Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

'I thought we'd been through all this,' said Quaint, as he tried to break through the brittle carapace of her anger. 'The Aksak's help is essential to-'

'To what? To torture me some more? To remind me what I've had to sacrifice?'

'Professor, I really don't think that-'

'Don't you "Professor" me, Cornelius Quaint!' seared Polly. She flopped herself down on an upturned wooden barrel and gazed disconsolately at the barren landscape around the encampment. 'I really don't understand you at all. One moment these Scarabs are nothing but scavenging animals picking at the carcass of life, and then you're prepared to fight alongside them as if they were your brothers! Does that not even bother you?'

'Bother me? Of course it bothers me! I don't relish throwing my lot in with the sort of people that on any other day I would probably be up against – but this is not any other day.'

'The enemy of my enemy is my friend?'

'Something like that,' said Quaint. 'The Hades Consortium is a big foe to fight, Polly, and I cannot do it alone. Allying myself with the Clan Scarabs was a hard choice to make…but it was also a necessary one.'

'And you're an expert in necessary choices, are you?' asked Polly.

'I don't expect you to understand, Polly,' Quaint replied, unsure if he really wanted to win this argument. 'I've learned a lot about human nature…particularly the darker side. I've travelled the world and I've seen much that turned my stomach – things that I could not just stand by and watch. So I interfered in matters that I knew little about. I intervened because I thought them to be wrong. But I wasn't qualified to make that judgement, don't you see? I judged them on my terms, by my ethics!'

'You're only proving my point for me. You're allowing your judgement to be impaired by circumstance, Cornelius. You talk about things like ethics, and yet where are they when you make a deal with the Devil?'

Quaint glanced down at the ground, kicking at a clod of dried dirt. 'Professor, this is a fight that neither of us can win unless we have walked in each other's shoes. I have experience with the Hades Consortium. Close up. I know what they're capable of, and the Clan Scarabs are insects compared to them! When you understand that, maybe you'll understand why I choose to lay down with dogs. Desperate times call for desperate measures.'

'And uneasy alliances,' said Polly.

'Sometimes,' said Quaint. 'But make no mistake, Professor – these are most desperate times indeed.'

Soon after, three streaks of dust cut a path through the desert sands towards Umkaza. The afternoon sunlight cast long shadows across the uneven territory as Cornelius Quaint, Aksak Faroud and Polly North rode side by side. The conjuror had been forced to change many of his opinions about the Clan Scarabs of late, and was now convinced the band of thieves at least had a semblance of civility about them. They had allowed him to change his ragged, bloodied clothing for some of their own garments. Clad in much more suitable attire for a desert trek, he wore a pair of loose-fitting khaki trousers and a plain white cotton collarless shirt, with a scarf wrapped around his head to shield himself from the unrelenting sun. Quaint did not ask where the clothes came from, guessing that the answer might sit uneasily on his mind.

Riding at his side, a disgruntled Polly North took every available opportunity to scowl at the hooded Scarab leader. She had an intense dislike of him – that much would have been obvious to a blind man, but she had been notably silent on the journey from Bara Mephista. Despite the fact that Faroud had joined Quaint on his mission, it did nothing to change her opinion of him.

Soon, Aksak Faroud raised his hand into the air, signalling the trio to stop.

'Umkaza, dead ahead,' he said to the conjuror.

They rode through a semblance of a wooden gate, wide enough for two carts side by side and twenty feet high. Quaint dismounted and took a slow look around.

'Dead ahead, indeed,' he said.

The ground was strewn with personal belongings of all kinds, an obvious sign that the inhabitants left in a hurry. A pair of spectacles lay bent and crushed in the sand, and notebooks, various pieces of ceramic pottery and a range of personal effects were discarded where they had fallen. A row of canvas tents up on the rise had been slashed into rags, the material flapping loosely from bamboo frames in the wind.

As his eyes gradually took in the sight before him, Quaint was numbed at how ghostly the place felt, how silent. It was hard to believe that just the day before it had been a thriving excavation site, buzzing with excitement. He looked cautiously at Polly, who had also dismounted, and he wondered how on earth she felt. She was uncharacteristically quiet, and now he understood why.

Polly was near to tears. She walked forwards slowly up the gentle incline, past several pits that had once been areas of excavation, now nothing but empty holes in the ground. She collapsed onto her knees at the edge of the pit. Her own notebook was lying in the dirt, the corners bent, the pages torn. After so many dead ends, so many fruitless searches, it had been her dream to uncover the resting place of the fabled Pharaoh's Cradle. Now, that dream was lying spreadeagled in the dust.

Quaint rubbed the back of his neck, uncertain what to say. 'Look…this doesn't have to be the end, you know. I'm sure you can put another crew together…start digging afresh.'

Polly's voice was upset. 'Not enough time.'

'Oh, come on! The treasures in this place have laid here for hundreds of years, what's a couple of weeks going to hurt? We can get you to Cairo, or Mos Nettair or somewhere to get a new crew,' offered Quaint. 'I know a few folk at the British Museum, surely they can-'

'No, Cornelius!' yelled the Professor. 'You don't know what you're talking about! It's too late, all right? I don't have the time to crew up. The paperwork alone takes weeks out here! It's over, don't you see?' She stood and kicked a crooked spade into the pit. 'The only thing I ever found even the remotest bit interesting in this place was a pile of bones anyway! And not even ancient ones…at least then I might have been able to salvage something from this trip. Stumbling across a mass grave only twenty or thirty years old is hardly a great historical find, Cornelius. No…it's far too late to repair the damage now.'

Quaint quietly approached her side. 'If it's a matter of cost-'

'Cost has nothing to do with it! Cost is the least of my troubles. It is time that is against me…and not even my sponsor's vast fortune can buy any more of that. It's almost laughable really,' Polly continued, rising to her feet, striding away from him. 'I can still recall him telling me about the wonders of this place. He was so confident, so driven. He said that I'd unearth the greatest find of my career…a find that would cement my name in the annals of archaeology for ever. How wrong he was…how wrong we both were. And now I've got no time left. I've got a ship bound for England to catch. I have to attend a celebration…in my honour, would you believe? A celebration? What do I have to celebrate? Now I've got no choice but to return to the Queen as a failure!'

'The Queen? As in…Queen Victoria?' asked Quaint.

'The one and only,' confirmed Polly.

'It sounds like your benefactor has quite a pull with aristocracy,' noted Quaint.

'Cho-zen Li is one of the richest men in the world,' Polly said. 'He has quite a pull with everyone. He was so sure that I'd find the Pharaoh's Cradle that he organised a celebratory gala dinner for me at Buckingham Palace. The fifth of February, just over a month's time. I'm supposed to present my treasures as a gift for the Queen. I'm in luck if she thinks that nothing but bones and dirt are treasure!'