The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set

by Gail Carriger

  Alexia was hypnotized by the spot as they floated over it. It was the early evening, so their descent was slow and measured. From the sky, the place looked oddly familiar, the wide curve of the river forming a shape in the desert that Alexia was certain she recognized. But it was like trying to see a figure in the clouds. Then, as they dropped down closer and closer, she realized what it was.

  She beckoned autocratically at her massive husband. “Conall, do come over here. Do you see that?”

  The earl gave his wife a very dour look. “Alexia, I am trying not to look down.” But he made his way over to her.

  “Yes, but, please? Just there. Zayed, if you could spare a moment? What is that?”

  Their host came over to where the Maccons stood, Alexia leaning over the basket’s edge, looking down intently.

  He nodded. “Ah, yes, of course. The Creature in the Sands.”

  Alexia pointed it out for the benefit of her husband, even though Conall clearly wasn’t interested. “See there, the curve of the river? That is its head, and there, stretching out in ribbons into the desert, those are its legs. Are those pathways, Zayed?” The earl, unwilling to study further the ground he would probably describe as rushing toward them, went over to lie down on a pile of colorful blankets, shutting his eyes.

  Zayed confirmed Alexia’s assessment. “Ghost trails into the desert.”

  “Really, made by actual ghosts? Before the plague, I assume?”

  “So they say. Not just any ghosts, lady. Ghosts of kings and queens and the servants of kings and queens. Must be ghosts, lady. What living man would walk voluntarily into the desert sands?”

  “Eight trails, eight legs,” ruminated Alexia thoughtfully. It is an octopus. But an upside-down octopus? Of course, because the Nile runs backward! She continued interrogating her host. “And that spot there? The one that represents its eye?”

  “Ah, lady, that is, how you might say, a temple.”

  “For which of the many Ancient Egyptian gods?”

  “Ah, no, not for a god, lady. For a queen. A queen who would be king.”

  Alexia knew enough of Egyptian history to know that could mean only one person. “Hatshepsut? Indeed. How very interesting.”

  Zayed gave her a very funny look. “Yes, lady. What might she say to you visiting here?”

  “Goodness, why should her opinion matter? Has it been properly excavated yet, that temple?”

  Before Zayed could answer, several things happened at once. The balloon lost altitude, as the air began to cool with proximity to the river, dropping down toward the very point under discussion—the Eye of the Octopus. Alexia felt a sensation of total repulsion, one she had only experienced heretofore from a preternatural mummy. Only this time it was ten times worse. She felt as if she were being pushed, literally pushed, by hundreds of invisible hands. All of them were trying to press her skin inward so that it melted back into flesh and bone. It was a horrible sensation and she wanted more than anything to beg Zayed to take the balloon back up into the aether. But she also knew that the answers to all her many questions lay down below.

  At the same time, Conall said, “Oh, I feel much better,” and sat upright.

  Prudence cried out, “Mama, Mama, Mama. No!”

  Alexia, dizzy from the repulsion, sank forward, tilting over the edge of the basket slightly, and spotted, moored near that fateful octopus eye, a large modern-style dahabiya.

  Oblivious to the internal chaos of his lady passenger, Zayed answered Alexia’s question. “One should never disregard the opinion of a queen. But that queen changed the pathways of the world.”

  Alexia felt as though she were missing something. As though the earth were spinning away from her, as fine and silvery fast as the Nile in full flood. The pushing came on harder and harder until it was as though she were being suffocated in a vat of molasses.

  The balloon bumped down not ten paces from the Temple of Hatshepsut, but Alexia knew none of this. For only the second time in her adult life, she had fainted dead away.

  Lady Maccon awoke to the sensation of cool water being splashed on her face and cool water surrounding her body.

  Someone had thrown her into the Nile River—fully dressed.

  She sputtered. “Oh my goodness, what?”

  “It was my idea.” Genevieve Lefoux’s mellow, slightly accented voice came from behind Alexia’s head. The Frenchwoman seemed to be supporting her by the shoulders so that she could float with the current.

  Her husband’s worried face appeared, blocking out the stars in the evening sky far above. “How do you feel?”

  Alexia assessed the situation. The pressure was still there, the sense of repulsion, but mostly around her head and face now. Where her body was fully immersed in water, she felt nothing at all. “Better.”

  “Well, good. Don’t scare me like that, woman!”

  “Conall, it wasn’t my fault!”

  He was truculent. “Still, quite un-Alexia of you.”

  “Sometimes even I behave unexpectedly.”

  He was not to be mollycoddled. “Don’t do it again.”

  Alexia gave up; there was no way he would be reasonable. She tilted her head back to look at Madame Lefoux, upside down. “It was a good idea, Genevieve. But I can’t stay here in the Nile indefinitely. I have an octopus to investigate.” Then she remembered something. “Primrose! Genevieve, did you steal Primrose and bring her with you?”

  “No, Alexia. I did not even know she was missing until your husband asked me that same question not ten minutes ago.”

  “But we thought…”

  “No, I am sorry. I was in a rush to leave the hotel because I had uncovered some very telling information and wanted to make my way here as quickly as possible. I had no idea there was a kidnapping. I do hope the little girl is all right.”

  “Don’t we all? Blast it, we were hoping you saw something and were on the trail of the kidnappers. What was so interesting, then?” Alexia had no subtlety.

  The Frenchwoman sighed. “Well, as you are here now, we might as well combine forces. Perhaps you are in possession of some missing pieces of my puzzle.”

  “How do you know it’s not the other way around?” interjected the earl.

  Genevieve continued as though he hadn’t interrupted her. “I found myself in the company of Edouard Naville, a burgeoning archaeologist.”

  “An OBO member? I knew you had some other reason for visiting Egypt.”

  Madame Lefoux made no acknowledgment of any connection to the Order of the Brass Octopus. That, in and of itself, was an admission. “He has recently received the concession for Deir el-Bahri.”

  “Oh, indeed,” encouraged Alexia, understanding none of this. She paddled frantically to right herself, touching her feet down into what she was certain was a filthy river bottom, but as she still had her walking boots on, it was impossible to tell. She stayed crouched down to keep as much of herself immersed as possible.

  Conall offered his assistance with the maneuver. Alexia made note that while they had not bothered to remove her dress, Conall was quite naked, and Genevieve was wearing some kind of gentleman’s undergarment as a bathing costume. Behind her, on the shore, Alexia could make out Zayed’s balloon, mostly deflated, and a party of human shadows that must be made up of Zayed’s family and the crew of Genevieve’s dahabiya. They were engaging in some kind of trade, or meal, or both. Alexia could hear Prudence, with her usual lack of interest in water, shrieking with laughter. The infant was utterly unperturbed by her mother’s ailment or resulting damp predicament.

  Madame Lefoux gestured behind her at the shore. “This is Deir el-Bahri. You can make out some of the ruins of the temple behind our party. Beyond it is the Valley of the Kings. But this… this is the Eye of the Octopus.”

  Alexia nodded. “Yes, I had figured as much.”

  “Naville is young yet, but he hopes eventually to excavate here. I was sent to investigate, you know, the source.”

  Alexia was one ste
p ahead of her. “The source of the God-Breaker Plague. You too?”

  Lord Maccon interrupted, “Whose temple did you say it was?”

  “I didn’t, but Monsieur Naville believes it to be the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut.”

  At which Conall, quite unexpectedly, busted out with a great crack of booming laughter. It echoed out over the river. “Well, well, well, I’m certain she won’t like us visiting.”

  Alexia frowned. “Mr. Zayed said much the same thing.”

  Her husband continued. “And it could hardly be a mortuary temple. A metamorphosis temple, perhaps, but not mortuary.”

  Alexia began to comprehend what he was getting at, almost falling backward into the Nile in her surprise. “Are you telling me…?”

  “Matakara is Hatshepsut’s other name. Well, one of the many. You didn’t know?”

  “Of course I didn’t know! Why should I? And why didn’t you tell me? My goodness, she really is very old!”

  Lord Maccon tilted his handsome head in that annoying way of his that was meant to be coy. “I dinna think it was of particular import.”

  “Oh, dinna you? Wonderful. And now, do you think it might be important now?” Alexia thought even harder, difficult to do with the sense of repulsion pressing in against her brain. She splashed her head back down into the river, immediately feeling better. She resurfaced, wondering at the no-doubt-horrible state of her hair, pleased that someone at least had thought to remove her hat and parasol before her dunking. “But, Conall, didn’t you once tell me that Ancient Egypt was ruled by werewolves?”

  “Only inasmuch as Ancient Rome was ruled by vampires. There were still vampires around Egypt, even then. Hatshepsut was quite an upset. Made some people very angry. Tuthmosis, of course, put everything to rights again. He was one of ours.”

  “It makes no sense. Why would Matakara’s temple be the epicenter of the God-Breaker Plague? Why would a vampire be involved in such a thing? Her kind, too, would be exterminated.”

  Genevieve Lefoux said, “May I suggest we look to the scientific evidence, and the reality of the situation first, and speculate afterward?”

  “I take it you haven’t yet explored the temple?” Alexia was surprised.

  “I only recently arrived here myself. We were mooring when your balloon touched down. How did you, by the way, manage to convince a Drifter to carry you?”

  “I am supposed to right my father’s wrong,” replied Alexia cryptically, twisting up her face in disdain.

  “Goodness, which of the many?” the inventor wanted to know. “Anyway, the temple is completely unexcavated, so it is still filled with sand. It would take years to dig it out. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Alexia splashed at her. “My dear Genevieve, I don’t see that our answers are going to lie inside the temple.”

  “No?”

  “No. Remember what we have found out, that preternatural touch requires air—preferably dry air—to work? Don’t you think dead preternaturals might function the same way?”

  “Dead preternaturals? Is that our source?”

  Alexia only pursed her lips.

  “How long have you known that might be a possibility?”

  “Since Scotland.”

  “The artifact of humanization was a mummy?”

  “Of a preternatural, yes.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?”

  Alexia gave her sometime friend a very funny look.

  Madame Lefoux clearly understood. Alexia could not reveal such a dangerous scientific fact to a member of the OBO. “You think we should look for the epicenter outside the temple?”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Can you manage it?”

  Alexia frowned. “I can manage anything if we get some answers at the end of it.”

  Thinking of the fact that she had recently fainted, Conall said, “We’ll bring water along and keep your dress as damp as possible. That might help.”

  “Oh.” Alexia felt guilty for maligning her husband’s actions in her head. “Is that why you chucked me into the Nile fully clothed?”

  Lord Maccon made a funny face. “Of course, dear.”

  They paddled to shore and climbed out onto the muddy bank. The moment she was free of the river, Alexia began to feel that awful sense of repulsion against her skin.

  “I think I may have to sleep in the river tonight,” she said to no one in particular.

  “You’ve done stranger things, I suppose,” was her husband’s reply.

  Early the next morning, before the heat of the sun, Lady Maccon, Lord Maccon, and Madame Lefoux climbed up the hill above Hatshepsut’s temple—or squelched up in Alexia’s case. She was all pruned from a night spent in the river, a kind of hammock having been made to support her while she slept. It had not been very restful at all, and she was peevish and annoyed as a result. A trail of Egyptians followed in their wake, each carrying a large urn or canteen of river water. At Alexia’s signal, one would step forward and splash her with it, rather too enthusiastically and much to Prudence’s amusement.

  “Mama, wet!”

  “Yes, darling.” Alexia could almost hear her daughter’s adult commentary behind the baby phrases: Sooner you than me, Mother.

  The sand-covered hill they scaled formed the back part of the roof of the temple, where it had been carved into the side of a cliff. Alexia took the lead, despite her damp dress hindering her stride, her parasol raised against the vicious sun. Then came Genevieve, and then Conall and Prudence. They left Zayed and family back at camp.

  It was there, on the top of that hill, they began to see the bodies. Or to be more precise, the mummies. Or to be even more precise, it was where Lord Maccon accidentally stepped on a long-dead preternatural.

  It made a sad, dry, cracking noise and let out a little puff of brown dust.

  “Conall, do be careful! Inhale one of those and you could be mortal forever! Or something equally nasty.”

  “Yes, dear.” The earl wrinkled his nose and shook off his boot.

  Madame Lefoux held up a hand and they all stopped walking and simply looked. They could see down the sloping back side of the hill the eight long pathways out into the desert.

  “Ghost trails,” said Alexia, repeating Zayed.

  “I hardly think so. Quite the opposite.” Madame Lefoux was crouched down examining one of the bodies.

  They were all mummies, or at least they looked to be mummies. As they followed along one of the trails down the hill, they eventually came across unwrapped bodies, baked and charred into a mummylike state by the dry desert sun. A thin coating of sand covered most of them, but once brushed aside, it became clear that it was these bodies that formed the octopus’s tentacles. Hundreds of mummies, stretching out into the desert, spaced farther and farther apart. Maximizing the expansion, perhaps? Each one was marked by a headstone, some made of carved rock or wood. They bore no legend or the names of the dead. They were all carved with the same shape—or to be precise, two shapes, an ankh, broken.

  Alexia looked out over the tendrils extending off into the sands, disappearing from sight. “My people.”

  Madame Lefoux stood up from where she had crouched down to examine yet another mummy. “Preternaturals, all of them?”

  “That would do it.”

  “Do what, exactly?” The Frenchwoman goaded her into saying it out loud.

  “Cause the plague. Dry desert air combined with hundreds of dead preternaturals, basically—oh, I don’t know how to put it properly—outgassing.”

  “That’s a lot of dead preternaturals,” said her husband.

  “Collected from all around the world for hundreds and hundreds of years, I suppose. There aren’t that many of us to start with. Could also be that originally they were all piled up and that forty years ago someone decided to start spreading them out.”

  Lord Maccon glanced over at Genevieve. “That would take quite an operation.”

  Alexia added, “Two operations: one to get it s
tarted originally and another to start it up again forty years ago.”

  Madame Lefoux looked back at them, her dark head twisting between the two and her green eyes grave. “It isn’t me! This is the first I’ve heard of it, I promise you!”

  “Yes,” agreed Alexia, “but it is the kind of thing that might require a secret society. A massive underground secret society, of scientists, perhaps, who might not get so squeamish as others about handling the dead and collecting them from all over the world.”

  “You think the OBO is doing this!” Madame Lefoux rocked back on her heels, genuinely surprised by the idea.

  “It is an octopus.” Alexia was having none of that kind of silliness.

  “No, you mistake me. The Order did spawn the Hippocras Club. I read the reports. I know we are capable of monstrous things. I simply don’t believe this is us. To have such knowledge, to know what the body of a dead preternatural could do and not tell any other members? It is all very well to have a secret society of geniuses, but to keep such information secret from the members defeats the purpose. It’s ridiculous. Think of the weapons I could have devised against vampires and werewolves had I known this. No, not the Order. It must be some other operation. The Templars, perhaps. They certainly have the infrastructure and the inclination.”

  Alexia frowned. “Don’t you think the Templars might have done more with such knowledge? Might have developed weapons, as you say, from the technology. Or more likely, have collected the bodies in Italy to protect the homeland there. Move the God-Breaker Plague rather than expand it.”

  Conall Maccon joined the fray. “You know what I think?”

  Both ladies turned to look at him, surprised that he was still there. Alexia’s husband had their daughter propped on his hip. He was looking scruffy and hot. Prudence was inordinately quiet and somber, faced with all the bodies. She ought to have screamed and cried with fear, like any ordinary child, but instead she had merely looked at them, muttered, “Mama” in a very humble way, and buried her face in her father’s neck.

  “What do you think, oh, werewolf one?” asked Alexia.

  It was hard to make out her husband’s expression behind all that beard. “I think Matakara started it all those thousands of years ago. I think she started it to get rid of the werewolves and it got out of hand. She might even have done it at Alexander’s behest. After all, when the Greeks came to Egypt and took over, they were very antisupernatural. She might have struck up a deal. A deal that left her the lone vampire in Alexandria and everyone else gone.”