CHAPTER 12

A Deal’s a Deal

Miu and I ran, all right—into each other. In our panic, we got caught in the fishing nets that were drying on the wall.

The vulture swooped down on us. Trapped on top of the wall, we were easy pickings. Kicking at the knotted strings only made the tangle worse. I ducked my head, waiting for the claws to sink in.

But instead of the rip and tear of talons, there was only a whistle of air. The vulture pulled up short, then touched down on the landing wall in front of me.

When I lifted my head up, the vulture was peering down at the crocodile.

“Hey there, Admiral,” she croaked. “I didn’t see you at first. Are these friends of yours? I don’t want to make a meal of your buddies.”

“They’re no friends of mine,” the Admiral rumbled. “You can eat them if you want.”

The vulture turned back toward me. Her eyes were bright and eager under her fringe of frilly head feathers. I struggled to free my paws from the net, but it was no use.

“I’m Ra the Mighty, Pharaoh’s Cat,” I babbled to the vulture. “Believe me, you really, really don’t want to eat me. Or my friends.”

“I’m Nekhbet,” she said, drawing closer. “And believe me, I really, really do.”

Kicking again at the nets, I got my forepaws free, but my hind legs were still trapped. “Sorry,” I whispered to Khepri. “Run for it, if you can. I can’t save us.”

“But I can save you!” Khepri bounded out from my belly fur. Balancing on top of the nets, he shouted, “I know where the crown prince is!”

“What?” Miu said.

“Where?” I said.

“Who?” Nekhbet said. She waddled after Khepri.

“Khepri, watch out!” I clawed at the netting. My desperation to save him must have given me strength, because this time I managed to slice through the string and free myself. I bolted for Khepri, reaching him moments before Nekhbet did.

“Khepri, buddy, where’s Dedi?” I panted.

“Not that prince,” Khepri said. “The other one.”

He’d lost me. “What other one?”

“You crocodiles have a crown prince, don’t you?” Khepri called out to the Admiral. “That’s the one I’m talking about.”

“You’ve seen little Sobek Junior?” Nekhbet darted closer. “Why didn’t you say so before? We’ve been looking everywhere for him. That cutie-pie likes to climb high on the riverbanks to sun himself, and that’s not safe for a little crocodile. He’s been gone for two days now.”

Down on the mudbank, the Admiral had risen up on his stumpy front feet. “Where is our prince? What have you done with him?” His lizardy eye glared at us. “Did you eat him?”

“Of course we haven’t eaten him!” Khepri hopped as he made his point. “But I think I know where he is.”

I tried to look like I was in on the secret, but I was clueless. Crocodile prince? All I’d seen were these huge granddaddy-sized lizards out on the Nile. Well, except for that crocodile baby on Lady Satiah’s—

Oh.

“I know where he is, too,” I called down to the Admiral.

“And so do I,” said Miu, who finally had freed herself from the netting. “And if you’re nice to us, we might even help you get him back.”

“Nice?” Nekhbet waddled toward us. “I’ll give you nice. A nice peck on the patootie!”

The Admiral lashed his tail. “Knock it off, Nekhbet. If they know something, we’d better hear it. We need all the help we can get. King Sobek is going to chew my head off if I don’t find Sobek Junior soon.”

So there was an even bigger, scarier crocodile somewhere on this river? I gulped.

“We’d better tell them everything we know,” I whispered to Khepri.

But Khepri had other ideas. “Sure, we’ll help you,” he called down to the Admiral. “But first you have to help us. We’ve got a missing prince of our own—a boy about twelve years old. He might have come down to the river right before dawn, and he maybe went out in a small boat. Did you see him?”

The Admiral shut his eyes and sank back down into the oozing mud.

“You ate him!” Miu cried. “I knew it!”

The golden-green eyes flashed open. “Hold your horses. I’m just thinking. Yes, there was a human out on the landing around first light. And he did mess around with the boats.”

“How old was he?” I asked. “What did he look like?”

“Who knows? A human’s a human.” The Admiral grinned. “We don’t keep track of their ages. We don’t even look at their faces. We only care about how they taste.”

“A delicious morsel,” Miu said, looking sick. “That’s what you called him.”

“You heard that?” The Admiral’s own earflaps went up—a sign of annoyance in a crocodile. “That was just one of my captains joking around. We saw a human come down to the dock, that’s all. We might’ve eaten him if he’d fallen in, but he didn’t.”

“Did he go out in one of the boats?” Khepri asked.

“Who knows?” the Admiral said. “I’m not paid to keep tabs on humans. Anyway, we crocodiles were busy then. We always are, at dawn.”

“Busy doing what?” Khepri wanted to know.

“Well, who do you think makes the sun come up?” the Admiral said. “The crocodiles, that’s who.”

Khepri wriggled his antennae. “But that’s ridicu—”

“—really wonderful of you,” I interrupted, nudging Khepri back. Never insult a crocodile.

“You bet it’s wonderful,” the Admiral snapped. “But don’t think flattery is going to get you out of our deal. I helped you, and now you’d better help me. Tell me where Sobek Junior is.”

Khepri tiptoed closer to the edge of the landing and peered down at the Admiral’s scaly head. “We’re pretty sure Lady Satiah has him.”

“Lady Satiah!” the Admiral roared. “That vulture!”

“Ahem,” said Nekhbet.

“You’re right,” the Admiral said. “Vulture’s too good a word for that human. Is she planning to roast our crown prince in her kitchen?”

“Actually, I think he’s part of her zoo,” Khepri said.

“They’ve got a zoo at the palace?” The Admiral blinked, then glared up at the vulture. “Why didn’t you tell me, Nekhbet? That should’ve been the first place we looked.”

“I didn’t know she had a zoo,” Nekhbet said. “Maybe that’s why she’s put netting over the courtyards. You have to get real close to see through it, and I can’t afford to do that, not when she’s ordered her guards to shoot arrows at any vultures they see.”

The giant crocodile paced along the mudbank, gnashing his teeth. “So close, and yet we can’t get to him. Not unless the river floods the palace. Then we can break in. But it usually doesn’t.”

“Never mind, Admiral,” Nekhbet comforted him. She swept her wings in our direction. “Remember, these animals promised to get him out for you.”

“We did?” I said.

“No, we didn’t,” Khepri said.

“Well, I said we might help,” Miu told the Admiral. “But I figured you’d be the one leading the expedition. I mean, we’re strangers here. We can’t—”

She stopped short as Nekhbet swung her sharp beak toward us. “A bargain is a bargain,” she croaked. “Betray the crocodiles, and you’ll regret it.”

“You sure will,” the Admiral snarled. “We’ll lay the crocodile curse on you.” He pointed his long snout at us and opened his toothy mouth wide.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the crocodile curse was, but I had a bad feeling it involved teeth.

“No need for any curses,” I said hastily. “Pharaoh’s Cat is at your service. And so are his friends. We’ll do everything we can to get your crown prince back to you.”

“But we can’t get anything done from here,” Miu pointed out.

“And we could work faster if we weren’t so worried about our own crown prince,” Khepri added. “We’ve heard a boat went missing last night. If you could check downriver, and see if our prince is in it—”

“Sure,” the Admiral agreed, with surprising enthusiasm. “We’ll do that.”

“And if you find him, don’t eat him,” Miu added fiercely.

The Admiral snorted. “I could say the same to you about our prince.”

“No worries there,” I said. “I don’t even like crocodile.”

The Admiral thwacked his tail against the mud. “Cut the wisecracks, cat. This is a serious situation. We’ve got a deal, and you’d better live up to it.”

“Don’t worry. We’re on it.” Khepri jumped onto my back. “Come on, Ra. We’ve got a crocodile to rescue.”

Even before he’d scrambled up to his perch between my ears, I was carefully picking my way around the nets. Miu was by my side, and within moments we were running over the bridge to the palace gates.

But it was the Admiral who had the last word.

“Remember, a deal’s a deal,” he snarled. “If I find your prince, and you don’t bring back mine, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s snack time.”