"The trap you set for Julie Stratford, you mean?"
Finally, a flicker of some emotion in his blue eyes that looked almost human. But impossible to read. Anger? Simple surprise? Was he impressed by her deduction?
"I didn't seek to poison Mr. Ramsey," he said with ice in his tone.
"But you sought to abduct Julie Stratford?"
"I did."
"And the poison?" she asked.
"The poison was not mine. Was it yours?"
And so he'd brought them to the threshold of her strange origin story, a story too dangerous for her to reveal.
"It was not," she answered. "I didn't know of its existence before today. Did you?"
It was the second time she'd asked this question. This time his answer was silence.
The tension in the captors on either side of her was so strong she could feel it.
He had, she realized. He had known of this poison, and still he had dispatched some of his people to carry out this abduction. How many had died as a result? The survivors stood on either side of her now, she was sure. Had they been saved by their mission in the tunnel beneath the temple?
She sensed in their tense silence a division in this group she might exploit. If she was careful. If she was patient.
"You should be grateful to me," the man said, an edge to his tone now.
"Share your name with me so my gratitude may take proper shape," she said quietly.
"Saqnos," he answered. "And you are Cleopatra, last queen of Egypt. Friend to Julie Stratford and her inamorato, the mysterious Egyptologist, Reginald Ramsey."
He was mocking the name Ramses had assumed in this modern era. Goading her to reveal what she knew of his real identity. But all she said in return was "Saqnos. From where does this name come?"
"From my history, of course. From my past."
"From which land?"
He considered his response. "From the land that existed when all the lands were one."
"You speak of the continents before they were divided?" she asked.
"You are a student of modern science?"
"I read many languages."
/> "And you speak many. Or you did when you were queen."
"I am no longer a queen."
"You will always be a queen." Almost parental the way he said this, as if there were concepts that mattered more to him than the stakes of their present exchange. Concepts such as the endurance of royal titles. "Just as I will always carry the title I held in my ancestral kingdom. The burdens we have shouldered, the visions and dreams, they will forever shape our immortal lives."
"And so you were a king three hundred million years ago, when the lands were all united?"
"You speak of unity in the literal sense. In terms of continents. I speak of a kingdom that united most of the world through treaties and trade and shared knowledge. It was not three hundred million years ago. And I was not its king, but its prime minister."
"How long ago?"
"In the time they now call eight or nine thousand B.C."