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“He’ll be up,” Mrs. Al-Ahmed asserted confidently. “He has gout.”

Constance clapped her hands with delight. “We can disguise ourselves as a Bedouin sheikh and his harem!”

“Nobody is going to believe that you lot are Bedouin.” Mrs. Al-Ahmed looked as though she were barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

“What if we have camels?” Constance pressed.

Adam’s eyes lit up at the mention of dromedaries.

“No camels,” Sayyid replied with a hint of sympathy. “There are only donkeys.”

“Be tourists,” Mrs. Al-Ahmed instructed flatly. “There are enough of you about even at this time of year, like a plague of locusts.”

“Then that is what we shall do.” Ellie rose to her feet. “I’m afraid we can’t take the risk of allowing Mr. Forster-Mowbray to have any notion of where we have gone. If he’s associated with Dawson, trusting him is simply too dangerous. I’m sorry,” she added with an uncomfortable look at Neil.

“And he did order his lackeys to shoot at us,” Constance pointed out helpfully.

“He couldn’t…” Neil spluttered. “He wouldn’t possibly have…”

“I heard at least three bullets,” she asserted breezily as she tucked the cash back into her corset.

“I am not precisely certain whether I heard anything at all,” Sayyid said quickly with an uncomfortable glance at his wife.

“I do need to get a message back home,” Constance conceded. “My family are sure to be frantic otherwise. Well—they will most likely be frantic either way, but at least if I send a telegram, they will be less quick to send the police and the army after us. And something will need to be done about Mr. Mahjoud. He must still be back at Saqqara and is certain to be worried.”

“I find it kinda hard to imagine Mr. M worried,” Adam said. “Exasperated and vaguely annoyed? Sure.”

“We can send Mr. Jabari’s grandson,” Mrs. Al-Ahmed declared. “He can deliver a note to the telegram operator at the Badrashin station to send on to Cairo and then locate your dragoman to let him know that you are safe.”

In the silence that followed, Ellie cast an awkward and hopeful look at Sayyid… one that filled Neil with a sudden sense of dread.

“I know it is a tremendous imposition, Sayyid… but would you consider joining us?” Ellie asked. “I cannot promise you that the endeavor would be without risk, but your skills would make you an invaluable addition to our party.”

Neil wanted to protest. The words demanding that Sayyid refuse were on the tip of his tongue… because he very much did notwantSayyid to go. Hewantedto turn the clock back five hours and return to teasing his foreman about his fear of bugs in the quiet of the antechamber—before he had learned that his best friend had all-but-ruined his sister, seen his brainless boss accused of throwing in with a cabal of thieves, and been calmly informed that the world was full of dangerous magical artifacts.

In the waiting stillness of the office, it seemed as though Sayyid’s next words would be the key to all of that—the pivot on which Neil’s entire future balanced. He desperately wanted to protest, but stayed quiet. Despite the storm that raged in his gut, Neil knew he had no right to make Sayyid’s decision for him.

Sayyid shot Neil an uncomfortable glance, and then looked at his wife. Mrs. Al-Ahmed gave her husband a small, clear nod.

“Yes,” he finally answered. “I will come.”

Neil felt the last remaining fragments of his comfortable world quietly shatter.

“Well! That settles that, then,” Constance said cheerfully.

“Five o’clock’s gonna come around early,” Adam observed tiredly.

“We should all get some sleep,” Ellie agreed.

“I will gather you blankets,” Mrs. Al-Ahmed offered. “This way.”

She led them out. Ellie and the others followed—all except Sayyid.

“Will you come as well?” Sayyid tentatively asked.

Neil realized with a horrified jolt that no one else had bothered to pose the question. The others had all simply assumed that he would join them, hauled along in their wake like a recalcitrant dog.

But what else could he do? Go back to the dig? He ached to, but even he had to admit that things weren’t simply going to fall back into their comfortable old arrangement. That, and he’d be leaving his sister and his best friend—as well as Sayyid and Constance—to stumble into who-knew-what trouble without him.