Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

Fortune snorted. “You know what? This isn’t a goddamn television show and I’m not your Captain Cruller anymore. We don’t need a guest star appearance, especially from someone who’s only here for publicity. You just want to see your face on CNN so you can sell a few more CDs. This is serious. People are dying here.” His face twisted, and for a moment Michael wondered who was talking, Fortune or Sekhmet. “We just buried King Cobalt. The Caliph intends to wipe out all the rest of us, along with the Living Gods and all their followers. This is war, and it’s real. I—we—don’t need dilettantes strolling in at the last minute.”

A wasp shrilled by Michael’s ear. He ignored it. “That’s what I figured you’d say. But you ain’t the only one here. What would Kate say? Or you, Lohengrin? Bugsy? You know what I got to offer.”

Lohengrin neither smiled nor frowned. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but evaporated before it could slide down his pale, doughy features. “He’s strong enough, ja? We shouldn’t turn down allies, John. We need every ace.”

“I’m a joker, not an ace,” Michael told him.

Lohengrin shrugged. Bugsy only stared. Sobek and Taweret were conferring sibilantly with Ali in Arabic, and she said something quietly to Fortune. Michael waited.

Finally Fortune looked down at the map again. “Fine. I don’t give a damn one way or the other. Just stay the hell away from me.”

“Not a problem,” Michael said. He waited a beat. “Where’s Kate?” he asked.

That brought Fortune’s head up again. “You’ll leave her alone.”

“I’ll let her tell me that.” Michael glanced at the map. “When you figure out where I can help you, let me know.” He turned to leave the tent. “No, you ain’t Captain Cruller no more,” he muttered. “You’re fucking Beetle Boy.”

He didn’t particularly care if Fortune or his companions heard him. He was tapping at his chest as he left, and the sound of drums echoed from the low hills around Lake Nasser.

“Ana! Earth Witch! Hey, I heard you saved the day with the dam.”

The woman, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, glanced over her shoulder at him. Her eyes widened as she recognized him, then narrowed tightly. “I thought I was ‘Earth Bitch’ to you.”

“Ouch.” Michael spread his lower hands. The lines of his tattoos crawled over his abdomen and biceps with the movement. “Hey, I was just pissed off when I said that, Ana. I really didn’t mean it to stick.”

“It did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet you are.” Ana took a breath, looking away from him to the nearest tent and back. “Kate doesn’t need you here. Your being around is only going to stir things up again, and that’s dangerous for Kate. You’ve hurt her badly enough. Distract her here and you could kill her.”

“C’mon, Ana, lighten up.”

Her dark eyes glittered under the hat. She glanced again at the tent. “I’m not joking.” Michael could see a deep sadness in her eyes, a grief that had never been there before. “You care about Kate? Then stay away from her. She won’t say that to you because she’s too polite for her own good, but I will.”

“She’s in there, isn’t she? Why don’t I just ask her what she thinks?”

“I can’t stop you. You always get what you want, don’t you?”

“Not always,” Michael told her. “Not with—” He stopped.

The tent flap flipped open and Kate stepped out. She looked tired and worried, the skin pouched and brown under her eyes. If she was startled to see him, she didn’t show it. He wondered if she’d been listening and for how long. “Michael,” she said, and a faint smile brushed her lips. She tossed a marble up and down in her right hand. Ana sniffed loudly and Kate glanced at her. “Take a walk with me, Michael?”

“Sure.” He extended his middle left hand to Kate. Her head moved from side to side faintly and he let the hand drop back down.

“We need to get you a hat,” she said. “And something over your torso and arms. You’re going to burn up here.”

She said little else, and Michael was content to walk alongside her. She led him across the road to an observation tower on the northern face of the dam. The guard there, a joker whose face was silver and reflective, nodded to Kate and opened the door. Beyond was a set of metal stairs. When they reached the first platform, she stopped and pointed north—downstream. The water on that side lay a few hundred feet below them, a winding lake held back by another dam several miles north. “That’s the Low Dam, Aswan Dam, built by the British,” Kate said, seeing where he was looking. “Four miles away, maybe a little more. The island just this side of it, the smaller one over to the right, is Philae; some of the Living Gods are there right now, but mostly they’re on Sehel Island, just on the other side of the dam. The Gods and their followers restored the ruins of the temples and rebuilt the town over the last several years. Philae’s really gorgeous, truly breathtaking. You should go see it if you get the chance, before …” She didn’t finish the phrase. Her voice was strained, dispassionate, and too quick. Michael thought she was talking mostly so he couldn’t.

“The main city of Aswan’s maybe another four or five miles past the Low Dam on the east bank,” she continued. “Syrene’s on the western bank, directly across from Sehel—again, just a bit north of the dam. Right now there’s a quarter million or so of the followers of the Living Gods living there, most of them refugees from downriver—from Alexandria, Cairo, Karnak, and Luxor. They can’t go any farther. There’s nowhere else in Egypt where they could survive except along the Nile. So they’ll stand here, with their Living Gods.”

Kate touched his arm, pointing behind them. Michael turned, feeling the lingering touch of her fingers on his skin. South of the dam, a gigantic lake pooled behind the curved ramparts of the dam out to the horizon, its water crowding the top of the structure. “Yeah, Lake Nasser,” he said. “I know. I looked at the maps.”

Kate smiled. “You knew all this?”

“Pretty much. Figured it might be useful.”

A nod. “If it weren’t for Ana, we would have already lost Syrene and Sehel Island, and I don’t know how many people. We won the battle but almost lost Aswan Dam in the process. That wouldn’t be as catastrophic as if this dam were to rupture—that would send a wall of water rushing all the way down to the Mediterranean—but it would have been bad enough. Controlling the dams is the key to controlling Egypt.” She took a breath. “Some of the Living Gods are afraid that Abdul-Alim might just try and take out the High Dam if things get desperate. He’s a fanatic, Michael. He means to destroy the Living Gods and all their followers.”

Michael stared downriver. On Philae, the sun glinted on gilded columns. Feluccas dotted the waters of the Nile, moving from island to island, shore to shore. He tried to imagine it all gone in a roaring fury of white water.

“Why’d you come, Michael?”

He knew she’d ask. He’d formulated a hundred replies to the question on the way, but they’d all evaporated in the heat and sunlight and her presence. He licked dry lips. “I wanted … the way things happened back on American Hero … I don’t know, Kate. I really don’t. It’s all fucking mixed up in my head. I wasn’t happy where I was. Even playing with the band wasn’t helping. I felt like if I came here—if I showed up …” He tapped at his chest; a mournful, low dhoom answered. “Y’know, back in L.A., we talked about doing something genuine, something that wasn’t faked and artificial. I’ve been on stage most of my life; I worked my ass off to get where I am. But I know I could do more. The fame, the money—I have all of that I need. I can either play with it all, or I can use it. The visibility, the publicity, the money—they can be tools, just like what the wild card gave me. Sometimes they’re better.” He flicked his fingers over his chest; a rapid drumbeat answered as the throats along his neck pulsed—a quartet of paradiddles, followed by the splash of a cymbal. “I’ve always been able to get what I want if I work at it hard enough.” He found her gaze, held it. “Every time but once. I really hate fucking up. With you, I fucked up worse than I ever have, and I’m not even sure why. I know I’ve regretted it every day since.”