CHAPTER 11

Great Detectives?

“Oh, no!” Her torn ear drooping forlornly, Miu stared at the widening gap between us and the barge. Ten cubits. Fifteen cubits. Twenty cubits.

I brushed up alongside her. There was something about the way she was standing that made me worry. “You can’t jump that far, Miu. No cat can.”

“Don’t do it, Miu,” Khepri put in.

Miu stayed put, but she didn’t stop watching the barge, and now her whole head was drooping. “She’s so small. Practically a kitten. And now she’s on her own. We really messed up, getting distracted like that.” As the barge glided away, she stared down at her paws. “I really messed up.”

“You’re not alone,” Khepri said. “Ra and I didn’t do a very good job of guarding Dedi, either.”

“I guess we shouldn’t call ourselves Great Detectives anymore,” Miu said sadly.

I sat up straight. “Now, wait a minute. That kind of talk isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“But it’s true, Ra,” Khepri said with a sigh. “Great Detectives don’t let two children vanish.”

“Kiya hasn’t vanished,” I pointed out. “We know exactly where she is. And she has guards and a nursemaid to protect her, even if they’re under the weather.”

“And Dedi?” Khepri buzzed.

“Well, that’s more of a worry,” I admitted. “But we’ve barely started detecting. And you can bet we have a better chance of finding him than anyone else does.”

Miu perked up. “You’re right, Ra. We need to focus on this case. And I know just where to begin.” She started trotting down the landing.

“Where?” I called out.

She sped up. “That crocodile, of course!”

“No need to be so hasty!” I shouted after her. “Remember, we haven’t even had breakfast yet. And maybe he hasn’t, either!”

“She isn’t listening, Ra.” Khepri climbed onto my back. “We’d better go after her. You know how she can be with suspects.”

I certainly did. Miu is a kindhearted cat, but put her in charge of an investigation and she acts like a lion. Still, even a lion isn’t a match for a crocodile.

I caught up with her at the top of a landing wall covered with fishnets drying in the sun. Below us, the huge crocodile was clambering onto the muddy riverbank. I measured the distance down to the ground with my eyes. It was an easy jump for a cat—but not a wise one.

“Miu, you can’t go down there!” Khepri warned. “He’ll eat you.”

The crocodile was already watching us, his golden-green eyes aware of our every move. He slithered closer to our spot on the wall.

“You better not have eaten Dedi, you big bully!” Miu shouted down at him. “You’ll be in trouble if you did. He’s the crown prince of this whole kingdom, you know.”

“Crown prince?” The crocodile’s jaws snapped. “What do you know about that?”

It wasn’t easy to understand him. Maybe it’s all those teeth, but crocodiles have very poor enunciation, as you probably know if you’ve tried to talk to one yourself.

Not that I’ve ever complained to them about that. Nobody in their right mind complains to a crocodile about anything. Well, except Miu. But even she was looking daunted now that those snapping jaws were so close.

“Let me handle this,” I said to her. “I’ve been trained for it.”

It was true. I had been. Sort of. My father knew that when I succeeded him as Pharaoh’s Cat, I would accompany Pharaoh on his Nile trips, so he’d warned me about crocodiles. Always show respect, he’d said. After all, they’ve been in Egypt longer than the rest of us, except maybe the scarabs. They have their own rituals, and their own way of doing things. And they’re very touchy.

“O most noble and worthy crocodile,” I began. “I am Ra the Mighty, Pharaoh’s Cat, Lord of the Powerful Paw, and I greet you with—”

“Cut to the point,” the crocodile growled. “What do you know about the crown prince?”

Hmmmmm…This encounter wasn’t going the way I thought it would. But I decided to meet him on his level. (Not on the mudbank, of course. I mean his conversational level.) “No, you go first. What do you know?”

Miu scowled down at the crocodile. “Did you see the crown prince this morning? Did you eat him for breakfast?”

“What are you talking about, you stupid cat?” The crocodile thwacked his bumpy tail against the mud. “Why in Sobek’s name would we eat one of our own?”

Miu and I sat back on our haunches, confused.

Up on my head, Khepri murmured, “Now that’s interesting. You know, I—”

Without finishing his thought, he shrieked and slid down under my belly. I ducked my head down between my forelegs and peered at him. “Khepri? What is it?”

“Up there!” he croaked. “In the sky!”

Glancing up, I spotted the dirty feathers and bright-orange faces of vultures, soaring high above us.

“She’s going to eat us,” Khepri wailed.

“I thought vultures only ate carrion,” Miu said. “You know, dead things?”

“Er…mostly,” I said. “But they’ve been known to eat small animals.”

“They eat insects, too,” Khepri put in from under my belly. “And dung. Sometimes insects and dung. That’s what happened to my cousin.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I told him. “This one probably hasn’t even noticed us. She might not even be hungry.”

Letting out an excited hiss, one of the vultures dived for us.

“Sounds hungry to me!” Miu said.

“Run!” I shouted.