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People shouted. Chickens squawked. Children laughed and dodged past shoppers—or begged. The way both handcrafted and plastic-wrapped merchandise spilled out into the already littered streets, and bright banners draped across the open area above us to provide shade and color, I found myself increasingly glad I didn’t suffer claustrophobia. With claustrophobia, this would be hell.
Instead, it was fun, if ovenlike. The smells of spices, incense, perfumes and produce—mountains of oranges and bananas and white garlic bulbs—overwhelmed the lingering scent of diesel like an exotic time travel. Quite a few merchants dressed as their predecessors must have for hundreds of years.
“Welcome to Egypt!”
“Where you from?”
“No charge for looking!”
Leaning close to Rhys, I raised my voice. “Are you sure they sell swords here?”
“I’m told they sell everything here.” He readjusted the laptop case, which we’d decided not to risk leaving in the car. “Legend has it some of the most ancient Christian scrolls were recovered at a bazaar like this.”
I smiled at his clear envy; he’d become increasingly interested in the early history of the church since he’d gone civilian. “Good luck finding some more of them.”
“You want swords?” asked a little boy with huge black eyes, suddenly ahead of us. “Here was once the metalworker’s bazaar. I show you swords—come!”
So what the hell, we followed.
The first shop he brought us to had only swords with animal-horn handles, not exactly what I wanted. The next sported highly decorative weapons that looked fit for Sinbad in the Thousand and One Nights, but were actually letter openers made out of tin. And the third one—
Just right. The third souk displayed a collection of real blades laid on silk-lined tables and hung from rope outside the shop. The inside walls displayed them one above the next.
Steel blades. Fighting swords.
Rhys slipped our miniature guide some coins—baksheesh, don’t you know—and I went shopping.
It’s not like I’m an expert on swords. Most of my experience before this summer came from practicing tai chi forms with a straight, double-edged saber. It’s used not so much for fighting as for an extension of one’s self in a fluid, moving meditation. But that practice came in damned useful when the Comitatus attacked Lex and me with ceremonial daggers.
Apparently society members had nothing against guns for your average peons, but knives were used for attacks of any ritual significance. I hoped I’d risen to that much esteem, anyway.
Mainly because I hate guns.
Some of the swords inside this hot little souk I could immediately reject. Almost half of them were just too large for me to comfortably wield, much less carry with any discretion. Just as many were curve-bladed scimitars, high on style, low on personal practicality. But some…
Several dozen straight-bladed swords beckoned me to pick them up, test their heft, swing them.
The grizzled shopkeeper stepped back to give me as much space as he could, which wasn’t much. Luckily, tai chi is all about control over oneself and, when swords are involved, one’s blade.
I barely heard the merchant’s explanation of the benefits of this piece or that—Toledo steel here, Damascus there, replicas of swords belonging to sheikhs and knights. I was too busy listening to the swords themselves.
I tried a sword with too thick of a grip, then one with a basket hilt, like a rapier, which felt awkward to me. I tried one that turned out to be way too long, and another that weighed too much. Rhys said something about being right back, and I nodded, but mostly I was lifting swords, holding them over my head, spinning with them, thrusting them at full arm’s length…trying to find my perfect extension.
For the first week or so after Lex’s attack I’d avoided practicing, and not just because I’d wrenched my wrist in the fight. Every time I’d picked up my sword, I would remember exactly what it felt like to thrust a blade into another human being. Through skin. Into muscle, ligaments, bone. And yes, it was sickening. That’s the point. It’s not that I regretted doing it—those men had given me no other choice when they tried to kill someone I cared about. But I regretted having been in a situation that demanded it.
Then my sifu had suggested that I either choose to swim across the blood or to drown in it. That was when I’d reclaimed my practice, my extension. It didn’t happen right away—but by now, I could lose myself in the slow dance of forms that is pure tai chi without the guilt.
Embracing the moon.
Black dragon whipping its tail.
Dusting into the wind.
I was halfway through a routine, stepping slowly from one movement to the next, before I realized this was it. The sword I held had great weight, great balance. It was the one I wanted, the one that wanted me. Lowering it, I saw that it had a slim blade with a stylish brass S hilt and, intriguingly, a pattern within the hand-beaten steel that reminded me of snake scales. Snakes are a universal goddess symbol, not just for Melusine or Eve or the Minoans. This was perfect.
Wiping my face on my sleeve, I turned to ask the shopkeeper the cost—and was surprised to see that sometime during the last couple of swords, he’d vanished.
How odd. Worse, my throat tightened in warning. Because of that, I had my blade up and ready as I turned toward the front of the shop—and stopped short.
The sharp tip of a scimitar hovered, a mere breath from my tardy throat.
The man who held the sword, swarthy and square-shouldered, was the man who’d helped us at the airport. He still wore the suit. But now, weirdly enough, he had a protective, Eye-of-Horus design painted in blue on his cheek.
“Well, witch,” he said. “Let us see how good you are.”
And he swung.
Had he just called me a witch?
Thank heavens for practice. If I’d had to actually think about anything at that moment, I may have ended up as shish kebab.
Instead, my new sword leaped upward almost before I knew I was moving it. The two blades collided with a steel clash that echoed through the souk.
One steel clash.
That was all I needed.
Tai chi is all about passive resistance, resolving everything into its opposite. Softness against strength. Yielding and overcoming. To meet this man’s force with more force would be foolish, him being so much bigger and clearly more aggressive than me. Instead, I met it with concession, sliding my blade around his.
He did the work of thrusting. His mistake, since my blade remained in the space he was thrusting against. The only reason it merely scratched his arm, instead of stabbing him, was my reluctance to have it yanked from my hand.
I’d drawn first blood, all the same.
He drew breath in a quick hiss. “What kind of fighting is that?”
“Maybe I fight like a girl,” I said. Warned.
When he drew back to swing again, my blade continued to rest against his. When he sliced the air with his scimitar, my sword coiled around his and struck a second time across the light sleeve on his forearm.
Another stripe of blood.
I was the one who demanded, “Would you stop that?”
“I?” The bastard groped outward with his left hand, picked up one of the display swords and, with a sharp jerk, flipped its scabbard to the stone floor. Such a guy. When in doubt, up the weaponry.
Crap.
Now I had two blades to deal with, using only one. My sword couldn’t flow around both of them, and I’m no two-handed fencer, so I had to make myself flow around the man instead. Try to. Wouldn’t you know I’d be wearing a skirt for this, gauzy but long—dress is very conservative in Arabic countries. At least I had on boots.
The cluttered walls loomed in, too close.
When the man rushed me, I had no choice but to back up—fast—rather than take the full force of his attack. Even as I pivoted out of his way, letting him push past me, I stumbled against another table of merchandise. When he charged again, I dived under his weapons to avoid them both.
Gauzy skirt material twisted around my legs, and sand from the floor grated across my skin. Luckily, I managed to roll to my feet—barely—before hitting the opposite wall of this small souk. My skirt tore under one foot. A dagger fell behind me. “What the hell is your problem?”
He swung with his right-hand sword. With my empty hand, I caught his from behind and encouraged it in the direction it was already going as I dodged, throwing him off balance.
He stumbled.
“Why did you call me a witch?” I demanded.
Catching himself, he now sliced the left-hand blade toward me. I blocked it with my own weapon, one ringing impact and then silent adherence, sinuously winding my blade about his.
That didn’t protect me from the first sword, his scimitar. It flashed upward too quickly. To dodge it, I would either have to drop my sword or—
No way was I dropping my sword. Instead, I sank into an almost impossibly low crouch—without having stretched first, which I would regret—and ducked under his elbow. The scimitar whipped through the air above me. But it missed.
I tried to bob quickly back to my feet, behind my attacker and away from the immediate threat and his weapons, but I’d stepped on my damn skirt, which yanked me off balance long enough for the bastard to bodycheck me.
That was unexpected—which was why it worked. He rushed at me, filling my vision with his shoulder, his elbow. I meant to dance backward myself, like riding a wave. Let him do the work. Let him expend the effort.
But wham! Too soon, my back met a sword-covered wall. The back of my head slammed against a hard scabbard. And Sinbad’s swinging elbow knocked the breath right out of me.
I sank, fingers curling desperately around the grip of my own sword. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it.
As if lifting it were even possible, at that moment.
My damp knees hit the gritty floor, and I folded forward, catching myself with one hand, one fist.
Don’t drop it!
Breathe!
My body obeyed the first command, but not the second. I fought the physical panic that comes from having breath knocked away and arched my neck, straining my face upward.
The stranger’s hulking body loomed above me.
“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated in his impeccable British. “And you will take your friend with you.”
My chest tightened, and my view of him began to waver. Goddess help me….
Maybe it was Isis, or Melusine, or just that universal, maternal force of goddessness that answered my prayer. Or maybe it was just timing.
Hot, exotic air filled my lungs with a rush. And with it came power.
Even as he said, “You will not interfere in matters that do not concern you.”
My fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, it sure as hell concerns me now.” And I swung. A quick, angry arc across his ankles. Not enough to cut anything off—I doubted I had that strength, or this new sword had such sharpness.
But definitely enough to bite. And unexpected.
That’s why it worked.
With a startled cry, the man jumped back. I surged up onto one knee, capturing my gauzy skirt with my free hand, and swung again while he was still off balance. It forced him back a few inches, which was all I wanted.
Before he could stop me, I ducked under his weapons, right past him and toward the front of the shop, no longer trapped.
He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.
“Do you really plan to take this into the street?” I asked. “With all these nice bystanders and policemen?”
The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.
He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. “You have no business here.”
But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a personal power that was uniquely feminine. “You just made sure I do.”
When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.
Then I heard Rhys’s distinctly Welsh voice. “Uffach cols!” he swore. “What’s this? Aren’t you that fellow—”
“From the airport,” I said, not looking back. “Yeah. Now he thinks he’s Sinbad.”
The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, “Shorta! Shorta!”
I hoped that meant police.
My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.
I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I only knew I was coming to Egypt last night…I guess that’s night before last, now,” I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. “How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me? At the airport!”
“I didn’t tell many people.” Rhys hadn’t lost the crease of concern between his blue eyes. Not while I talked to the police, and not while I bargained the merchant down to a third of his asking price for the sword that had protected me.
Normally I’m a wimpy barterer, but after the merchant’s earlier vanishing act, I was in a combative mood.
Now I wore the sword’s wooden scabbard slung innocently over my shoulder, a recent tourist’s purchase. I hadn’t decided on a name for the blade, yet. I would worry about concealing it later.
“It’s not your fault,” I assured Rhys.
“I told the hotel, to get you a bed. I told my friend Niko, when I asked to borrow the car. A group of people working on the project own it together, so it is possible one of the others know.”
“I never said to keep it a secret.”
“I told Tala, the woman I wish you to meet—”
