"I have a lot to explain to you, habibti. But we have time for that.

You're coming back to Cairo with me, aren't you?"

"Yes, of course. I'm not leaving you alone for a moment. There's much too much going on. But listen, now , in the cold light of day, tell me what you saw."

Valerie soaped herself. "What I thought I saw-although I'm beginning to think I dredged it up from inside myself-was the crucifi ed Christ."

"Oh," Najya said quietly . "It makes sense though, right there in front of Calvary."

"What I can' t understand is why you and Auset didn't see him.

That makes me wonder if it wasn't maybe a hallucination."

"Why should Jesus be any more a hallucination than Nekhbet?

Anyhow, what did he say?"

Valerie stepped off the platform, dripping wet, and kissed Najya quickly before she reached for a towel. "That was the strangest thing of all. He said, 'Tell them, please, to stop.' He wanted to be remembered as a teacher, even a winemaker, not a martyr."

Najya stepped past her into the shower . "Of course he would.

Who'd want to hang on a cross for two thousand years? What did you say to him?" She turned the water full in her face.

"Nothing reasonable. I was too dumbfounded. I just asked if my sins were for given. Shows you how much Catholic guilt was still cemented in my head. No surprise, though. I grew up in a place where crucifi xes hung in every room." Valerie toweled her hair, already feeling her back drying in the too-warm air . She snickered softly . "If he'd stayed any longer I'd have asked him where I could buy some indulgences."

* 230 *

Vulture's Kiss "Indulgences?" came from the shower. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's a Catholic thing. Remission from hell. They're no longer on sale though. Protestants cracked down."

Najya leaned out from the shower. "You laugh, but I think seeing him really affected you."

Valerie leaned against the doorjamb of the bathroom and watched the white soap lather stream down the sleek bronze body . She ran her hand down Najya's wet back to the curve of her buttocks. "Y ou affect me too. You bring me back to earth."

"You can wisecrack, but I think you still have to fi gure out where you belong."

"I know that. I've signed up with the nature gods."

Najya stepped out next to her and wrapped them both in her towel.

They stood for a long moment in each other's arms feeling warm, fresh skin, coarse cotton, and wet hair.

"Well, I've signed up more or less too, but I'm not sure for what.

Just exactly how are the Egyptian gods going to make life any better for people-for Palestinians, for Jews wanting to live peacefully with Palestinians, for wretched people anywhere in the world?"

"In the short term, I can't see how they'd change that at all. They don't claim moral authority or omnipotence. They're just the spirits of things, and we have to take care of them."

"Then why worship them?" Najya' s lips were warm on her shower-cooled skin as they kissed down the side of her face to the tiny scar. "They sound pretty feeble. For gods, I mean." She leaned against Valerie, her body asking a different sort of question.

Valerie pulled them back to the rumpled bed, answering both.

"You're probably right. But it's a bit like democracy versus dictatorship.

I'd rather have the spirits of wind, water , and wildlife all jostle for attention than have to grovel before an autocrat."

Valerie lay back and pulled Najya on top of her , belly to belly , breasts to breasts, warming again. She edged downward a fraction so she could press her lips under Najya' s throat and feel the pounding of her pulse.

"And just how do you worship these gods?" Najya murmured into her ear.

The heat between her legs drew her mind elsewhere, so Valerie summarized the lesson. "Recite the chants, carry the statues to the light * 231 *

at New Year, and revere nature." She felt Najya' s leg slide between her thighs, which had grown moist again, and she completely lost the thread.

Najya persisted. "What a choice.

Vengeance and martyrs or sunlight and sex."

"Sex? Did I say sex?" Valerie breathed dizzily , the excitement between her legs spreading now to every part of her.

"Yes." Najya rocked against her in a slow rhythm and pressed the fi rst urgent, penetrating kiss.

* 232 *

Vulture's Kiss

54.

The Shop of Graven Images Strange, I've been to this part of Cairo a dozen times, and I never noticed it." Najya stood in front of the tiny mahal, tucked between a kitchenware shop on one side and a tobacco and sheesha shop on the other.

The rows of mass-produced Anubis jackals, Horus falcons, and Isis mothers still stood at the front. The layer of reddish dust that had settled on them suggested they did not sell very well.

Valerie opened the door to the shop, and they ventured into its dismal interior.

"Ah, Dr...Foret, is it?" The shopkeeper approached them. "Y ou would like to have another likeness made." It was not a question.

"Yes, we would. Two of them. Of these men." Valerie fumbled in her shirt pocket for the wedding picture. "One of them is the man you copied last week. For the priest, remember?"

"Of course. For the priest. But this time it is for himself. He is...

deceased," he added neutrally.

"How do you know that?" Valerie asked, startled He studied the picture again, avoiding her glance. "For give me. I saw the picture in the newspaper. I am sorry."

Najya intervened, moving the business along. "So, we would like you to duplicate the fi rst statue, but without the braid."

"Yes," Valerie added. "And of course you should omit the spear wound in the back." She added solemnly , "Please put a small hole...

through the heart."

"And the other one?" He held the picture up close. "How did he die? Shall I include a mark?"

"A mark?" Valerie looked toward Najya for help.

Najya shrugged faintly. "I understand that he was thrown from the train, so the injury would have been internal."

The sculptor still waited for an answer , so Valerie added quietly, "No mark."

"Yes, certainly, Dr. Foret." He tilted his head then, as if he studied * 233 *

her, although he quickly dropped his eyes. "W ould you like one of yourself as well? Perhaps both of you."

"Of us? Of course not," she snapped. Then she realized the game they both played, each withholding information. It was obvious now that he sculpted for the dead. Perhaps only for the dead. Was the question his way to show he knew they were in mortal danger? A shiver went down her spine.

She changed the subject. "The other statues that you showed me a few days ago in your back room, may I see them again?"

Alarm showed briefl y on his face. "Uh...the key to the lock. I am sorry. My assistant has it." He busied himself with something behind the counter.

"Sayyid , " she said fi rst, using the Arabic term of respect, but he didn't respond. Then she tried Chemet, in old Egyptian, addressing him as royalty, and the suddenness with which he turned around showed her he had understood. She searched her mind for other fl attering terms, but all she could come up with was "vizier ." "Tsh 'aty," she said, and his poorly concealed smirk made it clear he knew he was being fl attered- in the ancient language. "We need to see the statues."

He lowered his glance again. "It is unwise, dangerous even."

"Dangerous to learn, or to reveal?"

He looked up through furrowed brows. "It is dangerous for the statues to be seen."

Valerie edged toward the rug that covered the narrow door . "You know we aren't thieves. We come on the advice of Nekhbet."

"Nekhbet. Ah, you might have said that in the beginning."

Valerie relaxed. It was truth time. "The man whose face you copied, the one who died, he was of the line of Rekemheb. And Najya..." She extended her hand toward her. "Najya is also in the family. She knows all our stories and has met the kas of Yussif and Derek, who wait for their likenesses."

His hand went to the pocket of his galabaya. "If goddess approves."

"Of course she approves. I am the writer of the chronicle. And a child of Rekemheb."

His eyes darted back and forth between them as if looking for a family resemblance. "All right, then." He marched the three paces to the carpet-covered door . "But if you want your two likenesses, you * 234 *

Vulture's Kiss must leave soon and let me work." He drew aside the carpet and opened the padlock.

They waited once again for lamplight, sensing the coldness of the room, in spite of the hot September afternoon. He returned and lifted the lantern at the center of the chamber , illuminating the hundreds of fi gures. All seemed to look down mournfully at them.

"Who are these?" Valerie asked. "Tell me the truth. What is this room?"

He looked past her, into the darkness. "They are the lost ones and this is their necropolis."

"They're all ka statues, aren't they? How is it that you have them?

Is this all of them?"

"I will tell you our story. First the Greeks and Romans came with their own gods, but they let us keep our ways. But when the Christians came, the mummifi cation stopped. Those who still believed had likenesses made of themselves to receive their kas, but no priest could be found to speak the incantation, for many had been killed."

He took down a fi gure and showed it to her. The limbs were intact and carved hair was still in place, but the facial features were hacked away. "And where the people succeeded in bringing ka and likeness together, the Christians seized them and smashed their noses so that they could not draw breath in the underworld."

He brushed his fi ngers lightly over the ruined face. "Those who were left became guardians of their empty images. They gathered up the ka-dolls, even the ruined ones, to mark our history and passed the guardianship to their children." He swept his hand in a semicircle over the array of dolls and statues. "Now you have had your explanation and you must go."

"Not yet. Please." Valerie raised a hand. "T ell me more about them. Who they are? Are any in the lineage of Rekemheb?"

The image keeper sighed. "Yes, some of his lineage and some of those who knew of it." He pointed overhead to a line of fi gures carved in various dark woods and took one down. It bore a strange resemblance to both Derek and Rekemheb, though its copious hair sprang out in a sphere around its head. "This one, Samek, was a believer, and in Nubia his children believed as well, and his children' s children. Until they were taken into slavery and converted. All were lost, of course."

Najya studied the various shelves with obvious fascination. "I see * 235 *

dolls and statues costumed up to the Middle Ages, but none after."

"There were few believers, and if they made themselves statues, these were useless, for no one knew the ceremony."

Valerie raised her eyebrows at the realization. "I knew the ceremony from my research. Does that mean that I was the fi rst-?"

"Yes. In a thousand years," he fi nished. "Since the hundredth generation."

Valerie shuddered. "You mean since the Fall of Jerusalem."

He nodded.

She rested a hand on Najya's shoulder, seeking support. "I saw a vision of that day, of the slaughter. And of some that were allowed to leave."

His voice was gentle now. "If you are a child of Rekemheb, then they were your family."

"One of them was Idris ad Dawla," Najya interjected.

"It was." He opened an ebony box at the back of one of the shelves and lifted a fi gurine from it.

Najya took it from him and held it to the dim lantern light, turning it lovingly.

"This is the Emir of Jerusalem?" Najya asked, awestruck. "The ancestor of my family?"

Age had dulled the colors and cracks had formed along the wood grain, but the detail was so fi ne that the face and fi gure still had character.

Under a brown breastplate, he wore a green coat belted with a brightly colored sash. His pointed helmet was held in place by a bright blue-green turban with a tail that hung down his back and over the hilt of his sword.

"Of both your families, though, the lines descend from dif ferent wives."