20
FENELLA
The Khan el-Khalili bazaar assaulted Fenella's senses the moment she stepped out of the air-conditioned vehicle. The heat hit her first, a wall of dry air that seemed to suck the moisture from her lungs. Then came the smells—spices and incense, leather and metal, sweat and garbage, all mixing into a stinky potpourri that made her eyes water.
Then there was the noise, with vendors shouting about their wares and waving potential shoppers over, tourists haggling in a menagerie of languages, Arabic music spilling from shops, and the constant hum of too many people crammed into the narrow medieval streets.
"Stay close," Ahmed barked, already looking harassed even though they'd been there less than a minute. "Do not walk away from the group! Do not stop for vendors!"
Easier said than done. They hadn't made it more than ten feet before sellers descended on them like hawks on prey.
"Beautiful lady! Come see! Best prices!"
"Papyrus! Real papyrus! Not fake!"
"Perfume oils! Cleopatra's secret!"
Fenella was squeezed between Din and Max, with Kyra on Max's other side and Jasmine behind with Ell-rom. Kalugal led the way with Ahmed, while two more security guards brought up the rear. Their formation might have been meant for protection, but it made navigating the narrow alleys nearly impossible. It was like trying to drive a tank through the market.
"Scarf for lady?" A vendor somehow managed to shove a piece of silk in Fenella's face. "Beautiful scarf for beautiful lady!"
"La, shukran," Din said firmly, shoving the guy and his scarf away from her.
"You speak Arabic?" she asked, impressed.
"Just the useful phrases. No, thank you. How much? Where's the bathroom? Those sorts of things."
"Husband buy!" The vendor with the scarf wasn't giving up. "Good husband buy beautiful things for beautiful wife!"
Din rolled his eyes and pulled out his wallet. "How much?"
She put a hand on his arm. "Din, no?—"
"Tourists buy things," he said quietly. "It's for our cover."
They were undercover?
Nobody had told her that. She would have put on her oversized sunglasses instead of the small ones.
Oh, well. Next time.
And so it began. The scarf was just the appetizer that had whetted Din's appetite. Once Din had been given permission tospend money on her, there was no stopping him. At the next stall, he bought her a silver bracelet. Then, leather sandals with long straps meant to wrap around her calves. A small inlaid box that the vendor insisted was made from real ivory, which made Fenella want to gag and throw it at the vendor's head until Din convinced her that it was fake ivory and no elephants had been harmed to produce it. The last one, for now, was a bottle of perfume oil that supposedly contained jasmine from Aswan.
"You're being ridiculous," she hissed as he examined a display of painted plates. "We're supposed to be looking for figurines, not redecorating our non-existent Cairo apartment."
"The dealer said his cousin sells figurines," Din said quietly, gesturing for the seller to wrap three plates. "Information comes with a price tag, and these plates are it. Jacki can give them to someone on their staff."
Fenella wasn't buying it. "That's the fifth cousin with figurines we've heard about." She watched the pile of packages in Din's arms grow. "They are playing you."
"I can help carry," one of Kalugal's guards offered, taking a couple of packages from Din.
"Thank you, Ibrahim," Din said.
None of the stores had air-conditioning, and after over an hour of touching all kinds of figurines and other artifacts that could loosely be classified as such, Fenella felt sweaty and dirty, and none the wiser.
She'd opened herself to impressions several times, with Kyra and Jasmine maintaining light contact by touching her arm or her shoulder and theoretically amplifying her abilities, but most of the items were completely flat, with no memories embeddedin them whatsoever. The few fragmented visions she'd gotten had been frustratingly mundane.
"This is useless," she muttered, setting down yet another figurine of Anubis that had only emitted a trace of irritation. "We are not going to find Esag by browsing tourist shops."
