A River in the Sky Read Online Free Page A

asking, “What happened to you?” The cut had stopped bleeding, but his cheek was smeared with dried blood, his clothes were dusty, and his hair was festooned with dried leaves. He handed Fisher the stone and sank into a chair.
    “It’s from the dig,” Fisher said, examining the remains of ornamentation on one side of the stone. “Why were you there at this time of night?”
    “I wasn’t. Someone pitched that at me a few minutes ago, when I was walking through the olive grove on my way here.”
    Reisner put his pen down and leaned back in his chair. His eyes moved over Ramses’s disheveled form. “Not again!” he said.
    “Sorry.”
    “No, I’m sorry.” Reisner’s sudden grin bared a large number of teeth. “The remark sounded somewhat callous. Were you injured?”
    “Oh dear,” Fisher exclaimed. “I fear I was also negligent in failing to inquire.”
    The two of them converged on Ramses. Reisner pushed the matted hair away from Ramses’s temple and ran expert fingers over the area. Most field archaeologists had to know something about medical treatment; accidents on a dig were not uncommon.
    “You’ll have a nice big lump tomorrow,” Reisner said coolly. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
    “I don’t have a concussion, sir.”
    “I expect you are only too familiar with the symptoms.”
    Ramses couldn’t tell from his superior’s expression whether that had been meant as criticism, sarcasm, or a simple statement of fact.
    “Yes, sir,” he said.
    “You don’t have to keep calling me sir.”
    “Habit,” Ramses said. “Hard to break.”
    He got another of those toothy grins. “I understand. I still have to fight the tendency to address your dad that way.”
    Reisner went back to his makeshift desk, took out his pipe, and began filling it. Fisher, clucking remorsefully, handed Ramses a glass, which the latter accepted with a nod of thanks. Unlike his parents, who celebrated the end of the workday with a whiskey and soda—or two—his current supervisor kept a scanty supply of liquor for medicinal purposes only. Not very good liquor, either, Ramses thought, sipping.
    They sat in silence for a few minutes, while Reisner fussed with his pipe and Fisher rummaged in the box of medical supplies. The small shabby room, the best the village had to offer, was illumined only by two flickering oil lamps. The gloom hid the ramshackle furnishings, such as they were, and the evidence of what his motherwould have described as typical male untidiness—a pair of stockings draped over a chair, papers spilling out of the rough boxes they used for filing documents.
    Reisner lit his pipe and puffed contentedly. “You went out tonight in the hope of provoking another attack.”
    “Well—yes, in a way. But I only wanted—”
    “To find out whether the first attack was an aberration or part of a pattern. Fair enough. If there is trouble brewing we need to know. Have you any idea what could be behind this?”
    “No. Perhaps you would prefer that I resign,” Ramses said.
    “What the hell do you want from me, an apology?” Reisner clamped his teeth down on the stem of his pipe. Then he said suddenly, “You probably think I’ve been a little hard on you these past weeks.”
    “No, sir.” The question almost surprised him into a truthful answer. Ramses was used to criticism. His father was a hard taskmaster; his frequent outbursts of temper had earned him the Egyptian title of Father of Curses. But Emerson doled out praise as readily as blame, and his shouts of laughter were as frequent as his curses.
    Fisher let out a whinny of amusement. “Don’t take it the wrong way, Ramses. George is afraid your mother will scold him if anything happens to you.”
    Ramses’s jaw dropped. “What does my mother have to do with this?”
    “He promised her he’d keep you out of mischief,” Fisher said, with a smile that held a certain amount of malice.
    It would have been hard to say who was more outraged,