Rebecca was awakened by the sounds of Sais outside her window and the light was shining in. She looked over at Simonetta’s sleeping form laying next to her. It had been a restless night. She had wanted so much more from Simonetta, but Rebecca had no idea if Simonetta even liked women like that. She sat up and felt the Egyptian heat already starting to make its way in.

Whatever other thoughts Rebecca had were lost to the pounding on the door. “Simonetta! Rebecca!” Hawk shouted from the other side. “Get moving!”

Simonetta sat up and stretched before she hopped off the mattress and hurriedly dressed. Rebecca stared at her as she moved around the room, seeing her naked under her clothes. Even if nothing else came of it, Rebecca would treasure the mental image of Simonetta in the nude for a long time to come.

“Hurry up,” Simonetta said throwing Rebecca’s dress at her. Simonetta hastily applied the kohl around her eyes yet still looked flawless. Rebecca tried to do the same but ended up looking more like a raccoon than she had intended. She did not even have time to put up her hair. Within a few minutes, both women walked out the door, as Hawk leaned against the building, waiting for them.

“We catch the first airship to Cairo,” he said. Sais was coming to life as people went about the hustle and bustle. Hawk and Simonetta kept going straight through toward the airport, despite Rebecca wanting to take in the sights.

They passed a street magician tracing glowing hieroglyphs in the air to the delight of a growing crowd. “Wow,” Rebecca said, watching those flaming symbols hanging in the air. “Could I learn to do that?” she said.

“If your hika is strong enough, my pretty girl,” the magician said, with a mischievous grin.

“Hika?” Rebecca said.

“Magic,” the magician replied. Rebecca reached for her pocket, that she was used to on her old dress.

“I’m sorry as I have no money, I was robbed and—”

“It is no matter, Miss…”

“Birch,” Rebecca said. “Re—” she was cut off by Simonetta dragging her away.

“Never give your name to a magician,” Simonetta said.

“Why not?”

“A name is powerful, which is why the old Pharaohs were always so busy trying to make sure their names would be spoken for centuries. If you give your name to a magician, they can cast all sorts of spells upon you.”

The magician was still tracing symbols in the air, for some other interested tourists. “We should go, Rebecca,” Simonetta said pulling her by the arm.

“Simonetta, how shall I know if my hika is strong?”

“That’s a bit much to explain,” Simonetta said as they arrived at the airport.

The air in the ticket office was as still as an ancient tomb as the queue shuffled through at a glacial pace. Rebecca had never been so grateful when they started up the gangplank to the moored airship. This was hardly the luxury liner that had taken her from Athens to Naukratis, but it was not some flying straw-wagon either.

Rebecca saw European ladies in their fancy dresses accompanied by gentlemen in black suits and occasionally by Constructs with polished brass faces. Rebecca knew under other circumstances she would be among them, but they paid her no more attention than they would any other Egyptian woman. Rebecca was annoyed at their haughtiness, as if they would not recognize one of their own.

She stood between Hawk and Simonetta and watched as the Egyptians shuffled around them. Rebecca could not help smiling as she felt like she fitted in more with the Egyptians than with these foreign tourists. What was the word that Hawk and Simonetta used? Shemmo?

Rebecca watched peasant women in tube dresses like hers mingled with white-kilted men, Muslim women in full body chadors and even one man who Rebecca guessed was a nomad from the western deserts. He was completely covered in colorful robes, and even his eyes were shaded by tinted spectacles. She could hear the ticking of his pocket watch as he moved past her and then with a jerky gait disappeared into the airship.

When Rebecca and her companions boarded, the three of them settled into one of the passenger lounges. Not as large as the airship that took her from London to Athens, there was only two rows divided by aisles along the windows and another aisle down the center.

The Egyptians sat in the central seats and were eagerly talking amongst themselves while the poorer tourists who had not gone into the European lounge were busy looking out the windows. There was also a contingent of women in military uniforms, rigidly standing in the rear. Rebecca remembered reading about them, the priestesses of Sakhmit, the so-called Ladies of Flame. They seemed to be watching everyone.

The engines rumbled to life and the massive airship started moving, and Rebecca walked over to the window, where the crowd had already assembled, watching the landmarks of the city of Sais pass by beneath them. The only constant was the silver ribbon that was the Nile.

After a short while she grew tired of the jostling crowd, so she returned to the seats they had claimed to discover Simonetta was gone. “Where did—?”

“Went to stretch her legs,” Hawk said.

“I do wish to thank you for saving my life last night, Mr. Ramsey.”

“Please, call me Hawk.”

“Hawk,” Rebecca said. “Simonetta said that the two of you were, intimate.”

“Simonetta is the complicated woman,” Hawk said.

“Oh?”

“I’m sure she told you that her father is the famous Egyptologist Giovanni Belzoni,” he said. Rebecca nodded. “Belzoni died over seventy years ago and Simonetta ain’t much older than thirty.”

“Why would she lie? Who is her father?” she asked. Hawk shrugged. Before Rebecca could ask anything else, several gunshots rang out.