“They’re ali—?” My astonished words must have sounded too loud for Idu’s liking, because he clapped his hand over my mouth again and pulled me away from the dead fire and his uncle’s snoring form. Scrambling and stumbling, he hurried me down the riverbank, past the boat, and to the far side of a lone palm tree that stood at least a bowshot away from our campsite. Once there, he let me go and leaned against the scaly trunk.
Idu tilted his head back and let out a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods that Uncle’s a deep sleeper. Still, you shouldn’t have done that. He’d beat me bloody if he knew I told you about your friends.”
“He’s been so kind to me, why wouldn’t he want me to know that Nava and Amenophis are alive?” I was so confused that my head spun and my stomach turned over. I wanted to believe Idu’s blessed words, but I was afraid that he’d made some horrible mistake. I didn’t know if I could bear another heartbreak. “And how—how do you know this?”
“First tell me this, Nefertiti,” Idu replied. “Is your friend Amenophis a tall, scrawny, gangly young fellow? Thick lips, a long face, kind of ugly?”
“He’s not ugly.” I leaped to Amenophis’s defense so hotly that it made Idu snicker.
“And he’s not just a friend to you, either, is he?”
My face flushed and I refused to respond to the taunting question. “So you really did see him?”
“If that’s what he looks like, I did. He was with a little girl—not a lot of meat on her bones, foreign-looking. We sailed past them yesterday. They looked badly roughed up, but if they’d escaped a hippo attack, they were lucky not to look worse. My mother’s cousin lost an arm to one of those monsters, and he bled to death. Anyway, the two of them were walking along the bank, following the flow of the river, and every few steps they called out a name—your name. Uncle heard it, too, so unless there are two girls named Nefertiti wandering lost around here—”
“Oh, Idu, thank you!” I flung my arms around his neck and hugged him. “You did see them! They are alive! Isis bless you forever! And if they were headed downstream on foot, we can probably catch up to them today, except …” A worrying thought crossed my mind. “Idu, you still haven’t told me the reason for all this secrecy. Why didn’t your uncle tell me he’d seen my friends, too? Why did he let me suffer?”
“Because he doesn’t want you to find them again,” Idu said grimly. “And he won’t take you to Dendera. He plans to get you aboard our boat this morning and make up as many stories as it takes to persuade you to come home with us. He’ll claim that the ducks we’ve caught need to be cleaned and preserved or they’ll rot. Once he’s brought you to our house, he’ll find one reason after another to delay your departure. He’ll wheedle you to be patient with a poor old man; he’ll promise a hundred times that he will take you to Dendera … tomorrow. But he won’t let you go. Nefertiti, he intends for you to become his wife.”
My jaw dropped. “He can’t be serious.”
“He was serious enough last night when he told me his plan. He told me that if I didn’t help him, if I told you about how we’d seen your friends, then the first thing he’d do when we got home was throw my mother and me out of his house. And it is his house, just as that’s his boat. He calls Mother his sister, but they’re only related by marriage. My father—his brother—left us nothing when he died, so we’ve had to depend on Uncle’s charity ever since. He’s mostly good-hearted, except when he really wants something. Then he’s ruthless.” Idu lowered his eyes. “He wants you.”
I touched his forearm lightly. “And thanks to you, he won’t have me. But … will you be all right, you and your mother?”
“That’s up to you. I’m going back to camp, and you’re going to run as far and fast as you can. When Uncle wakes up, I’m going to be as shocked as he is that you took off. The only way he’ll ever know I had anything to do with your escape is if he catches you and you tell him.”
“That won’t happen,” I said firmly. “Good-bye, Idu. I wish I could reward you for the gift you’ve given me.”
He shrugged away my thanks. “My father didn’t have much when he died, but Mother told me he always had a clean heart. That’s what I want to have when it’s my time to stand before Lord Osiris. Just move. Head away from the river to start, then swing back when the sun’s about that high”—he pointed across the river—“just to the top of those trees. See them?”
I peered into the fading darkness and saw the fringed shadows of more palms on the eastern shore. “Yes, I do.”
“Good. That’s when it’ll be safe for you to come back to the riverside. Uncle will have given up looking for you by then, maybe sooner; trust me. He’s a practical man, and he knows that if we waste too much time hunting you, the birds we caught yesterday won’t be fit to eat. Hmm, speaking of food, there’s a red-striped basket in the boat. If you can be quick and quiet, you might take a peek inside it before you go.” He gave me a conspirator’s grin. “Maybe take more than a peek. After all, a girl who would run away from the old man who was so nice to her, well, she’d probably help herself to some of his bread, too.”
“I don’t want to steal, Idu.”
“Then don’t steal. Just take two or three little loaves. That’ll be my share, and I’m glad to give it to you.”
Idu went back to his place by the dead fire, and I did what he’d told me. I used the strip of cloth I’d cut from my dress to cradle the bread loaves and turned my back on the sacred river. I moved as fast as I could, but I also moved with an eye to places where trees or tall plants would hide my passage. I didn’t want to go too far from the river, because I had no idea how far downstream Amenophis and Nava might be, and I didn’t want to loop around and miss them.