I Do Not Trust You: A Novel

by Laura J. Burns

  MIKE: If there was a hidden statue, wouldn’t they have found it?

  M: It’s small. Maybe it was inside something.

  MIKE: How likely is that? They moved the temple because it was submerged after they built the dam. Your Set piece probably washed away in the water.

  MIKE: M? Still there?

  M: Yeah. I guess I’ll just have to see.

  MIKE: Keep me in the loop, understand? I don’t trust this Ash guy.

  M: I’ll ping you from Egypt. Night.

  MIKE: Night. Love you.

  M sighed. What would happen if they went to Philae and the piece was no longer there? Ash wouldn’t think she had anything of value to offer. Saving her father would become even more of an impossibility. The now-familiar panic rose in her chest, and she tried to shove it down.

  “What’s wrong?” Ash’s voice asked in the darkness.

  The panic was still there, and she worried that if she opened her mouth to answer, a sob would come out. M screwed her eyes shut and willed herself to calm down.

  “Had a fight with the boyfriend, hmm?” he asked.

  “Screw you!” she snapped before she could stop herself. “I’m worried about my father. I’m terrified about my father. You tell me he’s alive like it barely even matters, like it’s not supposed to rock my whole world, and you expect me to not be a little upset from time to time? You care more about a freaking piece of rock than you do about my dad’s safety. You could tell me where he is right now, you could save him by just telling me so I could call the police, but you won’t. Meanwhile, those fanatics could be torturing him this very second, or they could’ve killed him and we wouldn’t even know—”

  “Hey.” Ash sat up in his bed. “It’s okay. They won’t hurt him, not unless they think they have to. They’re going to do everything they can to find the pieces of Set, and your father is smart enough to take a long time with his translations.”

  “You said if they thought he was useless…”

  “If they threaten him, he’ll tell them about the map using a code. He’ll tell them he needs to find the key, and he’ll send them on a wild goose chase looking for it. He’ll tell them it took five years to translate part of the map the first time and that he needs that much time to retranslate it with the code. He’s smart.”

  Her pounding heartbeat slowed a bit. “But they’ll run out of patience eventually.”

  “Yes,” he conceded.

  She turned so she was facing him. “Please, Ash, just tell me where he is.”

  “Give me the map, and the piece of Set, and I will.”

  M sighed. They weren’t getting anywhere. For a long while neither of them spoke.

  “You’re like him that way,” Ash finally said. “You don’t stop. You don’t hesitate. You just keep thinking of different ways to solve your problems. You make it up as you go.”

  She smiled. “He who hesitates is lost.” It was Dad’s favorite saying because it had been Mom’s favorite. Although Mom had said she who hesitates is lost.

  “It’s fairly annoying, especially when trying to get either one of you to do something you don’t want to do.” Ash chuckled. “I mean, do you ever think you’re wrong?”

  “Um…” She felt her cheeks heat up. “No.” They both laughed. “That sounds so obnoxious! I don’t mean I think I’m infallible or anything,” M went on.

  “Your father told me every moment in life is an opportunity to learn. That there’s no point in dwelling on what went wrong because it wasn’t really wrong—”

  “It was just not what you expected,” she interrupted.

  “Exactly. It was really quite remarkable, how calm and cheerful he was in the face of captivity,” Ash said. “Most people would have been frightened, and I imagine he was, but he was using the time to study the map and the people around him. It was impressive how much self-control he had.”

  “Sounds as if you liked him,” she said.

  “I did like him, do like him. Quite a bit. You should be happy you got that from him,” Ash told her. “Not everyone is lucky with their parents.”

  She frowned. Hadn’t he said something about parents back in Paris?

  “Were you?” she asked.

  “Hardly.” His bitter tone shocked her. In their time together, she’d never heard him sound so raw.

  “Why? What happened?” she asked, leaning toward him.

  She heard him suck in a ragged breath.

  “Ash?”

  “Get some sleep,” he rasped. “You won’t tell me where we’re going tomorrow, but I imagine it will involve skydiving or rappelling down a cliff.”

  Way to avoid the question. They’d finally been having an honest conversation for maybe the first time ever. He obviously didn’t want to talk about his parents. Fine. But he could still just keep talking to her.

  She rolled over on her side. Why should she care? It wasn’t like they were friends. “Good night.”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Searching at night is maybe not the best idea,” Memphis said from her seat next to him. They were on the boat to Agilkia Island.

  Ash shrugged. “It’s a touristy place. Too many people could see us in the middle of the day.” He hadn’t been to the Temple of Isis for a few years, but he could still remember the oppressive crowds. It was a sacred place, and he’d wanted quiet, space. He wanted that now. The past several days had taken a toll on his self-control—not only because of Memphis and her constant reminders about her father, but because of Set. She’d hidden the piece in her pack, but he felt it. The strange throbbing emanating from the artifact had continued. Occasionally he fancied it was calling to him.

  “It can be helpful to have a lot of people. When there is a crowd, nobody’s looking at individuals,” Memphis said. “We could disappear in the shuffle. And there would be sunlight.”

  “We’ve been searching in the dark all along. Why change now?” he asked with a smile. “Here. We’re docking.” He stood, eager to be off the boat, to be in the temple, to feel the presence of Horus.

  A light show was just beginning when they reached the temple of Isis. Enormous pictures projected on the high walls, with narration that told the story of Isis and her family: her husband, Osiris, their brother, Set, and their son, Horus. The few tourists had gathered around to watch it, so Memphis drifted off to the right, melting into the shadows, heading for the outer buildings. Ash followed slowly, sudden reluctance filling him. To hide a piece of Set here, at a temple to the mother of Horus, felt wrong. Set was the eternal enemy of Isis and Horus. Would the Eye really have done that?

  Memphis would say the least expected place was probably the best hiding spot.

  She was out of sight already, so he walked to the nearby mammisi, the small temple depicting the birth of Horus. If he were an ancient member of the Eye, that would have been where he would go. Who knew? Perhaps they thought the power of their god would protect the artifact from being found by Set’s acolytes.

  Once he was inside the stone walls, he forgot about searching. It was too still, too perfect. He let himself breathe in the presence of the god.

  Deep within, he felt the stirring of Horus. Ash stopped in front of a relief of Isis suckling Horus in a swamp. He let the stillness enter, meditating on how Isis had kept her son safe from Set as Horus grew to manhood. The constant throbbing from the Set artifact had vanished. M was far enough away that he couldn’t feel it. He was able to sink more deeply into stillness without the piece pulling at him. He had last been at the temple with Philip, at the start of his training. Now it was as if no time had passed. The years in between melted away and young Ash stood with his god, finally understanding where his gift came from, what it meant.

  Philip’s voice filled his memory, teaching him the secret prayers. Ash had been in this exact spot, the words strange in his ears, their sounds new, yet familiar, as if his blood remembered them.

  His lips moved in prayer now. The god was there, moving within, the electric feeling st
retching from his belly all the way out to his fingertips. But something was missing, or wrong. The words were ancient, but they were in the Coptic language instead of the true tongue of the priests of Horus. And while the temple was an ancient shrine to Horus, the island wasn’t Philae. The temple wasn’t intact. It had been moved, tampered with. His religion was nothing more than an imitation of its true self.

  Ash shook his head, trying to rid himself of these impious thoughts. It was Memphis’s influence. Philip had never taught him to consider the Eye inauthentic.

  The cell in his pocket buzzed. He didn’t have to look to know it was Philip. His mentor had been texting more and more frequently, demanding to know Ash’s whereabouts, insisting he come home with the map and piece of Set.

  Reluctantly, he checked the phone.

  PHILIP: Send your flight information. We will pick you up.

  ASH: I don’t have the map.

  PHILIP: Then bring the girl. I will discover where she has hidden it.

  ASH: She’s starting to trust me. If I betray her, she won’t translate the map for us. She won’t find the pieces.

  PHILIP: I’ve told you to stop this effort to discover them. Your only mission is to retrieve the map. You’ve created unnecessary danger by unearthing a piece. If you don’t bring it to us immediately I will be forced to act.

  ASH: What does that mean?

  PHILIP: If I don’t have flight information within the hour, I will alert our brethren in Norway to retrieve you.

  ASH: This is the wrong course of action.

  PHILIP: Careful, Ashwin. You risk losing your salvation. We cannot survive a dissenter in the Eye.

  Ash felt a wave of fear that quickly morphed into intense anger. He shoved the phone in his pocket without answering, then pulled it out again. As his fingers flew over the keys, securing funds before Philip cut him off, his head buzzed. Anger was an old emotion from his childhood, one that the Eye frowned upon. Knowing Philip would disapprove of his anger only made it blaze more strongly. Ash hurled the cell to the ground.

  “Guess I should’ve known you’d be here.” Memphis appeared from the darkness. “Have you bothered searching at all, or are you just here to worship and get in a fight with your phone?”

  “Your mockery is blasphemous, especially in the presence of Horus,” he snapped.

  She flinched, stepping back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I was only teasing, but I should’ve been more sensitive. This is like church to you.”

  “Yes.” He was surprised by the sincerity in her voice. Her apology drained all the anger out of him.

  “To me, archeological sites are just that—sites. Interesting from a historical or anthropological perspective, but not…”

  “Not sacred,” he offered.

  “Right.” She bit her lip. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  He hesitated, not sure what he wanted.

  “I’ll go watch the show,” she said, and walked off.

  Ash took a shaky breath. He wasn’t used to this version of Memphis, the respectful one. Her father had been respectful too, even to the followers of Set. Perhaps she had simply never realized how deeply Ash’s life was entwined with his god.

  “And how deep is that?” he murmured. He reached out to touch a relief of the adult Horus, a man’s body with the head of a falcon. It was here he had learned Horus loved him and had given him true power. He’d grown up feeling ashamed of himself, but Philip had taught him to allow the god in. You shouldn’t feel shame when you were an instrument of Horus. So why did he feel such doubt now?

  “I should listen to Philip,” he whispered to the carving. “But the piece of Set … it’s incredible to see such a thing with my own eyes. And Memphis will find the rest. Is it truly wrong to help her? Her father’s life is at stake.”

  The world is at stake. Ash no longer knew if it was his own thought or that of the god speaking to his heart.

  He slowly bent and picked up his phone. A message across the cracked screen said the money had been transferred to his private account. He breathed a sigh of relief. When members of the Eye discovered Ash was no longer in Norway, Philip would certainly cut him off from the Eye’s funds. He’d know Ash had been lying to him. Ash had eventually admitted he and Memphis were in Norway rather than Paris, but he’d never mentioned Egypt. Deep down he knew he had wanted to throw the Eye off track, to make sure they couldn’t take Memphis by force. And now he’d stolen money. “I’m sorry if this is wrong,” he told the falcon-headed god. “I should trust the Eye. But I don’t feel anger from you, only stillness.”

  Perhaps Philip didn’t know the desires of Horus. Or maybe Ash was letting his lifelong obsession with the pieces of Set cloud his judgment. It didn’t matter. He had made his decision days ago. He simply hadn’t admitted it to himself.

  Memphis was waiting with the rest of the small crowd, gazing at the images projected on the high stone walls. The speakers were narrating the show in Spanish, which he didn’t speak. Memphis nodded toward the pictures.

  “It’s a retelling of the Contendings of Horus and Set,” she said. “I think this is what you and I started with, over coffee, right?” Her tone was light, but he remembered her face from their first conversation at the diner well. She’d been elated and then terrified at the news of her father.

  “Are they getting the story right?” He’d never actually bothered to watch the tourist show.

  “I doubt you would think so. But they’ve got the basics: Set killed Osiris because he wanted to rule Egypt by himself. He chopped up Osiris’s body and scattered the pieces across Egypt. Then Isis, because she’s the best wife ever, went and found the pieces, put them back together, and brought him back to life. She should really get more credit for that.”

  “Is that what it says?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” she said. “It just talks about how they then conceived Horus, and Osiris went to rule the underworld. Then blah, blah, blah, Horus grows up and Set challenges him for the throne, and they fight like a couple of overgrown toddlers.”

  “We’re done being respectful, I see,” he said.

  “Sorry, but come on. They turn themselves into hippos—freaking hippos—in order to wrestle. And Isis is always messing with the contests, trying to rig them for Horus. It’s like an ancient Egyptian reality show,” Memphis said. “Both of them are completely juvenile. They should’ve just given the throne of Egypt to Isis. At least she knew how to use her power in ways that made sense.”

  Ash frowned. It had never occurred to him to think about Horus and Set in this manner. And he realized, she wasn’t wrong.

  “I’m just saying, I assume the version you learned was different.”

  “Well…” It wasn’t. “It has more gravitas when you say it in the Coptic language.”

  Memphis burst out laughing. “Awww. You made a joke about Horus,” she cried.

  He shrugged. “I focused on the devastating consequences of their battles. I didn’t really stop to think about how the battles themselves took place.”

  “Maybe they were metaphors,” Memphis suggested. “The generally accepted view is that this whole story was a way of describing how Upper and Lower Egypt came together to be one kingdom.”

  Philip had taught him that the Contendings were literal truth. Maybe it didn’t sound so ridiculous when you knew the magic in the story was real.

  “Anyway, I’ve always liked this myth,” Memphis went on, surprising him. “It’s all about family loyalty.”

  It was impossible to miss the pointed message in her words, but he didn’t know how to respond. She was fiercely loyal to her father. She loved him, completely. It was the sort of thing Ash couldn’t imagine. His parents had no loyalty to him—quite the opposite. So he had none to them. The only true loyalty, the only true love, he’d ever known was to Horus. The Eye was his family. His salvation.

  Sitting here with Memphis, though, it was difficult to muster the loyalty he was supp
osed to feel. He was lying to the Eye about his whereabouts; the Eye was hunting him.

  “They stick together, even when one of them gets chopped up or turns into a hippopotamus.” She shot him a look, daring him to get angry. But by now he knew she was just teasing.

  Ash pulled out his flashlight. “We should be searching.”

  * * *

  “It’s not here,” Memphis said, rejoining Ash.

  They’d spent five hours separately searching the temple for the next piece of Set. Ash paid special attention to every hieroglyph he found that depicted Set, Horus, or Isis, making sure to check for any hint of a hiding spot. Nothing revealed itself.

  “Unless they managed to get it up high,” she went on, gazing up at the sixty-foot-tall walls of the first pylon. “I climbed as high as I could, but I couldn’t risk anyone seeing me. I’d get thrown out for sure.”

  “You’re certain this is the right place?” he asked doubtfully. Uncertainty flickered on her face briefly, replaced almost immediately by her usual confident look.

  “Yes.”

  She was lying, but he didn’t challenge her. A tour guide leading a small group of French tourists caught his attention. The guide was giving the history of Philae Island, detailing how the temple was brought to Agilkia Island to save it from being permanently flooded after the Aswan Dam was built. It was a wonderful undertaking, he said, but also a tragedy. The sacred buildings were rescued, but Philae Island had been sacred as well. And now it was gone forever.

  “The island was sacred,” he said in French.

  “What island?” Memphis asked.

  “Philae.”

  “Right, it was a holy place, dedicated to Isis,” she agreed. “And it’s ironic—the temples were built on high enough ground that the yearly flooding of the Nile never reached them. Ancient Egyptians believed the flooding was the tears of Isis over the death of Osiris. And then boom! Modern people build a dam and the flooding stops, and—”

  “—the sacred ground of Isis floods forever,” he finished. “Drowning her in her own tears.”

  Memphis smiled at him. “Exactly.”