Said looked shocked. ‘Do we surrender? We don’t have anyone to ransom us. We’ll end up as slaves.’

At the mention of slaves, Alessandra started to thrash around. ‘No. No. Not again. I won’t.’

‘Hush. No friends of mine will ever be slaves. We just have to wait for a short while, and help will be here.’

‘Master,’ said Wahir, ‘the Ethiopians have split their force into two. They’re going to attack from two sides.’

‘We won’t be here when they arrive. Just don’t panic.’ Benzamir pulled Wahir down out of sight and patted the dust next to him. ‘Said, sit here. We need to keep close together. I’m doing this on minimal guidance and it’s not as accurate as it could be.’

A concussion that made the ground jump; a geyser of dust and rock; a shriek from Wahir and Alessandra; a bass bellow from Said. Even Benzamir flinched, and he knew it was coming.

Half buried in the stony soil was a fat silver tube, streaked with soot and strange coloured patterns.

‘Sorry. That was closer than I would have liked,’ apologized Benzamir. He spat out a mouthful of debris and dangled his legs over the edge of the crater.

The cylinder opened up like a flower and the contents fell out. Wahir looked over the rim in astonishment. ‘How did you do that?’

‘Magic. Here, hold this.’ He passed up what looked like a metal skullcap and unrolled a length of thick black cloth on the broken ground. He did something to it, and it suddenly went rigid like a slab of stone. Then he hooked on four spheres the size of grapefruit, one to each corner.

‘Master?’

‘No time to talk. Sit on that, and don’t take up too much room. It wasn’t designed for four. Said, get Alessandra over here.’

Said was reluctant to even touch the Ewer woman. Benzamir had to growl at him to make him put his hands under her shoulders and drag her.

‘Just sit next to Wahir. I’ll do the rest.’ He helped her down into the hollow and propped her up against Said’s back. ‘Wahir? The cap.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

‘This. Hold on tight.’ Benzamir clapped the skullcap down on his head, looked distracted for a moment, then the cloth rose into the air.

Everyone shrieked, even Alessandra, which Benzamir took to be a good sign.

‘Abracadabra,’ he said, and showed all his teeth in a wicked smile. The front of the craft dipped down, and they started to move forward, over the crater, over the low wall, down the slope into the valley.

He took a moment to destroy the evidence: the discarded cylinder vanished in two fearsome explosions, transforming it into unrecognizable scraps of shrapnel.

Someone shouted behind them, but there was no storm of arrows or javelins. Benzamir liked to think that the soldiers were so stunned to see a genuine flying carpet that all they could do was stand and stare.

CHAPTER 19

THE STRANGE, STIFF rug with its mostly gasping and quivering passengers dipped in and out of the landscape.

Benzamir thought that his wonderful sleek carpet steered like a cow; later he’d have to take it for a spin all on his own, no encumbrances.

Wahir was the first to relax and enjoy the ride. He soon stopped clinging to the edge of the carpet with one hand and Said’s arm with the other and knelt up, spreading his arms out wide.

He laughed. ‘Look, master. I’m flying!’

‘Yes,’ said Benzamir, ‘yes, you are. Can you feel it? The way your stomach gets left behind when we crest a hill?’

‘I can feel nothing else,’ mumbled Said, who still had his eyes screwed shut.

‘You’re the first people in nearly a thousand years to feel that sensation. You’re moving faster than anyone of your generation, your father’s or your grandfather’s before them.’ He got into a crouch, then stood, balanced on the balls of his feet. ‘Isn’t this just fantastic, Wahir?’

‘Yes, master. This will be a story that will live for ever.’

‘There’s no greater praise, though I’m afraid we’re going to have to stop before Said is ruinously sick.’ He looked thoughtful, faraway, and the carpet coasted to a halt.

Before it came to rest on the stony ground, Benzamir hopped off and ran alongside. He turned and looked back.

‘Are they following us, master?’

‘Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. We’ve done a day’s march in a matter of minutes.’ He bent down and helped Said to his feet. Said stepped off the rug, fell to his knees and kissed the ground.

‘Boats, barges and now this sorcery. Will my torment never end?’

‘My heart bleeds, Said.’ Benzamir put Alessandra’s arm around his shoulder and his arm around her waist, and led her in a stumbling walk to the top of the hill they’d landed on. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked her.

‘Like I’ve been trampled,’ she said.

‘You might well have been. Anything else broken or injured? Sorry, but I’ve been throwing you around like a sack of flour in the market.’

‘No, just my head.’ She felt the matted blood in her hair and tried picking some of it out. It hurt – her face screwed up in pain, and she desisted. ‘How did we get here?’

‘We flew on my magic carpet.’ It sounded so good that Benzamir said it again. ‘A magic flying carpet.’ He grinned and chuckled to himself.

‘I thought I was dreaming. Then I thought I was dying. When I realized that I was doing neither, I was terrified. What are you?’

Wahir wandered up, the desert soil crunching under his sandals. ‘He is Benzamir Mahmood, the mightiest magician in the land.’

‘Which land?’

‘Any land,’ said Wahir proudly. ‘He is the greatest to have ever lived.’

‘Thank you,’ said Benzamir. ‘I know how it works, but embarrassing me doesn’t do either of us any good.’

‘Oh,’ said Wahir.

‘Besides, I’m much more interested in why Alessandra was following us.’

‘She was?’ Wahir sat down quickly and gazed intently at the Ewer woman. ‘Why would she do that? Will we have to kill her?’

‘I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about killing her, as I’d only just saved her. It’d seem rather a waste. What do you think, Alessandra?’

She looked at Wahir, then at Benzamir, then down the hill to where Said was kneeling, his forehead touching the ground, hoping that the world would stop spinning. Then she looked further out, to the empty desert, the bright blue sky and the fierce, burning sun.

‘Can I talk my way out of this?’

‘Quite likely. I’m always willing to trade knowledge.’

‘The book I told you about, the one sold by a Kenyan . . . It was stolen from the emperor himself. The word went out that he wanted it back, but by then it had disappeared into the back streets of Misr. Now there’s a stack of Kenyan gold to the man – or woman – who can find it.’

‘And you thought that I was after the book and the reward. So where do the Ethiopians come in?’

‘When you headed off in a different direction to everyone else, I didn’t know what to think. I chased after you, but that stupid horse dumped me on my head. And thank you for rescuing me.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘The Ethiopians give tribute to the empire. I can only assume the emperor has run out of patience and that they’re here with orders to find the book. The obvious place to start looking for it is at the diggers’ market.’

Benzamir leaned forward and started drawing in the dust with his fingertip. ‘What’s tribute?’

‘You’d know if your people ever had to pay it. Rather than having your country invaded, your population enslaved, your cities sacked, you pay. You pay and pay and pay, and maybe they’ll leave you alone. To be fair, the emperor used to protect us from the Caliphate; they raided us from the sea all the time and made our lives a misery, but they suddenly stopped five years ago. All we do now is pay and get nothing in return.’