The magical district of Cairo was older than Diagon Alley. Considerably older. The shops here had been selling magical goods for long enough that several of them had stopped displaying their wares in windows and simply trusted that the people who needed to find them would find them. The street had the quality of something that had been built by people who understood that permanence was its own kind of confidence — none of the eager facade of a new commercial district, none of the anxiety of something trying to establish itself. Just age and the particular density of a place where things had been made and sold and used for a very long time.
He spent two hours there on the second day, moving through it with Bill's guidance and his own list.
What was available in Egypt that wasn't easily available in Britain was a function of history and geography and the specific paths that different magical traditions had taken over several thousand years. He moved through the shops with the methodical attention of someone who had done prior research and knew what he was looking for.
Kohl of True Sight — an eye preparation from a tradition that predated the British approach to concealment detection by approximately two thousand years, significantly more refined than the equivalent available in Diagon Alley. The proprietor explained it with the brisk economy of someone who had explained it many times: applied to the inner rim of the eye once, it enhanced the ability to detect glamours, concealment charms, and transformed states for approximately forty-eight hours. He bought four vials.
Desert ward stones in compressed form — small, smooth, unremarkable to look at, developed in a tradition where wards needed to function in exposed environments without structural anchors. He tested one in the shop's demonstration area at the proprietor's invitation: pressed into the ground, activated with a specific word he was taught on the spot, it established a basic perimeter ward within ninety seconds. Six ward stones, purchased. They fit in his expanded pouch without occupying meaningful space.
Scarab preservation amulets — the working variety, not the tourist shop approximation. Used by Gringotts' Egypt division to maintain curse-broken objects in stable condition during transport. He bought three with Bill's assistance in assessing quality, because there were scarab amulets that worked and scarab amulets that looked like scarab amulets, and the difference was not visible to the inexperienced eye.
Phoenix ash — residual ash from a phoenix's burning cycle, which had different properties from the fresh variety and was available here because several wild phoenixes nested in the region. A small sealed container. He wasn't certain yet what he was going to do with it. He was certain enough that having it was better than not having it.
Sand of the First Current — desert sand from a specific location that had been used in Egyptian magical practice for over three thousand years as a base ingredient in temporal enchantments. A sealed jar. Same principle.
And then, in a back room the proprietor led them to after a quiet conversation with Bill: a text he hadn't known existed until that morning, when Bill had mentioned it in passing — a survey of Egyptian ward architecture covering the pre-Ptolemaic period, written in a mixture of Ancient Runes and the Egyptian hieroglyphic magical script, which was not precisely the same as either but shared enough with the former that he could work through it with sufficient patience.
Bill found his own text in the same room. He watched Bill's face when he found it — the specific expression of a person who has been looking for something for a long time and found it in an unexpected place — and bought it for him before Bill could raise the question of cost.
Bill looked at him.
"You've been teaching me every evening," he said simply. "That's worth something."
Bill looked at him for a moment with the recalibrating expression he'd worn several times this trip. Then he accepted the book with the grace of someone who understood that the right response to a genuine gift was to receive it well.
He paid for everything, packed it in the appropriate compartments of his trunk, and walked back out into the Cairo morning feeling, with quiet satisfaction, that he had done what he'd come here to do.