Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  RINGS OF ANUBIS

  E. Catherine Tobler

  Copyright © 2014 by E. Catherine Tobler.

  Originally published as two volumes:

  Rings of Anubis: Book One: Gold & Glass and

  Rings of Anubis: Book Two: Silver & Steam

  Copyright © 2013 by E. Catherine Tobler.

  Cover art by Timothy Lantz.

  Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-521-5 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-520-8 (trade paperback)

  Masque Books

  www.masque-books.com

  Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact publisher@masque-books.com.

  For my mother and Liz Ann, two ladies who always believed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Paris, France ~ October 1889

  Virgil Mallory came into Eleanor Folley’s life during the autumn of her thirtieth year, a time when she should have been perfectly content to be with her father, books, or specimens from the field. Hers was not the life of a nun, she assured people (indeed, many presumed she had been packed off to a convent school, considering her Unfortunate Youth), but that of a librarian. No difference, her adviser and fellow librarian Juliana had argued.

  “Would you look at that?”

  Juliana’s voice beckoned, and Eleanor looked up from the collection of Senegal shells she was sorting, a fine and disorganized mess after yesterday’s hordes of younger Exposition visiteurs. She peered over the table at Juliana, at the gold ribbons that wrapped her auburn hair into a perfect Psyche knot. The woman’s interest seemed captured by something more than the airships passing over the clear glass roof of the Exposition Universelle all morning.

  “Is it another elephant?” Eleanor asked, her voice thin after a restless night. Two elephants had already passed through the Galerie des Machines that morning—one of living flesh, one of cleverly engineered clockwork. Eleanor was hard-pressed to say which beast was more remarkable, as each was astounding in its own way. Both beasts had responded to the commands of their handlers—abattre, debout, révérence—though the living elephant had been less amused at the idea of showing a leg than the clockwork creature had.

  Eleanor placed a cowrie shell back in its proper bin and stood, brushing dust from her skirt as she straightened it. She longed for her trousers, but had made a promise to her father: trousers were permissible for adventuring, but skirts were required in public. The Exposition Universelle in Paris was as public as anything could be, Eleanor supposed, with citizens of almost every nation coming to gawk at Eiffel’s tower, the Negro village, and the Galerie des Machines, in which they now found themselves. The gallery was massive, constructed of glass and iron, hinged arches vaulting above to enclose the largest interior space in the world. The way the light filtered through the glass intensified the colors of frescos, burnished the gleam of machines, and even seemed to make people glow—everything and everyone appeared gilded, as if having emerged from the pages of an illuminated manuscript

  Though the Folleys had been in Paris five months, it remained a daily wonder for Eleanor to work among the other exhibitors. The opportunity to show their research, inventions, and collection was something that might not come again. Eleanor appreciated, too, the chance it gave her to soak in the variety of languages and attempt to bend her tongue around them. While French was second nature to her, there were other less common languages she longed to explore.

  Such conversations rained down from the elevated track that circled the gallery above the exhibition space. Visitors could walk, or ride in carriages, above the machines but also among them, as a variety of flying beasts flaunted their lavish designs. Mechanical pterodactyls, owls, and sparrows reeled in the sunlight that streamed through the glass ceiling. More than one of the miniature mechanical dodos had found itself entangled in a lady’s hat or hair, and it soon became a desired distinction. If you hadn’t had an encounter with a dodo, your Exposition experience was not complete.

  Folley’s Nicknackatarium had never known such an honor. Eleanor tried to remind herself that it was an honor, even as other exhibitors tried to turn their inclusion into something else; most felt the Folleys didn’t belong here or with them—surely it could be only chance or pity that found them within these circles. Her father’s reputation as an archaeologist had never been sterling, and marrying an Egyptian only deepened the tarnish. In the wake of Dalila Folley’s disappearance, his status in archaeological circles dropped even lower. The Folleys were Irish, after all, people murmured; even his daughter had gone a-roving, so what precisely could one expect? Eleanor often wondered which straw would break him, but his love of the field never faltered.

  “Not an elephant,” Juliana said as Eleanor joined the older woman at the edge of the main display table within the Folley booth. “Nor a dodo.”

  What Eleanor saw might well have been another extraordinary clockwork creature, so little sense did it make at first. Her father was speaking with a young man, and in an environment where people the world over had come to witness the marvels of science and industry, one man speaking to another should have been in no way exceptional.

  Yet her father did not speak to young men, and indeed went out of his way to avoid them. According to her father, men aged fifty or older were the only people who made for decent conversationalists; there was no sense in wasting words on anyone—save daughters, he would add with a wink to Eleanor.

  The only young men he might exempt from his strict policy were those who chanced to unearth a mythical tomb or bring him a piece of sand-crusted evidence to add to his life’s research. Had you discovered the intact head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, Renshaw Folley would see you straight away!

  This young man was not Moorish, Indian, or Javanese, so it wasn’t his origin that her father found interesting, but something else. His features were unremarkable from a distance, skin pale and features drawn, as if he had not been out of doors in years. He appeared average in every way, clad in a simple ditto suit of coal black, black cravat tied haphazardly beneath the beard that covered his chin. His hair was cut to his jawline, longer than fashion dictated, and rather disorderly, unable to settle on one color; bits of blond curled in the midst of darker brown. The brown matched his eyes—something in his eyes . . . he was not as young as she had first thought. Her attention flicked to the bright pin he wore in his lapel: a gold letter M curled within a copper twist of clouds. Eleanor’s mouth flattened into a thin line at the sight of the symbol.

  “Do you know him?” Juliana whispered.

  “Only his kind,” Eleanor said somewhat hoarsely, her mouth having gone dry. She did not wish to know why an agent of Mistral was here, even as she very much did want to know. She had always felt the organization could be more than it was—if only someone cared to take the time to make it so. Had he come to escort them out, to remind them they were Irish and should, at the least, go back to Dublin if they could go no farther? “And he smells odd.”

  Eleanor could not name the scent that rose even above the gentle lily fragrance Juliana wore; perhaps the young man had walked through Professor Twine’s Miracle Steam Bath before he’d come here. The scent could be anything, for the petite professor claimed he could enhance his steam with any scent from past or present. Eleanor wished to smell her mother once more—bergamot, black tea, sun-drawn sweat from days on digs—but had yet to visit Twine to se
e if it might be possible. She closed her hand into a fist within the folds of her skirt, making an effort not to reach for the comforting lump of the ring she wore on a chain hidden beneath her blouse. Even so, her mind whispered the poem in which she often sought shelter: Backward, turn backward, O time, in thy flight; Make me a child again, just for to-night.

  Her father gestured across the aisle to their booth now, past the glass-encased statues of Horus and Osiris, to Eleanor. The young man’s gaze settled on her, entirely too curious and lengthy as he assessed her. Eleanor straightened and turned away, preparing to disappear into the back of their booth and slip into the neighboring one if her bustle allowed. She could lose herself in the Exhibition for the rest of the day, walking the maze of it as confidently as she could any ancient tomb. Maybe the Miracle Steam Bath could hide her from the curious eyes of young men from Mistral. At the very least, she could distract herself. Eleanor grabbed a book, but her father’s voice caught her before she could vanish within its pages.

  “Eleanor, a moment please. Surely that text can wait, and”—his mouth twisted in a vague smile as she turned back toward the shells—“the children will be here in an hour’s time to make the shells sing yet again.”

  Her father crossed the aisle and tugged the book from Eleanor’s grasp, his hands closing around it as if they were the best kind of old friends. Without the book, Eleanor felt strangely naked under the continuingly curious regard of . . .

  “Eleanor, this is Agent Virgil Mallory. With . . . Mistral.” He gestured to the young man who had followed him.

  Eleanor did not miss the slight pause before her father mentioned Mistral. Nothing good had ever come from that quarter in Eleanor’s opinion, and she doubted anything would. Covert agencies never seemed to care about desires beyond their own.

  Eleanor forced a smile at the young man and took a closer look at him. What had rumpled his suit and left his hair disorganized? He smelled both bitter and sweet and, beneath that, another layer that felt somehow old. He must have been accustomed to people staring at him, for he did not stir under her study—not even when Eleanor’s eyes widened in final recognition of the scent. Opium. He smelled like opium smoke.

  “My daughter, Miss Folley,” her father said. “Librarian for the Nicknackatarium, but she was there that day, all of twelve, I think, when those men appeared out of the dust.” Folley lifted his fingers to his mouth.

  That day, all of twelve.

  No matter the reasons this young man had for approaching her father, Eleanor told herself that speaking of the day her mother vanished could not be chief among them. Just as her father did not speak to young men, neither did people speak of the day Dalila Folley vanished. It wasn’t done.

  Eleanor’s attention followed her father’s motion to his mouth. She could remember the blood on his lips that day, could remember how bright it was in the swirling, obscuring sand. Renshaw dropped his hand and shook his head, as if he were trying to not remember. He extended a hand toward Juliana.

  “Mrs. Juliana Day. Also a librarian of ours, but not there. That day.”

  “That day” was never far from Eleanor’s thoughts, although she had tried to lock it away for her father’s sake. Now she couldn’t understand why her father was speaking of it—almost casually—in the presence of a Mistral agent. Dread should have bent her shoulders, fear pricking every finger, but instead it was hope that buoyed her up. Hope was decidedly worse.

  Their entire world had been turned upside down “that day,” and while she had sought to right it, her father begged her to leave the memories be. She had been but a child, had surely misunderstood what she saw. Eleanor could not deny that possibility, but neither could she stop trying to understand. She had lost her mother that day, but Renshaw had lost his wife. Which was worse?

  In the eighteen years between then and now, Eleanor hadn’t found a single satisfying answer to the strange occurrences of that day. Her father’s solution was to leave the field entirely and open his Nicknackatarium to allow the people of Dublin a glimpse of ancient Egypt. His every action told her to seek no answers, even though they were what Eleanor most wanted. Could she find them now?

  She looked again to Mallory, wishing for her father’s sake she could send him away, wishing to smother the small flame of hope his presence had inexplicably lit.

  Mallory inclined his head the merest bit to Eleanor and Juliana, a strand of gold-brown hair slipping free along his temple. He brushed it back and Eleanor noticed the tarnished silver ring encircling his right index finger. Skulls peered from the metal. A memento mori?

  “Mr. Mallory,” Eleanor said.

  “Agent,” he corrected, and his long fingers delved into his worn jacket to withdraw a neatly kept silver badge imprinted with a number.

  The lapel pin he wore did more to prove his position to Eleanor. Where might one inquire as to the legitimacy of a badge number for a mysterious organization few even knew existed? Mistral did not make its offices or officers public.

  “Miss Folley.”

  “Agent, what brings you to our booth today?” She gestured toward the device sitting in the center of the main table, the squat machine that had gained them entry into the Exposition. “Have you need of Folley’s Extraordinary Efficient Extractor? The Triple E, able to pinpoint priceless artifacts beneath even the densest soils and ensure a clean, intact extraction?”

  Mallory grinned at her practiced pitch. Juliana gestured toward the small marvel of science, her hands gently drawing invisible circles and waves in the air. The machine, with its exposed tubes and cogs, was ugly even in the golden light of the hall. A panel of switches and lights stretched across the machine’s surface; bright blue extensions—resembling braces that would hold a man’s pants up—allowed the machine to be supported by one’s shoulders. Hideous.

  Still, Eleanor knew one did not have to be beautiful to serve science. The device had to do with magnetic fields—not that she fully understood it. She could have taken the time, but it was her father’s invention and Eleanor found little use for it. She preferred to make discoveries on her own, with fingers and shovel, dirt packing every fingernail. Why allow a machine to attempt what she could better accomplish?

  “Agent Mallory has come with distressing news,” her father said. He clutched the book to his chest like a shield.

  Her father could rarely resist when it came to telling a distressing tale—as long as he was not the main character.

  “Distressing?” Juliana’s gestures ceased and she reached for Eleanor’s arm.

  Distressing coupled with the mention of “that day” made Eleanor’s attention waver. Distressing for her father may well mean exultant for her. She forced herself to be still, to be the deferential daughter her father longed for her to be.

  Agent Mallory, unaware of her father’s penchant for telling distressing tales, delivered his news. “The ring has been stolen from the Egyptian Museum,” Mallory said. He slid his badge back in a vest pocket, and then opened a portfolio Eleanor had not noticed he was carrying under his arm.

  “The ring?” Eleanor asked while Mallory shuffled through pages and loose papers. She wanted to leap at the papers, spread the pages out and devour what they contained. It was the same feeling that always claimed her before entering an unknown tomb. “Surely the Egyptian Museum possesses more than one ring, Agent Mallory.” But for Eleanor Folley, there could be only one ring within that museum. She could feel the ring she wore on a chain beneath her blouse pressing between her breasts, almost insistent, as if asking if one of its three siblings had been found.

  Mallory’s brown eyes flicked from his papers to Eleanor, annoyance plainly writ in the fine line atop his straight nose. “Your ‘Lady’s’ ring, Miss Folley,” he said and produced, without looking away from Eleanor, a small photograph. He offered it to her.

  Eleanor thought the photograph felt much heavier than it should. Memory, she supposed, could make even an image hard to hold. The mummified arm was as she re
membered it, still wrapped in crumbling fabric. The desert had preserved a goodly portion of the desiccated skin, though at the delicate wrist and hand, it had shredded to reveal bone thin as winter twigs. Eleanor had last cradled the arm on a sandy plain outside Cairo. Her mother had pressed it into Eleanor’s protective embrace, saving it from being trampled by metallic hooves mere moments before her mother . . . vanished? Was taken?

  “She’s not my Lady,” Eleanor whispered, but could not release the photograph. Her fingers tightened until her thumbnail gleamed white. She thought she could smell the dust of Egypt: could taste it again on her tongue, a drug as strong as Agent Mallory’s opium, heady and capable of carrying her backward in time.

  Backward, turn backward . . .

  The story of the Lady and her rings was supposed to be fiction, a tale told to child-Eleanor to carry her into sleep. But sleep had never come easily after the discovery of the real Lady and her four rings; the appearance of her horses, her guards. The memory of unearthing the mummy’s arm with her mother had the power to make her feel all of twelve again; it made her remember everything her father so desired her to forget.

  In the photograph, the wooden crate housing the arm had been crudely broken. A crowbar, Eleanor thought as she studied the deep bite marks that scarred the edge of the box. The arm, lying on a bed of muslin, had not been injured and still appeared to be colored with the fingerprints of Eleanor’s own blood—but the Lady’s fingers were bare. The single ring left to her was missing.

  “Some of the museum’s contents have been in transit of late,” Mallory said in a low tone as another group of exhibitors passed them down the aisle, speaking exuberant French. “The Nile flooded the museum this past summer, leaving things unsettled.”

  “Unsettled” seemed an understatement. The flood damage had been a subject of great interest among Egyptologists and archaeologists. Her father had offered to shelter items needing housing in the Nicknackatarium in Dublin, but the curator scoffed. The great museums of the world had made similar gestures, and Renshaw Folley was but a discredited archaeologist whose wild tales of his wife’s disappearance—which he now so wished to forget—had tarnished his credibility. He would forever be considered little more than a dabbler, a purveyor of knickknacks, never a serious archaeologist who meant to preserve artifacts before time swept them away.