LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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