Free Stealing Fire by Jo Graham Page A

handler said something under his breath, and went to collect his charge.
    “What was that?” I asked. I had not quite gotten what he said.
    Ptolemy looked amused, and something more. “He says you are favored of Bastet, my friend.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    We rode into the desert before the sun was high. By noon I had decided this was a rather hopeless endeavor. How any game should be found with twenty men in the party, and a dozen horses, I could not guess. No doubt we looked grand, but in hours we had not seen anything besides a hawk on the wing, far above hovering on the hot air that rose from the desert. Perhaps we weren't supposed to really catch anything. Perhaps it was all to look good.
    Cleomenes seemed unperterbed. At midday we halted in the shadow of an overhanging cliff and ate and drank from a fairly sumptuous hunter's spread. Then we rested a while replete in the shade.
    Ptolemy was being gracious to Cleomenes, but I thought he was getting annoyed. An entire day lost riding around the desert at a snail's pace doing nothing! Even the cheetahs looked bored and drowsed, washing their paws in a desultory fashion.
    Afternoon came on with long shadows. I was fascinatedly watching the trainers with their animals, and only half heard Ptolemy talking to Cleomenes, saying that perhaps we should be getting back.
    “But you have not caught anything!” Cleomenes said. “And I have heard that there are lions near here. Men have seen them! I would consider myself disgraced if you returned without bagging anything!”
    “You must be easier on yourself,” Ptolemy said dryly. “And anyway, how could we possibly get a lion with all this parade? In Macedon we hunted lions on foot, with five or six men.”
    Cleomenes laughed heartily. “You must think us very soft here! I can't bear that! Let us send away the parade, as you call it, and hunt lions as a king should, just us with our spears!”
    And dogs, I thought. In most places they used dogs, but we had none with us, as the cheetahs would not abide them. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
    “It's gotten so late,” Ptolemy began.
    “It's early yet,” Cleomenes said, and began giving orders to send the cheetahs and their handlers back, as well as the men and horses who had brought our lunches out.
    I was not pleased to see the cheetahs go. The beautiful female turned as she was led away and looked at me with a steady gaze, as though in warning. I loosened my sword in the scabbard. It did not escape me that if he wanted to kill Ptolemy, the fewer witnesses the better. I was one he should have to kill, at least.
    I was watching Cleomenes and that was my mistake. I hardly noticed as the shadows got deeper. I certainly did not watch carefully where we went.
    At last one of the trackers found some dung that he said was that of a lion. It was at the edge of a wadi, a steep ravine of reddish rock with a dry stream bed at the bottom. Perhaps that was why I found it hard to breathe. Perhaps that was why I was not attentive when Ptolemy said that we would go down. I was trying to think of a reason not to.
    A dry stream bed, a shaded ravine to camp in during the heat of the day…
    My blood ran cold and my breath came in starts. My chest ached with stabbing pains, and my vision swam. I wondered if I were dying just there, and what Ptolemy would say if I did. I would stay on my feet as long as I could, act as though all were normal. And so we were at the bottom of the cliff before I was aware of more than my feet on the path.
    “I think we should go around to the left,” Ptolemy said.
    This is not the same place, I told myself. This is not that place in Gedrosia. This is not that place. This is another place in another country. It only looks superficially the same. I would be the master of my own heart. I would not let this choking panic make a frightened animal of me, make me prey.
    I followed him.
    We went up the dry stream bed. The sun had entirely disappeared behind the walls