Wheel of Evil by N.L. Holmes

Author:N.L. Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ancient Egypt, female protagonist, lesbian protagonist, cozy, historical mystery
Publisher: WayBack Press
Published: 2024-07-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Not long after the two young women had departed, the man without two fingers said in a businesslike voice, “All right, let’s move out. Shury, gag and blindfold our guest and tie her up—”

“Wait!” Neferet protested. “That’s not the way to treat a guest!”

“No? Then maybe you’re a prisoner and not a guest.”

Shury chuckled, but the fat scribe looked sour. “Do we take her to the other place?”

Three Fingers nodded, and Shury and one of the servants grabbed Neferet by the arms and wrenched her hands behind her. Instinctively, she pulled back until she and her captors tussled violently. Finally, the toothless man pushed her down on her face on the floor and roughly bound her elbows close together.

She kicked out with her hobbled feet and shouted, “Help! Help!” until someone stuffed a cloth into her mouth and muffled her jaws with a foul-smelling rag. They bent her legs up behind her and fastened her ankles to her wrists like a prisoner of war. Any move she made just bound her more straitly and painfully.

“It’s a shame she’s not prettier,” said the toothless man with a lewd chuckle.

Furious, she grunted and howled, but the gag dampened the volume. Her situation had just grown much worse. And Three Fingers looked peeved, staring down at her on the floor. She laboriously craned her neck to see him out of one eye, like a bird.

“Cooperation good. Resistance bad,” he said dryly. He turned to the men. “Move her out of here.”

One of the servants hoisted her over his shoulder like a big coil of rope, a position much more uncomfortable than she expected, since she was hanging upside down with all her weight suspended from her bent legs, her skirts falling down around her waist. Thus, she couldn’t even groan loudly, hoping to attract attention, as they carried her, bumping against the doorframe, out into the courtyard and dumped her into a donkey cart. A load of some heavy fabric that might have been rugs landed on top of her. She coughed in the storm of dust, her eyes burning with anger and hopelessness.

Someone stirred up the donkey, and the cart began to roll. Neferet heard the gate open then close behind her, and the sounds changed as they set out into the narrow, walled canyon of the lane. Clip-clop clip-clop went the slow hooves of the donkey, and one of the wooden cartwheels made a rhythmic squeak as it went round. There was no way she could tell where they were going. If Papa and Lord Ptah-mes came looking for her, they’d never know where she’d been taken. Her nose twinged with the sheer helplessness of her situation.

It seemed they traveled for a long time. For all Neferet could tell from her hot and unbreathable cache in the dark bottom of the pile of rugs, they could have made their way out into the eastern desert by the time they finally stopped the donkey and unloaded her from the cart.

They were inside a large, trampled courtyard with other donkeys around.

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