Rings of Anubis: Gold & Glass
()
About this ebook
Related to Rings of Anubis
Related ebooks
Rings of Anubis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRings of Anubis: Steam & Silver Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Glass Falcon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Clockwork Tomb Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shadow in the Glass Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Quartered Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirestone Key Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHaunted Inheritance: A Haunted Short Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Memory of Babel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mechanical Wings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMissing in Toscana: An Emma Darling Suspense Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpare Parts: Starfighter Origins, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOxygen: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Year of Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDreaming of You: An absolutely heart-warming and bookish romance for 2024, perfect for fans of cosy reads Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Universe in 3/4 Time: A Novel of Old Europe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWorld's End Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Vagabond: The Halloween Issue: Vagabond, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lion's Share Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe Have Everything Before Us: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Honey Mummy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStarfighter Origins Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Search For Pandora's Box Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevolution (Chronicles of Charanthe #2) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Insect Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Unicorn Quest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Kind of Vanishing Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wax Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHoly Skirts: A Novel of a Flamboyant Woman Who Risked All for Art Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Science Fiction For You
This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cryptonomicon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time and Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contact Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Light From Uncommon Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Rings of Anubis
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Rings of Anubis - E. Catherine Tobler
RINGS OF ANUBIS
BOOK ONE: GOLD AND GLASS
E. Catherine Tobler
For my mother and Liz Ann, two ladies who always believed.
Copyright © 2013 by E. Catherine Tobler.
Cover art by Timothy Lantz.
www.stygiandarkness.com
Cover design by Sherin Nicole.
Ebook design by Neil Clarke.
ISBN: 978-1-60701-501-7
Masque Books
www.masque-books.com
Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books
www.prime-books.com
No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.
For more information, contact:
publisher@masque-books.com
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 see 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 remembered 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.
It is believed to be the work of a single person,
Mallory continued after glancing behind him to ensure they were still alone. A person with intimate knowledge of the museum and its security. A person who knew the Lady remained when so much else had been moved.
Eleanor’s head came up sharply and she looked at Mallory, surprised to find his eyes on her. She knew the conversation was about to take a fateful turn. Mallory would know about her past—he was with Mistral, was he not? He would ask for her help and dredge up everything Eleanor had tried to leave behind for her father’s sake. She wanted to tug Juliana away before Mallory could say more, for there was much her friend did not know.
Miss Folley—
No, Agent Mallory.
A person with intimate knowledge of the museum and its security procedures. A person who knew the Lady remained when so much else had been moved. Eleanor could picture the steady hands bypassing locks, the shadowy form slipping past any guard. Fear whispered Christian in her ear, but she refused to believe him responsible for the theft.
Surely he would not—
Yet he so easily could.
How many valuable artifacts had she discovered with Christian Hubert? How many dangerous situations had they been in during their time together—and managed to get out of? She could not count. Could he have slipped into a museum, silent as snow, melting into shadows when the need arose?
Eleanor returned the photograph to Mallory and reclaimed her book from her father. The leather cover held the heat of his embrace, familiar and safe the way it had been that long-ago day. Eleanor, to me!
Her mother crying out for the arm. Men on mechanical horses, clockwork steads stronger than their living counterparts, emerging from the desert sands. Her mother running with the arm until those horses caught her. Until those men dismounted and—
Their mouths were not human . . .
"My reply to anything you may have to say is no, she added when Mallory appeared as if he were about to speak again. She set her jaw, an ache winding through her.
The Lady was lost to us years ago. Let her rest."
This was the line her father asked her to walk, the path from which she tried not to stray. But how could she not stray