The Rosetta Key by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online Page A

in Jerusalem thinks they’re three steps closer to heaven,” he summarized, “which means that together they create their own little hell.”
    “It is a weaponless city of peace and piety, is it not?”
    “Until someone steps on someone else’s piety.”
    If anyone questioned my own presence I’d explain I was a trade representative for the United States, which had been true in Paris. I was waiting to make deals with the winner, I said. I wanted to be friends with everyone.
    The city was so filled with rumor of Napoleon’s coming that it buzzed like a hive, but there was no consensus about which side was likely to prevail. Djezzar had been in ruthless control for a quarter century. Bonaparte had yet to be beaten. The English controlled the sea, and Palestine was but an islet in a vast Ottoman lake. While the Shiite and Sunni sects of the Muslim communities were at bitter odds with each other, and both Christians and Jews were restless minorities and mutually suspicious, it was not at all clear who might take arms against who. Would-be religious despots from half a dozen faiths dreamed of carving out their own puritanical utopias. While Smith hoped I might recruit for the British cause, I’d no real intention of doing so. I still liked French republican ideals and the men I’d served with, and I didn’t necessarily disagree with Napoleon’s dreams of reforming the Near East. Why should I take the side of the arrogant British, who had so bitterly fought my own nation’s independence? All I really wanted was to hear of Astiza and find out if there was any chance this fabled Book of Thoth might improbably have survived over three thousand years. And then flee this madhouse.
    So I learned what I could in their hookah culture. It was a small town, and word inevitably spread of the infidel in Arab clothes who worked at the forge of a Christian, but there were any number of people with foggy pasts seeking any number of things. I was just one more, who did what life chiefly consists of: waiting.
     
CHAPTER 5
     
    T o pass the winter, I did my best to tease Miriam. I’d found a piece of amber in the market, an insect preserved inside. It was being sold as a slick and shiny good-luck charm, but I saw it as an artifact of science. I stole up behind her once when she was cleaning a chicken, rubbed the amber briskly on my robes, and then lifted my hand above the downy feathers. Some floated up to my down-turned palm.
    She whirled. “How are you doing that?”
    “I bring mysterious powers from France and America,” I intoned.
    She crossed herself. “It’s evil to bring magic into this house.”
    “It’s not magic, it’s an electrical trick I learned from my mentor Franklin.” I turned my palm so she could see the amber I held. “Even the ancient Greeks did this. If you rub amber, it will attract things. We call the magic electricity. I am an electrician.”
    “What a foolish idea,” she said uncertainly.
    “Here, try it.” I took her hand, despite her hesitation, and put the amber in her fingers, enjoying the excuse to touch her. Her fingers were strong, red from work. Then I rubbed it on her sleeve and held it over the feathers. Sure enough, a few levitated to stick.
    “Now you’re an electrician, too.”
    She sniffed and gave it back to me. “How do you find time for useless games?”
    “But perhaps they’re not useless.”
    “If you’re so clever, use your amber to pluck the next chicken!”
    I laughed, and ran the amber past her cheek, pulling with it strands of her lovely hair. “It can serve as a comb, perhaps.” I had created a blond veil, her eyes suspicious above it.
    “You are an impudent man.”
    “Simply a curious one.”
    “Curious about what?” She blushed when she said it.
    “Ah. Now you’re beginning to understand me.” I winked.
    But she wouldn’t allow things to go any further. I’d hoped to while away spare time by finding a card game or two, but I was in the worst city in the