Darren Craske - The Eleventh Plague

'I suppose I should congratulate you,' Alexandria said, seating herself.

'For defeating the Hades Consortium?' asked Quaint.

'No…for not getting yourself lynched by the Clan Scarabs,' Alexandria replied in clipped tones.

'Ah, they're a bunch of puppy dogs once you get to know them!' said Quaint, with a wave of his hand. He had not expected a warm welcome – which was advantageous, as he certainly did not receive one – nevertheless, he had learned much of Aloysius Bedford's disappearance and Alexandria had a right to know what had happened to her father.

'Sit, if you like. You are making the place look untidy,' offered Alexandria, sipping orange juice from her glass tumbler.

'I'd rather stand, Alex…I don't have much time.'

'I know you hate long goodbyes, but you have only just arrived,' laughed Alexandria, her dark eyes floating across Quaint's strait-laced expression. 'Let me guess…more obligations? Well, I suppose that I should feel honoured that you can spare me the time to say goodbye…it is more than I got the last time.'

'Alex, I'm tired and I could really do without this, if it's all the same,' Quaint said. 'A lot has happened over the past few days.'

'I have no wish to hear you boldly recount the tale of your adventure.'

'Perhaps not…but you need to hear it anyway,' Quaint said firmly. 'It's important…it's about your father.'

Alexandria remained silent. She sat on the edge of her seat and waited for Quaint to continue. And continue he did…

'I've learned much of late…about myself, about the Clan Scarabs, about Egypt…and much about your father.' He paused, expecting an interruption, but none came. 'What I have to tell you will shake you, Alex. It will shake you to the core of your being…but I think it may just help to heal a few old wounds.'

Ten minutes later, Cornelius Quaint had completed his tale, and he and Alexandria stood at the edge of her flat rooftop, their hands entwined.

'My father…did not leave us of his own volition?' Alexandria said, her eyes sore with tears. They flowed effortlessly, twenty years' worth of pain. 'He sacrificed himself, you say…so that others might live?'

Quaint held Alexandria's hand ever tighter, as if she was in danger of floating away from him. 'His last act was one of heroism, Alex, not of cowardice. Aloysius had to run away…but he was not running away from those he loved – he was running for them. He was infected with the disease. His death was inevitable. The only thing that he could do was get himself as far away from people as he could.'

Alexandria felt herself falter and she stepped away from the roof's edge, almost falling into Quaint's embrace. 'That is good to find out, Cornelius. But how can you know that?' she asked.

Quaint bit his lip. Your father's ghost visited a friend of mine and told her, sprang into his mind, but he thought better of it. 'Destine stumbled across Aloysius's old journal. It was all in there…word for word. Unfortunately, it was lost,' he said, happy with his discretion.

'So I have wronged him all these years then? He was capable of compassion…of love…of courage.' Alexandria looked desperately into the conjuror's black eyes trying to find an explanation within them.

'He was,' Quaint said, the words cooling on his lips. 'If he hadn't discovered what Cho-zen Li planned to do to the most intelligent minds in England, we could all be stuck in the dark ages by now! Your father gave his life so that others would live.'

'I have carried anger for him in my heart for so long,' Alexandria said, and the tears fell relentlessly. She had long since given up wiping them away. 'How could I have wronged him so badly?'

'You felt betrayed, Alex…no one can blame you for that,' said Quaint.

'I can blame me!' she yelled, her eyes ignited with a raging inferno of self-loathing. 'I do not weep for him, Cornelius – I weep for myself. All these wasted years…the years of hating him and yet loving him at the same time. How can I bear to look at myself in the mirror? How can you bear to look at me?'

Alexandria's body seemed to have trebled in weight and she could no longer support it. Shattered by guilt, she slumped herself deeper into Quaint's arms. How many people had she hurt over the years because she could never allow anyone to get close…never allow herself to trust? How long had she wrapped herself in a cocoon of such bitterness? How many men had she allowed herself to love? The answer to that was just the one…and he was stood by her side.

Here he was, close enough to touch, close enough to hold – but still a world away.

'When do you have to leave?' she asked through trembling lips.

'Right away.' Quaint steeled himself, swallowing back the emotion. 'I have to get to Cairo as fast as I can and try to cobble passage on the quickest vessel out of this country.'

Tiny formations of anxious saliva congregated at the corners of Alexandria's mouth as she tried to speak. 'Will you not stay with me, Cornelius?'

Quaint broke from their embrace abruptly. 'Alex…please don't ask that of me.'

'But why not?'

'Because I might just say yes,' Quaint said. 'Alex, in another world…another lifetime…another me, perhaps…I would stay in a heartbeat. But I have responsibilities that must take precedence. I cannot ignore them. I wish that I could.' His face flashed a brief smile, but his eyes stayed as dark as pitch. 'It seems that once again, Fate has selected me as its plaything…and once again, I find myself being drawn back to England's shores just when I-'

Alexandria cocked an anxious eyebrow at him. 'Just when you what?'

Quaint stopped himself from answering.

'Time is always our enemy, Cornelius,' Alexandria said. 'You and I never seem to find enough of it. Even if we could live for ever…there would still not be enough.'

'You cannot possibly appreciate how ironic that statement is to me, Alex,' said Quaint. 'Maybe I'll come back and tell you one day.'

'I would like that,' the Egyptian woman said, gathering up her courage, wiping away her tears. 'You want swift passage to England, you say? Well, I may just be able to help you out with that.' Alexandria pushed past him through the door to her inner quarters and darted down the whitewashed staircase into her shop.

Typical Alex, Quaint thought, one minute she's begging me to stay and the next she's practically booting me out the door!

Downstairs in her workshop, Alexandria began sorting through pile after pile of material covering a large desk that Quaint had not even noticed.

'I have a friend who owns a spice clipper,' she said. 'Captain Madinah's craft is blindingly fast, superior to all other vessels in the port. From what you have said, I imagine that you will be going after Cho-zen Li as well?'

'Once I disrupt his plans for the Queen…' replied Quaint.

'Well, I have something here you might be able to make use of,' Alexandria said, as she finally produced a dusty old ledger from under a roll of silk, which she discarded absentmindedly onto a nearby chair. 'He placed an order with me, remember? That coat over there that you loved so much? I have his home address, if you want it.'

Quaint's mouth fell open at the serendipitous development, and he tapped upon his teeth with his fingernails. Perhaps some coincidences were not that bad, after all.

'And I suppose you might as well keep this.' Alexandria lifted a dark indigo, almost black, long-coat from the rail at her side. 'I presume that you will have to kill Cho-zen Li, and finery like this is simply wasted upon the dead,' she said, throwing the coat towards Quaint. 'It must be your lucky day!'

'Alex, I sailed halfway around the world to save Egypt from destruction,' he said, with a reflective, melodic tone. 'I have been tied up, beaten, tortured, blown up and almost damn near killed on a number of occasions. I rescued a hot-headed professor from a gang of vile thieves that I was then forced to ally myself with. I defeated an old enemy's plot, only to discover a brand new one waiting in the wings…and now I must race steamship across the ocean to save the life of a queen who is under threat from something that she cannot see, cannot hear and cannot touch.' Cornelius Quaint offered Alexandria a defeatist grin. 'Oh, yes…I have simply fabulous luck.'