Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  It didn’t look like a regular door, for stone crumbled all around it. Bits of the writing on the walls looked chipped, too, as if someone had broken in. Still, as she followed her father inside, she could see pieces of things she recognized amid the markings.

  “Owl!”

  Her father only followed Piazzi Smyth deeper down the corridor. Eleanor turned back, reaching for her mother so she would not lag behind; she curled her fingers around her mother’s still-dusty hand.

  “What do you think, minnow?” her mother asked.

  Eleanor looked up the entire corridor, thinking it went on forever and they would never reach its end. “It’s quite large,” she said. “And full of owls.” Eleanor hooted, a sound which echoed down the corridor before them.

  Her mother smiled a smile Eleanor one day might interpret to mean something wholly different than simple happiness, and they walked on in silence.

  Eventually they caught up with her father and the Italian, and Eleanor grew quiet, so she could hear her parents’ fervent whispers. The whispers filled the corridor and when she closed her eyes, she could picture a hundred people in conversation. Her parents talked about a place called Luxor, and another place or person that Eleanor could not understand the name of. It sounded like Dear Ellebarie to her, and she couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She returned to her study of the walls, searching for other owls. She found them, each one peering at her, but only after tracing paths of feathers, snakes, and something that looked like lightning.

  They went deeper, and Eleanor saw more owls, small suns, and many more feathers. She decided they were owl feathers and realized only then that her mother was speaking again, this time to her.

  “Your grandmother had a hand here,” her mother said.

  Eleanor didn’t know what her mother meant by that, but didn’t ask. Her mother was Egyptian, as was her mother before her, so the idea of that grandmother having a hand here—had she placed her hands on these walls?—seemed only natural. Eleanor reached out to touch the nearest wall with its carvings, surprised that no one stopped her, not even Piazzi Smyth who fussed earlier when Eleanor had wanted to touch a camel’s tail.

  Her fingers splayed against the old stone, and she imagined it warm like the dirt outside. Imagined it glowing with a thousand lamps, stone turned to gold. Something like magic hummed under Eleanor’s fingers, through the stone and into her. She found herself imagining a shadowed silhouette at the end of a corridor that was colored with lamplight, a silhouette that moved on four legs before standing on two.

  “Daughter,” this shadow said, through a mouth that wasn’t human.

  “ . . . Da?”

  “Not yet, Eleanor.”

  “Eleanor?” Her mother crouched beside her.

  Eleanor drew her hand back, looking at her mother in confusion. She was quiet for so long, her mother eventually touched Eleanor’s cheek. It was the touch of those fingers that brought Eleanor back from wherever she had been.

  “I want to go,” she said. She pulled her attention from the wall to look at her mother. That familiar face wiped everything else away and Eleanor felt better, but it felt like the walls were getting closer. Too many owls with peering faces. “Outside. Need out.”

  “I’ll take her.”

  Her father scooped her up and Eleanor curled into his arms. She closed her eyes and fisted a hand into her father’s shirt. “Out, out, out.” It became a low chant between them.

  Her father kissed her mother. “You go on; we’ll see you when you’ve finished your search.”

  Outside could not come soon enough for Eleanor. Once under the sky, she wiggled out of her father’s hands and dropped to the ground. She spied the camels all sitting in a neat row and avoided them, not wanting to be spit on again. Mr. Piazzi Smyth had been right about not touching camel tails.

  “Ellie, are you quite well?”

  She looked at her father when he joined her. “I was scared,” she said, “but I’m better now.” Better, but not perfect, because she still felt squirmy. It was like a dream, the shape and the voice, but it was also impossible, because she was very much awake.

  “What scared you?”

  Eleanor concentrated on the rhythm of her father’s hand, smoothing slow circles over her back, and on the pretty colors of the sunset spreading over the pyramids. Both calmed her.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t tell her father the complete truth. Telling him about the man crawling like a dog sounded too strange, even to her own ears. He might tell her she was talking nonsense, and she didn’t want to be told that. She was afraid he wouldn’t let her come back to the pyramids.

  “It was too tiny, and getting darker.”

  “Small spaces can do that sometimes.”

  Eleanor crawled into her father’s lap, resting her head against his shoulder. He smelled like sweat, but like oranges too, and Eleanor found this comforting beyond all things. They had eaten oranges that morning; he peeled hers for her, keeping the rind in one long ribbon. Eleanor had wrapped it around her wrist like a bracelet.

  “Mum is never afraid.”

  Her father wiped his broad hands over her dusty cheeks. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  Eleanor liked secrets very much, though she wasn’t yet good at keeping them.

  “Keep this one in your boot,” he whispered, for he always told her where to keep such a thing. “Deep down inside, by your toes.”

  She nodded again.

  “Sometimes, Ellie,” he said, “we are all scared.”

  Eleanor’s hand closed in her father’s vest. Her forehead wrinkled as she turned that idea over in her head. She didn’t like it one bit.

  “You?” she clarified. “And Mummy?”

  He nodded, and Eleanor’s eyes sought the head of the Sphinx, washed in the first shadows of the desert after sunset. She shoved the secret down into her boot as he told her, down by her toes, tucking it under the big toe and squeezing. She wished that her father had kept his secret to himself.

  Cairo, Egypt ~ October 1889

  Modern Cairo spread like a disorderly circus beneath Virgil’s balcony, reminding him in some ways of Paris and the Exposition. Everywhere he looked, something of interest caught his attention. After the morning call to prayer from the minaret at the end of the street roused him, Virgil opened the wood-latticed windows to let some measure of the city into his rooms.

  Morning traffic filled the streets, horse-drawn carriages and supply-laden camels alike— the latter outnumbering the former by dozens—merchants and customers headed for the open-air market, a group of uniformed boys being ushered to school. The morning air carried with it the scent of camels, but beyond that, there was fresh fruit, roasting meats, and the woodsy scent of a crackling fire. Virgil hadn’t been to Cairo in years, but remembered its opium dens all too well. The thought of the smoke made Virgil’s hands shake, and he hardened his hold on his cup, focusing on the Turkish coffee within.

  He hated that he had eased his rein on the beast. Hated more that Eleanor had seen him rip the guards apart. There was nothing to be done about it; genies let out of bottles could not be stoppered back in. It had been a relief to let the anger and the beast consume him.

  Foolery, Auberon would have said had Virgil voiced that idea aloud.

  “Foolery,” Virgil whispered, still trying to convince himself he was not the beast, that the beast was not him. But it was. He knew this terrible thing the way he knew his own pulse in the night. He could close his eyes and feel his heart hammering, the steady rhythm in his throat. The beast was as much inside him as that rhythm was. Denying it was becoming impossible.

  If only I had access to opium . . . if only I had not been so very angry at the idea of Eleanor being taken.

  These denials no longer worked their magic. They felt empty, drained of all usefulness. The opium might make the beast sleep, but the beast was he and he was the beast. This was the only answer that made sense in the light of day.

  An
d Eleanor had seen. She had seen and had not been afraid. Let it come, Virgil.

  Virgil closed his eyes, marveling at that idea. When he heard the brisk knock and the squeak of the door latch behind him, he turned to find Auberon entering. His partner was tidy and crisp in a cream brocade waistcoat and matching cream trousers. His right arm was encased in what looked like sculpture, a hard case enclosing the entire forearm—no doubt the work of Dr. Fairbrass. It had been evening by the time the airship had delivered the rescued party to Cairo. Baths, food, clothing, and medical attention had been provided; clean linens and exhausted sleep soon followed for all.

  Auberon nearly slammed the door behind him; the small lotus-shaped mirror beside the door rattled a complaint.

  “What in the world are you wearing?” Virgil asked, rather than poke Auberon about his temper. That might wait. Goodness knew it was easier to focus on Auberon’s arm and temper than his own recent indiscretions. He stepped back into the room, though left the balcony doors open to allow the morning breeze entry behind him.

  “Fairbrass calls it plaster of Paris, if you can believe that.” Auberon knocked his left knuckles against the casting and they made a solid sound, as though he knocked upon a door. “He didn’t invent the stuff, but surely knows how to use it.”

  Auberon strode toward the coffee service and lifted the pot, though when he poured, found it quite empty. He slammed it back into place on the tray.

  “Cleo is staying on the case. She’s worked with the Lady all these years, so naturally she would stay. Cleo is staying and you’ve drunk all the coffee.”

  Virgil allowed himself a sliver of a smile, though he didn’t exactly feel happy. “It was coffee or something stronger, wasn’t it?” he asked, then set his cup to the side. “It’s not a surprise, Cleo wanting to assist? She’s good at what she does and will have impressions of the Lady we otherwise might not—”

  “Don’t try to cloud my mind with logic, of all things. You aren’t helping.”

  Two years ago, Virgil hadn’t been much help, either. What was there to say, with his friend and partner in love with another Mistral agent, an agent determined to take a post in Cairo, when Auberon was stationed in Paris. The only bit of luck that Virgil could see was that Cleo Barclay wasn’t working for a rival intelligence agency. Auberon hadn’t appreciated the observation. Virgil was certain he shouldn’t repeat it now.

  He tried to put himself in Auberon’s shoes—larger though they were—and imagine how it would feel to discover that the woman you loved had not perished in a hospital after the loss of her arms, but that she had been miraculously restored. Strangely, there was revulsion at the idea of such a thing happening to Caroline. No, he didn’t want to discover that.

  “The coffee wasn’t that good,” Virgil said in a low tone as Auberon continued to fuss with the cups and saucers. Virgil set his own cup aside. “I could, however, have another pot brought, if you—”

  “No.” Auberon turned from the coffee service to eye Virgil himself. “How are you faring?” Before Virgil could make any reply, Auberon slipped a hand into his waistcoat. “Here.” He withdrew a slim black book that he offered to Virgil.

  Virgil closed his fingers around Eleanor’s file and exhaled. He had believed it lost. Upon the group’s separation, an overwhelming rage had consumed him. Placed within that suffocating temple, he had fallen apart, logic seeking refuge within the beast’s angry mind. Yet he had known Eleanor. The sound of her voice had trickled through that animal mind to touch some still-human part of him.

  “Thank you.” He pondered Auberon’s question and wasn’t sure how to properly answer. Upon arriving at the Sirocco headquarters, he had told Auberon everything about the small temple, from his change to them bringing Eleanor for him to kill and eat (he had been tempted, he had to admit). From her bravery to her encouragement. The words that eventually came from him were not those he expected to say.

  “You continue telling me this is simply what I am, who I am, and I continue to hope one day I will accept that as truth—that I will accept the thing I am. It was somewhat a relief, to have her see. On the Nuit, I worried what might happen should I change up there. And the worry only compounded the anger—anger that I could do nothing should the beast overtake me. And yet, if this beast is me, perhaps it is time to stop fighting myself.”

  Auberon’s laugh was low, but kind. “Stubborn fool,” he said. He looked up. “How often did I suggest such a thing to you?”

  Virgil meant to say he didn’t know, but Auberon rolled onward before he could speak.

  “I don’t believe either one of us could count that high.” Auberon’s expression remained intent on Virgil. “It is a miraculous thing, my friend.”

  Virgil shook the words off. “It feels like a curse. I don’t know why God would ask this of me.”

  “Perhaps it feels like a curse because you fight it. What would happen should you embrace the idea this beast is you?” Auberon waited a beat and then added, “You cannot tell me that every saint had an easy road. That Mary herself did not question why God chose her for the miracles she worked.”

  “I am no saint, Auberon.”

  Auberon waved the denial away. “None of us are saints. If you take my words literally, you miss the deeper meaning—which I think you know. No path is easy, Virgil. Do you think my own has been without stones and pitfalls? Should I have listened to myself when I told myself I was incapable of becoming an agent of Mistral because of the color of my skin? It would have been easy to hide behind that fear, to allow it to hold me back from what I most wanted.”

  Virgil closed his eyes. What he most wanted. He wanted to let his human form slip away; he wanted to run on four feet through the streets of Cairo, chasing whatever birds he might rouse. Duck, he liked duck. He wanted to leap into a sun-washed lake to wash the dust from his fur. He wanted to tackle the beautiful Miss Folley and dig his teeth into her neck, to mark her as his. But wanting these things and realizing them were two wholly separate things, he knew

  Society had questioned Eleanor’s wants and, in his opinion, hers were far simpler than his own. She wanted to explore the world, had fallen in love with a man who taught her how to go where she would, and had been branded unfit because of it. She had allowed that word to press her further into the quiet spaces of her father’s Nicknackatarium, where society could ignore her. Virgil knew she didn’t want to be seen as a curiosity, either.

  “Like knows like,” Auberon said.

  Virgil looked at his partner and said nothing. Auberon knew how to read Virgil’s face. Even worse, Virgil let his guard down around the man. Trusted him enough to do so.

  “Miss Folley didn’t shy from you,” Auberon pressed.

  “As Cleo didn’t shy from you,” Virgil countered, taking satisfaction when Auberon squirmed. The tall man straightened from the sideboard and crossed to the latticed balcony, looking into the street. Virgil followed him, hands in pockets. “Your temper can be off-putting.”

  “As can your—”

  “No, no, enough about my faults today,” Virgil interrupted. “We have already laid my psyche bare and it’s quite cold and shivering now, despite the growing heat of the day. I’m certain we have great works to accomplish and I need to know if you’ll be able to handle such in her presence.”

  “Her?”

  “The delightful Miss Barclay,” Virgil said, though Auberon knew quite well exactly whom he meant. “She likes eels, you know. Despite this inherent flaw, she’s intelligent in all the ways we require and those we probably don’t yet realize. We do find ourselves in her homeland. Will you be able to work with her?”

  Stony silence was Auberon’s initial reply. He attempted to cross his arms over his chest, but the casting on his right arm made such a show difficult. “I thought I was past it,” Auberon said. “The anger.”

  “It’s not anger, it’s—”

  “Don’t say that word.”

  Virgil didn’t say the word. He held back, in compl
ete understanding. Some truths needed to be confronted in small measure. “Perhaps it feels like a curse because you fight it,” he murmured, giving Auberon his own words back.

  Auberon only grunted in reply and turned to look at Virgil’s room. It was a good room, as these things went. Much as Mistral did in Paris, Sirocco provided a townhouse for its agents, with rooms, a dining hall, and laundry services. The room was small, the bed likewise and draped with netting to keep the evening’s insects at bay; the balcony was the best feature, as far as Virgil was concerned, though his newly acquired clothing that didn’t involve a floral robe was running a close second.

  “Have you heard from anyone this morning?” Virgil asked. He wanted to specify—it was Eleanor who concerned him most, and her reaction to him.

  “No; however, I would lay wager Cleo is already with the Lady. Miss Folley should be nearby. If you’re ready to head down to the archive?”

  The journey to the archive could not be completed without first stopping by the dining hall. Auberon knew Virgil well enough to understand this, so fell into step beside him as Virgil detoured. Every transformation left him starving; the night before, he’d gone to the hall three times despite curious looks from local agents, and even then had still woken hungry.

  Mrs. Gonne, who oversaw the operations of this dining hall, seemed to be expecting him this time around—he suspected the late evening crew had spoken of his appetite—for she moved briskly from her station near the door when Virgil and Auberon arrived, and appeared soon after with two brown packages, both slightly steaming. She offered these, along with oranges and a bundle of almonds. Her green eyes gleamed as if she were part of some great game.

  “Now there’s a saint,” Virgil murmured to Auberon as Mrs. Gonne shooed them on their way. Virgil tucked the orange and almonds into his coat pocket and unrolled the paper bag. The fragrant scent of a meat pie hit his nose, followed by the sweeter scent of dates. He tore into the meat pie first, finding it rich with leeks, onions, and garlic. A fish pastry waited beneath that one, with three fig and date pastries stacked beneath that. “A saint.” Today, he wasn’t even going to balk at the idea of fish. He would eat most anything, if only to silence his stomach.