“Gin gave Kay reading access,” Rat said, “which was about all I expected.”
“She does guard her kingdom like the fierce dragon she is.” Uncle Yushua smiled. “I’m glad she got that much.”
“Well, aren’t people going to be suspicious when I request things I shouldn’t be able to read?” I asked.
The three men exchanged looks. “Harper is the librarian for the Old Kingdom section. He can cover for you in the other two, if we need it.”
“Jules is aware of certain irregularities about our business here,” Uncle Yushua said. “He’ll cooperate and keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, Rebecca in the New Kingdom library is on loan from Harvard. She might be difficult, but we’ll deal with that if we have to.”
“And what is it that Shawmut actually deals with?” I asked. “Because that’s something no one’s bothered to tell me.”
“I told her you two were the people to talk to,” Rat admitted, “when she asked me this earlier.”
“I must confess that had slipped my mind for some reason,” Uncle Yushua murmured before continuing in a louder tone. “I think it’s because we’ve been so secretive for so long, there is the assumption the person is either ‘in the know,’ in a manner of speaking, when an incident occurs, or is ignorant and needs to be kept so.”
Harper sat back and looked concerned but just shook his head. He clearly wasn’t going to get involved in explanations.
Rat shrugged. “I’ve learned from the best on how to pass the buck.” He grinned, even though it looked strained. “And I know I’m not the best person to tell her about this supernatural circus.”
There was a bitter note in his voice, and I wondered how bad it had been with Uncle Yushua when he needed his squad’s help. I had a feeling it didn’t end well for everyone. That was probably the reason he was so reluctant to tell me how he met Uncle Yushua.
“Egypt has an extensive history,” Uncle Yushua started, making it sound like it was the beginning of a lecture. “And most of it isn’t known, due to time. Due to human nature. Before the Romans absorbed it into their empire, it was thought to be a magical place. People believed the gods were all around them.”
“Preindustrial man believed in the magical easily,” Harper pointed out. “From the remaining records we have of both societies, the Romans were very practical people.”
Harper sounded annoyed when he said that, a hostility I seemed to be the only one to pick up. I’d lost the thread of what he was saying while I was thinking.
“You do treat her like she is worshipped by you,” Rat teased.
“Leave my relationship with Mafdet out of this,” Uncle Yushua protested with a chuckle, before he sobered. “And I don’t agree with your insistence the Ancient Egyptians were so close to their gods, and their deities freely walked among them. You know that’s only been recorded by one or two of their scribes. Most serious scholars seem to think that those records are the result of boasting and wishful thinking.”
“The same scholars who don’t believe in curses,” Harper said, a thread of anger in his voice. “The ones who founded this place to keep the world safe from those things they can’t explain.”
“Do you mean this entire place is just a dumping ground for cursed items?” I demanded. “How do you keep stuff like that contained? How do you know a doohickey is even cursed for real? Adding curses to a burial was as regular as leaving flowers!”
How did I know that?
“The thing either gives off enough of an aura for even ‘rational men,’” Rat said, making air quotes, “to know there is something wrong with it. Or it eats a grad student or digger. Then they know it’s cursed,” he finished sarcastically.
“And unfortunately he’s correct.” Uncle Yushua sighed.
“Was that what happened to you?” I squeaked.
“That’s not important,” Rat said impatiently. “What we need to deal with now is fixing what is going on with the missing casket and the asshole who’s targeting Kay.”
Harper looked at all of us. “All that matters is the Casket of the Night is found before someone is hurt.” He flushed. “Hurt more. I’m sorry that I seem to be making light of what happened to you—”
“But having an entitled jerk and his puppy haunting your dreams isn’t the worst thing that could happen,” I said. “The neat language skills could be thought of as a bonus.”
Rat turned to stare at me, because he seemed to be the only one who caught the sarcasm in my voice. Uncle Yushua looked relieved I wasn’t having hysterics, and Harper just plowed on with what he was saying.
“I’m going to get you a series of reports,” Harper told me. “Settle down in the Old Kingdom library to see how much you can get out of them.”
“And how much does Gin know?” I asked, wondering if there was a reason for the woman’s actions.
I got some weird feelings off her. Or I could have imagined it. Maybe she didn’t like teenagers or even anyone in “her” library. Her hostility could be from a perfectly logical place.
“Gin is naturally suspicious.” Rat grinned. “Me picking you up and coming in late as a favor for Josh won’t seem out of place. This isn’t a nine-to-five job sometimes.”
“We’d turn you loose in the stacks,” Harper said, “but the whole mess is in some sort of weird sorting system. I barely know it, and I’ve been here for years.”
“That was because of the ongoing argument for years whether to use the Dewey decimal system or the Library of Congress one,” Uncle Yushua explained dryly. “By the time it was decided, this one had taken root. No one was willing to undertake any type of reorganization once they realized what had happened. So the system continues, and only a handful of people understand it.”
“So if you learn the filing system,” Rat said, “you’d get a job here as soon as you graduated high school, never mind college.”
“I’ll put that on my to-do list,” I teased. “But let’s deal with one crisis at a time.”
I didn’t even know what I wanted to do, and this new skill didn’t make me suddenly want to dig up the desert to find things either.
Uncle Yushua nodded. “Now, Mykayla, I need to explain part of the trouble I dragged you into.”
I grimaced. “Don’t feel guilty. I’m blaming Sutekhgen for this.”
“Don’t say his name,” Uncle Yushua cautioned me. “It might bring his attention to you.”
“Or worse,” Harper chimed in. “But using a mystical being’s name is never a good thing. I was surprised he told you his.”
“I gave him mine,” I said.
“But not your whole name, so that will protect you some,” Harper said. “He only knows your first name, right?”
“Just my first one,” I muttered, wondering if I could feel any stupider. “Not my last one or anything.”
“There isn’t a lot that has been recovered about the Second Dynasty, even with all the digging that has been done over the past century or more,” Uncle Yushua said, trying to save me any more embarrassment. “Mainly because it’s part of the Old Kingdom. Most of the buildings were either deconstructed and used for another project or just simply covered over by other dynasties. It’s a victim to urban renewal as much as anything else.”
“Everything in it’s more than a couple millennium old,” Rat piped up. “So good luck finding anything of use.”
For a man who claimed not to be educated, he seemed to know a lot about archeology. But it could also be he’d absorbed this stuff by working here so long. But it still seemed weird to me, and I was going to ask him about it the next time we ran.
Uncle Yushua shook his head. “Tomb robbers, more than time, have been our enemy here. I admit that early archeologists probably destroyed as much as they uncovered in their rush to discover the wealth of the pharaohs.”
I nodded and let my head fall against the back of the chair, closing my eyes. I was getting a little overwhelmed. Knowledge was power and all those sayings, but the sheer amou
nt of history we were dealing with was incredible.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Uncle Yushua asked.
“Does no really count as a good answer?” I replied, opening my eyes. “I don’t, but that jerk shoved this information in my head for a reason, so we might as well use it. If we can use it against him, I’m all for that.”
“You can walk away from this still,” Uncle Yushua told me, looking a little wild. This appeared to be as hard for him as it was for me. No matter how many bad things had done stuff to him, it was apparently different watching it happen to me.
“Until I wander through the Met,” I whispered, “and see that I can read the exhibits without having to look at the translations. Or he shows up again—this time in a place I don’t have anyone to help me. So I need to find out why Sutekhgen seems to be so interested in me.”
Uncle Yushua looked stricken when I said that and came over to hug me. “Part of the reason I haven’t been as close to the family as I should have been was because I was worried something like this might happen.”
I just hugged him back, grateful he was here. He must have been so lonely over the years staying away from us. As crappy as this was for me, I hoped this would bring him closer to his family again. There was silence for a moment.
“The Second Dynasty is centered mainly around Abydos and the Thanis area of Egypt. That’s in the upper southern region of the Nile. It is also the first united dynasty, controlling both the Upper and Lower areas of Egypt,” Harper explained, getting us back on track.
“The ruler of the sedge and the bee,” I murmured.
“That’s right,” Uncle Yushua said after a second.
I realized I had said it in Egyptian and flushed. “And if I do that around my parents, they’re going to have me at a doctor’s office to see if I’m on drugs or having a psychotic break. So I need to get this fixed.”
If it could be fixed. I was beginning to think it couldn’t be, but could I be on guard all the time to be certain what language I was speaking?
“Peribsen is interesting because the man has Seth, Set, or Sutech in his serekh instead of Horus,” Harper lectured. “And some people think he might be three of the pharaohs of the Second Dynasty, that he just had changed his Nesu-bit name to show how he ruled over both Upper and Lower Egypt.”
“I’m sure all this is interesting,” Rat interrupted, “but we should actually tell her the creepy-crawly part and not give Kay a historical rundown on the area.”
Because the historical part of it was hard and confusing, because I knew the word, Nesu-bit, knew that it meant Lord of Sedge and Bee and was part of a pharaoh’s title, but I didn’t know why it was so important.
Harper opened his mouth to protest, shut it, and nodded. “I’ll keep it short, then. You can tell names of pharaohs and other people, because they’re circled. The nomes are also circled. The circle’s called a cartouche. It’s French for cartridge. The Second Dynasty didn’t use those; they had boxes around their names, called serekh. Also, they only had two names instead of the five of later dynasties,” Harper continued. “I’ll lend you a couple of books on the subject, and maybe a grammar or basic primer to the language. Just so you know how all the information that’s been shoved into your head works.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said.
I might be able to figure out which language I was speaking at the time, for one thing. It would keep me occupied so I wouldn’t do something reckless. Though what that could be, I really didn’t know. I knew all the words he mentioned, but I really didn’t have any context for them. It was annoying, and I was mentally kicking Sutekhgen in the head for giving me another headache.
“But the issue we’re having is a bit more metaphysical than practical,” Uncle Yushua said. “And this is one reason I never really talked about my work with you before this.”
“I don’t think I’d have believed it before this,” I said. “Xiu’s the one who’s into the mystical—astrology, tarot cards, and stuff like that. I just know a lot of things because she likes telling me all about what she’s found out.”
“She sounds like a good friend,” Rat said.
“She’s the best.”
She was. I wanted her here to hold my hand through all this scary stuff, even as I also wanted her as far away from it as possible.
“There are beings in the universe who are outside time and space,” Harper intoned. “They want to try and get to our planet, whether we want them here or not.”
“Most of those things are nasty and cranky,” Rat added. “That’s one of the reasons we don’t want them here.”
Harper shot him a glare, like he didn’t enjoy Rat making fun of something as serious as this. It happened so fast, I thought I had imagined it.
“The other is those beings have been considered as gods when they do manage to break through the barriers,” Uncle Yushua said.
“There was an old TV show—” I started.
“Don’t mention that,” Rat and Harper chorused. Then they looked at each other and said, “Jinx,” at the same time.
Uncle Yushua just shook his head at their antics. “It’s not aliens who are pretending to be gods but monsters with powers that could be considered godlike. The Egyptian pantheon is vast. Most of that is because it’s covering a period over three millennia. A lot changes in three thousand years.”
I nodded. “English writing has changed a lot in a couple of centuries. And language changes all the time. See how English has changed in the last ten years or so with all the new tech around. That’s added to the vocabulary.”
“There are also local gods, as well as the national ones for the Egyptians, which add to the confusion,” Harper said. “Not to mention the Amarna issue.”
I made a mental note to ask about that later, because that sounded kind of serious.
“But the one we’re worried about right now is the one called Set,” Rat said. “There are a lot of different spellings for his name, depending on when and who is spelling it.”
“The fact Ancient Egyptian seems to have no vowels doesn’t help,” Uncle Yushua said.
“And it’s a translation of a translation half the time,” Harper added.
“Plus the overlay of being a Roman province taken from Greek rulers,” Uncle Yushua continued.
“Means that it’s almost as bastardized as English is,” Rat ended with a grin. “Which is adding to the headache you’re having now.”
“More of a headache from the three of you playing off each other.” I smiled. Egyptian was settling easily in my brain, worming through it like the Nile.
Where had that simile come from?
Uncle Yushua looked a little guilty. “I’m sorry. I still have a habit of lecturing.”
“You need to explain things,” I assured him. “I really don’t know what’s going on.”
“And to skip the History of Egypt’s Dynasties in three-point harmony, only one of us should give you this information,” Rat said.
“Why don’t you point me in the direction I need to go, and if I have any questions, I can ask them later,” I said.
Uncle Yushua and Harper looked like they wanted to argue, but Rat grinned. “I like that! Overloading you with info right now isn’t the best thing.”
Harper looked annoyed for a second, before smiling at me.
“Then let me get you settled in the reading area and bring you some books. Unfortunately all the reading cubes have been claimed, because we’ve been overrun with grad students this summer,” Harper said. “That would have been best, so we wouldn’t be running the risk of someone discovering what was happening.”
“What is this about a casket?” I asked, suddenly remembering the discussion we had last night.
“The Casket of Night,” Rat said. “At least that’s one of the translations used for the thing.”
“It was found at one of the earliest digs sponsored by the MFA,” Uncle Yushua said. “And one of the reasons the Shawmut w
as founded.”
“I would have liked to see the looks on all those guys’ faces when they realized how screwed they were.” Rat smirked.
“What guys?” I demanded.
“Most people know about the ‘curse’ from Tutankhamun’s tomb on Carter’s dig,” Uncle Yushua said, putting quotes around the word curse. “But that was simply a matter of bad luck, among other things. There was nothing supernatural about what happened to all those people.”
“Curses and mummies are all that people think about when you mention Egypt,” Harper murmured, disgust dripping from his words. “There’s a lot more to its history and people. But too many people chose to be ignorant of its glories.”
“That was in the twenties,” I said. “But there had been digs going on there for decades before that.”
Uncle Yushua nodded. “Harvard and the MFA got a toehold in there early.”
“Because you don’t want to be left behind when looting a nation,” Rat said sarcastically. “Most of the good stuff goes early. Just ask the Greeks.”
I winced, because there was one Greek teacher, Mr. Kokogious, in whose class we heard all about how much the country lost due to British imperialism. Mentioning the Elgin Marbles would get him going so much we’d lose half the class time to his rants.
“So when Harvard started their excavations there,” Uncle Yushua said, “the university ignored the warnings of the locals and started digging in an area they claimed was forbidden due to a curse from the old gods. They feared it so much, these devout Muslims had their imam and a Coptic priest bless the area yearly.”
“And since none of these men had the sense of a goose,” Rat continued, “they ignored the ‘ignorant natives’ and dug anyway.”
“What happened?” I asked when he paused. Something bad had to have blown up on them for Harvard to believe in the supernatural and establish this place to deal with such things.
“The casket was protected by a number of curse tablets,” Uncle Yushua said. “The usual spells were written, along with a few only found there.”
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