Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air by Melissa Scott, Jo Graham Read Free Book Online Page A

Willi said. He shot Jerry a look that was almost challenging. “Then I’ll heat up some soup for our guest while you tend to his injury. You had best let Jerry have a look at it. He practically has an aid station in that shaving kit of his.”
    “Come in my bedroom,” Jerry said. “And I’ll have a look. You should be safe enough here.” He watched Iskinder get to his feet stiffly, almost as carefully as Jerry always did, and waited while Iskinder went into the bedroom first. Willi had his back to him searching out canned soup from the cupboard. “Willi,” he began.
    Willi didn’t look around. “Which soup? Does he keep Halal?”
    “He’s Christian,” Jerry said. “So whatever there is.” Anything else he needed to say would have to wait, and so he followed Iskinder into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
    “You trust him,” Iskinder said.
    “With this.”
    Iskinder nodded. It was, after all, only his life at stake. Jerry felt a surge of pride. Iskinder put his life in his hands just as he had during the war, wordlessly, as though it were nothing. It was a lot to live up to. But now…
    Iskinder sat down on the edge of the bed gingerly, his careful movements betraying the pain his face didn’t show. Jerry rummaged in his shaving kit for scissors and iodine. “Take the gallibaya off,” he said. “Let’s see how this looks.”
    “Not as bad as it feels, I promise,” Iskinder said. Beneath the tattered robe he wore shirt and pants. He unbuttoned the shirt awkwardly.
    He’d lost a great deal of weight, Jerry thought, his collar bones standing out starkly. A pad of bandages was wrapped around his chest, covering ribs and passing just beneath his arm. Two bulges stood out in the wrappings, one on his right side below his arm and the other at his sternum.
    “God, Iskinder,” Jerry breathed. If he’d been stabbed just at the sternum it was a wonder he was alive.
    “That’s not the wound.” Iskinder shook his head, slipping his hand down among the bandages gingerly. “But rather the cause of it. There’s more than one reason I came to Alexandria, and the guns are only part of it.” Wincing, he sought beneath the folds, then drew forth the object which had lain bound against his breast like an amulet from the wrappings of a mummy. He held it out to Jerry wordlessly, and Jerry caught his breath.
    The gold shone in the dim lamplight. It was a medallion fully five inches long and nearly four inches wide, the pectoral ornament from a necklace, the archaeologist in him thought even while he reached out a hand to take it carefully. Warm from Iskinder’s body, it almost glowed, alive in his hands. Isis stretched her wings in the center, the vulture wings spread in benediction over all, Mut the mother granting protection and blessing. Four cabochon Indian rubies gleamed, set in the ruddy gold characteristic of the early Hellenistic period, almost rose gold. Exquisite. Amazing. Jerry lacked words. He turned it over reverentially, tracing the hieroglyphics on the reverse. Yes, a pectoral. He could see how it had hung, the inscription against the wearer’s skin.
    “Blessed is Isis, Mother of the World,” he read, his fingers tracing each warm shape. “Blessed is Berenice the mother of the young god in this the first year of his reign.” And there was the cartouche. Jerry read it aloud, speaking the Horus Name and the Nebty Name and the Golden Horus Name, all the names of a pharaoh. “The Strong Youth Whose Might is Great, Who His Father Has Raised to the Throne.” He’d seen that cartouche many times before. “Ptolemy II Philadelphus.”
    Jerry took a deep breath. A pectoral ornament, inscribed this way… “A gift from the young pharaoh to his mother,” he said. He looked at Iskinder keenly. “What’s its provenance?” This had never been in a tomb, never been underground. It was alive.
    Iskinder smiled thinly. “It has been part of our coronation regalia since the fifteenth century.