Her Kind Of Trouble

My fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, it sure as hell concerns me now.” And I swung. A quick, angry arc across his ankles. Not enough to cut anything off—I doubted I had that strength, or this new sword had such sharpness.

But definitely enough to bite. And unexpected.

That’s why it worked.

With a startled cry, the man jumped back. I surged up onto one knee, capturing my gauzy skirt with my free hand, and swung again while he was still off balance. It forced him back a few inches, which was all I wanted.

Before he could stop me, I ducked under his weapons, right past him and toward the front of the shop, no longer trapped.

He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.

“Do you really plan to take this into the street?” I asked. “With all these nice bystanders and policemen?”

The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.

He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. “You have no business here.”

But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a personal power that was uniquely feminine. “You just made sure I do.”

When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.

Then I heard Rhys’s distinctly Welsh voice. “Uffach cols!” he swore. “What’s this? Aren’t you that fellow—”

“From the airport,” I said, not looking back. “Yeah. Now he thinks he’s Sinbad.”

The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, “Shorta! Shorta!”

I hoped that meant police.

My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.

I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.

“What the hell was that all about?”

“I only knew I was coming to Egypt last night…I guess that’s night before last, now,” I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. “How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me? At the airport!”

“I didn’t tell many people.” Rhys hadn’t lost the crease of concern between his blue eyes. Not while I talked to the police, and not while I bargained the merchant down to a third of his asking price for the sword that had protected me.

Normally I’m a wimpy barterer, but after the merchant’s earlier vanishing act, I was in a combative mood.

Now I wore the sword’s wooden scabbard slung innocently over my shoulder, a recent tourist’s purchase. I hadn’t decided on a name for the blade, yet. I would worry about concealing it later.

“It’s not your fault,” I assured Rhys.

“I told the hotel, to get you a bed. I told my friend Niko, when I asked to borrow the car. A group of people working on the project own it together, so it is possible one of the others know.”

“I never said to keep it a secret.”

“I told Tala, the woman I wish you to meet—”

“Rhys.” I stopped and fixed him with my best scowl, swordfight-proven. “Let’s not empower fear. The man didn’t even use my name. He may not have even known who I really am.”

“Then how is it that, so soon after the airport, he found you here?”

I looked around us, at a rope of guitars hanging outside one souk and a rainbow of glittering material draped before another, at the press and flow of people all around us. “Well…we wouldn’t have noticed anyone following us around here, that’s for sure.”

“But how is it the man could have followed us in this crowd, and in Cairo traffic? And Maggi, why would he?”

Yeah, that one had me stumped, as well.

“Rings for rings,” called the veiled woman working at the jewelry counter nearby, which made me look down at my left hand.

My breath caught in my throat, stopping as surely as it had when Sinbad shoved his elbow into me. “Unless…”

I could barely form the words. But the sudden rush of possibility was too horrible to keep to myself. “Unless I’m wearing some kind of tracking device.”

“But who could possibly—” Rhys apparently saw how I was staring at the wedding ring.

The one Lex had given me.

Lex, one of the lead members of the Comitatus.

That’s the problem with old wounds. They reopen.

“The guy attacked me with a sword,” I whispered.

Rhys grabbed my hand, PDA or not. “Now wait a moment, Maggi. You were in a shop chockablock with swords. Just because this stranger used one does not mean he’s a member of that secret order.”

Yes, Rhys knew. I hadn’t taken any vows of silence.

“They used ceremonial daggers, didn’t they?”

“There is a difference between the two. Even if there were not, even if the man were—” he lowered his voice “—Comitatus, that could mean Phillip Stuart sent him, not necessarily Lex.”

“But Lex is the only one who could have told Phil, and how else did that man follow us from the airport?” I freed my hand from his and waded through the crowd to the jewelry counter, where I could see the female clerk’s smile in her eyes, over her veil. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Yes. Rings for rings.”

“I don’t want to buy—well, not a ring,” I decided, since if I wanted help, I couldn’t expect her to give it for free. I glanced impatiently at the cluster of cheap pewter pendants and quickly chose the horned disk that symbolizes Isis. “But I was hoping you could check this ring and tell me if there’s anything strange about it. Anything like a…a tracking device?”

The clerk stared at me blankly, as if disappointed. Apparently her English wasn’t good enough to include tracking device.

Great. “Is this a normal ring?” I tried, tugging the wedding band from my finger and sliding it across the counter toward her.

Then I froze, because of what she’d just slid hopefully across the counter toward me.

A brass chalice-well pendant—two intersecting circles, also called a vesica piscis. Similar to the pendant I already wore, had worn in one version or another since I was fourteen, except for the Arabic flourishes.

Symbol of the Grailkeepers.

Chapter 4

When the hopeful clerk repeated, “Rings for rings,” I finally understood her. I’d simply known the childhood rhyme as Circle to Circle.

But circles, rings…they were all eternal loops. It lost little in translation. And it was a recognition code.

“Never an end,” I greeted softly, purposefully giving the next piece of the Grailkeeper’s chant.

She clearly recognized it. She beamed. I even caught a pale hint of white teeth behind her veil as she reached across the counter and grasped my hand. Her grip was firm. Then her eyes closed and she drew in a long, deep breath, as if savoring…

What? Was she sensing the essence of goddessness that seemed to empower women whom I touched, of late?

It wasn’t like I expected her to rip off her veil and head scarf and demand equal pay for equal work. But when she opened her eyes, all she said was, “It is you!”

Uh-huh… “What is me?”

“You have come to reclaim the sultana’s magic,” she continued. “As in the tales.”

For a moment I had the sick feeling that there was an actual sultana out there somewhere. One more responsibility I hadn’t meant to take on. Then I realized that my word for the position would be queen.

“You mean like the fairy tale, about the queen and her nine daughters?” I asked.

“Seven,” corrected the clerk—but as surely as I’d heard different versions of the story, I’d heard different numbers. Sometimes the queen had as many as thirteen daughters, sometimes as few as three. “Seven beautiful daughters.”

Rhys, behind me, asked, “Does she mean the story where the queen gives her daughters magical cups?”

The clerk’s eyes widened. She backed away two steps, making what I assumed was a protective gesture.

“It’s all right,” I assured her. “His mother is a Grailkeeper.”

She stared at me blankly.

“A…Chalice Keeper,” I tried.

She nodded slowly and said, “A Cup Holder.”

“Um…yeah. A Cup Holder.” Now that one suffered in translation. “He knows the story.”

Pour your powers into these cups, the queen instructs. Hide them so that your energy can live on even though you be forgotten.

The veiled clerk continued to eye Rhys as if he meant to attack her. Or me. With his big, manly hands and all that…testosterone.

“Perhaps I should go look at…yes, there,” said Rhys, choosing the first thing he noticed. “One can’t have enough T-shirts, can one?”

Only after he’d backed away did the “Cup Holder’s” shoulders sink in relief. Poor, gentle Rhys.

“Let me try again,” I said. “Hello. My name is Magdalene Sanger.”

“I is Munira,” said the clerk, clearly pleased. “It is…honor…to meet champion.”

“To meet what?”

“Champion of the Holy One.” She opened her arms toward me, like a tah-dah move. “It is you, is not?”

“I’m looking for goddess cups, but I wouldn’t call myself a champion.” Certainly not the champion.

Even factoring in the number of women who’d forgotten or dismissed the legends, I suspect the number of hereditary Grailkeepers had to count in the hundreds, if not the thousands. The whole world had once worshipped goddesses, after all. We’d just kept such a low profile for so long, we’d lost track of each other.

There still had to be a handful who understood what the stories meant. Not just me.

“Blessings upon you, Champion,” said Munira.

I gave up arguing with her, in favor of better information. “Well…thank you. Would you happen to know where a goddess cup is hidden?”

Like the Isis Grail?

She stared, brow furrowed.

“Did your mother teach you a rhyme or song about where the Holy One’s cup might be waiting?” That’s how most of our knowledge had been kept. Power mongers rarely think to dissect fairy tales or nursery rhymes.

“Ah!” She nodded—and recited something singsong in Arabic.

I smiled a stupid half grin of ignorance, and Munira took pity on me, but her attempt at translating was clearly an effort.

“She…she sleeps, yes?” She mimed closing her eyes, head tipping sideways in illustration. “With no light. She is.”

“She is what?”

Munira shook her head. “She is. And much…always…will she be such.”

Then she nodded at her completely unhelpful attempt, proud of herself. To be fair, her English so far outshone my Arabic that I couldn’t do anything but thank her.

That, and make a mental note to come back with someone—a woman—who was fluent in both languages.

“May she smile upon you,” said Munira—then looked down at the wedding ring I’d set on the counter. “What is you wish for this ring, Champion? You say…trapping?”

No reason to confuse matters with the concept of a tracking device. “Is there anything unusual about this ring? Something that does not belong, embedded in it?”

I felt sick, just having to ask. Lex and I were working on trusting each other, damn it. If it turned out he’d bugged me again, the man would need more than a sword to defend himself.

Munira raised a jeweler’s loupe to her eye, a strange contrast to the veiling, and professionally examined the ring. If there was anything artificial there, she would surely see it.

“It is written,” she said. “Graven?”

“Engraved?”

Nodding, she found a pencil to trace the unfamiliar letters, right to left. They came out sloppy, like a child’s—but again, any attempt I made to write the beautiful flourishes of Arabic would have looked worse. All I needed was legibility.

That’s what I got. Virescit vulnere virtus.

Latin. Something about vulnerability and strength. I’d seen the words before—over Lex’s father’s fireplace.

It was the Stuart clan motto.

“Does this…understand…to you?” she asked, and I nodded tightly. “Is all I see. Is fine ring. Very old. Very expensive.”

So, just for giggles… “How expensive?”

She named a price—in American dollars, not Egyptian pounds—which staggered me. For just gold? No diamonds or anything?

“You have generous husband, no?” she asked.

No. What I had was a contradiction to Lex’s oh-so-casual, standard-for-women-overseas story. Was it also company policy for businesswomen to wear expensive, been-in-the-family-for-generations, complete-with-motto rings?

“We sell much fine jewelry,” offered Munira. “Very low price.” And like that the strange Grailkeeper interlude turned back to the assumed normalcy of souvenir shopping at the Khan el-Khalili.

I’d seen the Pyramids of Giza as we flew in, and caught glimpses while we were in the city, they were so close to urban Cairo. But they were the opposite direction from Alexandria.

The drive had its points of interest, for sure, like the occasional sight of fellahin, or peasant farmers, riding overpacked bicycles, donkeys or even camels down the road. Rhys pointed out the road we would take if I wanted to check out the oldest Christian monastery in existence. But contrasted against pyramids almost anything would seem anticlimactic.

Even speculating about who had attacked me with a scimitar—and what Munira had meant about me being “Champion.”

“Perhaps you’re special,” offered Rhys.

“I’m not special.”

He glanced toward me as if he wanted to contradict that but hesitated from propriety’s sake.

“I mean, I’m no more special than the next person. Certainly no more than the next Grailkeeper.”

“Perhaps you are. That is to say…perhaps you have been somehow chosen. You did find the Melusine Grail. And you did drink from it.”

“My cousin Lil drank from it, too,” I reminded him. “And my friend Sophie, and Aunt Brigitte.”

“That happened some days later, did it not?”

It did, but… “One thing I’ve liked about being a Grailkeeper, ever since I realized the concept was bigger than my grandmother’s old stories, is that there’s no hierarchy. No inner circles. No one woman—one person, I mean—is more important than another.”

“Unlike the Comitatus?” Damn, but Rhys could be insightful when he wanted.

“As far as I can see, the only difference between a secret warrior society and a pyramid scheme—the financial kind—is that nobody tries to sell you anything.”

“Instead, they try to kill you.” Rhys shared my grin, then asked, “Do you still believe that Lex was denied leadership simply because he had leukemia as a child?”

“It makes a weird sort of sense, especially if the order was established during pagan times. An ancient belief equates the health, even the virility, of the land with that of its king. Who knows? That could explain how my country has managed to prosper under presidents who were real hound dogs.”

“But surely if Lex has fully recovered…”

“Oh, he recovered all right.” But thinking about Lex and virility at the same time wasn’t going to uncomplicate anything. Besides, I was still annoyed that he’d tricked me into wearing a family heirloom—so annoyed that I’d taken it off. “I used to wonder why he was so driven to stay in shape. Now I guess I know. But no way would Phil relinquish control that easily. My best guess is that Lex will try for a peaceful coup.”

“That would be the path of a true leader, would it not?”

Depends on how you defined leadership. “He said something strange to me, Rhys. He said he needed me, needed balance, in order to do something important.”

“He needs you, and you flew to Egypt?”

“He said it a few months ago. Hasn’t mentioned it since. Besides, you needed me, too, right?”

Rhys slanted a skeptical look my direction. “I didn’t invite you here to be my bodyguard, Maggi. I do care for your safety rather more than that.”

“But if someone thinks you’re close enough to finding the Isis Grail to try killing you…”

“Then you deserve to be here for the actual discovery,” he finished. “I’ve gotten permission for you to participate. As an academic observer, that is.”

“To participate in…” Belatedly, I realized exactly what he meant. “The project? Cleopatra’s sunken palace? Really?”

He grinned. “You and she have a great deal in common, after all.”

Noting how his eyes shone at the gift he’d given me, I thought, Attracted to two men?

Or, worse, was he going to say something gushy about immortal beauty? I didn’t want Rhys admiring me that way, at least not saying so.

I was officially dating Lex, trust or no trust.

“You are both strong women,” Rhys clarified, to my relief.

That seemed the safer analogy.

Speedboats bounce. At least, they do around other boats, as in the partially enclosed harbor of Alexandria. Salt spray flew into my face, sunlight glared across the water, and I loved it. This no longer felt as foreign as Egypt. It felt more familiarly like the Mediterranean—which, just beyond the crescent of land enclosing the harbor from either side, it was.

You may have read about the discovery of Cleopatra’s Palace in Newsweek or National Geographic, or seen a special about it on cable television. I had, even before I’d started my search for the goddess grails…or learned that Cleopatra herself had claimed to be the reincarnation of the goddess Isis.

“That’s common knowledge to Egyptologists,” Rhys assured me, shouting over the engine of the motorboat we rode toward the anchored cabin cruiser where the main archeological team worked. “Pharaohs were gods on earth, or so they and their followers believed—hence that little tiff between Moses and his foster brother, before the exodus? Cleopatra VII was simply maintaining an important tradition passed down from millennia of rulers.”

“Cleopatra VII?” Had there been that many?

“She’s the one you’re thinking of,” Rhys assured me.

“Seduced Julius Caesar, then Mark Antony, heavy-on-the-eye-shadow, death-by-asp Cleopatra.”

“The very same. It’s well-known that, amid her palace complex, she had a temple to Isis. But we now assume that the same earthquake which destroyed the Pharos Lighthouse submerged the palace complex as well. It was long after that nasty death-by-asp business, though.”

I looked from the approaching cabin cruiser back toward the coastal city of Alexandria, which, from the water, vaguely resembled an especially dusty, disorganized Venice off the Grand Canal…except for the chunks of cement blocks at the water’s edge, to fight erosion. Then I turned to the medieval fortress that guarded the harbor entrance from the sea, and tried to imagine how this ancient city would have looked a thousand years before even that had been built. “And where there is a temple to Isis…”

“It stands to reason there may be a reliquary,” agreed Rhys. “And where there is a reliquary…”

“There could be relics like a goddess grail.” I shivered happily at the thought. Another font of female power, just waiting for us under the salty water. If only I could collect enough—however many that might be—then they could finally be revealed to a world in need of their balance and power.

The man we’d hired to ferry us out to the cabin cruiser steered well around what I recognized as a diver-down buoy. He cut his engine and levered the motor up out of the water for safety. Momentum carried us the rest of the way to the ship. When I saw the name of this floating headquarters—Soeur d’Aphrodite, or Aphrodite’s Sister—I felt all the more certain of the rightness of this visit.

Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus, isn’t just a goddess. She may well be another face of Isis.

“Several significant archeologists have been leading the effort to explore these sites since their discovery,” explained Rhys, grabbing hold of the ladder on the side of the ship as we coasted in beside it. “Whenever they can get permission. This is one of the few places in Alexandria where the scholars aren’t having to fight developers for rights to the land. There is even some talk about creating an underwater tunnel system specifically so that tourists can view the finds—once the government manages to lessen the toxicity in the local seawater. After you.”

He had my laptop case again, so all I had to do was gather up the excess of my torn cotton skirt, twist it, and tuck it into the waistband before I climbed up. If anyone had a problem with seeing my knees, they’d just have to get over it. I wasn’t about to risk falling into water Rhys had just announced was toxic. Once I swung onto the lower deck I freed my skirts, while Rhys followed me.

What came after was a pleasant jumble of introductions and welcomes from an international assortment of divers and archeologists. The director of this particular branch of the project, Pierre d’Alencon, shook my hand but seemed busy with other matters, so I backed to the edge of the deck, out of the way, to simply observe. Rhys got permission to show me the computer programs being used to map the underwater finds, so I turned in that direction—

And faced blazing green eyes.

“You,” snarled a sickeningly familiar female voice, in French.

Right before its owner pushed me over the railing.

Chapter 5

I made a desperate scramble at the metal railing as I fell over it. But I was too surprised, and it wasn’t enough. The impact against the back of my legs, against my grasping hands, gave way to weightlessness.

Then, with a splash, I vanished beneath the surface of the toxic harbor—and quickly closed my eyes. Sinking downward, before my frantic strokes and kicks stopped my descent, I wouldn’t have seen any goddess relics even if they waited right there in front of me.

Some champion!

Only after I managed to struggle upward, boots and soggy skirt and all, and my face broke the waves into the air, did I open my eyes to the sunshine—

And behold, far above, the bitch who’d pushed me.

Catrina Dauvergne of the Musée de Cluny, Paris.

The woman who’d once stolen the Melusine Grail from me.

The willowy, tawny-haired Frenchwoman was not smiling.

That made two of us.

Once I managed to drag myself up the chrome ladder and back onto the deck, I took two dripping steps in my attacker’s direction, my hand fisting. Maybe women don’t normally default to violence as quickly as men, but this was by no means quick. This had been simmering for weeks.

Rhys shouldered himself between us. “I forgot to mention her being here, Maggi. I’m so sorry.”

He would be. “Move.”

“I will not.” Protecting people brings out the tough-guy in Rhys, even when they didn’t deserve protection.

“Yes, Pritchard,” agreed Catrina in smooth French. “This is not for you to interfere.”

“But it is for me to interfere,” insisted a new voice, that of Monsier d’Alencon—also in French. The French seemed to be running this particular show, after all. “Explain yourselves.”

I wrung out my skirt into a splattering puddle; it clung like wet tissue. “You want me to explain?”

My French, unlike my Arabic, is fluent.

“I wish someone to explain so that I know which of you two—or three—” his gaze included Rhys “—to dismiss.”

Catrina and I glared at each other. But this was a choice expedition, remember? Newsweek. National Geographic. Cable. The threat of expulsion carried weight. I could read her hatred in her narrowed gaze. She’d once accused me of playing archeologist, raiding medieval sanctuaries and stealing the Melusine Chalice instead of leaving it in situ—not that I’d had any choice! She, on the other hand, had pretended that she would put the chalice on display in the Cluny, where it might empower countless visitors with its proof of goddess worship, only to then sell it onto the black market.

Either way, Catrina and I each had enough on the other to permanently ruin both our chances of involvement with either Cleopatra’s Palace or the Temple of Isis everyone hoped to find there—and, worse, to end Rhys’s internship, which he’d gotten through the Sorbonne. I was comfortably employed, waiting only for the fall semester to start. Catrina, I assumed, still had a job with the Cluny, unless she’d quit to live off her ill-gotten gains. But after he’d left the priesthood, archeology was the only profession Rhys had found that spoke to him.