Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  Caroline looked at him, but said nothing in answer to his question. She planted a kiss on his nose.

  “I’ll bring you a parrot,” she said again.

  Virgil blinked, to clear the quiet truth from his eyes, and said, “Make it blue.”

  Morocco, Virgil thought as he followed Eleanor up the looming pyramid. Two women, and both of them had been in Morocco. Two women interested in Egypt and her ancient treasures. What were the odds that he would be connected to both of them?

  His foot slipped against the next stone, and Eleanor’s hand wrapped around his arm to keep him upright. She hauled him close, and her strength surprised him.

  “You truly want to buy Gin’s drinks tonight?” she asked, her mouth curling upward. Still, her concern for his misstep wasn’t entirely hidden. This close, he could see the sweat that dampened her face and could smell the fear that snaked around her. Could feel the heat radiating from her, too, which pulled him back into the hallway. Eleanor was close now as she had been then.

  “God, no,” he murmured. “Why do you think they call him Gin? He drinks like a fish.” He held to Eleanor’s arm to steady himself. In her eyes he saw the same thing they’d held in the hallway; was it a challenge? “Thank you for catching me. I was—”

  “Somewhere else,” Eleanor said. “This place can do that to a person, I know. Come on—we’re almost there, and Gin is so far behind us, he’ll be buying the drinks for the rest of the mission.”

  The rest of the mission. What happened afterward, when the rings were secure once more and he and Eleanor parted ways? He made certain she was solid on her feet before he stepped away. He kept her one step ahead of him, following her shadow up. Each step became a focal point for him so he could ignore the pointed way his body cried for the sweet oblivion of opium smoke.

  At the top, the terrain of the pyramid began to change, much of the outer casing stones still intact. They went slower here, picking their way from one chip in the stones to another, and when Eleanor paused, Virgil drew up behind her.

  “God, look at that.”

  The reverence in Eleanor’s voice sent a chill through Virgil. He came up alongside her to see what had her captivated. Cairo lay in the far distance, gleaming like a golden jewel in the surrounding dark of the Nile Valley. Small villages peeked here and there, pinpricks of pale light, while the Bedouin camp closer to them glowed. The Sphinx was lost to the night, though above its head the first stars began to appear.

  Eleanor sat on a stone that looked wide enough for two. Virgil tested this theory by joining her, his hip brushing hers. The world was oddly quiet up here under the stars; then a curse broke from below.

  “Auberon would much rather be home,” Virgil confided in a whisper. And I might rather be inside a private room with Clementine bringing my tray, but . . . He looked to Eleanor. No. Not tonight.

  “Eating eels?”

  Virgil stroked his fingers over his beard. “Likely so.” He looked around their small seat, marveling at the structure beneath them, the countless stones that stepped their way up and up. “How in the world did humankind build a thing such as this? And why did they ever stop?”

  “My father would have theories for you,” Eleanor said. She wrapped her arms around herself and rested her elbows on her thighs. “Even when you look at Eiffel’s tower, you can see the influence, can’t you?”

  “That tower.” Virgil finally picked Auberon’s form out on the pyramid below. He moved swiftly, yet paused every now and then to gauge where he was and how far he had yet to go. Ever practical. Gin was further behind, tangled in rope. “It’s a blight.”

  “It’s rather amazing if you ask me, though you didn’t ask me.” Eleanor’s mouth split in a grin. “These pyramids must have been the world’s best structures at one point, but now the world bypasses them, building ever taller, ever stronger. Do you think that blight of a tower will outstand these pyramids?”

  There was a touch of sorrow to her question, and Virgil touched her arm, giving her a gentle push. “I think there’s room enough for both of them in this world,” he said and then fell to silence, thinking that no matter how far he had gone in this world, there was always a new corner he had yet to explore. How many more wondrous things awaited them?

  Every wondrous thing awaits you, so said his father in a wedding toast to him and Caroline. She had smiled the smile he had first fallen in love with; that same expression had been gifted to her own father, when he gave her a small box and wished them both well. Every wondrous thing.

  “Where are you now?” Eleanor asked.

  “Thinking about the breadth of the world.” He ran his hand over the rough stone beneath them and thought of that small box in Caroline’s hands. “I understand why these places call to you. I think I understand why even that tower has its own appeal. To some.”

  It was the challenge in a thing, the idea of building something taller than anyone had built before; the idea of leaving a mark that would reach into the future.

  Eleanor whispered, “Do you think the Lady is my mother?”

  The same question she had asked earlier, only this time Eleanor’s voice didn’t sound so strong. Virgil watched her fold one hand around the other.

  “I have believed the Lady is a modern woman,” he said, “though I have no sound evidence pointing that way—beyond your mother’s photograph case now. It was only ever a feeling, and when I looked back at the accounts from you and your father that day, it fit.”

  Eleanor shifted on the stone, turning more toward Virgil. “Except how does my mother dig up her own body? If we say the Glass of Anubis did open, and somehow did cause a breach in time, she can’t be dead and alive both, can she?”

  Virgil shook his head, but it wasn’t the answer he meant to give. “There may be a method in every madness, no? Least I’ve held to such an idea through the years. In truth, I’ve less held to it than dabbled with it.” He felt the beast inside him stretch, yawning and rolling its eyes. If there were a method to this madness, he had not yet found it and mostly didn’t look.

  Eleanor’s smile, when it came, was full of understanding. “I don’t know if there is a method, Virgil. Most days, it all feels like madness. The not knowing. My father tells me that she’s dead, simply that and nothing more. That we lost her that day and should move on, but there’s no . . . ”

  “Too many questions, not enough resolution,” he said. He covered her hand with his. “Someone has to dig the Lady up, so Dalila can find the ring and go back, so that she can die and someone can dig her up and . . . ” Virgil drew lazy loops in the air before them. “I don’t know.”

  “The idea that the Lady is my mother is absurd, isn’t it?”

  “A little frightening too,” Virgil said and withdrew his hand from hers. He tried not to laugh as Gin took another misstep on the pyramid below. Auberon could no longer be seen, and Virgil wondered if he had skirted around the pyramid rather than up. “If it were my mother, I don’t know what I’d be thinking.”

  “Tell me about your mother, your family. That way, I don’t have to think.”

  “My mother,” Virgil said with a lopsided smile. “Paragon of motherhood, should be sainted upon her death.” Eleanor laughed, a pleasant sound in the otherwise quiet night. “Brother Adrian and sister Imogene—you know them as the two I am forever competing against.”

  “And what do they do in order to outshine you?”

  What didn’t they do? His fingers itched for a pipe. Ah, but he needed to speak to Adrian, no question. “Chateau Mallory, ever hear of it?” He plucked a small loose stone from those around his feet and turned it over in his fingers.

  “That’s your family?”

  “Vintners for as long as we can remember.” A memory of the toads rose in his mind, and he found himself sickened all over again. Damn toad.

  “My father handed most of the business over to Adrian a good ten years ago, though he still takes an active part in things. One can barely pry him away from his
grapes most days. Adrian lives and works on the family land. He married and has continued the Mallory line with twin boys, a little girl, and one currently on the way.”

  “A relief for you, no doubt.”

  Virgil laughed. “Oh, goodness no. I need a family, don’t I? In order to rise above.” The smile he flashed Eleanor was short-lived. He didn’t even know if he could have a family. “Imogene surprised everyone and became a governess,” he continued. “She watches after Adrian’s children. For the longest time she didn’t know what to do with herself, only that she wanted away from the grapes. Some part of me wanted away, too.”

  “And Adrian, did he want away?”

  “I’m certain he did, but certain too that he felt obligated to continue what our father had continued from his father.”

  “How long since you’ve been home?”

  “Too many years.” His voice came out more strained than he hoped, for the idea of home was nearly suffocating. He both wanted to be there and didn’t, for being there meant facing Adrian and his anger. Anger that Virgil had been able to break away and leave. “You would think I’d get there more often, based in Paris and all.” He dropped the rock from his hands.

  “You sound so practiced,” Eleanor whispered.

  Virgil bowed his head, then looked to Eleanor, whose expression was filled with understanding. He knew that soon he needed to tell her the truth of all he knew. She needed to know about Caroline, about his personal investment.

  “I stayed away for four years,” she said. “When you get the chance, go home.”

  “It is not that easy,” he began to protest, but Eleanor laughed.

  “The important things are never easy,” she countered, reaching out to touch his hand where it rested against his leg. Her fingers traced the line of his silver ring, over skull and cross and words.

  Viver disce, he thought. That was the part he had such trouble with: learning to live.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Climbing the pyramid gave Eleanor a restored sense of purpose and renewed the tie she felt to Egypt. This was a timeless place, one that even their modern world could not erase. The pyramids had stood for thousands of years and would stand for thousands more. Feeling that power beneath her feet, Eleanor calmed.

  She wanted to stay atop the pyramid all night, watching the stars reel overhead and the sunrise come morning. She wanted to imagine the pyramids as doors once more, opening onto worlds she did not yet know. She wished her father were there, to christen her with Egypt all over again.

  She pictured her father and Juliana climbing the pyramid, Juliana clinging to his arm the entire time. While she might scale a bookshelf in search of a particular volume, she rarely went much higher.

  Instead, there was Virgil Mallory, who had begun to open himself to her. There were things he still held back—she couldn’t fault him for that—and they kept their silence on the climb down.

  The camels were where they had tied them, and Mallory undid his tricky knotwork with ease. The journey back to Sirocco’s headquarters was one of the longest Eleanor could remember, for her thoughts would not slow. The idea of the photographic case haunted her, as did the notion the Lady was her mother. It wasn’t the first time she had considered it, but it was the first time she had been faced with evidence that might support the theory.

  By the time they reached the townhouse, Eleanor’s mind had quieted. She took Auberon’s hand as he offered it to her and slid down from the camel, who was as tired and cranky as Gin. Eleanor bade the trio of gentlemen goodnight. She promised to meet them come morning and fled to her room, despite the eager expression on Mallory’s face. If he wanted to talk, she meant to make him seek her out, feeling she had already exposed too much of herself on top of the pyramid and earlier in the hallway.

  Young men were not worth the trouble—didn’t her father tell her that? With that idea firmly in mind, Eleanor closed and locked the door behind her. Less than an hour later, there came a soft knock.

  Sleep had not arrived to carry Eleanor away the way she hoped, and she put aside her old sketchbook to stare at the door across the room. There was a long silence and then the knock came again.

  It was low, but still carried, and when it came a third time, this one a bit more demanding, she slid from the bed and crossed to the door, unlatching the lock to find Mallory hovering there. His surprise was plainly evident on his face, perhaps because she had finally answered the door, or perhaps because she was wrapped in nightclothes and robe.

  “I realize this is unusual,” he began.

  Eleanor reached through the gap in the door to take hold of Mallory by his rumpled lapel. She pulled him into the room. She closed and locked the door behind him, telling herself this was no worse than their midnight conversation on board the Nuit—right before the airship crashed and fell to pieces.

  “It’s better than you standing in the hall, knocking all night,” she said. He was such a contrast, Virgil Mallory. Demanding when circumstances required it, almost shy when they didn’t.

  “Ah, well—” Mallory attempted to smooth the wrinkles from his jacket. She could see that his hands were shaking again, and a fine sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. “Surely I wouldn’t have remained all night. Perhaps a mere quarter of an hour.”

  Eleanor moved to the liquor tantalus that crouched on the room’s sideboard. The small walnut cabinet enclosed three cut-glass decanters and a plethora of small glasses. She chose two glasses and the whiskey, which she had ferreted out earlier. It was, surprisingly, Irish. She poured.

  She wanted to invite him to sit, but could see that Mallory was too full of energy. She stoppered the decanter and nodded toward the other room—the bedroom—and when Mallory’s eyes widened, Eleanor clicked her tongue.

  “The balcony, you ninny,” she said with a laugh, and moved that way, glasses of whiskey in hand. It made her question what Mallory thought of her association with Christian; did he, like so many others, think she should have been sent to a convent for the rest of her days?

  When Mallory joined her he took a draught of the evening air, still redolent with smells of the marketplace twisting through the streets below. Eleanor offered Mallory a glass and he took it, clearly attempting not to drink its entire contents at one go.

  “Forgive me for saying so, Agent,” Eleanor said, “but something has you tied in knots.” She sipped her whiskey and set the glass on the balcony rail, waiting for Mallory to calm.

  He looked out at the city. It was a long look, from a man who had never seen Cairo before, or from one who was seeing it for the first time all over again. When he at last spoke, he looked at Eleanor, as if refusing to hide within the city’s elaborate streets. In the low lamplight that flooded from her room, he looked on edge.

  “One way I deal with the beast, Miss Folley, is opium, and I have not smoked for several days now.”

  Eleanor had the feeling he could have told her down to the very hour how long it had been since he had last smoked. She suspected, too, the admission was difficult and that those who knew of his need were few, much like those who knew about the beast.

  “That isn’t why I’m here, however,” he said before she could make any offer of help. “That isn’t what I came to tell you, in fact.” He laughed, a low sound between them, and a tremor ran through him. “I have wanted to tell you for some time now, but the timing has been poor.”

  He paused, letting the silence draw itself out. From the street below there came the low bray of a donkey, but otherwise the quiet of the world held.

  “I was recruited into Mistral after my time at the military academy and immediately met Miss Caroline Irving.”

  Eleanor’s skin pricked with sudden heat. Mallory looked at her as though the name should be significant to her, and of course it was. It made Eleanor feel queasy, not from the whiskey, but from the idea that this was how the puzzle came together.

  “At first, she was nothing more than my mentor,” he continued, “and that s
he should have stayed.” Mallory took another generous swallow of whiskey. “She was older than I, driven in her work, and respected by every agent we crossed paths with. I am not ashamed to say I fell deeply in love with her. I asked her to be my wife, and we were married after a scandalously short engagement.”

  Mallory set his glass beside Eleanor’s, clasping his hands together as he went on to describe their marriage. It sounded like anything but a marriage, with more time apart than together. How had they possibly maintained a relationship?

  Perhaps Mallory having been married should have surprised her, but somehow it didn’t. Having come from a large family, it was normal for him to want a family of his own.

  “Did she know?” Eleanor asked. “That you were a wolf?”

  When Mallory said no, Caroline hadn’t known until the end—that was the thing that surprised Eleanor most. How had he kept such a truth from his own wife?

  “There were clues about her and I should have paid more attention,” Mallory went on. “For a while I felt as though I was drowning in some new revelation every day—things I never saw, but that were right before my eyes. She worked for other intelligence agencies, seemingly for the highest bidder, taking jobs that even Mistral would never touch. My last mission with my partner Joel—”

  Mallory’s voice hitched, and Eleanor pushed his whiskey closer. “Take a breath,” she said. “There’s no rush.”

  But Mallory couldn’t slow himself. “We were gathering intelligence,” he said in a lower voice, one that was smoothed by the whiskey, “and Caroline was doing the same. Our paths crossed. She shot Joel and I—” There was only a slight pause before he went on. “In my anger, I let the beast consume me, and it—” A hitched pause again. “No. I killed her.”

  Eleanor reached for Mallory’s hand, but he turned away, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets as he stared into the streets and across the city. Eleanor withdrew, feeling somehow unwanted, but she realized that wasn’t it at all. Mallory was confessing to her—the opium, his wife’s death at his hands—and how impossible it must have been for him, to first admit it to himself, and then tell another.