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

the few beggars I had seen were old or leprous.
    The importuning hand was small and dirty, as was the child to which it was attached. It was also stubborn.
    As, judging by the expression on his face, was the child.
    I put the final orange segment on the grubby palm. It vanished; the child did not.
    “Be gone,” I ordered, an Arabic phrase that came readily to my lips.
    To my amazement, instead of retreating or thrusting the open palm back at me, he reached to grab my hand.
    I snatched it back. “No! Go away.”
    He took a backwards step, then another. He was a handsome child, with black hair, light brown eyes, white teeth, and a face so open and innocent, I was filled with suspicion. The expression his appealing features wore seemed oddly expectant. I glanced behind me, wary of some partner in thievery, but none approached; when I looked back, he had not dashed forward to snatch my worldly goods. Now he tipped his head, as if inviting me to follow him.
    So I turned and walked in the other direction. To my astonishment, four steps away the small hand insinuated itself into mine. I whirled around, lifting the hand in a threat.
    “Child, no. Leave me.”
    He looked, if anything, puzzled. His finger went up, pointing … at the series of bowls mounted on the wall.
    At the so-called clock.
    I felt the mechanism of my brain turning, more cumbersome than any thirteen-bowled timepiece. “Clock?” I asked in Arabic. “Sorcerer’s clock?”
    He nodded.
    I worked my hand inside my djellaba , loosened the hair-pin on my breast pocket, and dug around until I found the tiny scrap of onionskin. The child came forward to see what I had, and then looked up and granted me an expression of wide approval. He patted his narrow chest and pointed at the paper, then held out his hand in a gesture clearly meaning, “ Now , will you come, please?”
    However, if he had been responsible for the written Arabic, then he could speak it. “Where do you want me to go?” I asked him.
    His light brown eyes slowly blinked; his hand remained raised.
    I thought about it, thought about the lack of shelter and the coming night. What choice had I? To join the acrobats and snake-charmers at the city gate? I took a breath, and placed my hand in his.
    I had, it seemed, acquired a guide.

C HAPTER F IVE
    THIRTEEN DAYS EARLIER
    S herlock Holmes watched the slender brown hands pour the thick coffee and arrange the silver spoons, then fold themselves against the woollen robe in a semblance of a bow. When Youssef had been assured they needed nothing else, and his dark eyes had surveyed the room as if commanding the objects there to behave themselves in his absence, he left. Holmes took an appreciative slurp from his cup, stretched his feet towards the glowing brazier, and told his companion, “I thought I’d hire a guide in Marrakech.”
    “Be certain that he has a functional rifle.”
    “It’s still unsettled down there?”
    “ ‘Unsettled.’ That’s an understatement. One of the more distasteful tasks of my position is arranging for ransoms. That, and funerals.”
    “I see. Well, for your sake, I shall specify arms.”
    “At least you’re not going north.”
    “You’ve worked a miracle in this country.” They were speaking French; the pronoun Holmes had used was neither plural nor formal, but the tu of intimates. The older man on the other side of the brazier, dressed in a blue uniform with seven stars on its sleeve that even at this hour looked morning-crisp, was Morocco’s Resident General, Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey. The Maréchal was, oddly enough, a blood relation. Of course, most minor European gentry could locate common blood if they looked deeply enough, but in the case of Holmes and Lyautey, they were fifth cousins on their mothers’ sides. The two men had met by accident thirty-one years before, when, during the usual stilted dinner conversation of fellow passengers on a Mediterranean crossing, Holmes happened to mention that he