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“Ha ha,” Julian laughed nervously. “And excessively old, of course. In fact, I’m told it likely dates back to the sixth century.”

“The sixth century!” she echoed—as though very impressed by this.

“Go ahead and pull it out,” Julian told her.

Constance started a bit at his instruction. “You want me to… er, remove it from the scabbard?” she prompted carefully.

“I’m afraid odd things happen when I touch it,” Julian replied with a chuckle.

Constance gave him a hard look to see if he had intended to make a double entendre. He clearly hadn’t the foggiest idea.

“Fair enough,” she concluded with a shrug, and then tugged at the hilt of the sword. It slid easily from the scabbard.

“The metal looks… different,” she noted with a frown of genuine interest.

The oiled surface was twisted through with rippling lines of lighter and darker metal.

“That’s because it’s iron,” Julian replied. “They didn’t exactly have steel in the sixth century!”

Constance bit her tongue, as she was fairly sure she’d heard Ellie rambling on about the long and storied history of steel manufacture in places like China and the Middle East, which went back at least so far as that. She doubted educating Julian on the subject would aid her cause.

“But where did you get it?” she asked instead.

“It’s been in the family for centuries,” he replied. “One of my noble ancestors acquired it in Cumbria when he was granted land there by Henry I. Found it tucked into a pile of hay in a byre after he’d subdued some local laird up there, as the story goes. It’s Dyrnwyn.”

“What’s a Dyrnwyn?” Constance demanded.

“The sword. That’s its name,” Julian elaborated. “It’s one of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain. Or was it twelve?” he questioned, frowning. “Well, I hardly suppose it matters, anyway.”

Constance knew very little about the Twelve—or Thirteen—Treasures of Britain, but she was fairly certain Ellie would have been horrified to learn that one of them was stashed in Julian Forster-Mowbray’s travel trunk rather than an institution of learning.

“It’s very… er, impressive,” Constance hedged. “But what does it have to do with your dangerous and exciting double life?”

Julian’s expression went over a bit canny. “Legend has it that when a worthy or well-born man wields Dyrnwyn, the sword bursts into holy flames.”

Constance’s mind went blank. She hadn’t the foggiest notion how to respond to that.

“You think I’m having you on,” Julian filled in for her, lounging comfortably on the settee, “but it’s entirely true. I would show you right now, only I’m afraid it would throw the crew into a panic. They’re very particular about fire.”

Probably because theIsiswas a floating tinderbox, Constance thought exasperatedly.

More surprisingly, she found that she believed him—perhaps because she had recently watched Ellie light up a rooftop with a wing bone and had spent the last few days chasing down the Staff of Moses.

“But why doyouhave it?”

The words spilled out of her before she could think better of them. Julian’s face flashed with irritation as he jolted the sword back into the scabbard. “My older brother Heathcliffe isn’t interested, so I’ve the loan of it for now,” he retorted a bit crossly.

Constance sensed her misstep. She had obviously stumbled into a sore spot. She worked quickly to correct it. “Oh no—I mean,of courseyou have it. You are the expert swordsman, after all,” she said soothingly, quickly pulling up that useful tidbit from Julian’s droning over dinner back in Cairo. “What I meant was—why did you bring it here to Egypt?”

“Oh, that,” he said, relieved. “I convinced my father that it might be useful, given what I’d been sent here to do.”

“But what has Lord Aldbury to do with it?” Constance pressed eagerly, sensing she was getting closer to the nub of things.

Julian didn’t immediately answer. Clearly, she had reached a point at which he began to wonder whether he was giving away too much.

She needed to push him over that edge before he wised up and closed his mouth.

“I mean,” she modified a little shyly, tracing the magazine along his knee in a tantalizing manner. “You must have been given a verybigresponsibility for your father to have trusted you to take such a dangerous and important treasure along with you.”