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“That would be the path of a true leader, would it not?”
Depends on how you defined leadership. “He said something strange to me, Rhys. He said he needed me, needed balance, in order to do something important.”
“He needs you, and you flew to Egypt?”
“He said it a few months ago. Hasn’t mentioned it since. Besides, you needed me, too, right?”
Rhys slanted a skeptical look my direction. “I didn’t invite you here to be my bodyguard, Maggi. I do care for your safety rather more than that.”
“But if someone thinks you’re close enough to finding the Isis Grail to try killing you…”
“Then you deserve to be here for the actual discovery,” he finished. “I’ve gotten permission for you to participate. As an academic observer, that is.”
“To participate in…” Belatedly, I realized exactly what he meant. “The project? Cleopatra’s sunken palace? Really?”
He grinned. “You and she have a great deal in common, after all.”
Noting how his eyes shone at the gift he’d given me, I thought, Attracted to two men?
Or, worse, was he going to say something gushy about immortal beauty? I didn’t want Rhys admiring me that way, at least not saying so.
I was officially dating Lex, trust or no trust.
“You are both strong women,” Rhys clarified, to my relief.
That seemed the safer analogy.
Speedboats bounce. At least, they do around other boats, as in the partially enclosed harbor of Alexandria. Salt spray flew into my face, sunlight glared across the water, and I loved it. This no longer felt as foreign as Egypt. It felt more familiarly like the Mediterranean—which, just beyond the crescent of land enclosing the harbor from either side, it was.
You may have read about the discovery of Cleopatra’s Palace in Newsweek or National Geographic, or seen a special about it on cable television. I had, even before I’d started my search for the goddess grails…or learned that Cleopatra herself had claimed to be the reincarnation of the goddess Isis.
“That’s common knowledge to Egyptologists,” Rhys assured me, shouting over the engine of the motorboat we rode toward the anchored cabin cruiser where the main archeological team worked. “Pharaohs were gods on earth, or so they and their followers believed—hence that little tiff between Moses and his foster brother, before the exodus? Cleopatra VII was simply maintaining an important tradition passed down from millennia of rulers.”
“Cleopatra VII?” Had there been that many?
“She’s the one you’re thinking of,” Rhys assured me.
“Seduced Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony, heavy-on-the-eye-shadow, death-by-asp Cleopatra.”
“The very same. It’s well-known that, amid her palace complex, she had a temple to Isis. But we now assume that the same earthquake which destroyed the Pharos Lighthouse submerged the palace complex as well. It was long after that nasty death-by-asp business, though.”
I looked from the approaching cabin cruiser back toward the coastal city of Alexandria, which, from the water, vaguely resembled an especially dusty, disorganized Venice off the Grand Canal…except for the chunks of cement blocks at the water’s edge, to fight erosion. Then I turned to the medieval fortress that guarded the harbor entrance from the sea, and tried to imagine how this ancient city would have looked a thousand years before even that had been built. “And where there is a temple to Isis…”
“It stands to reason there may be a reliquary,” agreed Rhys. “And where there is a reliquary…”
“There could be relics like a goddess grail.” I shivered happily at the thought. Another font of female power, just waiting for us under the salty water. If only I could collect enough—however many that might be—then they could finally be revealed to a world in need of their balance and power.
The man we’d hired to ferry us out to the cabin cruiser steered well around what I recognized as a diver-down buoy. He cut his engine and levered the motor up out of the water for safety. Momentum carried us the rest of the way to the ship. When I saw the name of this floating headquarters—Soeur d’Aphrodite, or Aphrodite’s Sister—I felt all the more certain of the rightness of this visit.
Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, isn’t just a goddess. She may well be another face of Isis.
“Several significant archeologists have been leading the effort to explore these sites since their discovery,” explained Rhys, grabbing hold of the ladder on the side of the ship as we coasted in beside it. “Whenever they can get permission. This is one of the few places in Alexandria where the scholars aren’t having to fight developers for rights to the land. There is even some talk about creating an underwater tunnel system specifically so that tourists can view the finds—once the government manages to lessen the toxicity in the local seawater. After you.”
He had my laptop case again, so all I had to do was gather up the excess of my torn cotton skirt, twist it, and tuck it into the waistband before I climbed up. If anyone had a problem with seeing my knees, they’d just have to get over it. I wasn’t about to risk falling into water Rhys had just announced was toxic. Once I swung onto the lower deck I freed my skirts, while Rhys followed me.
What came after was a pleasant jumble of introductions and welcomes from an international assortment of divers and archeologists. The director of this particular branch of the project, Pierre d’Alencon, shook my hand but seemed busy with other matters, so I backed to the edge of the deck, out of the way, to simply observe. Rhys got permission to show me the computer programs being used to map the underwater finds, so I turned in that direction—
And faced blazing green eyes.
“You,” snarled a sickeningly familiar female voice, in French.
Right before its owner pushed me over the railing.
Chapter 5
I made a desperate scramble at the metal railing as I fell over it. But I was too surprised, and it wasn’t enough. The impact against the back of my legs, against my grasping hands, gave way to weightlessness.
Then, with a splash, I vanished beneath the surface of the toxic harbor—and quickly closed my eyes. Sinking downward, before my frantic strokes and kicks stopped my descent, I wouldn’t have seen any goddess relics even if they waited right there in front of me.
Some champion!
Only after I managed to struggle upward, boots and soggy skirt and all, and my face broke the waves into the air, did I open my eyes to the sunshine—
And behold, far above, the bitch who’d pushed me.
Catrina Dauvergne of the Musée de Cluny, Paris.
The woman who’d once stolen the Melusine Grail from me.
The willowy, tawny-haired Frenchwoman was not smiling.
That made two of us.
Once I managed to drag myself up the chrome ladder and back onto the deck, I took two dripping steps in my attacker’s direction, my hand fisting. Maybe women don’t normally default to violence as quickly as men, but this was by no means quick. This had been simmering for weeks.
Rhys shouldered himself between us. “I forgot to mention her being here, Maggi. I’m so sorry.”
He would be. “Move.”
“I will not.” Protecting people brings out the tough-guy in Rhys, even when they didn’t deserve protection.
“Yes, Pritchard,” agreed Catrina in smooth French. “This is not for you to interfere.”
“But it is for me to interfere,” insisted a new voice, that of Monsier d’Alencon—also in French. The French seemed to be running this particular show, after all. “Explain yourselves.”
I wrung out my skirt into a splattering puddle; it clung like wet tissue. “You want me to explain?”
My French, unlike my Arabic, is fluent.
“I wish someone to explain so that I know which of you two—or three—” his gaze included Rhys “—to dismiss.”
Catrina and I glared at each other. But this was a choice expedition, remember? Newsweek. National Geographic. Cable. The threat of expulsion carried weight. I could read her hatred in her narrowed gaze. She’d once accused me of playing archeologist, raiding medieval sanctuaries and stealing the Melusine Chalice instead of leaving it in situ—not that I’d had any choice! She, on the other hand, had pretended that she would put the chalice on display in the Cluny, where it might empower countless visitors with its proof of goddess worship, only to then sell it onto the black market.
Either way, Catrina and I each had enough on the other to permanently ruin both our chances of involvement with either Cleopatra’s Palace or the Temple of Isis everyone hoped to find there—and, worse, to end Rhys’s internship, which he’d gotten through the Sorbonne. I was comfortably employed, waiting only for the fall semester to start. Catrina, I assumed, still had a job with the Cluny, unless she’d quit to live off her ill-gotten gains. But after he’d left the priesthood, archeology was the only profession Rhys had found that spoke to him.
No way would I ruin this opportunity.
No way would I allow Catrina to do so.
“I apologize,” I said slowly—to the project director. “Catrina and I are old friends. Sometimes our little jokes get out of hand, don’t they, Cat?”
Catrina Dauvergne might be disloyal, dishonest and vindictive—but she was not stupid. “But of course, Magdalene,” she said tightly. “Now we are even for the little joke you played in Paris.”
Bitch.
D’Alencon glared from one of us to the other while I stood there dripping—so much for making a professional first impression. “There will be no more jokes on my time, yes? It is how injuries happen.” And, blessedly, he turned back to other demands.
“This is not over,” Catrina whispered menacingly.
“Not even close,” I answered—and deliberately turned to Rhys, who had some explaining to do about forgetting to mention this woman’s presence.
But first I needed to know… “Just how toxic is this water?”
Catrina laughed, disgustingly pleased—but turned back to her other duties.
As it turned out, the East Harbor of Alexandria was so polluted from raw sewage that the divers who went in regularly were supposed to wear cautionary headgear and dry suits, though not all of them took that mandate to heart. Locals still swam in the stuff. Brief exposure was unlikely to infest me with parasites or turn me radioactive. And in the meantime…
In the meantime, my introduction to the scope of the project quickly distracted me from any inauspicious beginning.
I’d arrived too late in the day to make suiting up for a dive practical. But more than in the relatively shallow waters of the harbor—which is maybe twenty-five feet at its deepest—most of the work was being done by computer, and much of that was on shipboard. The following few hours became an enjoyable blur of information about latex molding techniques, aquameters, nuclear resonance magnetometers and sonar scanning. The archeologists really weren’t collecting artifacts from the sea and transferring them to some museum. They were mapping them, photographing them, sometimes raising them long enough to make molds, and then leaving them exactly where the assumed earthquake and/or tidal wave had once left them.
In situ.
I was so enthralled by the catalog of watery finds—sphinxes, statues, algae-covered pillars—that I almost forgot why I was there. Almost. Then Rhys reminded me that we had a dinner engagement for which I should probably clean up, and I remembered my real goal.
Isis.
Goddess grails.
And a supposed Grailkeeper whom he’d met, who’d said she would share the rhyme she’d learned about the location of the Oldest of the Old’s chalice. Hopefully in English.
Considering that someone had tried to run Rhys down a few days ago, not long after he’d spoken to this woman, he wasn’t the only person to suspect she might know what she was talking about.
The Hotel Athens, where most of the expedition was staying, had slotted me into a plain but neat third-story room, which I would share with a fortysomething Greek scientist named Eleni. It had two twin beds, one plain wardrobe, and a window overlooking trolley-car tracks with overhead wires that sparked whenever a trolley passed. As with many midrange European hotels, the bathroom and shower were down the hall.
I dressed as conservatively as before with the exception of sandals—my boots would take a while to dry. Since this was a social call, I decided to wait on rigging up a harness for my still nameless sword and instead left the weapon under my pillow. But I put my essential belongings—cell phone, money, matchbook—in a modest leather fanny pack, to keep my hands free. My passport had its own special pouch under my long-sleeved shirt. I pulled my hair back in a long brown braid.
And, after some deliberation, I put Lex’s damned ring back on. Things can get stolen in hotel rooms.
I hadn’t even been in the Arab Republic of Egypt for a day, but already I assumed that Mrs. Tala Rachid would be wearing a head scarf at least, maybe even a veil.
I assumed wrongly.
The vibrant, sixtysomething woman who greeted us when we arrived at her beautiful villa looked more Greek than Egyptian. She had beautiful black hair slashed with gray at her temples, which she’d drawn off her swanlike neck into a modest bun. Her knee-length blue dress would have been appropriate for the museum soiree I’d attended a few nights back. And, sure enough, she wore the sign of the vesica piscis on a beaded chain around her neck.
“Circle to circle,” I said softly, upon our meeting.
“Never an end,” she greeted—the correct response—and extended her hand to shake mine. A small blue cross, tattooed inside her wrist, peeked out from beneath the sleeve of her dress. “I’m pleased to meet you, Professor Sanger,” she said warmly, her accent exotic but her English impeccable. “Or should I call you Doctor?”
“Neither, please,” I insisted, trying to hide my surprise at her appearance and poise. She was, after all, a Grailkeeper. “I’m only a postdoc, it takes a while to earn tenure. And doctor still makes me think of medical professionals.”
“As a medical professional, I appreciate your modesty.”
Now I stared. “You’re…?”
“Dr. Rachid,” she confirmed, gesturing us into a luxurious parlor. “As was my mother before me—and her mother was a midwife. There are still some of us on this side of the world, Mrs. Sanger.”
Missus? Oh…the ring.
“Maggi is fine. I didn’t mean offense.”
“Of course not.” Gracefully, she managed to seat us before settling onto a sofa herself. She kept her knees together, her ankles crossed. Her posture was excellent. “My career is admittedly less common here than in the West. But even the Muslim women can practice as doctors.”
The…? “You’re not Muslim?”
“I’m a Copt,” she clarified, extending her wrist again so that I need not sneak a peek at the tattoo I’d only glimpsed before. Definitely a cross. “Coptic Christian.”
Hello. While Christianity in Rome wasn’t sanctioned until the fourth century, it had flourished in Egypt from its very beginning—yet another reason that we’d passed the first monastery. Early writings such as the Gnostic Gospels had also been recovered here.
Rhys said, “The Copts, though a minority now, are the Egyptians who can most directly trace their lineage back to the Pharaohs.” Like Cleopatra?
“And to priestesses of Isis?” I guessed, with a shiver of comprehension. “That’s how you can help us find her chalice.”
Most of the Grailkeepers I’d met, myself included, had learned special nursery rhymes as children. Those rhymes held within them the riddle to where their mothers’ mothers’ mothers had hidden their ancestral grails. Maybe it was the dry heat, or the faint scent of tropical flowers in the air, but I could easily imagine this woman’s ancestors protecting holy relics in the court of Pharaohs.
“Precisely,” said Dr. Rachid. “The truth of the cup’s location has been in my family for centuries.”
“Then the divers are looking in the right place?”
She nodded, but her smile was mysterious. “One could say that. But before I share what I know…I’m afraid I must ask you for some assistance.”
I looked at Rhys, whose brows furrowed. “You said you wanted to meet her,” he protested. “You didn’t say anything about favors.”
“I apologize, but I had to make certain she is as competent as you told me.” Dr. Rachid nodded, seemingly to herself. “And clearly she is.”
My throat didn’t tighten with any premonition of danger, but my bullshit meter was sure in the red. “How could you possibly tell my level of competence just by shaking…my…?”
Oh. My hand. Whatever force the Melusine Grail had imbued me with, Dr. Rachid seemed to have sensed it.
