A clerk sat hunched at a mahogany desk, gold pince-nez perched on the tip of his nose. He looked up as they entered, the movement of his hands never pausing—he tapped the edge of each paper in his stack precisely against the desk, aligning them into perfect blocks of order.
“I have an appointment for Lady Eden Pemberley,” Eden announced, and the clerk’s eyes flicked first to her face, then toher red hair, then to the battered dossier she produced from her satchel.
He reached for it. His hands were soft, his fingernails immaculate. “We were expecting you at eight.”
She glanced at the clock above his head. She was precisely four minutes late, but Max had drilled into her the importance of not arguing or making excuses, so she held her tongue.
He thumbed through her dossier, pausing at the letters of recommendation and the translation certificates. “Interesting endorsements. But a rather ambitious undertaking, my lady.”
“That is rather the point.” She folded her gloves, willing herself not to fidget. She knew that someone higher up had already made the decision. Her permits were either going to get approved, or they weren’t. This little man was just trying to rattle her. “If Egypt were a solved riddle, there would be no need for half this office.”
The clerk exhaled through his teeth, as if sighing for all the lost time women had cost him. “Your permit application is complete, but there is a question of guarantees for your diggers’ conduct. The local authorities are, shall we say, insistent.”
Eden had expected this. She leaned in, lowering her voice. “What guarantee is standard, in your experience?”
“A local foreman with a proven record,” he said, then looked over her shoulder at Max. “Or a guide of repute. There are regulations—”
Max placed his own folder—the Royal Geographical Society insignia front and center—on the desk. “My credentials.”
The clerk’s gaze flicked between the two of them, eyes narrowing. “Mr. Thorne. You are to be the guide of record, then?”
“That’s right,” Max replied coolly. “Her survey is under my direct supervision. You’ll find my record spotless. More so than the office windows, at any rate.”
Eden nearly snorted but kept her face composed. The clerk looked at Max’s card as if it were a snake. “Very well,” he said, producing a fountain pen with a flourish. “I shall have the permit stamped at once.”
There was an interval of theatrical paper-shuffling and stamping—three sheets, each with the wax seal of the Crown, then a pink duplicate for local authorities. At last, the clerk slid the signed permit across the desk to Eden.
“Mind the rules,” he said. “And the labor code. The Inspectorate has grown quite vigilant.”
“I’m well aware,” she said, tucking the permit into her journal. “Thank you for your time.”
They left the office together, Max holding the door. The corridor was empty but for a row of black umbrellas and the hiss of a distant samovar. Eden glanced sideways at him, measuring his mood.
“Was I overbearing?” she asked, when they were out of earshot.
“You were a queen,” Max said with a laugh. “They hate that.”
They stepped into the sunlight, and Eden paused at the edge of the courtyard, feeling the permit heavy in her satchel. She could officially look for the labyrinth.
She took one last look at the Antiquities office, then at Max, who stood a pace behind her, shadow and sun intermingling on his face.
“Well?” he said, when she lingered.
“We have it,” she replied. “At last.”
“Then we’d best not waste it.” He grinned, a wolfish flash that turned her insides to jelly. “Now that the permits are in order, we’re nearly ready to leave the city. We’ll meet our crew and foreman tomorrow to see if they have everything ready. If you’re up for it, we should go to the bazaar and pick up a few more items.”
She nodded, still shocked by how smoothly her appointment had gone. She’d been terrified they’d refuse to issue them the permits because she was a woman.
Not that she’d have let that stop her. She’d had several backup plans.
By the time they reached Khan el-Khalili, the sun was a white-hot coin in the sky, and every inch of the bazaar seemed to shimmer. Donkey carts crowded the alleys, hawkers cried out over mounds of fruit or coils of rope, and the air was filled with the competing perfumes of rosewater, frying mutton, and a faint, omnipresent whiff of camel dung.
For a moment, she simply stood at the threshold, letting the chaos wash over her. The market was everything she loved about Cairo, so overwhelming and alive.
Max was already half a stall ahead, moving with the grace of someone used to making himself invisible among crowds. He waited for her only at the broad intersections, glancing back with a ghost of a smile to make sure she was not lost or run down by a handcart.
Eden trailed him but at a bit of a distance, her attention snagged by a spice merchant plunging his bare arms into baskets of yellow cumin, then by a carpet seller holding up a blood-red runner woven with the Eye of Horus. Vendors called out to her in every language she’d ever learned—and some she had not.
