Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “Whatever her ties,” Auberon said, “it is likely her father knew her every move. They trusted each other; how could he not know?”

  “And yet,” Eleanor added, “Caroline was skilled when it came to disguise and manipulation.” Virgil didn’t mistake the caution he heard in Eleanor’s words now. “Eleanor.” Virgil covered Eleanor’s hand with his own. He swallowed hard, thinking his tie needed loosening, but there was no tie around his neck. “All of you. I appreciate the . . . tiptoeing around this, but it’s unnecessary. I did not know Caroline as I believed I did. What I do believe now is that she deceived everyone—including me, the man she married. Why would her father be any different? I think she told the truth when it suited her, and rarely did it suit.”

  Eleanor’s fingers slid through his and gave him a firm squeeze. He knew she understood, that awful truths had been revealed about people they had both loved—and all they could do was move forward and find the final ring before either Christian or Irving did.

  Christian could want the rings for himself, or he could be working in concert with Irving. If so, what did Irving intend? Had Auberon actually bought them time or had he only managed to forestall something inevitable?

  A brisk knock sounded at the door, and before Virgil could rise, Gin was already on his feet and moving toward it. He opened the door to reveal a young lady Virgil didn’t recognize, though she handed Gin an envelope bearing an official Sirocco seal.

  “What now?” Auberon muttered.

  “Urgent communiqué,” Gin said. He knelt on his cushion and offered the envelope to Eleanor. “Miss Folley.”

  Virgil studied the envelope as Eleanor took it. The envelope was addressed to Eleanor, in a hand he did not recognize, but that told him little, other than it was not a summons from Irving. When Eleanor turned the envelope over, the official wax seal gleamed in the candlelight, revealing the spread wings of an owl. Eleanor smoothed her thumbs over it.

  Messages were always sealed, even in-house, to prevent tampering en route, but the method wasn’t foolproof. Wax could be reheated and eased open; Virgil knew this from experience. The seal sounded fresh when Eleanor broke it from the paper, and he prayed it was so. The evening’s conversations had only heightened his sense of wariness.

  He was close enough to see the handwriting upon the page when Eleanor withdrew it; it was still unfamiliar, but he saw a familiar name there: Renshaw Folley.

  “Cleo relayed this,” Eleanor said. Virgil wrapped his arm around her shoulders, Auberon and Gin and propriety be damned.

  “She received a message concerning my father earlier tonight—he was the victim of an attack and has . . . ”

  Virgil’s hold on Eleanor tightened as she trailed off. He peered down at the page before her.

  “He’s been taken to Hôtel-Dieu de Paris—Juliana wants me to come.”

  Silence descended again. There was no question they would go, and Gin leapt once more into action. “I’ll see to transportation.”

  Virgil looked down at Eleanor as her fingers traced the carefully written words. She was oddly quiet, entirely unlike the Eleanor he had come to know. “Eleanor?”

  “This isn’t right,” she said.

  “Of course it’s not, it’s your father—”

  “No, listen,” she said. “Irving returns and gifts Auberon with one of the rings we have no other means of finding.” Her eyes lingered on a nodding Auberon over the edge of the paper, then came back to Virgil. “Hubert leads us to the temple where my grandmother’s name is written and challenges us to a race for the final ring. And now my father is attacked and I’m asked to return to a city I just left?”

  Virgil felt cold down to his bones, as if he had been doused in ice water. “Someone wants us in Paris now.” He stood from the cushions and offered Eleanor a hand up from them.

  “I don’t like playing the part of a chess piece,” Eleanor said, but still grasped Virgil’s hands and pulled herself to standing.

  Virgil squeezed her hands. “But don’t you know, the queen can go any direction she likes.”

  “Don’t tell me this isn’t a trap,” Gin said as he returned to the room, one pack already in hand. “You may call me mad, deranged, delusional, whatever you like, but this . . . this smells as bad as eel-jelly.”

  Auberon clicked his tongue as he pushed himself away from the table. “Oh, it’s definitely a trap,” he agreed.

  “It doesn’t feel like Hubert’s doing,” Virgil said as they all moved toward their rooms.

  “No,” Eleanor agreed. “It doesn’t.”

  That left only one person in Virgil’s mind, he decided as he stepped from the common room and into his bedroom. Howard Irving.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The cool of Paris was a stark contrast to the heat of Egypt. Where the autumn air might not have seemed cold otherwise, it now had Eleanor pulling her Mistral-purchased coat around her more firmly. The Jackal arrived to dismal skies and the sheen of recent rain coating everything.

  Even at top speed, the flight had taken over twenty-four hours. It had been mercifully quiet, though the silence and lack of being shot from the sky gave them time to rest and ample opportunity to consider all they had learned in the days prior, which made for an uneasy atmosphere. It didn’t help that worry was consuming Eleanor as she fretted over what had befallen her father. A second message from Cleo mentioned an attack after leaving the market, Renshaw found bloody on the ground. Eleanor had to wonder if the messages they received en route were from Cleo at all; she was to the point of questioning everything. Had Cleo been compromised? Was Irving overseeing her communiqués?

  The attack didn’t feel like Christian’s doing, yet Eleanor suspected something was amiss with him too, for he wasn’t his normal self in the temple chapel. Something was not right, but she didn’t yet know what. Trying to unravel the constant riddle of Christian while worrying about her father was impossible.

  The journey to Hôtel-Dieu seemed interminable. When at last she could see the towers of Notre Dame nearing, she began to relax, knowing her father was close. Eleanor had been to Notre Dame countless times; its towers, gargoyles, and rose windows were well known to her—but never the hospital that sprawled beside it. She would have to thank her father for the new adventure.

  Eleanor slipped out of the carriage as quickly as she could—not quickly at all considering the rain-slicked cobblestones. She had considered donning a skirt to appease her father, but couldn’t tolerate the idea. From the moment they had communicated in Cleo’s rooms, a new path had been established. No longer would she deny who she was, not even for her father’s peace of mind. She accepted Mallory’s steady hand when he offered it.

  “No sense in you occupying a bed here, too,” Mallory said.

  Auberon and Gin lingered near the carriage, taking in the church towers, the hospital roof, the shrubberies nearby. Eleanor couldn’t say she was surprised that their conversation was composed of plans to ensure the hospital was secure. Their resources were slim now, as they were uncertain whom they could trust outside their circle. Director Irving possessed fathomless resources and had countless people under his command. The idea that he might attack a hospital full of patients and Augustinian nuns filled Eleanor with a loathing she could hardly contain, but she kept her composure and headed toward a knot of black-draped nuns clustered near a reception desk.

  At her query as to her father, one of the sisters asked Eleanor to accompany her. Mallory stayed with the other sisters, showing his Mistral identification and explaining the delicacy of the matter before them. Eleanor left him to handle security matters and followed the small nun deeper into the hospital, then to a room occupied by four beds. Her father was in the last, near the window where he might overlook the Seine if not for Juliana pacing in front of the glass.

  “Eleanor!”

  Eleanor opened her arms to the woman and murmured her thanks to the sister before she left. Juliana was cold and shaking, her face lined with concern. But
she calmed somewhat in Eleanor’s embrace, then tugged her toward the bed, where her father slept.

  “He asked me to stay for dinner,” Juliana explained, “and went to the market for a few things. The market that always has those lemon drops I like so much. But he . . . ” She pressed a shaking hand to her midsection. Eleanor squeezed an arm around Juliana’s shoulders. “When he didn’t return in his usual timely fashion,” she continued, “I grew concerned and walked outside to find him—to find him—”

  The man in the bed resembled Eleanor’s father in only minor ways. She had to look twice before she understood this to be him, beaten and bloodied. His head was wrapped in bandages, his face a mottled purple. One hand was bandaged as well, while his other cradled a small skull. Eleanor brightened some at the sight of it, the small lynx skull he liked so well. He had told a young Eleanor it was the skull of a baby sphinx, and how she had adored it. She had spent long hours stroking a line between its empty eye sockets, as if she could conjure a jinn.

  “He was on the ground,” Juliana continued. “So still and bloody.” She clutched Eleanor’s hand within her own. “All those lemon drops spilled on the ground around him.”

  Eleanor opened her mouth to ask if Juliana had spoken with the police, but the question arrived in Mallory’s voice, which made her mouth quirk upward.

  “Have you spoken to the police?”

  They both turned to look at Mallory, who joined them at the end of the bed. Juliana moved from Eleanor’s side to pace the length of bed so she could fuss with Renshaw’s blanket.

  “I did,” she confirmed, “but they aren’t optimistic about catching anyone. They said he was likely attacked for his money.” Here, her drawn face dared to brighten. “He won his category at the Exposition, Eleanor. The judges loved his machine, said it had a genuine and practical use in ever-expanding fields, and h-he . . . won. Din-dinner was to be our celebration.”

  A sob escaped Juliana. She dashed her hand over her face to remove the tears, shaking her head and smiling at Eleanor and Mallory both.

  “The doctors say he will be fine, but . . . ”

  Everything that Juliana didn’t say pressed hard and insistent against Eleanor’s heart. She looked down at her father and touched her cool fingers to his temple. He might be fine, but even so remained terribly injured.

  Eleanor placed a kiss against the bandages that wrapped his head. “Da?” she whispered.

  She closed her hand around the hand in which he held the skull, feeling as he must have when she had been attacked that day in the desert. Bruised and trampled, his daughter’s arm bitten and bleeding, his wife vanished. Her father looked so small and frail in the hospital bed, but when he opened his eyes, Eleanor felt a flare of hope.

  “Lila?” he whispered.

  Eleanor closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be mistaken for her mother, not then. “It’s me, Da. Eleanor.”

  “Ellie . . . ” His voice was like grating gravel. “There were men, and a knife—”

  “Yes, you were stabbed, you foolish man,” Juliana said.

  Stabbed. Eleanor hated blades—they hurt—and she looked her father over with a new interest, seeing nothing until his bandaged hand patted his wrapped chest. His ribs may well have saved his life, she thought.

  “I only had . . . ” Her father’s bruised forehead furrowed with his scowl. “Green beans and lemon drops? Not so expensive if they wanted their own . . . ”

  Eleanor shushed him, Juliana fussing with the blankets again, pulling them closer around Renshaw’s chest.

  “You are recovering now,” Eleanor told him, fighting to keep her voice even. If her father were gone, what would she do? She never thought to presume he would always be there—having lost her mother, she knew better—but this brought the realization close, that indeed someday he would go and she would be left and then . . . And then.

  “You are—” Her father peered up at Eleanor in the dim afternoon light that streamed through the nearby window. “In Cairo.” With that, his body began to shake from the force of his tears. “Oh, Eleanor.” Her name drained him. “I’m s-sorry.”

  Eleanor bowed her head against his, looking down the length of the bed to Mallory, who stood there, solid and sure, his eyes heavy on them. He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.

  “I’m here now, Da,” she whispered. “You go on and sleep.”

  Eleanor took Mallory’s handkerchief and dried the tears from her father’s bruised cheeks. There was so much bruising; she barely touched him for fear of causing him more pain. When she withdrew from his side, Juliana settled into the chair.

  “You need rest too, Eleanor,” Juliana said. She closed her hand around Renshaw’s and the lynx skull.

  Eleanor had a denial ready at hand, but Mallory’s arm sliding around her made her go silent. There was kindness there, and Eleanor wanted to lose herself: wanted to close her eyes and just drift away for a while.

  “She does,” Mallory agreed and tugged her back from the bed. “My fellow agents Auberon and Gin will remain here on guard, Mrs. Day,” he added, “but I’m going to see that Eleanor gets some food and rest. If you need anything, you have only to ask them.”

  Eleanor was aware that Mallory guided her out of the room, but she felt distant, watching from afar as he guided her from the room and out of the hospital. It had been the same in those first few moments without her mother, too, that same sense of being separated from all else, floating.

  Mallory didn’t guide her to the carriage. He took her instead to Notre Dame, where silence and the scent of incense washed over them as they entered. Eleanor paused in the entry, feeling as though the whole of the world was shut away in here; the stillness was so encompassing, it grounded her in another place.

  Eleanor had not been raised in a religious household—the Folleys were perfunctorily Catholic, but if they held to a faith, it was a faith written in the bones of the world, not in its heavens. It was a faith that ensured nothing was forgotten, even if buried for centuries.

  Even so, she respected these places, and within the cathedral she dropped a knee to the floor. Mallory followed suit. They dipped their fingers into the font of holy water and crossed themselves, and by the time they took a place in the pews, Eleanor felt calmed. The holy water cooled on her forehead and fingers until it was but a memory.

  “There is much we need to do,” Mallory said, and reached for Eleanor’s hands, enclosing them within his own, “but right now, only this.” And then he prayed. “Holy Virgin Mary, you are reigning in glory with Jesus, your Son . . . ”

  Eleanor found a strength in Mallory’s voice that she hadn’t heard before. As Christian had changed, so, too, had Mallory. Something had changed within him, and it flowed through the words he murmured. He was at peace, she thought. At long last, peace. She reached for that peace, too, that she might hold it within herself and not feel the prickings of fear in this place of all places. Port Elizabeth was a long time ago, she told herself. Caroline wasn’t about to appear and make a demand.

  “Remember us in our sadness,” she whispered along with Mallory, bowing her head above their clasped hands and closing her eyes. She knew the words, and for once believed in them with her whole heart.

  “Look kindly on all who are suffering, or fighting against any difficulty. Have pity on those who are separated from someone they love.”

  Eleanor wasn’t separated, not that, not now. She was back with her father and ever close to— She looked down at Mallory’s hands around her own. His were broad, scarred, and his silver ring pressed into her as he prayed. She couldn’t help but smooth a finger over the silver, over skull and bone. She remembered him bent and broken in the canyon temple, that ring glinting in the darkness. Like a small beacon.

  “Have pity on the loneliness of our hearts. Have pity on the weakness of our faith and love.”

  She heard no weakness in Mallory’s voice now. They had both fought to reach this point of peace in their journ
eys. Eleanor knew they were not yet finished—as much as Mallory’s ring had been a point of focus in the temple, the Lady’s fourth ring was such now, lost.

  “Have pity on those who are weeping . . . ”

  “ . . . on those who are praying, on those who are fearful.” Mallory’s hands closed around hers now, and she looked into his brown eyes, which were brightened with gleaming gold. How close was the wolf? She knew now: the wolf was always there.

  “Holy Mother, please obtain for all of us hope and peace with justice,” Eleanor whispered.

  Mallory dipped his head and pressed his mouth briefly to hers. He was startlingly warm in the cool of the afternoon, and no longer smelled of opium, but of soap and the crisp autumn air they had flown through.

  “Amen,” he whispered against her lips.

  “Amen.”

  From Notre Dame, they took the carriage back to Mistral’s Paris headquarters, where Mallory guided Eleanor to his private rooms. Eleanor suppressed a smile at the reaction of the receptionist in the lobby, the way her wide eyes tracked them up the staircase. Eleanor felt something similar, never thinking to find herself here in the course of this mission—or anything that might reach beyond the mission.

  She had never pictured the place he lived—doing so would have been admitting she fostered a curiosity about him. In their first days together, he had been an agent of Mistral, something to distrust and little else. He had since become considerably more. It was a change borne out of their shared plight, and Eleanor was mindful of that; as it had been with Christian, she did not want to repeat herself with Mallory. People had speculated about her misadventures with Christian, and she didn’t want to give anyone cause to do the same with Mallory.

  Mallory had two rooms, the first dominated by a fireplace and gilt mirror. The walls were washed in a green paint that made Eleanor think of deep forests—all the better to run though on four bare feet—and the floor was spread with a bright rug, flowers floating on a lapis sea surrounded by a braid of gold and amber. Bookcases lined two walls, while two heavily draped windows looked out onto the Seine. Eleanor could glimpse the towers of Notre Dame, and it comforted her to know her father was close.