Rings of Anubis: Steam & Silver

By E. Catherine Tobler

In a thrilling adventure that carries them from Paris to Egypt, and from the present to the deep past, Eleanor Folley and Virgil Mallory continue their epic quest to solve the mystery of Anubis’s rings and the disappearance of Eleanor’s mother. Their journey is complicated by the reappearance of Eleanor’s former love, those who wish to use the arcane power of the dark god Anubis for their vile desires, and Mallory’s struggles with demons his own. Uncovering the truth exposes a dangerous game of life, death, and unknowable powers!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prime Books
• Release date: Aug 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781607015048

Book preview

RINGS OF ANUBIS

BOOK TWO: SILVER AND STEAM

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: 978-1-60701-504-8

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Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books

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CHAPTER ONE

Cairo, Egypt ~ October 1889

Matters could have been worse, but the list of precisely how was too long for Eleanor Folley to detail.

The insistent fingers of an autumn wind pulled a shutter loose from its mooring, but it wasn’t the weather that concerned her. If the radiant energy photographs spread before her were where all paths led, she found herself standing at either the end of a passage or upon a cliff’s edge. Her fingers slid over the corner of an image showing the bright outline of something that should not be: modern false teeth in the mouth of an ancient Egyptian woman.

But this woman, the Lady, was evidently not so ancient, Eleanor told herself, nor was she the woman she sought. The Lady was not her long-lost mother.

The scents of Cairo rolled into the sitting room on another inrush of air: anise, myrrh, camels, smoke. These scents were as drugs to Eleanor, nearly capable of drawing her back in time. She wanted to go, away from this room and into the guise of childhood’s safety. To the known, and not the unknown spread before her.

Virgil Mallory moved from her side, crossing toward the window and its loose shutter while she remained on the couch. She had objected to the Mistral agent’s very presence only a short time before—feeling he had no place in a search so private—but now did not wish even his momentary absence. Cliff’s edge, she told herself. An abyss, unfathomable.

One thing I have never been able to understand, Mallory said as he pulled the shutter to, is why your mother was so intent on the Lady. She fashioned an entire mythology for this woman rather than simple bedtime stories. The Lady wasn’t a pharaoh, wasn’t a royal, so who was she? More specifically, who was she to your mother?

Eleanor looked at Cleo Barclay as she—guardian of the Lady’s remains these past years—sorted through more images. Her mechanical arms gleamed in the low lamplight, fingers carefully closing against the edge of a photo as she lifted it.

What about your grandmother? Cleo asked. "If your own mother was seeking her mother, it would make sense—that connection . . . "

Eleanor was thankful Cleo trailed off. The idea made her feel as if she were about to be pushed off the cliff and into the yawning abyss. She pressed her hand against the couch, feeling not the fabric but a rough, male hand. It closed around hers with the heat of a white-hot sun burning through a cloudless Egyptian sky. She closed her eyes.

Soon, Eleanor.

It was not her mother’s voice, the voice she had sought all these years, but one heavy with power and age. Was it, as she had begun to suspect, the ancient god Anubis?

As if the mere thought of his name conjured him, a sharp canine face assembled itself from the liquid black behind her eyes. Imagination, Eleanor told herself, as she had so many times before. Still, she remained unconvinced as his mouth parted to reveal gleaming fangs. Did his smile mock her doubt?

Eleanor felt the reflection of a similar expression on her lips, and she tongued the sharp fang she felt in her own mouth.

The shutter latch closed with a click that sounded like a revolver’s trigger. It served to snap Eleanor’s eyes open and her attention back to the room, where she fancied she could see the inky shadows being absorbed by the walls as the face of Anubis retreated. Eleanor ran her tongue across her teeth to reassure herself she had not just grown fangs.

The Lady, Mallory continued, was found buried in the middle of nowhere, but Dalila Folley knew the map of nowhere very well indeed.

Mallory sank onto the couch beside her again, and Eleanor curled into the reassuring arm he wrapped around her. She didn’t care that Cleo was there to bear witness. Cleo was more intent on the questions posed by the photographs.

There was a strange sense of relief when my mother found the Lady, Eleanor finally said, her eyes on the photographs. The day she had lost her mother was never far from mind, but pressed even closer now. They were coming closer to the truth; they had to be. I remembered thinking that everything would be all right, because she had looked for so long, and so many people told her she was wrong. Very few respected her work or my father’s—that only worsened when she vanished and he ceased his travels

What do you know of your grandmother? Mallory asked. Your mother’s mother.

I never knew her—Sagira. The name felt strange on her tongue now. She died before I was born. My mother was raised by an aunt; her own father died when she was ten, but he was an archaeologist, too. My mother’s father taught her, much as my father taught me  . . . 

Eleanor felt as though a puzzle piece had snapped into place, a piece that allowed more of the overall image to become clear. But the image she saw was discomfiting. If the portal she believed in had allowed her mother to move backward through time, had it done the same for her grandmother before? Was the body in the ground indeed Dalila Folley’s own mother?

Eleanor balked. The idea she had followed the same path as her mother before her was not only frightening, it was unsettling. Things she had no explanation for began to make painful sense: her father’s insistence through the years, the way her mother had known where the body was, the look on Dalila’s face when they had at last unearthed the Lady.

We have no evidence— But didn’t they?

Nothing beyond the circumstantial, but, Eleanor . . .  Mallory drew his arm from around her shoulders and made an effort to claim her hands. She pulled away, terror-stricken.

Eleanor curled her hands into fists. Agent—

Eleanor, how long will you deny the obv—

Mallory, don’t. It was a plea. Fear slammed her heart into her throat, making it impossible to think or talk.

Eleanor watched Mallory’s jaw tense, but he fell silent. She suspected she knew exactly how difficult that silence was for him.

Cleo shifted on the couch, carefully gathering the radiant energy photographs into a stack, thin layers of cushioning paper between each. I have returned the Lady to her slip in the archives, she said in a voice that was like cool balm over the conversation. We can work from the photographs, with no one the wiser. I’ll see you two in the morning?

Eleanor crossed her arms over her chest. She felt vulnerable with this new idea before her, as if a fresh wound had been opened. She was not surprised by Cleo’s sudden departure; their behavior had been dreadful.

Cleo, please forgive me. Me and not Mallory because Mallory’s idea was absurd, frightening . . . and true? It cannot be. It cannot—but it can. Panic closed a hand around her neck.

There is nothing to forgive, Eleanor, Cleo said. I cannot say I would be holding up nearly as well in your position.

Mallory saw Cleo to the door, and Eleanor bolted from the couch, stalking back to the balcony where she had left her whiskey. She finished it in one gulp. It burned like hellfire, bright and toxic, and she struggled for an even breath when Mallory joined her.

Eleanor.

Don’t. Don’t say it.

She wanted him to forget he had suggested the body could be that of her grandmother. She had believed for the longest time that the Lady was somehow her mother, that the mystery was that simple: her mother had traveled back in time, had lived an entire life elsewhere, only to die in the desert waste. It made no sense, the idea that her mother could dig herself up. But her grandmother? That made sense. Terrifying sense.

And if it were true? Dalila Folley remained missing. Where was she if not in that ground? Did she live yet, in some distant time they could not reach without the rings of Anubis? Would there ever be an answer?

I have grown weary of dust and decay, weary of flinging my soul-wealth away; weary of sowing for others to reap . . .

Eleanor felt the gentle brush of Mallory’s fingertips against her forehead, moving a tendril of nutmeg-colored hair out of her eyes. Only then did she realize she was crying.

I wanted it to be her, she said between choked sobs, and slumped against Mallory’s chest when at last the admission was made. He tucked her into his arms as if he had done it for years and years, and rocked her as she cried, saying nothing.

When she at last quieted, the hoot of owls carried to them across the Cairo night. Eleanor realized Mallory was offering her a handkerchief. She closed her hand around the soft linen. It was still warm from his pocket when she pressed it against her eyes and cheeks.

It only means the search isn’t finished, he said, keeping her tucked beneath his chin, one hand tracing random patterns along her back. The patterns were calming, and Eleanor let herself hover there for a long while. She thought of nothing but the shapes, circles blending into infinity’s figure of eight, which rounded into long coiling spirals moving inward toward her spine.

I suppose it’s childish, she said when she felt she might keep her voice on an even keel. To want to see her again—any way that I can, even if a weathered body.

Mallory made a low sound and gave Eleanor a nudge. He guided her from the balcony to the slim bed just inside the doors. She let him escort her to the thin mattress and cover her with the colorful woven blanket from the foot of the bed. He plumped the pillows behind her, then retrieved his own whiskey from the balcony ledge. He pressed it into her hands. His hands lingered around the glass, around her hands.

It’s not childish, he said. I think we all wish we could correct things in our past. That we might revisit people and places dear to us. There’s no replacing a mother.

His voice trailed off. Mallory drew his hands away, and his expression was less than happy, one saying he understood all too well.

Forgive me if I overstepped my bounds tonight, he said.

If he had, Eleanor wished he would do so again, be it with the kiss before Cleo’s arrival or his suggestion about her grandmother.

Eleanor shook her head, wanting to reach a hand up and draw him back down to her side. She wanted to offer him another drink, another kiss, but it was too much for her right now. She felt overwhelmed by the idea of knowing him so well, by the possibility of the Lady being her own grandmother. Eleanor made only a murmur of agreement when Mallory said he would see her in the morning. She listened to the latch of the door and his footsteps retreating down the hall.

Sleep was elusive. Part of her felt certain Anubis would cart her away if she fell asleep; part of her wanted that. She finished Mallory’s whiskey, then drew the insect netting around the bed. The ceiling, with its blue vault and precisely painted gold stars, was indistinct through the netting, unreal and beckoning. She listened to the distant sound of night birds outside, and felt the wash of cooling air from the open balcony doors, and still could find no rest.

Her grandmother?

Eleanor allowed herself to believe it. She saw her mother, not through her child-eyes, but through her adult eyes; saw her mother’s obsession as if it were her own—for it was.

As she hounded her father through the years and insisted her mother was alive, Eleanor imagined her mother doing the same, for the sake of her own mother, Sagira. If this was true, surely Dalila had known the Lady was her mother; it explained her desperate need to claim her before time took her away.

She knew she had to contact her father. If her mother’s own search had been motivated by the idea that the Lady was Sagira, surely he knew. His insistence told Eleanor he must. Would he admit it now?

When she padded down the hallway in robe and slippers, her room key secure in her pocket, it was Mallory her thoughts turned to. He had obviously considered the idea that the Lady was her grandmother for some time, and the idea that he had thoughts yet unshared made Eleanor eager to speak with him. The more her mind embraced the possibility, the less frightening it became.

She didn’t pause when she passed his room, tempting as it might be. No light glowed from beneath his door, and Auberon’s room was dark upon passing as well. Eleanor continued up one level in the elevator to the floor where Cleo lived.

Light glowed from beneath Cleo’s door, which didn’t surprise Eleanor; they had much in common when it came to work and the inability to sleep entire nights through. She knocked, only wondering after she had, if Auberon might be with her. When Cleo opened the door, however, the room was empty but for her, and she welcomed Eleanor in.

The room held a scent Eleanor came to recognize as developing chemicals for photographs. It didn’t appear a likely environment for such things—it looked more like a traditional lady’s parlor than a laboratory. Pastel floral prints were matched with bright stripes, lotus flowers blooming over fabric as well as erupting from black lacquer bowls around the room. The furniture was all ebony, gleaming in the lamplight. One table held an array of photographs, while another was scattered with paper. Glass inkwells—Cleo collected them—marched line after line across a bookcase.

I didn’t even look at the time, Eleanor admitted in apology as Cleo latched the door behind her.

No apologies, Cleo said and nudged Eleanor toward the tea service occupying a low table between two wide chairs.

When I have a project like this, I rarely sleep. My mind won’t let me. It just keeps running. Cleo sat in the chair to the left of the tea, her violet caftan spreading out around her. Sugar? Milk?

Just sugar.

Eleanor watched Cleo’s remarkable mechanical hands deftly manage the cups, saucers, and small, steaming pot. The pot was inlaid with what looked like cloisonné lotus flowers blooming in profusion.

I couldn’t sleep, either, Eleanor said as Cleo took up a small spoon and lifted the lid from the sugar bowl. I was thinking about the Lady being my grandmother.

Cleo’s generous mouth lifted in a wide grin. I think that idea might cause many sleepless nights. If you’re interested, there is a test we could run.

Mallory mentioned something to me, but I think I have a quicker, less experimental way to get an answer, which is why I came. I was hoping you could help.

If I can, I will. Cleo added milk to her own tea until it was a pale and creamy brown, her spoon against the china cup the only sound in the room.

Eleanor found herself attempting to summon the courage to even broach the idea. In her room, it seemed simple enough. But if her father confirmed the identity of the Lady, what then? The idea of what happened next had always appealed greatly to Eleanor, but now it felt like she had approached the edge of a cliff. She could not see the bottom of the valley below.

I need to contact my father in Paris, Eleanor said. She cradled her cup in her palms, letting the heat seep into her. If my mother was seeking her mother, he would know. I hope he would admit it now.

With that out, other words came more easily. Eleanor rambled about her parents and their bond, the way they had always understood each other. She could remember her father being only supportive when it came to Dalila’s research.

As Eleanor chatted on, Cleo moved to an ebony cabinet and opened its doors. Inside squatted a device of brass and bronze. When Eleanor moved closer, she saw it was inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, over which lay a variety of hinged needles. Wires coursed around the interface, disappearing into a wooden cabinet inscribed with the image of an inkwell. Eleanor had never seen its like.

Will he still be at the Exposition? Cleo asked, settling into the chair before the cabinet.

He will.

Cleo hummed pleasantly as she cranked the machine to life, slid a sheet of paper against the needles, and tapped a message out across the engraved letters. In this regard, it seemed very like the typewriters Eleanor had seen at the Exposition. We’ll see if anyone is awake on that end at this hour. Surely there must be . . . ah!

It didn’t take long for Cleo to receive a response, something that left Eleanor a little breathless. The hinged needles moved across the sheet of paper, transferring the incoming message without the need of a spool of inked fabric ribbon. Each letter on the interface glowed as if it had been lit by a match, then dimmed as it was transferred. The type was small, precise.

The operator says your father is in the gallery and has gone to fetch him. Cleo tilted her head as they waited and sipped at her milky tea. If you know how to use this, I could leave you some privacy.

"I don’t know