d
held them there. When they raised them out and brandished them, the
claws were glowing red. They turned to the prisoner, who started
screaming at once. One executioner thrust his pincers through the front
of the cage. The prisoner tried to back away, but the cage was too
small. He only pressed his buttocks against the bars behind him, where
the other executioner had crept and now dug the jaws of his pincers into
the man's flesh as the crowd roared with laughter. Daoud heard the
sizzle. The man's scream rose to a pitch that made Daoud's ears ring.
The executioner held up his pincers with a gobbet of burnt flesh caught
in them for the crowd to see, then slung them so that the bit of meat
flew through the air. Daoud saw people reach up to grab at it.

_This man is dying horribly because of me._ The thought bit into Daoud's
heart like the red-hot claws. When Sophia had said as much accusingly to
him, he had shrugged it off. Now he had to face the fact.

_Let your guilt pierce you through the heart. Do not armor yourself
against it. Do not run away from it. Above all, do not turn your back on
it._ So Saadi had advised him after he avenged himself on Kassar.

* * * * *

The sands of the Eastern Desert were the color of drying blood. The
hooves of Daoud's pony sank into them with each step, and he wished he
had a camel to ride.

Their training troop had never traveled this far south, and Nicetas had
been a fool, Daoud thought, to go hunting in unknown and dangerous
country with only a pony to ride. No wonder he had not come back
yesterday. Probably, the sun had killed the pony, and Nicetas was
crouched in some wadi waiting to be rescued.

_I should have gone with him._

But they had been friends, and more than friends, for two years, and
from time to time each needed to be alone. They both understood that.
And so, when the naqeeb Mahmoud gave them a day of rest after the trek
down from El Kahira, and Nicetas said he wanted to go out alone to get
himself a pair of antelope horns, Daoud simply hugged him and sent him
on his way.

Daoud felt the murderous heat of the noon sun on his head through his
burnoose. Ten times hotter here than at El Kahira, now a hundred leagues
to the north. The wind filled the air with red dust, and he had wrapped
a scarf over his nose and mouth. Only his eyes were exposed, looking for
Nicetas.

_Antelope horns! Not even a lizard could live in this desert._