Ethan Gage Collection # 1 by William Dietrich

Author:William Dietrich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

I followed the smell of charcoal to find Jericho. He was in the bowels of the armory in the basement of Djezzar’s palace, his muscles illuminated by the glow of a smithy furnace, hammering like Thor on the tools of war: swords, pikes, forked poles to push off scaling ladders, bayonets, ramrods. Lead cooled in bullet molds like black pearls, and scrap was piled for conversion into grapeshot and shrapnel. Miriam was working the bellows, her hair curled on her cheeks in sweaty tendrils, her shift damp and disturbingly clingy, perspiration glistening in that vale of temptation between neck and breasts. I didn’t know what my reception would be, given that they’d lost their Jerusalem house in the tumult I’d caused, but when she saw me her eyes flashed bright greeting and she flew to me in the hellish glow, hugging. How good she felt! It was all I could do to keep my hand from slipping onto her round bottom, but of course her brother was there. Yet even taciturn Jericho allowed a reluctant smile.

“We thought you dead!”

She kissed my cheek, setting it on fire. I held her a safe distance away lest my own enthusiasm at our reunion be too physically obvious.

“And I feared the same for the two of you,” I said. “I’m sorry our adventure has left you trapped here, but I really thought we’d find treasure. I escaped from Jaffa with my friend Mohammad in a boat.” I looked at Miriam, realizing how much I’d missed her, and how angelically beautiful she really was. “The news of your survival was like nectar to a man dying of thirst.”

I thought I saw a blush beyond the soot, and certainly I’d erased her brother’s smile. No matter. I wouldn’t release her waist, and she wouldn’t release my shoulders.

“And now here we all are, alive,” Jericho said. “All three of us.”

I finally let her go and nodded. “With a man called the Butcher, a half-mad English sea captain, a mutilated Jew, a disgruntled schoolmate of Bonaparte, and a Muslim guide. Not to mention a burly blacksmith, his scholarly sister, and a ne’r-do-well American gambler. Quite the merry men, we are.”

“And women,” Miriam said. “Ethan, we heard what happened at Jaffa. What happens if the French break in here?”

“They won’t,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “We don’t have to beat them—we just have to hold them off until they’re compelled to retreat. And I have an idea for that. Jericho, is there any spare heavy chain in the city?”

“I’ve seen some about, used by ships, and to chain off the harbor mouth. Why?”

“I want to drape it from out towers to welcome the French.”

He shook his head, convinced I was daft as ever. “To give them a hand up?”

“Yes. And then charge it with electricity.”

“Electricity!” He crossed himself.

“It’s an idea I had while in the boat with Mohammad. If we store enough spark in a battery of Leyden jars, we could transfer them with a wire to a suspended chain.

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