bandage leaned close and whispered, “The El-Jiri sometimes deal in slaves. A group of men trained to fight? They would be happy to have them to trade.”

Emily paused, mentally questioning how she felt about that. But she’d seen too much of the cultists’ handiwork to think it anything other than fitting.

When she was free again, the sun had sunk low, and it was time for the evening meal. As the dowagers had predicted, there was a feastlike atmosphere, with much wild talking, laughing, and backslapping among the men. The women…

Now she looked more closely, Emily saw not resignation so much as fond affection in the women’s glances, in the way they waited upon their men. Their defenders and protectors. She’d heard enough to realize that, the way matters had stood before this afternoon, their caravan had been in grave danger of being attacked and overwhelmed when they attempted to move on.

The action of the afternoon had eradicated that threat. The men had indeed defended and protected them.

She saw Gareth across the fire and was conscious of a flaring desire to go to him, to congratulate him, to smile and fill his cup and offer him the sweetmeats being passed around.

But she and he weren’t married.

She wasn’t his-so he wasn’t hers.

She didn’t have the right to share his triumphs, to laud and celebrate, and make much of him, as the other women whose husbands had fought were doing with their men. Even Arnia, she noted, smiled and waited on Mooktu, sitting just behind him, leaning against the back of one broad shoulder as she ate from her own plate.

Emily slowly circled the fire. Her eyes returned to Gareth-and his found her as she paused by Anya’s side. He smiled, and she smiled back-honestly, joyously-feeling within her the same emotion that colored the married women’s eyes-but then Ali-Jehan asked him something and he turned to answer.

Emily sank to the rug beside and a little behind Anya.

A second later, the older woman reached out and, without turning her head, patted her hand. “They are difficult, our men, but they are worth it in the end.”

Her gaze fixed across the fire pit, Emily discovered she agreed.


Three days later, a single cultist, disheveled, dusty, bearing wounds that, untended, had festered, groveled on the flagstones of a small courtyard in a quiet section of old Cairo.

Uncle looked down on the bedraggled head of the man who had just reported the complete and utter defeat of the men he had sent to capture the major. One question burned in his brain. “What of my son?”

The man, forehead to the stones, visibly shook with fear. “Gone,” he managed to gabble. “They’re all gone. All fallen.”

Uncle knew a moment of sheer madness, of keening devastation, but by sheer force of will he held it all within. “The Arabs we hired turned against us.” He still couldn’t take that in. In India, no one-no one-would dare betray the Black Cobra.

According to all precepts, he should ensure the offending Arabs were suitably dealt with-their children slaughtered, their women debauched and killed, a long slow death for the men. His vengeful soul cried out for that succor-he craved vengeance for his only son-but here, now, he didn’t have the time.

And he was running low on men. He had few of the elite he’d left India with left.

Swallowing his fury, his grief, his rage, wasn’t easy, but if he didn’t satisfy his master, all would be in vain.

He forced himself to swing away from the groveling man, to glare at his acting lieutenant, the one who would now take Muhlal’s place at his side. “Make sure-sure-that the major and his people are captured the instant the caravan comes in. Put men-”

“No. Uncle…”

Uncle swung back to see the man on the flagstones raise his hand in placation. “What?”

“The caravan is not headed here. I heard the Arabs talking before we were attacked-the major’s caravan heads to Alexandria.”

Uncle narrowed his eyes. “You are sure?”

“On my life, I swear it. The El-Jiri knew the Arabs with the major-they said they go to Alexandria.”

Uncle wasted no more time. Swinging to face his lieutenant, he rapped out, “Get the fastest boat you can find on the river-we must reach Alexandria before them.”


31st October, 1822

Before dinner

Anya’s tent in the Berber camp

Dear Diary,

Tonight will be our last with the Berbers. Tomorrow we will reach Alexandria, and go our separate ways. Entirely contrary to my original expectations, our time with them has not simply been a matter of traversing distance, of moving from one place to another, but a journey laced with interest and discovery.

I have learned much-from Anya and the dowagers, from observing the Berbers going about their straightforward, more open and less complicated lives. Through that, my appreciation of Gareth has moved onto a new plane. I feel I am now viewing him through better-educated eyes.

I have also learned more about the important things in life-or rather, what things are important to me. That has led me to reevaluate what I am willing to give ground on in return for what marriage to Gareth will bring. Such a decision is not a simple matter, yet I am looking forward to returning to civilization to see how those traits I have grown more adept at discerning in him in less civilized surrounds will then appear.

Strangely, and this almost beggars belief, I suspect I will miss my stinky camel. I have grown used to his rolling yet steady gait.

E.

They arrived on the outskirts of Alexandria just before noon the next day. The El-Jiri had taken their captives to some desert meeting place to the south. Gareth hadn’t asked too much about their plans.

He had suggested his party separate from the caravan some little distance from the town walls, but Ali-Jehan would have none of it. The caravan halted at their usual grounds, then Ali-Jehan, his mother, and a detachment of the guards, walked with them to the town gate.

There they parted, with much slapping of backs and shaking of hands-and, Gareth noted, embraces among the women. If asked two months before whether the Governor of Bombay’s niece could find her feet in a Berber tribe, he would have said no, but he hadn’t then met Emily. He was beginning to think very little could seriously discompose her for long; she seemed to possess the happy knack of coping, regardless.

Emily blinked rapidly and as they strode off down the street, looked back one last time to wave to Anya. She was even sorry to see the last of Ali-Jehan. He’d been an excellent companion for Gareth. Then again…she glanced at the man striding forcefully a pace ahead of her, his Arab robes swishing about his calves. After their days in the desert, he looked every inch an Arab sheik, and they his retinue, trailing after him.