The Quick and the Dead
Hattie's mind raced, speeding thoughts fueled by adrenaline and anxiety whipping around in her head. She barely heard Beni tell the warrior that he could leave her where she was. She glanced at Ardeth, bound helplessly at the table, and could see the frustrated anger and concern broiling in his eyes. She pursed her lips together, and willed herself to look calm. She willed herself to look like he could trust her.
Because, by God, Hattie O'Connell hadn't made it this far in a strange country as a vulnerable, single foreign woman without her wits.
She glanced away from Ardeth and watched Beni close the door and lock it. She watched him turn around and give her a nasty, superior glance. And she clenched her teeth, because she knew - she knew - she was smarter than him. And even if she wasn't, she had something he didn't have, and something he could never comprehend or stand up against. And that was the natural (in her case, fortunately beautiful) allure of the female form.
She didn't have to be smarter than him, and she didn't have to be particularly pretty...but those things helped. They were going to help.
He sauntered over to her with a nauseating air of self-importance, and she forced her best, barely-calm smile.
"You think you are so smart," he told her. She found that a little ironic, since she had just been thinking that very thing - though not in the context he was indicating.
She met his eyes evenly. "Not smart enough, it seems."
"No," he said with a smirk, wagging a finger in her face. "I am the smart one. I bet you think I did not know what you and turban-head over there were talking about last night. Well, I do. I heard it all. I knew Meela would pay a fine price for that information, and she did not disappoint."
Hattie swallowed hard, and despite the scattered plan that she was concocting by the minute in her head, she suddenly felt more than a little foolish. She didn't know Beni well, but her brother didn't trust him as far as he could throw him (even though that was relatively further than the saying meant to allow), and she should have been more cautious. Of course he came and eavesdropped on their conversation. And of course he held onto that information until the most profitable moment. He had agreed to her arrangement of using his room as a farce, an opportunity to annoy Rick, and then waited until he could trap them all and conveniently take Rick's job out from under him.
"Was this your plan all along?" she asked quietly. "Getting me in your room for the night?"
Beni snickered. "That was an added bonus."
She nodded slowly, and met his eyes with a sense of defeated duty. He reached a hand up to her face, and her whole body tensed under his touch.
"Having done this both ways, it would really go better for both of us if you get me a drink first," she said quickly, the words pouring out almost faster than she could say them.
His brow furrowed, and he gave her a suspicious look. "I don't want to go all the way up there and get you a drink."
She met his eyes as earnestly as she could, and stared at him for a moment. "I won't fight you. I just want a drink first." She gave him a nervous and suggestive smile, "I'm marvelous after a drink."
Beni eyed her for another moment, and huffed an irritated sigh. "Fine."
He grumbled over to the door, shooting her a warning look.
"Aren't you going to ask me what I want?" she called.
He frowned. "You will drink whatever I bring you, and you will like it."
"That's not very gentlemanly - "
He called her something in Hungarian and slunk out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Hattie breathed a sigh of relief, turning her attention quickly over to Ardeth.
"Please tell me you have a knife somewhere on you."
For a moment he just stared at her, his dark eyes a mixture of confusion and astonishment. He shook his head, glancing away from her to the door, and managed to say:
"Um, no. They took all of my weapons."
"Shit," Hattie breathed, chewing on her lip. "I don't think we have much time." She concentrated hard for a moment, and then nodded her head. "Okay."
He watched her carefully bend down and step first one foot, then the other, over her bound wrists. Now that they were in front of her, she could see where the rope had been knotted. Sucking in a deep breath, she took hold of the knot in her teeth, and started to work her right hand out of the rope. It was tight and rough about her wrist, and not at all big enough to slip her hand through. But it was only rope, and she had slender hands. She worked the rope up to her knuckles with relative ease, but it was much too narrow to pull over that wide part of her hand without some pain. She bit down harder on the knot and jerked the rope slowly, agonizingly over her knuckles, the sharp barbs of wiry twine cutting into her skin. She pulled it off at last, a blood-stained mass of rope that was just going to have to hang from her other wrist for now, because she wasn't going to waste the time pulling it off that hand, too.
She glanced up at Ardeth, who met her gaze frantically. She let out a hopeless sigh at the mess of knots that trapped him in the chair.
"You're sure you don't have a knife?"
He nodded his head hopelessly. She quickly started rifling around the room, pulling out drawers in search of something sharp. And then she saw the kerosene lamp on the bedside table.
"This isn't going to look like a great idea," she told him, snatching the lamp and twisting off the protective bulp of glass that surrounded the flame. She knelt down and held the lamp against the rope around his ankles, grateful for the leather boots that covered his feet as the flame lapped against them. It cut through the rope in a few seconds, and she quickly pulled it away and set it on the floor, taking the singed rope in either hand and breaking it apart.
"Don't underestimate yourself," he told her as she stood up, catching his eye for a brief moment before hurrying behind him and holding the flame to his hand restraints.
"I'm sorry in advance if I burn you," she said. She heard him wince, her hands sweating empathetically as she held the flame just a little too close to his. They had bound his hands tighter than his feet, with more rope, and she felt an eternity inching by in those borrowed minutes while she held the flame, knowing it was burning his hands and anxiously awaiting the damning sound of -
A key jingled in the lock. Hattie was too nerve-wracked to breathe a single one of the curses clattering in her head. At last the flame singed through the last bit of rope, and Ardeth pulled his hands apart with a relieved sigh, just as the door swung open and Beni slipped in, a couple of drinks in his hands. He glanced between both of them in bewilderment for the sliver of a second before immediately shouting at the top of his lungs for Meela and Lock-Nah.
Ardeth stumbled to his feet and charged at the other man, who let out a whining squeak and would have shot out of the room and down the hall, had he not immediately collided with the guard outside the door, throwing them both to the floor with a loud smack. Hattie felt Ardeth grasp her wrist and pull her along behind him. They tore down the hallway, past the cursing tangle of Beni and the guard on the floor, and made it to the stairs just before Meela's men poured out of her room to see what all the commotion was about.
Ardeth shoved Hattie ahead of him up the stairs, bullets whizzing past their ears in a continous, threatening song. They made it on deck and sped past tables of confused passengers. Ardeth took hold her her hand again, racing past her right to the railing, and in one sudden, fluid motion, picking her up over it and throwing her into the Nile.
She was suspended in the air for a moment that felt much longer than it probably was before crashing into the shockingly cold depths of the water. Her body sank down below the surface, and she was surrounded on all sides by the placid, unknowing depths for a few moments that slowed her racing heart and might have cleared her mind.
But then she felt Ardeth's hand about hers again, and she was pulled up to the surface, to the sounds of gunshots and the urgency of being hunted.
"Can you swim?" he shouted at her over the noise.
"Yes," she told him.
"Good," he said, letting go of her. "Swim to shore."
She barely managed to sputter, "Okay," swimming as hard as she could after him, into the darkness. After ages of beating against the waves with sore, used-up muscles, her feet scraped against sand and marsh. She stumbled through the shallow water, onto her feet, only to collapse a few yards later onto the shore.
She wanted to rest her face in the sand and close her eyes; to just breathe for a few moments and regroup. But Ardeth was taking hold of her arm and tugging her to her feet.
"Come on. We cannot stay here."
Hattie stared up at him in confusion, but forced her limbs to work and get herself back on her feet.
"Why not?" she asked wearily, attempting to keep up with his determined gait.
Ardeth breathed a sigh, glancing over his shoulder at the barge. Hattie followed his gaze, wondering at the bright, cheery little vessel floating so languidly on the river. It was the only source of light in the blackness of the marsh.
"We must assume they will come after me," he told her between ragged breaths. "Also, crocodiles."
Hattie's body tensed, and she immediately found the energy to walk a little faster.
"What are we going to do?" she asked, desperation creeping into her voice the further into the darkness they walked.
"Tonight," he said, "we are going to the village of Ansar, and asking for protection."