The dig site was still another few day's ride after Ardeth and his three men joined the O'Connell's and the McNamara's. As Drostan traveled on the back of Adil's horse, Evelyn was able to unravel their illustrious con.
Drostan McNamara and Boann McNamara Mulhern were not engaged, but in fact, cousins, on her father's side. The betrothed gimmick apparently helped the pity factor in the begging of street-hires. He was twenty-seven years old, they had been living there for nine years now, spoke fluid Arabic, and had been completely unemployed for several months.
"Boann's actually cleaner than a nun – well, with houses and such, at least... or at most – and has kept housekeeping jobs for years on end. The only problem is getting her hired in the first place..." At that, Drostan trailed off. He did not elaborate on this vocational handicap, moving on to other, more anecdotal aspects of their life in Egypt. When Evie tried to pry from his jaw why he and his cousin would pose as desert guides when in truth they knew so dangerously little, he would dodge her inquiry with a skill beyond his apparent intelligence.
Ardeth also listened to Drostan's stories. He attended to the exchange between Drostan and Evie about recent adventures with a partial ear. The rest of his attention dedicated itself to the woman Boann. She had covered her entire face again in the faded black scraps she wore. He was impressed by the stamina and skill of her horse. It was not an Arabian, but it was certainly too small to be a standard breed. It did not step high in a proper fashion, nor did it trudge like a work horse. It seemed to glide under her thin hands' command.
He kept back his own horse – a glass-eye-black Arabian, highly decorated with Bedouin decor – trying to get a bit more even with her white creature. Ardeth had been leader of the Medjai for three years now, a considerably small fraction of his twenty-eight, yet he had witnessed the culmination of his tribe's fears, and the eventual dissipation of them. In truth Ardeth struggled almost visibly every day with his title, and it's accumulation. He was surprisingly unmarried, though only surprising in a cultural context. What little animal impulses he reacted to were increased by his obvious curiosity towards Boann. In many ways, he felt she tried to avoid attention, but only seethed it towards her in doing so.
He had gathered that she was mal-nourished by what little he could see of her arms. He did not need to be told that they were essentially beggars. But she was most definitely strong. Unbelievably so for a woman. She could fire a pistol with militaristic precision, and throw a punch to kick one's eyebrows to their medulla. But he had noted from what he had observed from the battle that she would avoid the swords. She was not classically trained in warfare, although she did utilize quite a pocket knife.
Her accent was familiar. Not as plump as the Scottish – it was most definitely Celtic though. From Drostan he learned that it was in fact Irish. What little he had seen of her features when they were undressed was unsatisfying to his visual assessment. She was miraculously pale, freckle-less, with, judging from the far-off view he got of her naked head, dark dark hair. Black. Her eyes, or eye, as he had only seen one, was darker than black. Darker than his. Darker than his mother's. Her jaw was very square, unlike his more angular line, and Drostan's soft facial curvation. Her nose was slightly crooked, and her lips were thick and finely cut as they smeared into her cheeks, with a sharp curve in the undercleft of the mouth. Not much else was visible, and he was unable to pass full judgement on her face as such, but his premature conclusion was that she was indeed unattractive. Far too manly for most people's taste. But, ever since Ardeth was a small boy, too small to precisely remembered, he had an unexplainable fixation with technically unattractive creatures. He had always assumed it was from being surrounded by the dead for nearly all his life, whether in doctrine or in reality.
He spent several minutes contemplating the purpose of the facial cloth. It made no sense as a barrier, for it covered her eyes. In the end he ruled it down to several possibilities; an unsightly birthmark or natural disfiguration of some sort – pinched skin, bulbous acne, warts, etc.; possibly a burn, or maybe even a disease. Some sort of boil picked up on the streets. In truth he did not know. He had also considered cataracts in her right eye, yet this wouldn't explain the need to cover so much of her face, unless she didn't want any sort of patch to be seen either.
While running through each possibility, Ardeth had nearly been eluded by Boann's approach alongside him. She wasn't terribly tall, but sat strait on her horse. He admired the beast up close, and couldn't help himself,
"That's a beautiful creature," he found himself saying in English.
The shrouded head turned slightly to face him, and here he saw that the fabric over her left eye was so thin that she could very well see through it to him. After several seconds of silence, she gently, with a hand that was calloused, scabbed, scarred and knuckly, pulled the cloth down away from the left side of her face.
"Thank you," she returned in Arabic. Her accent was decent, though not impenetrable for it's European twinge.
"Good breed, looks very strong and young," he responded in Arabic as well.
"Yes," was all she said.
"You fight very well," he continued, skillfully avoiding questions, lest he drive her unexpected cooperation to his curiosity asunder. He was also simply unable to find his transitions at the moment. He was a little... intimidated.
"Thanks," was all she said. Ardeth was unsure of where to go from this. He deliberated...
"Right." She fell silent after he had spoken, but continued to ride alongside him.
"You're Medjai," he then heard. "For Humunaptra and all. Dead city." Her Arabic was not so much at fault for her lack of eloquence, he could detect; it was that she was like her cousin, uneducated, clearly. Yet educated in a way that in this day is considered useless, yet to him, and the hundred before him, is invaluable.
"Yes, we are. I am the Chief." She gave a twinge of expression at this. It was approving, but slight.
"And so, I suppose Immy's not been giving you trouble for the past year then, eh?"
Ardeth stared at her in shock. He supposed that Evelyn and Rick may have told them the story, but not if they expected a chance in Hell of them coming out here. Boann smirked slightly, half her mouth curling out from under the cloth.
"How do you know about Imhotep?"
"How do you know?"
He realized that this question was not naive or stupid, but completely sardonic. He chuckled with a surprisingly malleable sense of humor.
"I've heard bits and pieces here and there," he responded, finding a tinge of a smile biting at her lips, but only for a second. She was a hard girl to get to smile.
Drostan's voice was sailing backwards towards Boann's thin frame. Ardeth could break her ribcage with one hand, he realized. He could break it and take out her heart. He didn't know why this thought came to him.
"The arse doesn't need a drink he needs a smack in the ass," he heard her mumble.
"Or a lobotomy," he spouted. She curled her one brow in a second of confusion, but made an effort to look unperturbed.
"Or a blow job," she finished. Ardeth felt a laugh like wax crackling foam in his throat. He liked her, a bit, he thought. She was so curious. At one moment hateful, and at the other, perfectly humored. Evelyn had said they were eager to come into the desert, but why, then, was she so malign to the idea of continuing with Medjai?
Boann raised a darkly colored glass bottle, waving it at Drostan before uncorking it with her teeth. She began to ride swiftly to where he sat, not spilling a drop of the bottle's contents. She handed it to Drostan, who took a throat-charring gulp that lasted several minutes. Ardeth watched with a slight amount of amusement as Drostan was slowly, stupidly draining Boann of her alcohol. Boann was becoming impatient. Ardeth was adapting to the language of her shoulders – minute twitches and molestations of movements with agitation. Boann began to calmly slap Drostan's hand that held the bottle, he swat her away – all the while still moving – several times. Finally, with one deft movement, Boann swept the bottle from Drostan's lips like a perfect lover would sweep a woman off her feet, and in some brand of bar-room ceremoniousness, crashed the nearly empty bottle over Drostan's head. He fell back, unconscious, dangled off the horse's rear. The two young Medjai laughed and cheered at the quick, and seemingly simple silencing. Rick secretly congratulated Boann, inside his head, while Evie looked concerned.
Ardeth was somewhere between unimpressed apathy and interested amazement. Boann, well, she laughed now, hearty and full as she glided around in a half circle from Drostan's limp body, after carefully checking that his throat passages were clear of liquid. She laughed like a demon, like a goddess, like a cataract-clairvoyant lioness .
