The Ebon Jackal

By E. Catherine Tobler

~ Ancient Egypt ~

Daughters.

Mothers.

An end to every beginning.

Disguised as a boy, Sagira Solimon spent her youth trying to salvage a dead Egypt from the drifting sands, before Englishmen could carry it all away. She found the rings in a cracked bowl, slid them on, and vanished into another world entirely. A world where Egyptian gods still ruled.

Broken and haunted, Dalila Folley suffered the loss of her mother and grew up searching for her, knowing Egypt had swallowed her whole. Dalila set herself on a path to unearth Sagira from the Egyptian desert and open the Glass of Anubis once more, no matter that her own daughter was the cost.

Eleanor Folley watched her mother vanish into the desert, and though everyone told her Dalila was dead, she refused to believe. Determined to understand the truth, Eleanor pit herself against the dark god Anubis himself, to set the world right once more, but ancient Egypt holds her heart as firmly as Virgil Mallory does, and she won't let either go easily.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Apokrupha LLC
• Release date: Dec 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463017289

E. Catherine Tobler

E. Catherine Tobler's work has been nominated for the Sturgeon Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and others.

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Apokrupha

All Rights Reserved

The Ebon Jackal

Folley & Mallory

E. Catherine Tobler

Published by Apokrupha

copyright E. Catherine Tobler, 2019

ecatherine.com

Cover by Ravven

apokrupha.com

Adventures of Folley and Mallory

The Rings of Anubis

The Glass Falcon

The Honey Mummy

The Clockwork Tomb

The Quartered Heart

The Ebon Jackal

Dedication

For C. F.

Chapter One

Saqqara, Egypt ~ 1835

In the lengthening shadow of the Step Pyramid, Sagira Solimon held her breath under the scrutiny of the camera lens, clutching a crate of excavated dirt and debris to her chest. She tried not to frown, because she couldn’t decide which was more absurd, that she was being memorialized as an exotic native surrounded by European men, or that those same men had no earthly idea she was a woman. Clad in the dirt of hard work and a shapeless robe tied with a rope at her waist, Sagira was thin enough to pass as one of the countless young male workers the expedition had hired in Cairo. She passed among the workers unseen, unless she failed to haul the dirt quickly enough. Only then did she merit a sharp word or a cuff to the head.

She stared into the camera lens, daring it to blink before she did, but it was unmoving, showing her the reflection of a tranquil, triumphant scene before the pyramid. Men, having come into the desert wastes, victorious in their discovery of a history that did not belong to them, a history they meant to carry away in their trucks, their boats, their arms. Sagira’s thin brown fingers tightened on the crate of dirt she held, because she knew she would fight them for it. She didn’t know how, only knew that she would. She had not taken this work for any other reason. If she could tell her sister where the men meant to journey next, which ruin they meant to violate, she and Akila might stop them.

A laugh threatened to break her concentration, but she swallowed it. What chance did two Egyptian girls have against the horde of European men invading their country?

Merci, gentlemen. The photographer replaced the cover over the lens and everyone who had stood for the photograph breathed once more.

Sagira exhaled and moved immediately away from the group of men, intent on taking her dirt toward the large pile that was evidence of their day’s work. Every stretch of desert beckoned to them, seducing the men with the idea that it was theirs for the taking, that what treasure the dirt concealed was theirs to possess. Every tomb waited only for them, to be pulled into glorious light and revealed as Their Own, for surely no one in this dusty backward land could possibly understand the treasures as they could.

No one looked at her or paid her mind as she carried her dirt from the excavation. Sagira knew she could walk away and no one would blink; she could not return tomorrow and no one would be astonished. Another lazy native, they would say, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues; someone who didn’t understand the value of work, who didn’t believe in doing their part. But walking away would be like putting a knife in her own heart.

This was what she wanted—not the careless and continued violation of her homeland by foreign men, but rather the discovery of what her homeland had once been and could yet be. This history, this story. She wanted to know what lay hidden beneath the dirt as much as these men did, but she did not want to cart it away, did not want it enshrined elsewhere, for it belonged here. But carry it away they would, and she could only watch and report to her sister; could only hope to glimpse what the men drew from the ground before they wrapped it in linen and shipped it elsewhere.

Hurry, boy, hurry! You’ve an entire desert to haul.

Sagira ducked before the swinging hand could make contact with her. She put a skip in her step to keep herself ahead of the man should he choose to follow, but he laughed with his friends and gestured at the ruins around them, murmuring how grand the statue would look in his drawing room, away from all this infernal dirt. Sagira licked the dust from her lips, savoring the taste of her home.

Sagira dumped her crate of dirt into the growing pile and traced the route back for more. Countless young men were employed thusly, clearing the dirt from the catacomb the men wished to plunder. Great kings slumbered beneath the ground, the men said, laden with gold and gems like none had ever seen, and so when, five days later, it was mummified falcons and baboons they discovered, Sagira felt a heavy satisfaction in her belly, as if she had eaten a good meal. She understood these men would not be so easily deterred, and so work continued, but this supposed failure pleased her greatly.

She saw no failure in what they had found; the catacombs were filled with mummified animals, but none were so fascinating to her as the dogs they began to find. Mostly jackals, their mummified bodies wrapped in linens that were decorated with symbols and words praising Anubis, jackal-headed god of the underworld. Sagira felt a little shiver at the idea of all the dogs beneath the ground, of the falcons and cats, of mongoose and fox. But the men, discouraged, ordered the dirt shoved back into the hole, ordered the failure buried and forgotten, so they might continue their grand work of unearthing kings elsewhere.

It was senseless, Sagira decided as she sought privacy to ease her bladder. The men, spending weeks digging, only to fill the hole to hide their miscalculations! How fragile they were, she thought as she squatted over the sun-warmed rocks. She thought of the look on their faces should they find her in such a position, if their eyes should meet her own with her robes hitched around her waist the very way a pair of dark eyes were meeting hers now. Sagira stared, telling herself to move, but she could not move, could not drop her robes and run from the young man who was staring at her.

The young man turned his back sharply away and Sagira, already in position, finished her business. When she was finally able to stand on shaking legs, she cleared her throat and the young man glanced back at her. They were alone in public and she should not speak to him, but she laughed at this idea, because she should not be here at all. She brushed her robes down and looked him in the eye. He was as beautiful as the sun at first light, broad nose and forehead drawn in soft lines, full lips parted in surprise at the sight of her.

You will not tell anyone, she said.

One of his eyebrows crept up in a silent question, but he nodded. His skin was the color of water-soaked sand, the sunlight tracing a bright line down his shaved head, spilling like gold against his jaw.

Your business is your own, he said, and who would believe me. He pulled himself taller, as if he could intimidate her, and tried to sneer, but his face looked only kind, soft and still hairless. His eyes were wide and softly brown, like the shadows near her home in the early morning, the sun a tease against the horizon. You look like a boy.

Sagira’s mouth split in a grin at his attempted insult. So do you, she said, and turned on her heel, returning to the dig.

* * *

Waset, Egypt ~ May, 18th Dynasty

Eleanor Folley walked slowly, yet with purpose, through the city market, still not having adjusted to the idea that its glory existed, that she could, and did, walk through its treasures. Everywhere she looked, Waset overflowed with life and activity, though in her mind she could still envision what the city had been in her own time, Luxor and a shadow of its former self. Crumbling into dust, rather than standing firm and sure.

Every morning when she woke, she expected to find herself back in her proper place, nineteenth century Paris, under crisp covers with coffee soon to percolate, but through the windows came the sounds of a different city entirely. Of a different time. Every morning it was not Paris that woke her, but New Kingdom Thebes as it would be called, flourishing under the rule of Queen Hatshepsut. It was Homer’s Thebes of the Hundred Gates, only Homer had yet to be born.

Neither did her own Paris exist, and she tried to convince herself it was all a dream. A world had been erased to give rise to this one, the flow of time’s river diverted to another channel. Eleanor thought the world should have felt like silk between her fingers, ephemeral and temporary, but everything was solid and true, as if it had never been otherwise. What had become of her father and everyone else in the world they had known? Eleanor did not and could not know.

Anubis had always maintained some measure of control over time, given he was charged with balancing every person’s heart against a feather as they came to the underworld. His rings and Glass allowed him to turn through years as though they were pages in a book, to witness what a person had done in their life and make proper judgment against them. Feeding their heart to Ammit or sending them on to the next life—these were his gifts. But with the addition of Eleanor—the addition of her blood—the rings acquired the ability to change and divert time itself. And so Anubis acquired the ability to set right what he believed had gone wrong.

And what had gone wrong? Every morning, a queasiness filled Eleanor’s belly, no matter the thriving world around her, because the history she remembered was the history Anubis was intent on erasing. Resurrecting Imiut, placing him within Hatshepsut’s sphere of influence and tutelage so he could be raised to pharaoh when the stars said it was right. So none would know, this time, Imiut’s true nature and kill him before he could take the throne.

Madness, Eleanor whispered to herself, shivering despite the heat of the day.

The worst part was, she had no idea how to undo what had been done—or even if she wanted to undo it. Seeing Egypt whole and prospering was something she never expected to experience. Being among the people of Waset was no less than thrilling. Nothing could replace learning their ways and walking among the lives she had only seen pulled in fragments from the dusty ground. They were a living, breathing people, Anubis certain that a nation led by Imiut would prevent the Roman and Grecian conquests that destroyed what Egypt had been to these people.

Was it so wrong? she asked herself. She did not know, even though Cleo Barclay made sure Eleanor knew she believed it was. After leaving the temple, Eleanor spent evenings with her friends, debating one way of life against another. How had such a thing come to be in their hands, Cleo often asked her; how was it their right to decide the fate of everyone in either time? How was it Anubis’s right? Cleo was certain they should set things back as they had been, as quickly as they could, to not grow attached to the place Anubis had raised from the dust.

Wandering the market did not help, because it was captivating and whole, everything Eleanor had wished for. The stalls with their colorful awnings for shade from the brutal mid-day sun; the calls from merchants to their customers and friends; the stench of camels mixing with the scent of the nearby river; the prowlings of feral cats; the barrels of spice scenting the air everywhere she turned; baskets of lentils and beans into which she could plunge her hand to feel their cool disks against her skin. Eleanor had spent so much of her life digging the remains of this life from the ground that to see it in the flesh—to see everything and everyone alive and living—still stole her breath. She could not separate her mind from her heart, though when she caught glimpses of Anubis following her in the shadows, it became somewhat more easy.

He was foul and marvelous in the same instant, much as the market was. He should have been a memory, a relic of the past hauled from a forgotten tomb, but he lived and breathed and desired, just as any other creature in this city did. Was it right, to deny any of them a future? They had all been dust, ground under Roman boots. And now, these people had been given another chance. The idea was like a vise around Eleanor’s heart, though when she blinked, the shadows were free of the dark god and she breathed easier.

With the flower merchant Ipy, Eleanor stumbled her way through a conversation in the ancient Egyptian tongue she was still learning from Imiut. But the merchant, and so many others like him, knew who she was, and went to lengths to humor her. She was cherished by the pharaoh herself, a member of the court, and when Eleanor tried to pay for the flowers, Ipy lifted his hands and shook his head, telling her no, he could not, he would not. He placed bundles of fragrant flowers into her arms, until she was overflowing with the best his shop had to offer: cornflower and daisy, anemone and jasmine, roses of red and pink, and wild celery. He gave her blue and white lotus last, their stems dripping with the water he drew them from.

Take them to the temple, Ipy said in his baritone, stepping back when Eleanor meant to protest his generosity, and should you place them in the pools beneath the pharaoh’s myrrh trees, it will be as if I myself am there, kneeling before Amun on this most glorious of days.

Eleanor could not argue such a thing and so did not. Part of her could still not grasp the idea that she was standing with a merchant in Waset—talking about offerings to gods. Neither could she grasp that she would witness the Festival of the Valley, that she would make the walk to Dier el-Bahri to place the flowers before Amun’s golden feet.

Instead, she invited Ipy to make the temple walk, for the Festival of the Valley was meant for royalty and commoner alike. She reminded him of this, and then it was he who brushed her comments off as ridiculous; he was a merchant and not one for temple grounds. His robes were filthy—he smelled like flowers but also camel dung, and would not be swayed. Eleanor stopped trying to convince him and wandered through his flowers a little more, certain she didn’t see the last thing she needed.

You have no papyrus? she asked, hoping she sounded offended. Ipy stood suddenly straighter, concern creasing his face.

In this I am lacking.

It is a holy festival, Eleanor said carefully. She didn’t want to upset him—he knew her connections, her standing, and might panic at the idea he had offended someone so close to the pharaoh. She reminded herself that however Anubis had changed the world, this merchant knew only this time; there was no other life for him, no other pathway.

Lady of the temple, Ipy stuttered, there shall be more, if you will grant me—

When the papyrus arrives, Eleanor interrupted, keenly aware of the cold water from the lotus dampening the linen kalasiris she wore, bring it to the temple. You will find me there. That was one way to get him to participate, she hoped.

With those words, Eleanor turned away, giving Ipy no chance to argue. She knew he would come to the temple. He would walk among the thousand others who would leave the city with the likeness of Amun and journey with the god across the river and into the temple. There, Hatshepsut could greet them and join her people in celebrations to praise Amun, and to celebrate the memory of all those dear who had died. They would feast with their dead loved ones under the stars of the night sky until Ra carried the sun back into sight once more.

It was Virgil Mallory who came into sight as Eleanor stepped out of one street and into another. He was speaking with Okpara, who carefully handed him linen-wrapped packages, appearing to explain each as he did. Mallory frowned and stumbled over the words, still learning his way around the new language much as Eleanor was.

Still, he looked a part of the city now, the sun having deepened the color of his skin; he had abandoned his usual suit for the belted tunic and shendyt most men in the city wore. His hair had grown longer and though despite being worn in a queue, was as mussed and wild as ever, the sun picking out the strands of gold with ease. Mallory gleamed and Eleanor stood content to watch him as he finished his business and turned to scan the street.

Mallory spotted her easily enough, their natures drawn to one another. As métamorphes, they possessed an innate recognition of others of their kind, an awareness when they were close and an ability to acknowledge what remained hidden to most of humanity. But as they had come to know one other intimately as well, they were aware of each other on another level. For Eleanor, Mallory’s presence was like a stray piece of hair on her skin, whispering.

Folley, he said when he had closed the distance between them. He hefted the packages from Okpara. Dates, I believe, and possibly honey. He touched his finger to the top most package, where a bee had been drawn in ink. I suppose it would be quite a shock should we open it to discover bees, hmm. They might rather like you and all your blooms. Mallory reached out to touch the lotus woven into Eleanor’s hair, his warm fingers lingering against her neck. I rather like you and all your blooms.

That morning, Eleanor’s servant at the temple, Halima, had come to their apartment in the city, to deliver the smallest blue lotus blossoms Eleanor had ever seen. They were to be wound into her hair as tribute to Amun, Halima explained, and she would have stayed to see it properly done, but Eleanor dismissed her. Eleanor would never get used to the idea she had a servant. She tried to keep Halima from the city entirely, keeping her to the temple alone, but Halima would not hear of it, often arriving with fresh fruits and coffees and sweets for everyone. Eleanor was certain Gin was smitten with the young woman.

"If it is bees, Eleanor said, resisting the urge to lean in and kiss him, for she had learned such things were not done in public, you will perhaps remember the difference between bee and honey after they’ve crawled all over you."

"Don’t place that much belief in me—I’m the fellow who could not differentiate here and where, remember."

Eleanor looked again at the market and beyond it, the city, rising against the blue sky. It still took her breath, the buildings whole and in use and not piles of rubble. "To be fair, here and where are highly fluid for us at the moment, aren’t they?"

Despite their being in public, Mallory slid an arm around Eleanor and hugged her to his side. There, he smelled like warm linen, dates, and honey, perhaps proving he didn’t carry a box of bees after all.

Aye, and I suppose after all this festival fuss, we need to sort that, don’t we?

The festival had been, Eleanor thought, a break from the realities they needed to face—but what of their own world? How might they discover what, if anything, remained of it? Cleo’s words worried at Eleanor. Did the worlds exist independently, or had everything been turned backwards? Erased? They needed to decide what they meant to do, and place themselves on the path to doing it. Still, Eleanor wanted to linger, for this was a world she had long dreamed of. This was a whole world, a world that had not crumbled beneath the boots of invaders.

First step, Eleanor said, and nodded toward the west bank of the Nile where the temple Djeser-Djeseru loomed against the crescent-shaped cliffs behind. The temple had never looked quite so beautiful, bedecked in fresh paints, flowers, and oil lanterns. My mother awaits.

Chapter Two

Egypt ~ 1871

All through the long night, the world flowed like a upward-rushing waterfall, everything Dalila Folley knew sucked up and away, running against the course it had long ago been set to.

Dalila tried to sink her hands into the shifting blackness, but she held so firmly to something, something she knew she could not release, that she could not command her fingers to open. She wanted to slow her fall, if that’s what it was, for she too was flowing backward, into the sky that was also the ground, though neither thing had color or actual form. She only called these words to mind because they were what she knew of up and down. In this place, neither seemed to matter. Nothing was solid or sure.

Thinking of anything else—anyone else—made the darkness around her stutter. Recalling her daughter made the blackness run red. All around her came the thunder of clockwork legs, metal hooves striking divots into the ancient desert. Her daughter—captured by those riders, shrieking, shrieking, and the metallic burst of blood in the desert air. What was once dry and barren exploded with life—salty, bright life. Under that bursting color, the portal cracked open, Anubis’s Glass carrying Dalila away.

Away to where everything ran backwards, where time split its seams and a great ebon eye looked down upon her before all was truly black and empty. She reached again for things she had known, tried to fashion their proper names with her tongue, but could not before each word was stolen by the wind. From the depths of the darkness came a loathsome beast, a thousand mouths with a thousand thousand teeth in each, and though she called its name, this too was snatched away, set upon the beast’s tongue and swallowed. Apophis, she thought—chaos—and then it, too, was gone.

Through it all, Dalila could not open her hands, could not release the mummified arm she had pulled from the sand at the approach of