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Neil hurried onward, calling back to Sayyid as he went. “If we’re quick enough, we might still reach the others in time to make a difference!”

“We would make far more of a difference if we found that staff,” Sayyid grumbled. “But it would be like looking for your needle in a haystack.”

“Not really,” Neil replied automatically.

Sayyid stopped short. “Not really? What do you mean by that, precisely?”

Neil frowned at his urgent tone. “Oh! Only that I had a bit of an idea where it might be. Not that I know anything for certain,” he protested at the intent look in Sayyid’s eyes. “It was just a little notion that popped into my head right before Mr. Forster-Mowbray came in. It’s probably nothing. It wouldn’t really have made any sense, anyway.”

Sayyid did not look convinced by Neil’s disclaimers. He crossed his arms, planting himself firmly in their path forward. “You do realize that your notions about the past have an uncanny habit of turning out to be correct?”

“What?” Neil gave an awkward laugh. “Don’t be silly.”

“I am not being silly.” Sayyid’s eyes narrowed. “How did you find the tablet in Hatshepsut’s temple?”

“I didn’t find it!” Neil protested. “Ellie did!”

Sayyid rolled his eyes. “And how did Ellie find it?”

“Well, she spotted one of the little hands of the Aten on the surface of the sun chapel altar, after I…”

Neil’s voice trailed off.

“After you what?” Sayyid prompted.

“After I… might have had the notion that the altar had been rebuilt and expanded in antiquity,” Neil finished weakly.

“And did you see something on the altar to make you think of that?” Sayyid pressed. “Or did that notion just pop into your brain as well?”

Neil didn’t answer him.

“I watched you find the location of Horemheb’s funerary chapel by looking at an empty stretch of desert.” Sayyid jabbed a finger up at the mountain over their heads. “Less than an hour ago, I saw you locate the way into Neferneferuaten’s tomb by crawling under a boulder that looked like ten others scattered across the ridge.”

“That wasn’t…” Neil started, spluttering. “You can’t possibly be suggesting… You’re making it sound like…”

Sayyid raised an eyebrow.

“This isn’tmagic!” Neil burst out. “It’s scholarship! And maybe a bit of… lucky guessing!”

“You were not guessing at Saqqara when you relocated our entire excavation plan thirty meters to the southeast without having found so much as a single pot shard to support the change,” Sayyid returned stubbornly.

“I am not magical!” Neil shouted.

The words resounded hauntingly through the pillared darkness of the quarry… and Neil remembered the moment he had stepped into Akhetaten and watched the city come alive around him as though he had fallen through a hole in time.

Magical,the quarry echoed back at him.Magical.

“I suppose we’ll find out,” Sayyid declared relentlessly and dragged Neil onward.

??

Thirty-Nine

The starlit hollowof the ridge blared with paraffin lanterns and clattering tools. The crew of theIsis—a mix of Egyptian, Greek, and Sudanese sailors—worked with a hurried clamor by the boulder that covered the entrance to the tomb. The men had used a heavy iron jack to lever up the enormous stone a few crucial inches, widening the space below enough to set a winch over the fissure and start lowering in equipment.

Ellie watched them from where she sat with her back resting against the steep bluff that had once separated them from Julian’s misplaced excavation. Her hands were bound behind her back. She wiggled her fingers as the crewmen threw her and the other prisoners uncomfortable looks.

She highly doubted anyone had asked those simple sailors if they minded assisting in a criminal enterprise.