She nearly missed Max’s stop at the tent maker. He had already set out five rolls of canvas on a makeshift table, one end weighed down by a copper scale, the other by an iron kettle. The vendor, a man with arms like ancient cedar and a curling gray beard, was holding forth with a gravity that bordered on biblical.
“I require five,” Max said, his voice low and direct. “Double seams, oiled canvas, and none of your imported rubbish.”
“These are the best in Egypt,” the man replied, with the flat assurance of someone who’d said it a thousand times that day alone.
“Prove it,” Max said, and began to unroll a sample, flicking the canvas between his fingers to test the grain. “This is half the weight of what you sold me last winter.”
The vendor’s eyebrow twitched, but he kept his smile. “New supplier. English, as you prefer.”
“I prefer what won’t rot in the sun,” Max shot back.
Eden let them volley for a minute, more interested in the market’s people than in canvas. She observed the women in their indigo hijabs, the way they moved in packs, laughing and bartering for tin teapots. She noted how the beggar children clustered in the shade, eyes always on the foreigners, and how the cats—dozens of them—wove among the stalls like smoke. She would never grow tired of seeing how these people lived, so foreign from everything she’d ever known.
“Forty pounds, no less,” the tent maker declared, snapping Eden back to the present.
Max rolled his eyes. “Thirty. And only because I admire your beard.”
The vendor hesitated, his gaze darting from Max to Eden and back. “You drive a hard bargain.” The man barked a laugh and shook his hand. The deal was struck.
They moved on, Max apparently carrying the tally in his head, Eden running through her own list. Next was the glassware stall: shelves crowded with jars and bottles, some filled with blue liquid, others empty and etched with flowers or stars. Eden scanned for a crate of photographic plates, and at the back of the stall, she found them—each plate nested in straw, glimmering faintly in the shaded light.
She lifted one, angling it toward the vendor. “Are these suitable for use in the desert?”
The seller, a youth no older than sixteen, nodded with solemnity. “Made for the desert. English. Very good.”
Eden rotated the plate, inspecting the silver edge for flaws. “They’d better be. I need to be able to document my work.”
The youth held up three fingers, swearing by Allah and all his ancestors, and wrapped the crate with a flourish. Max appeared at her side with a roll of twine and a length of linen, and for a moment, they stood together in the crush of bodies, neither speaking.
Eden felt an unexpected urge to touch his arm, to thank him for the way he’d handled the tent vendor, but she resisted. Things had gotten far too personal last night, and she was still reeling from it a bit. Who knew what would have happened if Felicity hadn’t been waiting up when they returned to their suite? It was easier to keep their partnership professional, at least for now.
She was so out of her depth with him. She had no idea whether to throw herself into his arms or run away as fast as she could. But at the moment, the expedition was the most important thing. They could figure all the rest out later.
She gave him a sidelong glance. “I admire your efficiency.”
He shrugged, his blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight. “Years in the military. I buy, I supply, I keep people alive.”
She wondered what it had cost him always to be tasked with taking care of others.
They made their way to the edge of the bazaar, their arms laden with parcels, the sun already beginning its long descent.
A boy with a donkey cart was waiting, as pre-arranged, and after some shouting and arm-waving, the supplies were loaded for delivery to the Shepheard. Eden brushed a strand of hair from her damp forehead and exhaled, feeling a release of the pressure roiling inside her for the first time since morning.
As the muezzin’s call unfurled over the rooftops, Max paused. “Well done,” he said. “All the tedious preparations are complete. Soon, the real work begins.”
She smiled, feeling the old energy return. The challenges ahead would be legion: heat, bureaucracy, rivals like Thaddeus, even her own doubts and fears. But ever since she’d first read Lucas’s letter, since she’d gone to The Smuggler’s Lantern and seen Max again, she’d felt genuinely alive.
“Soon,” she agreed. They needed to leave in the next few days, because they needed to be at the Bahariya Oasis before the new moon, as their path from there depended on what she saw that night.
And as they set off down the street, past the coffee-sellers and the slow swirl of dust, Eden realized that what lay ahead was not just history to be unearthed, but her own life waiting to be written.
