The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(86)

“I left it on the boat, sir,” I gasped.

“Come along, then, but we must hurry. There is someone I must see before we depart.”

He led me down a series of narrow, winding streets, a confusion of intersecting lanes hardly wider than forest paths, except here the trees were thin-trunked and branchless, and the dust puffed and boiled beneath our feet.

We turned a corner and came into an open-air market called a souq, a kind of bazaar where one might find practically anything—candies and curiosities (I saw more than one vendor hawking shrunken heads), liquor, tobacco, coffee, and clothing—including a variety of boater hats, though we could not find one that wasn’t at least three sizes too big for me. There was some comment made that the sun must have boiled all the moisture from my head. I didn’t care. The brim rested on my eyebrows, and the thing jiggled annoyingly when I made the slightest movement, but it blocked the hateful sun.

We left the market and retraced our steps to a smoky café not far from the docks. The patrons—they were all male—sat about in small groups, smoking sisha, a fruit-flavored tobacco, from ornate water pipes. Upon seeing my master, the proprietor rushed forward, clapping his hands furiously and shouting the name “Mihos! Mihos!” He wrapped the doctor in a tremendous rib-cracking hug.

“Look what the wind has blown in from the desert! Hullo, hullo, my old friend!” the man cried in nearly unaccented English.

“Fadil, it is good to see you again,” returned Warthrop warmly. “How is business?”

“As bad as that?”

“Worse! It is terrible! But it is always terrible, so what can I complain? But who is this hiding under the big white umbrella?”

“This is Will Henry,” replied the monstrumologist.

“Henry! James’s boy? But where is James?”

“Gone.”

“Gone?”

“Dead,” I put in.

“Dead! Oh, but that is terrible! Terrible!” Tears welled in his mud-colored eyes. “When? How? And you are his son?”

I nodded, and the hat bounced back and forth upon my heat-shrunken head.

“And now you take his place. Very large shoes to fill, little William Henry. Very large indeed!”

“Yes,” said Warthrop. “Fadil, my ship leaves in less than an hour, and there is something I must—”

“Oh, but that is terrible! You will come to my house for dinner, Mihos; take the next boat. Say yes; you will wound my feelings if you say no.”

“Then, I’m afraid I must wound them. Perhaps when—or if—I return…”

“If you return? If? What does this mean, if?”

The doctor peered about in the fragrant haze. Fadil’s customers seemed oblivious to our presence. Still…

“I will explain everything—in private.”

We followed him into the back room, a kind of gambling hall in miniature, where a very fat man was conducting a game of dice with two anxious, sweating, clearly overextended Belgians. They plunked down their silver, watched the dice tumble from the fat man’s wooden box, and then watched their silver disappear. Warthrop grunted in disapproval; Fadil waved his objection away.

“They’re Belgians, Mihos; they don’t care for nothing. Sit; sit, in the corner there, where we cannot hear their cries of pain and sorrow. But this is terrible; where has my mind gone? I will bring you some tea—I have Darjeeling!—and a lassi for William.”

“I’ve really no time for tea, Fadil,” said my master politely.

“What? No time for tea? You, Mihos? Then, your business in Egypt, like mine, must be truly terrible.”

The monstrumologist nodded. “In nearly every aspect.”

“What is it this time? Smugglers again? I told you to stay away from those scum, Mihos.”

“My trouble has to do with scum from an entirely different pond, Fadil. Okhranka, the czar’s secret police.”

“Russians? But this is terrible! What have you done to the czar?”

Warthrop smiled. “Let us say my interests conflict with his.”

“Oh, that is not good—for the czar! Ha!” He leaned his forearms on the table; his eyes glimmered eagerly. “What can Fadil do for his good friend Mihos?

“There are two of them,” the doctor replied. He described Rurick and Plešec. “I managed to avoid them in London and Venice, but they can’t be more than a few hours behind me.”

“And their boat will stop here to take on coal and supplies.” Fadil was nodding grimly. “Leave everything to me, Mihos. These two have seen their last sunrise!”

“I don’t want you to kill them.”

“You don’t want me to kill them?”

“Killing them would only bring you more trouble. In a week Port Said would be drowning in a plague of Ruricks and Plešecs.”

Fadil snorted and smacked his fist into his open palm, an Arabic gesture of contempt. “Let them come. I have no fear of Russians.”

“You’ve not met these Russians. They are sons of Sekhmet the destroyer.”

“And you are Mihos the lion, guardian of the horizon, and I am Menthu, god of war!” He turned his sparkling brown eyes upon me. “Who shall you be, son of James Henry? Your father was Anubis, weigher of men’s hearts. Shall you be Ophois, his son, who opens the way to victory?”