The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) (5 page)

“We should,” Cleo finished.

They had been allotted a budget from Mistral for such things, but the bidding rose quickly as each individual sarcophagi was presented. They were not grouped together as a lot, though plainly they were meant as such; dividing them up increased the profits for the auctioneers, causing those interested to bid more fervently to obtain a complete collection.

Virgil feared they were doomed when it came to actually leaving with the sarcophagi in their possession, so heated was the bidding. He noted that once again, Akila did not bid, but sat very still, watching the sarcophagi rather than the bidders. Among the latter were Eleanor, George Pettigrew, and three others Virgil did not know, but it was Pettigrew who emerged victorious, refusing to give ground on any of the treasures. While Virgil would have contributed personal funds toward the acquisition of the sarcophagi, there was simply no way they could cover the amounts Pettigrew could.

After the bidding, Pettigrew turned and extended a hand to Virgil. His grip was clammy, but strong, and Virgil offered the man a smile. Pettigrew’s own smile was viper-like, devouring even as it welcomed.

“Quite an acquisition, especially that serpentine,” Virgil said. “Whatever to do you intend to do with them?” Virgil could not imagine Pettigrew meant to donate them to a museum or otherwise display them to the public.

“This, my friend, is ever the question!” Pettigrew said, and he laughed as he looked at the others of their group. “Given your keen interest in the items—and the lady’s acquisition of the beautiful rings—I would like to invite you to my home. One week from tonight, we shall open the caskets and unwrap whomever lays within!”

Dear Mister Auberon,

I write to you slowly this morning, an exercise in using the new arms I have been fitted with. Doctor Fairbrass has made me two extraordinary mechanical arms, which I am still learning my way around.

By all accounts, I should not have survived such an injury—they tell me you were there when I was pulled from the rubble of the catacombs, my arms nearly severed clean through. I remember nothing of those moments. Indeed, the first thing I remember is waking in the hospital, my arms bound so that I could not move them. I felt rather like a mummy—Doctor Fairbrass tells me this is not far from wrong, given how he had to stabilize me. He remains reserved as to other details, however, suggesting I should write to you and slay the monsters of Questions and Adaptation with one letter.

I would enjoy hearing from you, should you have the time. Until then I remain as ever

C. Barclay

The dawn light was not yet a smudge on the horizon when Eleanor rose from her bed, ill-tempered from a night of poor sleep. She pushed the tangled sheets off and stared at her bare feet against the wood floor. The jackal inside her pressed for release. She drew in a deep breath in an attempt to calm the jackal, but it did not.

The hotel, overtaken by the British after their occupation of the city seven years prior, had been outfitted with a system of bell pulls and Eleanor took advantage of hers, calling to have tea sent up, despite the early hour. She couldn’t fathom how she would approach the day ahead without it. She and Cleo were to meet and compare their sketches of the sarcophagi, to see if they might determine who occupied them prior to George Pettigrew’s party.

But before that…

Eleanor looked at the small wood box that sat on the bureau. The box was as lovely as the rings within, carefully crafted and hinged with brass, though not remotely connected to the rings prior to having been brought to auction. The rings, much like the Mistral archive in Paris, were without context and Eleanor tried to push this worry to the side. Context might yet come, given the markings upon them, or even the tiny glass and jasper scarab. If she could trace similar artwork to other regions…

She opened the box to gaze upon the rings, a little nauseated as she beheld them. It was only the memory of sliding Anubis’s rings onto her fingers, she told herself. The memory of having time turn upside down and blood run through her hands. Nothing like that was happening here and now; she remained firmly within her hotel room. She could not quite believe she was faced once again with four ancient rings; had not been able to explain to Mallory what they meant to her—though suspected he knew without a word between them, probably swallowing all of the fuss he actually wanted to make as she acquired them. But how could she let them go? She could not, and he had known as well as she.

Now, she pressed her finger to the corroded iron ring and wondered that it was here; so very like the ring that had been left in the Paris archive for her. Exactly like it, were she being honest.

There came a soft knock at the door, and Eleanor crossed to allow the server entry. But as she opened the door, looking forward to the ritual that tea would bring with it—cups, warm tea, and careful pouring that would distance her mind from the whine of the jackal who wanted to run, it was not a server who stood in the hallway, but the dark god Anubis, holding a tea tray set for two. In this moment, he was as the Egyptians had drawn him: the body of a man, the head of a jackal. Both were pitch black, as if he had stepped from a pool of Indian ink.

Eleanor stepped back in alarm, believing she had finally fallen into a solid asleep while looking at the rings, because Anubis did not deliver tea in the small hours of the morning. But as it had been before, it was now; Anubis strode past her on bare feet and the warmth of him rushed over her, a living and breathing body, absolutely here and present. He was fetid and foul like the earth full of all the dead that had ever been, and she closed the door behind him, lest someone else smell him, though a glance at the hallway proved it empty.

She had last seen Anubis in Paris, in her very rooms where they had reached an accord as to her continued association with him.
I am not your instrument
, she had told him,
no matter that I carry a jackal within me. I go of my own accord or not at all.

I would have it so,
he had replied, and Eleanor meant to hold him to that now.

Anubis placed the tea tray at the foot of the bed and turned to look at Eleanor with his jet eyes. He was clad in a linen
shendyt
, pleated beneath a belt of hammered gold. The linen draped him from waist to knees, leaving the vast expanse of his belly bare. Gold curled up his arms and draped his neck, wide necklaces of gold and lapis echoing the curve and splash of the Nile at sunset. His rings were in their proper places upon his fingers; Eleanor’s attention lingered on them overly long.

Daughter
.

She had only ever known him to be calm; even when he had taken the Irvings in hand to judge them, he had not flinched or grown angry. It was so now, too, as he watched her. His velvet ears flicked as he regarded her.

Daughter
.

He did not speak the word so much as he thought it. Eleanor’s eyes slid shut, because the voice was like nothing she had known; when he wasn’t ordering her to do something in a rough purr, the voice was equal parts pleasure and aggravation. Tonight, it was as if a thousand beetles had taken up inside her mind, scrambling one over the other. She pushed them back, for they only called to the jackal inside her, made that part of her even more restless. She opened her eyes to look at him, then forced herself to move toward the tea tray. She picked it up and carried it to the table near the sofa. It gave her something to do, something to busy her hands with.

“Anubis.”

Anubis did not immediately follow, but looked instead at the four rings within their box. Eleanor’s breath hitched and she poured two cups of tea—two, though the idea of Anubis drinking from a china cup struck her as terribly unlikely. Still, she let the tea sit, curious if he would pay it any attention. For now, his fingers whispered over the rings.

These are not so splendid as my own, but this one—

He pressed a finger to the corroded iron ring and his mouth parted in a hiss. The sight of his gleaming fangs only made Eleanor want to slip from her human form even more.

This
.

Eleanor abandoned the tea, to join Anubis before the rings. “Tell me, what of it?”

Anubis’s hand closed abruptly around Eleanor’s throat; he did not squeeze, only held her this way as the hotel around them vanished. Eleanor could not say where they were—everything melted into darkness, even the rings. The floor dribbled out from under their feet and she became aware of a great and powerful rush of air; the air was warm, Egyptian night enfolding them, as they moved toward lights that flourished overhead.

These lights were suddenly all around them, as if bubbles in water, hot and streaming blue-white fire against the velvet blackness. Eleanor could not take a breath, but found she did not need to; if she stayed calm and kept the jackal down, she found she could breathe, could even move within the cage of Anubis’s fingers.

She turned within that hold to regard the broad expanse of space that spread around them. The world curved beneath them, gleaming gold where the sun had begun to rise. The light fragmented across the Mediterranean and down the Nile, like a fuse being lit, like the world was soon to explode. She picked out Giza from high above and watched the pyramids spin as Anubis guided them ever up.

Eleanor looked up to the stars they rushed through, not certain what Anubis was showing her. From this angle, she recognized no specific stars—astronomy was not a thing she had studied with any depth, though she knew the Egyptians had. She knew Eratosthenes, and Ptolmey, and his brilliant book
Almagest
, but she did not know—

As quickly as they had risen, they began to fall. Eleanor clung to Anubis now, and was certain she was screaming, but beyond the rush of stars and air, she could not hear herself. Warmth enclosed her and she fancied that she was falling apart, little pieces of her trailing through the sky. From the ground, she perceived herself in Anubis’s grasp, the bright explosion of light and heat they made as they crossed the night sky.

Comet, she thought, then discarded it. Comets didn’t enter the atmosphere. But—

“Meteor.”

It came out as a whisper, her throat strained and charred. At her side on the sofa, Anubis pressed a tea cup between her hands. The china cup still radiated heat from the freshly poured tea. Eleanor drank it down, finding it blissfully cold compared to the heat of the stars, the heat of reentry—

She looked around the hotel room, uncertain as to how they had returned. Had they left at all? She expected a sooty smudge to mark the ceiling, expected the windows to be blown open, but nothing was disturbed, as if they had never moved from the room.

Anubis lifted his own cup of tea and drank from the cup as a dog might, his shockingly pink tongue lapping at the tea. Eleanor stared, unable to fit this image with those she had just experienced. She set her cup down and crossed to the balcony doors, to open them wide and peer outside. The stars were as she remembered, bright and constant. Back inside, she picked up the box of rings and lifted the one of corroded iron.

“Are you telling me this ring comes from the stars?”

Anubis only stared at Eleanor until she began to wonder if she had hallucinated the entire thing. What if Anubis was not Anubis, but merely a server and she was dreaming still?

She reached out, to press a finger against Anubis’s broad nose. He did not move. Sleek black fur covered him as it might a Labrador Retriever, and his nose was wet as any dog’s would be. His whiskers were prickly, his mouth damp from the tea. She smoothed her fingers upward, toward his eyes. They closed and he leaned briefly into her touch as her fingers rounded his velvet ear. How like a dog, she thought, she drew her hand back.

“Not dreaming.”

Never dreaming, daughter. You are as I am—not a god, but of this body, of my children. And that ring, not mine, but of this land, of those stars. It will carry you.

Eleanor closed her hand into a fist. “Carry me? As did your rings?” When Anubis made no reply, she said, “And the ring left in Paris? Don’t tell me there are four rings I must find. I am well and truly tired of questing for rings.”

Anubis’s laughter was like falling stone.

This is not that, daughter.

Anubis stood and walked toward the open balcony door. Eleanor followed, latching the ring box as she did, but when his feet crossed the threshold to the balcony, it was as though the pre-dawn sky swallowed him entirely. He did not vanish so much as he became the lapis-dark sky, stretching over the whole of Alexandria. If she looked closely enough, she thought she could pick his eyes out of the stars. Eleanor clutched the ring box against her chest, certain she would never grow accustomed to his arrivals or departures.

It was strange, how the jackal within her calmed in his presence, how it became more a part of her with Anubis near, and not a separate entity trying to claw out of her throat. She exhaled and turned to the empty room.

There came a knock at the door.

Eleanor did not startle, only glared at the door, wondering if it was Anubis again, come with a fresh tray of tea. Opening the door, she couldn’t help show some caution; she peered out between door and jamb, relieved to see Cleo’s face. But hers was the face of a person who had not slept well; Eleanor knew this look, given that she wore it as well.

“Good morning,” Cleo said with an anxious smile.

“And to you, though I can only actually confirm it being morning. My mind isn’t yet decided as to the quality of the morning.” Eleanor opened the door to allow Cleo entry, latching it once she was inside.

“I don’t mean to interrupt…”

Eleanor followed Cleo’s gaze to the table, where the teapot and its two cups sat, one cup still half full of steaming tea. Eleanor bit the inside of her cheek. It was a small room and they were plainly alone, unless Mallory were secreted away in the bath or under the bed.

“That… Isn’t exactly easy to explain,” Eleanor said.

She wasn’t sure where to begin, in fact, given that Cleo didn’t know that Eleanor could shift into a jackal. Eleanor had found no good way to share this information; it wasn’t that she believed Cleo would think any less of her once she knew, it was rather that it was a difficult thing to explain. Cleo had traveled backward in time with them, thanks to the rings of Anubis, but learning that one’s friend was also a jackal? Eleanor continued to hesitate. In that moment she completely understood Mallory’s own difficulty in telling his family about his dual nature.

“It isn’t my place to ask,” Cleo said, “so long as I’m not interrupting.” She looked around the room, and much as Eleanor might have in her place, began to walk around, as if looking for intruders. “Anything. Anything at all.”

“There is no one under the bed, or clinging to the balcony rail,” Eleanor said, wondering what might have happened had Anubis remained. She lifted the ring box. “I had trouble sleeping, my mind on these. You might imagine… Four rings, and me again. It doesn’t bode well.”

“I trust you won’t go putting them on,” Cleo said, peering at the wardrobe before she circled back to the sofa and sat. “I also had trouble sleeping. I was thinking of the auction—of the silver-haired woman there. Was she…” Cleo stopped, metal fingers tapping an uneasy rhythm on her thighs. “Was she actually the Defender from the canyon? I pray that you will tell me I am entirely wrong, incorrect, and awful for thinking such a thing—that any such woman is yet in that canyon, far away from us in safe, safe, safe Alexandria. Did I mention safe?”

Eleanor joined Cleo on the sofa, taking the time to draw a fresh cup from the sideboard and pour tea for her. Eleanor poured slowly, knowing there was no way she would lie to Cleo about such a thing. If Cleo were in danger, she deserved to know everything Eleanor did.

“Yes, she was. The one who wanted to study you. Your arms.”

Cleo shuddered, pressing herself back into the sofa cushions.

“She is also known to my mother,” Eleanor said. “Akila, my mother called her. My mother said Akila’s kind travel between the times by means unknown—but given what we know…her means are likely much like those of Anubis.” She considered Anubis’s own words—
they will carry you
, and the jackal inside her shifted from foot to foot, wanting out. Wanting to run. “Unless you have another theory?”

Cleo drank her tea and said, “No. It’s one reason I wanted to talk with you. I haven’t been able to settle my thoughts after seeing her. I can accept that we have been…lured to this auction, if you will, for reasons we don’t yet know, but her appearance…” She shifted on the sofa, drawing her legs up to her chest to balance the teacup on her raised knees. “That was unexpected.”