Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King Read Free Book Online Page A

fretting.
    “But the driver said we’d be quite all right.” This was the tallest, horsey in type and in face.
    “Ethel, he’s French.”
    “Ivy, even the French don’t like to put paying customers in the path of danger. The Front is considerably farther north.”
    “But the roads will be filled with soldiers. And you know how they can be.”
    “I think we should go south instead,” Miss Worry insisted. “We might even have enough time to go to Erfoud, and see the dunes.”
    “You and your sheikhs,” Ethel scoffed.
    She pronounced it sheeks , but I hardly noticed, because when her friend said the word Erfoud , it had set off an echo, reverberating through my skull.
    Erfoud: blonde curls/the grit of sand/ “Action!” /the dust-smell of baking canvas/vast blue sky—
    Then it was gone, leaving me pounding on the closed door of memory.
    I must have stood for half a minute, staring at nothing, before the urgent cries of “Bâlek! Bâlek!” penetrated, causing me to shift to the side an instant before the laden donkey shoved past. I hastened after it until I reached the ladies—but this time the guide caught sight of me. He frowned. I turned away, fishing one of the oranges from my pocket, and leant against a wall to peel it, to give a reason for dawdling.
    The three continued to debate the advisability of visiting the outskirts of what my morning’s eavesdropping had convinced me was, if not a Front, at least the buildup to one. France, unhappy with the incursions of mountain rebels into the areas it controlled, seemed to be drawing a line in the sand—or rather, across the mountains. Fighting was sporadic, but the medina was certain that outright war was not far away.
    Granted, those had been people who spoke in the same breath of spirits— afrits —and of the miracles of the itinerant holy men called marabouts ; perhaps I should not be too certain of their judgment.
    Then the ladies’ guide spoke a word that made me drop half my orange: horloge .
    Clock.
    Nothing about sorcerers, but it caught my attention, and I waited impatiently as the women crept through the lanes at an escargot’s pace.
    When he gathered their wandering attention and directed it upward, I had to wonder if perhaps my assurance with French was misguided. On the wall overhead was a series of thirteen protruding beams, each of which held a low, wide bowl. A clock?
    I drew out a second orange as he launched into an explanation that made it instantly clear that he had no idea what the object overlooking this scrap of bazaar was: Tradition claimed it was some elaborate Arabic waterclock, and thus it was known, throughout the ages, despite having neither mechanism nor display.
    Ethel was not convinced, either. After she’d listened to his incoherent explanation, she pulled a face and said, “It looks more like a series of door-bells to me.”
    Then Ivy noticed that the object brushing her shoulder was the lower lip of a camel’s skinned head, hanging before a butcher’s shop. The doorbell-clock was instantly forgotten, and the guide made haste to lead them towards a nearby madrassa —here it was pronounced madersa —that was open to English ladies. As they went past him, he shot me a hard glance. From here on out, following them would require a great deal more effort.
    It was the middle of the afternoon, and I would have given half of all I possessed—which, granted, was not much—to be permitted to curl up quietly for a few hours. The slippers did nothing to cushion my feet from the hard stones, my various bruises were clamouring, my head had begun to feel somewhat detached. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I needed to sit. I did not have to stand and wait for them to emerge from the madrassa .
    I was folding the last-but-one segment of the orange into my mouth, preparatory to walking up the street to a stall selling various juices, when I became aware of a hand, thrust in my direction.
    It came as something of a surprise, since