High Stakes Trial

by Mindy Klasky

  All of it was magnificent. All of it was magical. And I couldn’t wait until we got out on the roof, until I could see Mohammed Apep’s scarab, preserved in all its glory.

  Geordie dropped back to walk with me before we climbed the last flight. “So ye’ve got a special interest in the Scarab Set?”

  I didn’t want to make small talk. I just wanted to see the window. But I managed to say, “My cousin saw it last year and said it was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.”

  Geordie preened like a proud parent. “Ye’ll be seeing it at the right time of day.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Right before sunset. Just before the sun disappears over the central roofline. It reflects off the red glass in the window. Strange effect—it seems like it’s on fire.”

  Once again, the amulet leaped in my pocket. I barely managed to disguise the clench of my fist from Geordie’s friendly gaze. “Th— that sounds amazing,” I said.

  “In medieval times, red was the rarest color of glass. They made it with gold.”

  I made polite sounds as we finished our climb. My mind was far from medieval gold. I was concentrating on the ancient Egyptian glass in my fist.

  “Right!” Geordie called, as we reached the door that led onto the roof. “I’ll lead the way, folks. Ye can take all the photos ye want, but make sure not to drop your phones. It’s a long way down!” He laughed at his own joke, and a number of the tourists joined in uneasily.

  One by one, we stepped over a high stone threshold onto an elevated walkway. On one side, the slate-tiled roof of the transept sloped up to its central line. On the other, a dead drop plummeted to the ground. A chest-high wall of stone blocks guaranteed that no one would accidentally slip overboard.

  My fellow tourists exclaimed at the view. One by one they ventured onto the walkway, chattering nervously and taking hundreds of photos.

  I hung back, closer to the bulk of the nave. Geordie had said I’d have a good view from the roof. That meant the window must be…just…about…there.

  From the outside of the building, the window wasn’t much to look at. The lead stripping between its panes was heavy. The colors were dark, too shadowed to distinguish a clear design. In the middle, framed in a rectangular space, was a single pane of clear glass.

  The scarab sat in the middle of the glass.

  The beetle was as long as my hand. It was fashioned out of faience, the same bright blue as the amulet in my pocket. The head was stylized, separated by a single incised line from the paired wings. The body was an oval, bisected by a straight line. Even from this distance, I could make out the indigo shadows that defined the shape. I knew they’d be the identical shade of the lines that creased my amulet.

  Geordie had shepherded the group to the far end of the walkway. His hand was stretched out, pointing to an empty platform at the top of the nearest buttress. He was talking about the 2011 earthquake, making a pitch for donations to add to the cathedral’s ongoing repair fund.

  A woman said something in a voice too soft for me to hear, and the entire group laughed. A child spoke up, her voice ending in a question. Geordie’s gruff drawl began a response.

  And the sun shifted.

  Not enough to change the world. Not enough for the group to even register. But I saw it. I saw the moment the window ignited.

  Geordie was right. The red glass burned. It wasn’t the same gleam that people would see from inside the cathedral. It wasn’t the transparent glow of light passing through colored glass.

  Instead, I saw a reflection, as if all the gold ever used to fuse red glass in the Middle Ages had surfaced on the panes of this one window. It blazed up, too bright for mortal sight.

  Catching my breath against the glare, I closed my eyes. Only then could I sense the true power in the glass. Only then could I feel the sacred force of the scarab.

  I knew it, the same way I’d known the power of my amulet. I didn’t see the charm, didn’t hear it, didn’t taste or smell or touch. Instead, the scarab in the glass spoke to the amulet in my hand. It whispered through the bones of my body, through the scaffold of my soul.

  The scarab’s power reverberated through the cathedral. It pulled me, and I was over the stone threshold that led back inside, halfway down the ladder before I knew I’d moved.

  I was breaking the rules. I was supposed to stay with my group. It was dangerous on the ladder, in the attic, on the stairs that led to the ground floor.

  I didn’t care.

  The scarab held me in its grasp. It built a bridge to the amulet in my pocket, keeping me safe. Holding me captive.

  Emerging from the stairwell, I crossed the nave to look up at the scarab window. The sun had continued its movement across the evening sky. The glass still glowed—crimson, claret, ruby, red—but the fiery force that had gripped me on the rooftop was invisible now.

  From this distance, I shouldn’t be able to see the scarab itself. It was too far away. Too small to be anything more than a dark speck set in clear glass.

  But my imperial eyes could make out the blue faience as if it were no more than a handspan from my face. And now, looking at the underside of the piece, I could see new indigo striations.

  They were carved into the scarab’s belly, sharp lines that formed the shape of hieroglyphics.

  Sheut, I read first. Then: Sekhmet. And finally: Together we shall rule the world.

  34

  It was patently impossible to make out the words at such a distance. I couldn’t read ancient Egyptian. I had no way of translating the deep-carved shapes.

  But I saw them, and I read them, and I knew what they meant. I knew the force that had drawn me to the cathedral floor. I understood that my mission had not ended yet; I’d only just begun.

  The scarab compelled me to walk toward a chapel, the one dedicated to St. Joseph of Arimathea. No. Not toward it. Into it.

  A sign stood beside a door: West Crypt Columbarium. In front of the door stood a stanchion, with another smaller announcement: No Admittance Without Appointment.

  I didn’t care about signs. I didn’t care about rules. I was caught by the power of the scarab. I was bound by Sekhmet’s Seal.

  I walked down the stairs, determined to make my way to the crypt.

  My footsteps echoed. The stone ceiling was low, close enough that I could almost touch the vaulting. Part of my mind gibbered, reminding me about the weight of the building above us, the thousands of tons of stone that could come crashing down in a single moment.

  But part of my mind knew without a doubt that I was safe. Sekhmet’s Seal had guided me here. Sekhmet’s Seal would protect me.

  I walked past walls covered with orderly plaques. Names. Birth dates. Death dates. I was surrounded by the ashes of the dead.

  The amulet in my pocket had grown hot to the touch. There was no reason to keep it a secret any longer, not here, not when we were encircled by ghosts.

  When I took it out, blue light shone between my fingers. The bones of my hands stood out like cobalt X-rays. My blood glowed lapis.

  The amulet wasn’t home yet. It wanted to move. Sekhmet’s Seal called it, as loudly and clearly as the scarab had called me. I paced the length of the crypt, until I came up fast against the far wall.

  The echo of my footsteps died. My eyes could see blank stone. I reached out with my left hand, the one without an azure glow, and I touched cold, solid marble.

  But those senses lied. My ears and eyes and fingertips failed me. Somehow, in a language I couldn’t reduce to words, the Seal drew me forward.

  I needed to go farther. Deeper.

  Chris had taught me how to move beyond my senses. He’d shown me how to focus on my insignia, how to forge a path with coral and hematite.

  I didn’t have any coral; my ring had been taken away. I didn’t have any hematite; the court still held my bracelet.

  But I had something more valuable than either of those jewels. I had the amulet.

  I took a deep
breath and held it for a count of five. I lifted the faience charm to my forehead. Its radiance suffused my flesh, warming me, turning me to light. I produced the word Chris had taught me, the word for thought: Skepsi.

  I exhaled slowly, letting the dark poison of tension drain out of my skull, my temples, my jaw.

  I lowered the amulet, settling it against my throat. I drew another breath, measuring another count of five. I felt the blue light spread across my larynx. I thought another word from Chris: Phoni.

  I exhaled, offering my voice to the amulet. As my breath left my body, I felt like I was drifting. The air in the crypt was the same temperature as my skin. It was thick around me, like water, like a vast sea of sand.

  My hand drifted to my heart. I could see the blue glow now. I watched the light filter through my flesh as I inhaled for another count of five. Chris had given me one last word, the word for passion. I thought it now: Pathos.

  And when I exhaled, everything was different.

  35

  The flagstones dissolved beneath my feet. A flight of stairs beckoned me into the darkness below.

  Something about the sight was familiar. The image nagged at my brain, whispering in a well-known voice. I’d been here before. I’d stood at the top of these stairs.

  Before I could take the first step, my mind filled in the blank. The descent into darkness looked like the secret passage in Judge Finch’s courtroom. I felt like I was entering the administrative offices of the Eastern Empire, the booking desk and holding cells and interrogation rooms.

  But I wasn’t in the courthouse. And these stairs led somewhere else. Somewhere unknown. I held the amulet high, and I descended.

  I found myself in a good-size chamber, a room as large as Chris’s study at the Den. This room, though, lacked windows and chairs. There was no overstuffed sofa, no desk with papers laid out in perfect precision. This room was absolutely, completely empty.

  At first, I thought the walls were made of cobblestones. The nubbed surface stretched from floor to ceiling, catching the light and carving it into shadows. As I grew closer, though, I saw the walls weren’t rock.

  They were made of bones.

  I was staring at the rounded ends of femurs, thousands and thousands of them, stacked on top of each other. But unlike ordinary human bone, these bones were black, as if they’d been scorched by a merciless fire.

  I should have been terrified. I should have turned around and run up the shadowed stairs, crossed the crypt and caught up with Geordie and the tourists and any other normal human being I could find.

  But bone was bone. People lived. People died. It didn’t matter if they were imperial or mundane; when their days were over, they were stripped to bone. I had nothing to fear here.

  Holding the amulet like a sacred offering, I moved into the next chamber.

  This one was lined with spines, individual vertebrae marching from floor to ceiling, ladder after ladder after ladder. These bones were blackened as well, scorched just short of cracking.

  Dark ribs formed the walls of the next room, delicate curves woven together like laths that had never seen plaster. Next were blackened shoulder blades, graceful plates fitted together like miniature shields to cover every vertical surface. After that were walls that looked like rough concrete, until I came close enough to recognize the short, sharp lines of burned fingers and toes, jumbled together until they’d set like some sort of sedimentary rock.

  The last room was lined with skulls.

  They alternated—rows of shiny pates, polished and rounded, set beside gaping noses and open, clacking jaws. Each was darker than the one before. They could have belonged to humans, to sphinxes, to vampires. Death made no distinction.

  But this room was different from the others.

  This room held a dais, also made of skulls. And on that platform was a chair. No. A throne. This room held a majestic throne fashioned of seared femurs and still more skulls, the entire thing backed with a glinting arch of jet-black arm-bones, like a photographic negative of the haloes surrounding medieval saints.

  A man perched in the center of the throne.

  It was hard to judge his height because he was sitting, but I suspected he didn’t stand much taller than I. His head seemed large for his body, but maybe that was because he was completely bald. His narrow chest was covered by a white linen shirt, which hung loosely over the waistband of his wrinkled khaki pants. His hands rested on his knees, and his fingers were long and skinny, with unusually deep nail beds.

  Welcome, he said.

  Except he didn’t say it. His lips didn’t move. Instead, he set the word deep inside my mind, beneath the blue light of the amulet, past the haze of my worry about credit cards and Prius parking spots and when I could finally take a shower.

  “Thank you,” I said, because politeness seemed like an excellent option. I hesitated at the end of that familiar phrase, though, because I didn’t know what I should call him. Sir? My lord? Your honor?

  He seemed far older than I was, but maybe that was because of the baldness. His skin looked like tanned leather, tawny and smooth, without a single wrinkle.

  You may call me Apep, he said, again placing the words deep inside my head.

  Apep? Mohammed Apep? This was the man who’d donated millions to save beloved sites in Washington DC? The man who’d endowed the American University chair? Who’d given the amulet to the National Museum of Natural History?

  But no ordinary man had the power to place words inside my mind. No everyday reclusive philanthropist huddled in a secret cave of bones beneath a marble crypt.

  My confusion must have amused him, because he laughed. The sound filled the room around us, bouncing off those gleaming skulls and rattling around in the gaping eye holes and nose holes and mouths.

  Perhaps you’d prefer my true form?

  Blue light surged from the amulet in my hand, coruscating off the skulls and the throne of bone. My eyes automatically squeezed closed, but I forced them open, unwilling to miss anything in this impossible magical space.

  In that single heartbeat, Apep had changed. The leathery man was gone, and in his place was a snake.

  Its body was as big around as my waist. Its scales glittered with iridescence, brown-blue-green-grey as the beast slithered around the throne. Its head was hooded, like a cobra, and its distant tail tapered to a sharp point. It opened its mouth wide, displaying rows of concentric teeth, like a shark.

  As I gaped, the beast unhinged its jaw, and it swallowed the back of the throne, the sunburst of fire-blackened arm bones. Its mouth couldn’t possibly be wide enough. There was no way the serpent could consume the sun.

  But with a massive crack, the throne was destroyed. The seat—the part fashioned of femurs and skulls—shattered into its component bones, flying across the room with the force of bullets.

  The snake’s throat worked, convulsing on itself over and over and over again with a grinding noise that made my own bones ache. The beast shuddered, curving toward the ceiling in a beautiful, terrible arch. And when it crashed down to earth, the sun was destroyed.

  The snake was monstrous. It was terrifying. Yet even as I watched it destroy the throne, I saw the beauty in the beast. Its muscles rippled beneath its skin, long and strong and supple. Its teeth gleamed in the amulet’s blue light, each one tapered to a perfect needle point. Its eyes were flat, glinting like onyx in the chamber of bone.

  Or perhaps you find this older form more pleasing? The snake’s voice reached deeper inside my head than the man’s had. It rooted me to the spot, as if I were a songbird or a mouse. I couldn’t have moved if the cathedral collapsed around me.

  As I watched, the snake transformed again. Its hood stretched into a crest along the back of its head. Long whiskers descended from its mouth. Legs budded from its body, four appendages that coalesced from long, sleek muscle. Two more buds spiked from the back, growing taller and thinner until they transformed into wings. The snake’s scales grew thicker, hardening
into armor. Its iridescence rippled, cascading from nose to tail until all the grey and brown was consumed, melted into swirls of blue and green.

  I stared at the dragon, mesmerized by its sinuous gait. It slunk from the dais and made a circuit of the room, each jointed leg dancing an impossible ballet. Its wings opened and closed overhead, their fine skin stretched like cloth made of sky. Its tail lashed, and I realized I’d overlooked part of the transition from snake. Four spikes, each as long as my forearm, decorated the armored tip of the tail.

  The dragon’s dance brought it to the far side of the room, to the door where I’d entered. With its tail stretched back to the now-empty dais, the dragon filled its lungs. Its sides heaved outward, blue-green hillocks rippling with strength. A blast of frozen fire tore through the underground chambers beyond the throne room.

  Even sheltered behind the dragon’s body, I was driven to my knees. My hands clapped over my ears, trying to block the creature’s roar. My eyes squinted shut at the brilliance of the icy flames. I finally understood how all those bones had been scorched to utter blackness—not by fire but by ice.

  I was still kneeling when the dragon turned around. His whiskers trailed on the ground below his mouth, and his crest lay flat on top of his head.

  Or you might prefer my oldest form.

  The wings pulled into the dragon’s body, sinking toward its massive back at the same time that the spikes were absorbed by the tail. That tail grew shorter and stouter, feeding into the creature’s jointed hind legs. The spine twisted, pulling the torso off the ground, and the front legs contorted into recognizable arms. I’d forgotten to watch the head, the crest, the whiskers; I didn’t see the moment they took on human form.

  The armored plates lost their green, melting away to perfect sapphire flesh. The man grew fingernails and eyebrows, lashes and lips. Once again, his head was perfectly shaved. The remnants of his wings twisted around his waist, weaving together to become a cyan linen skirt.