Heart of Light (3 page)

When she managed to look up, there was no fire at all and the dragon had gone. The Royal Were-Hunter captain was standing nearby. “You should have let us shoot it, ma'am. You never know what those creatures are about. We have all sorts, in the isles,” he said, offering Nigel his hand to help him rise. “From wolves to foxes. Some of them are harmless enough, and we wink at them. But them dragons, they're desperate creatures that can neither be controlled nor brought down easily.” He pulled Nigel up and Nigel pulled Emily up along with himself. “We had a perfect shot.”

“She was too scared to move,” Nigel said.

And Emily supposed that could be true, but deep inside she didn't think it was. Not scared. More . . . fascinated, intrigued. She couldn't help turning her head a little toward where the dragon had been, feeling a lurch of dismay that the sparkling, magical being was gone.

She couldn't quite understand why that would leave her feeling empty—as though a yawning abyss of dark, gray nothingness had opened where the wondrous should reside.

Nigel didn't seem to notice. Or if he did, he attributed it to her presumed fright. He said nothing until she was back in her cabin, sitting on her bed in her dressing gown, wrapped in her grandmother's shawl. And then he said, “Dragons are native only to China. It is said their noblemen suffer the hereditary curse of were-dragons and are venerated and given virgins for fodder in the days of their madness. There are many weres in England, but surely no true Englishman can be a were-dragon.”

He didn't seem to either expect a reply from Emily or want it. Instead he went through the connecting door and into his room.

Emily sat on the bed, hugging her knees. In her mind's eye was the image of the powerful, elemental beast. Where had it come from? Where was it going? And why had she saved its life?

CAIRO FROM ABOVE

Nigel's heart tightened as he looked out from the
deck of the carpetship descending toward Cairo. The mission proper was starting. Today he would meet his contact and learn where he was to go and how to complete the mission the queen had given him.

“It's very bright, isn't it?” Emily asked, leaning against him, her open parasol more decorative than practical.

Nigel nodded, looking at the landscape beneath them. It was indeed bright and completely different from the sheep-dotted green fields, the stately country houses, the landscape of Nigel's proper English childhood. It didn't even resemble bustling London, where he had spent the last year. From this far up, all of Egypt looked like a narrow strip of land, squeezed between golden sparkling desert and shining emerald sea, along the green ribbon of the Nile. Where the river met the sea, a green shape formed, resembling a lady's fan. There, the arm of the Nile branched into multiple fingers and along those fingers vegetation grew and white houses nestled, looking—from this far up—like a toy village.

In the desert, away from the city, the fabled pyramids of ancient Egypt rose, golden and eternal, dwarfing the impermanent mortals with their majesty.

Nigel wished with all his heart that he was just coming to Egypt on his honeymoon, to see the beauties of antiquity and savor the exoticism. That was what Emily believed and it made him wish—madly—that he hadn't lied to her. That he'd never heard of Widefield or the queen's secret mission to Africa.

That mission had caused his older brother, Carew, to vanish. Carew had been the competent older son, forever confident and full of certainty. Nigel, on the other hand, was only the Oldhall's sickly younger boy, kept at home and allowed to attend school only because Carew had attended it also. And only allowed to go to Cambridge on Carew's say so as well.

Nigel was not half the man that Carew had been. The only reason he'd been chosen at all was his blood. Carew's brother, they'd said, must complete his mission—might be the only man who could do it. They never explained why that was, though it seemed to have to do with Nigel's being descended via both his parents from the first man who'd used the compass stone.

Now Nigel could see the squarish houses, without proper roofs but with terraces. And here and there, the protruding, rounded tops of what he presumed were cisterns. It looked like an illustration in a book of Bible stories he'd owned when he was very little. He remembered looking at that picture for hours, fascinated by the dark, starry sky above, the alien-looking houses.

He'd wondered what it would be like to be one of the shepherd boys in the picture, away from English society and rules. Now that alien landscape beneath him looked and felt as fantastic as it had when he was little. An exotic land, an imaginary haven—a way to escape his own limited life.

“Did you know it would be this beautiful?” Emily asked. “Is that why you chose it?”

Her warm breath caressed his cheek, more tantalizing and erotic than those experienced and trained ladies of the night to whose boudoirs Carew had introduced Nigel at Cambridge. And yet, he couldn't
have
Emily as he had enjoyed those beauties. And he wondered why. Except . . . except that she depended wholly on him, and she was so innocent. She'd been badly treated and neglected in her life, a waif without a mother and devilishly ignored by her father and his new wife. If he did what he longed to do, it would feel like a betrayal.

And then there was the undeniable fact that he had betrayed her. He had brought her here under false pretenses. How would she react to finding out he'd lied?

He shook his head. “All I knew of Cairo was my teacher of Arabic,” he said. “A frightful little man who smelled too much of garlic and always dressed in white suits with a red carnation in his pocket.”

He thought he heard Emily giggle amid the noise of the people around them. The deck was crowded with the portion of England that traveled with them—the better-bred portion—pressing about them all around, wearing the best dresses, the best suits, the most exquisite and fashionable attire. And yet he felt as if he were alone with Emily. Alone with the woman he loved, with the woman to whom he was obliged to lie.

Beneath him, the carpetship jolted.

They were close enough now to hear the shouts of workmen and carpetdock workers, a mingling of Arabic and English, both clearly intelligible to Nigel, but in a mixture he'd never before heard nor imagined. Even those who spoke English spoke it with a lilting exotic accent that was fennel and garlic to the ear, evoking hot spices not part of the English cuisine.

When Nigel looked back, Emily was looking at her feet, a faint smile playing on her lips.

He leaned against the glass windbreaker thinking how bright the houses were, how pale the morning-fired sky, how deep blue the ocean beneath them. He'd craved such liveliness through his days in his sickroom, listening to Carew and his friends playing outside.

The ship was descending slowly toward the bright metropolis of Cairo, with its glimmering buildings, its brightly lit feluccas with multicolored sails.

In the carpetport beneath, carpetships clustered. Some were built upon brilliant carpets that showed around the edge of the buildings upon them, and whose fringe—a mix of brilliant gold and red and sky-blue—blew softly in the wind. Other carpetships were smaller, and showed wear and age in tatters and holes around the edges. All of them were woven by descendants of a single Persian family, whose ability was hereditary.

The flags of Spain and France were the most prominent, but at a glance Nigel saw a couple of Union Jacks, a Portuguese flag, two German ones, and others where his geographical knowledge faltered.

At the edges of the carpet, strong navvies threw down thick ropes, which were caught by natives stripped to their waists and tanned deep brown by the sun. The men's corded muscles strained, and they chanted in Arabic as they pulled the ship down for the final tethering to the strong dock pillars.

A scent rose from the city, along with the increasingly loud babble of voices—a scent of spices and hot cooking oil and heated sand. Many buildings surrounded the carpetport as though the city pressed against it like a child peering through the window of a sweetshop. Up close, the walls looked not white but golden, as if they'd acquired the color and texture of the surrounding desert. Amid the buildings, bright clusters of multicolored tents shone.

Bazaars, Nigel assumed. He had heard much of souks and dim, ancient markets filled with mysterious goods. His teacher of Arabic had spoken of them. Huddled in the cold of a Cambridge garret, he made his living bestowing his knowledge of Arabic language and culture on people such as Nigel. Never quite saving enough money to buy his passage back to the warm sands of his native land, the little man had spoken of bazaars filled with the exotic goods of the East, with the wild spoils of Africa. And of dazzling women who hid their features beneath veils and let only their eyes peer out to tantalize male kind. Women of gold and spice.

Women, Nigel imagined, like his Emily. Emily's hand snaked around Nigel's wrist, and Nigel jumped, drawn back from his daydream. “Does it look like India?” Nigel asked.

She gave him a startled look, her eyes opening wide, like sapphires on a dusky cushion. Then she blushed and turned away. “I don't know,” she said. “I was so small. Six. I don't remember.”

Nigel nodded, but in his mind this land and India were the same, all part of the empire his mission would save. Yet if Carew could not have accomplished the mission and returned triumphant to the queen of England, the empress of India, how could Nigel do it? What could Nigel add with his poor efforts to Carew's failed, heroic attempt?

Yet something in Nigel seemed to trust itself. Heretically, against all revealed knowledge, something in Nigel believed that he could rescue Carew and return to England in triumph. And then maybe his parents . . .

But he flinched at the thought.

He'd take this mission step by step, as he'd taken his exercises at school. Nigel had been given precise instructions on how to search for the magic jewel, how to bring it back for the queen. He had to remember he was not in this alone.

First, he would meet the secret emissary of the queen's government in Cairo. This man would give Nigel more exact instructions, including how to activate the compass stone that would show the way to the temple in which the jewel lay hidden.

Nigel leaned forward and scanned the crowd assembled on the disembarking quay.

Lord Widefield, the queen's friend and the overseer of her most secret enterprises, had told Nigel that there would be a tall Englishman waiting there—a Cairo expatriate. He would wear a white linen suit and a panama hat, a bright yellow flower on his lapel. And he would tell Nigel all the specifics of the mission, the particulars that Lord Widefield had been afraid to reveal in London, where he had been sure someone had watched and listened to them. He would tell Nigel where to go, how to proceed with finding the ruby of power that Lord Widefield had called Heart of Light. The ruby that would give the queen firm magical control over Europe and end, once and for all, the blood-soaked republican uprisings.

Maybe the man could even tell Nigel how Carew had failed his mission and where he might be. Or where his remains might be.

But Nigel flinched away from
that
thought. He couldn't bear the idea of taking news of Carew's death to his mother.

Yet no matter how hard he tried to see his contact, no Englishman stood amid the dark faces on the quay and no straw hat was visible amid the turbans and head cloths.

The ship touched down with a jar and passengers called shrilly to their servants, ordered them to retrieve their luggage, then screamed out good-byes to travel-met friends. Nigel had not brought servants, telling Emily that it was their honeymoon and that surely the hotel would have personnel who could assist them with the dressing, the undressing and such necessities. But truth was that Nigel had neither wanted to endanger an old family servitor, nor risk treason if he had been somehow coerced or seduced onto the enemy side. Perhaps that had been the mistake Carew had made. So they needed to trust the ship's personnel to unload the luggage. Or rather Emily was supposed to have seen to it. He turned to Emily, a questioning look in his eyes.