Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Thirty-Six

But Khaled kept them waiting - and waiting - and still he didn't come; the plane's engines hummed for another hour or so, then expired with a metallic shudder, and still they were left alone in the frigid darkness. Hermione suspected that this was intentional - it was one thing to confront your wayward little sister when she was full of angry adrenaline, fresh from the capture, and quite another to wait until she'd spent a hungry night tied up without water or bathroom privileges on the freezing desert ground.

The bastard.

"Keep moving your fingers," she advised Itmana through chattering teeth. They had managed to hoist themselves into sitting positions and prop themselves up against the brick wall of their unused-airplane-hangar prison, which retained more heat than the ground but was still bitterly cold. Hermione, too, by way of much calculated rubbing of her head against the aforementioned wall, had gotten her blindfold eventually rucked up and off - it hadn't been tied as tightly as Itmana's.

Apart from those small gains, they were stuck - no wand, and therefore no Apparation capabilities, the loss of which privilege still had Hermione gasping in freshly renewed outrage. No magical chocolate drops with protective powers. No handy charm bracelet with its arsenal of tiny silver escape options - she hadn't worn it on a lab day since her first week of class, when the grey kitten charm had sustained a slight acid burn in a reactive experiment and had cried plaintively for the rest of the afternoon, until whatever restorative spell it was under finally took effect and repaired it.

No, they were well and truly trapped here ... and whereas the Priestess had proven most helpful against the Avada Kedavra, she hadn't been much protection at all against a simple hand-delivered KO. At this point, Hermione would have traded in all her witch credentials - and most of the royalties from the Eli Lilly deal - in exchange for one cellular phone, a connection that worked, and the number for the British Consulate.

Still, even though it probably wouldn't get them anywhere - except possibly a bit warmer - she was working on getting their hands free. She'd been picking at the knots in Itmana's ropes for what seemed like hours, a thankless task made even more difficult by the darkness of the hangar and the numbness in her own tied hands, and they were just now starting to show a little give.

"I think I'm getting there," she whispered. "Don't move now, okay?"

"Okay."

There was definitely a loop in the rope that hadn't been there before. Trying not to hurry and lose her advantage through carelessness, Hermione hooked her index finger through the loop and cautiously tugged.

"There," she said. "Is it any looser?"

Itmana shifted her hands and gasped. "A bit. Oh, that hurts. They're all pins and needles."

"Good - it means you've still got circulation. Keep still now and I'll try for the next bit - looks like Husan double-knotted you."

She started on the next knot, squinting in the dark and cursing as the coarse rope hooked one of her fingernails and tore it to the quick. "Oh, fuck me. Fuck."

"What?"

"Nothing." Hermione gritted her teeth and grimly set to her task again. "Sorry."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

And then there was a soft whoosh and a whisper of feathers, as a dark shape glided into their prison through a high-up open window. Itmana stifled a scream.

"What's that sound?"

"Just an owl, I think," Hermione reassured her, then took another narrow-eyed look in the dark and froze.

Not just an owl.

Bill's owl.

"Hey, Satchmo," she murmured, unaccountably relieved by this glimpse of something friendly and familiar. The big black owl dropped silently from the rafters, in response to her greeting, and shuffled over to hop onto her knees. He was soft and sleek and blessedly, blessedly warm. "You here to get us out of this mess?"

The owl gave her a soft hoot, presumably in the affirmative, and reached up to nibble her ear. A moment later he'd fluttered around behind her. Itmana gave a start.

"He's trying to bite me!"

"No, he's trying to untie you," Hermione corrected, and let Satchmo nudge her fingers toward the correct rope. Itmana snorted.

"Owls aren't that smart."

"This one is." Hermione felt another loop and joyously yanked, heedless of her bleeding fingertip. "He's very well-trained. Belongs to Bill."

"Oh."

Another loop, another pull, and the ropes slackened. "There, see? Give them a good yank."

Five minutes later, her hands were free, too. They grappled silently with the ropes on their ankles; as soon as hers fell loose, Hermione struggled to her feet and limped over to a stream of pale light from one of the high glassless windows.

"Okay, Satchmo. Let's see the note." She read silently, then cursed under her breath. "Oh, crap. He hasn't even missed me yet, I'll bet. He worked late tonight."

Itmana studied her curiously. "I didn't know owls carried messages."

Hermione traced the little penciled-in rose absently with her injured forefinger. "Well, yeah. Like I said, he's trained."

"What do you think that Bill will be able to do?" Itmana wanted to know. "How will he find you, and what's he supposed to do about it, even if he does?"

"You'd be surprised." Hermione dug in her pocket - she'd had a mechanical pencil there earlier, from class; was it still there? Please?

It was.

"Do you know where your brother's going to take us?" she asked Itmana in a low voice. Itmana nodded.

"Back to the palace, I imagine. In Jordan. Otherwise he wouldn't have brought the plane."

"Give me the address."

"Hermione - "

"What?"

Itmana heaved a sigh. "He's not going to be able to stop this. Khaled's a prince - he has diplomatic immunity, do you understand me? He could kill us both tonight and no one could touch him for it."

"Just give me the address," Hermione repeated. Itmana shrugged.

"It's your decision, of course. But I'm telling you, it's useless."

We're in danger, Hermione wrote on the blank side of the paper. They've broken my wand. Owl Dumbledore before attempting rescue.

And then, the address.

There.

"Okay, Satchmo," she whispered, and kissed the top of the owl's feathery head as she tied on the note. "I don't have any food for you, I'm sorry. Get this back to Bill as fast as you can, and I'll catch you a mouse myself next week-I promise."

A soft hoot, and he was gone in a silent slide of feathers. Hermione heaved a sigh.

"Well," she said, "that's something, at least. Now - let's take a look around. Do you think they might have a Jeep here or something?"

**

The hangar door wasn't even locked - clearly, their captors had expected their knots to hold. Khaled's personal jet glinted sleek silver-blue in the moonlight, casting a shadow on the ground like a giant malevolent bird. A few hundred yards from the hangar, lights were on in a smaller building. Itmana jerked her head toward it.

"I was right," she whispered. "This is Khaled's landing strip. Well, it's the family's, really. But he's the only one who uses it - whenever the others travel to Egypt, they usually just fly into Cairo."

"The others?"

"Big family," Itmana said simply. "Muslim families have a lot of children, even when they're as modern and forward-thinking as the Jordanian Royals." There was a bitter edge to her voice.

"Oh." Hermione took another step toward the brightly-lit cabin, shivering as the wind ripped through her robes. "So, if you're a princess - is your father a king?"

"No, just another HRH." Itmana dragged her back into the shadow of the hangar, smirking a little at Hermione's questioning look. "His Royal Highness," she clarified. "There are lots of us. I'm a very minor princess, and Khaled's a very minor prince - something I should have taken into account a year ago, before I let myself get into this mess."

"Oh. Okay." Time to shut up, Hermione decided - Itmana seemed caught in some interior battle of her own, and not inclined to explain. "I think I get it."

"The British titles work a little differently from ours, I think," Itmana said, as matter-of-factly as if they were discussing the market price of mutton. "Basically all it means for our family is diplomatic immunity. And a lot of money, of course."

"Ah." Hermione cast a sideways look at her. "Doesn't sound like such a bad life."

"You're wondering why I ran away."

"You don't have to tell me."

"I know."

They edged around the side of the cabin, keeping to the shadows. As they rounded the corner, Hermione saw a low outcrop of building that the rest of the cabin had blocked from her view before, heading off in a perpendicular direction to the rest of the structure. Itmana pointed to it.

"There," she said. "That's where the cars will be. But I'll bet anything it's locked - just about everything else is safe in the desert, but people come up out of the sand itself to steal petrol. And they'll have the ignition keys inside with them, of course." She regarded Hermione curiously. "I don't suppose you can pick a lock."

Hermione thought, longingly, of Alohomora. "Sorry, no."

"Just checking. You're very resourceful, you know. It's surprising." She tossed her head-no longer the wisecracking, wryly political student, but altered somehow into someone with higher carriage, sharper eyes, a twist to the corner of her mouth that was half-determined, half-resigned. "None of the others would have made it this far, that's for sure. We aren't like them, you and I."

"No." And let's leave it at that, Hermione thought - while one True Confession deserved another, the last thing she needed was sanctions from the Ministry of Magic to top this night off. "Do you suppose," she asked, hoping to distract Itmana, "that it's warmer in that building?"

"Than out here?"

"Or in the hangar."

Itmana scanned the low lines of the garage. "Probably. No windows, for one thing. And it's connected to the lodge - you'd better believe they're nice and toasty in there."

For the first time in hours, Hermione grinned. "Reason enough right there to break in, don't you think?"

**

As it turned out, Alohomora wasn't necessary - rather than locking the doors, they'd posted a guard outside one of them, not Abu or Husan but a skinny, snoring kid of about fourteen with a thermos of tea and a mountain of robes swathed around his bony frame until even his eyes barely showed. He never stirred as they slipped around him and through the door into the garage.

It was almost worth trying to hotwire one of the Jeeps, this stroke of good fortune - except, as Itmana pointed out, that apart from the fact that they didn't know how, without a compass their chances of reaching even a rudimentary civilisation before running out of petrol were next to nil. If it came down to a choice between being stuck in the desert without fuel or water, or taking their chances with Khaled and whatever fate awaited them at the palace in Jordan, she told Hermione, they ought to stay.

Hermione was inclined to agree - after all, it was in Jordan that Bill was primed to look for her, whenever he got her message. And then, now that they'd esconced themselves cozily in the back seat and wrapped themselves up in the blankets they'd scavenged from one of the other vehicles - not to mention demolishing the stash of Hershey bars someone had left in the glove compartment - she was starting to doze off.

"So ... why did you run away?" she asked sleepily, and Itmana laughed.

"I thought I didn't have to tell you."

"You don't. Doesn't mean I'm not going to ask."

Another laugh. "Fair enough. It's a long story, okay? But basically I think I was played."

"By who? Khaled?"

"Basically." Itmana shrugged. "You've got to understand - modern Islam, and modern Muslims, aren't all alike. Some, like the majority of my family, are pretty progressive - they're still good Muslims, but they wear Western clothes and go to American universities and give lip-service to women's lib. Queen Noor's probably the best example there is of that - the Jordanian government is eager to look forward-thinking to the rest of the world, see?"

"Right."

"And then there's the ultra-traditional school of thought," Itmana continued, "which pushes a return to the veil and the seclusion of women and says that people shouldn't cut their hair or listen to music." She shrugged. ...They're a minority. They're the wackos who bomb the Israelis and hijack planes. Like that American guy in Utah a couple of years ago and his Davidian Branch. Get it?"

"Yeah."

"And everybody else, meaning eighty percent of the country ..." Itmana paused. "Well, they're somewhere in between. Not ultra-modern, but not fundamentalists either. Just trying to make it through the day."

Hermione nodded, thinking of her parents and their uneasy Christmas-and-Easter pact with the Church of England. "Makes sense."

"Okay." Itmana took a deep breath. "So I wanted to be a doctor, right? And I told my father I didn't want to think about marriage until after I got my degree, that men were the last thing on my mind. Which was true. And I got a scholarship to Wellesley - not Ivy League, exactly, but close - and he agreed." She paused. "Which upset Khaled. He's the token wacko in our family."

Hermione bristled, sympathetic. "Why should he care?"

"He's an idiot. Thought it reflected badly on him with his business associates and friends that his sister was walking around in a lab coat instead of a burqa ... you've heard the others talk in the hammam, you know how big a deal family honour is here."She let her head fall back against the window of the Jeep. "He wanted to marry me off to one of his business partners. And was working on my parents about it day and night."

"But they said no, right?"

"Right. Except ..." Itmana sucked in more air. "Except that I did something stupid."

Hermione's eyebrows shot up. "Which was what, exactly?"

Itmana looked disgusted with herself. "I don't regret doing it - it was the right thing to do," she said. "There was a student group at a nearby university, the summer before I was to leave for school ... a protest group, ultra-liberal. Under Jordan's laws, they were permitted to exist, but they weren't looked kindly upon. They had a lot of concerns about women's rights on the grass-roots level - they spent a lot of time passing out condoms and sex-ed brochures, if you can believe it. And there was also an ecological wing that existed mostly to protest the dumping of industrial wastes into the Gulf of Aqaba; that was the issue I was most involved in. They were after one company in particular, and though I didn't know it at the time ... " She trailed off.

"Let me guess," Hermione said grimly. "Khaled's?"

Itmana nodded. "His, partially," she said. "And partially his partner's. And some other people, to a lesser extent." She rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes. "Well, you can guess how it played out," she said. "There was a protest - I was there, and though I managed to get through the whole thing without being recognised by the press, my brother has sharp eyes."

Oh, this was getting interesting. Hermione leaned forward. "So what did he do?"

"Showed up in my rooms that night. Had pictures that he'd had someone take, big glossy full-colour prints of me waving a sign and yelling with my mouth open. Stupid of me." She shook her head. "Said he was going to Abb' - Daddy - with the pictures, and that there was no way they'd let me go away to school now, knowing what kind of trash I'd be likely to get mixed up with. Said he was going to talk them into marrying me off, after all."

"And you believed him?"

Itmana blew out a long breath. "He was pretty persuasive. And it wasn't like this man he wanted me to marry, this Sayif, was an ogre, by my parents' standards ... and then, well, who said it? With freedom comes responsibility. And my father would have been furious to learn that I'd gotten involved with a protest group, knowing the potential bad publicity it would mean for the Royals." She shrugged. "Certainly he would have been angry enough to keep me out of college in the States. Whether or not he would have countenanced the marriage ... well, that's harder to call. But at the time, I was scared."

"I can certainly understand why," Hermione said. Itmana laughed.

"And that wasn't all," she said. "Remember - Khaled's an ultra-conservative, right? Well, his partner was, too. Marrying him would have meant submitting to a virginity test, and possibly a clitoridectomy. And then once it happened, there would be no college, ever. Just lots of housecleaning and babies. Not what I wanted from my life."

"Yikes," Hermione said quietly. "So you ran."

Itmana wrapped herself more tightly in her blankets. "So I ran," she agreed. "I shouldn't have - I should have waited until the morning, to talk to Father myself. But I panicked."

"Understandable."

"Mm." Her eyes met Hermione's. "You know what I'm scared of now, Hermione? It's not what's going to happen when we get to Jordan. It's what he's going to do ... before."

Hermione digested this. "When you said he was a bit mad ... " she began. "What exactly did you mean by that?"

But Itmana just shook her head, and wouldn't answer.

**