Dead to Rites

by Ari Marmell

  Tsura choked.

  “I do not know what this means.” When the mummy spoke, a faint gust swept across the room, carryin’ the aroma of ancient dust. Strangely, that tremulous voice was exactly as clear—no louder, no softer—as it’d been through the closed door.

  “Yeah, you’re probably better off that way. Are we gonna hafta fight?”

  “Did you come seeking to engage me in battle?”

  “Not unless I gotta.”

  “Then let us not.”

  “Uh… ’kay.”

  He rose, then, and bowed. Every move he made was stiff, and I coulda sworn I heard a faint crack or snap with each motion.

  “I am called Nessumontu.”

  “Mick Oberon. This is Tsura Sava.”

  “I am honored. Although I am already passingly familiar with Tsura Sava.”

  “You are?” she’n I both asked.

  “Indeed. You rarely entered the structure in which I have recently traveled, but you did so a time or two, and you often passed nearby.”

  Tsura frowned. “I… don’t understand. Are—were you aware the whole time?”

  “Not all of me, and not at all times. My ka remained awake to experience the world and watch over me.”

  “Ka?”

  Oh. Of course. “The Egyptians believed the soul had multiple parts,” I explained. “The ka was sorta a duplicate of the person as a whole, and it hung around the world of the living to continue some aspects of life—and also to protect the body for the sake of the rest of the soul in the Underworld.” I stopped, glancin’ over at Nessumontu. “That more or less right?”

  “It is rather an extreme oversimplification, but so long as we lack opportunity for detailed discussion of faith and philosophy, it will suffice.”

  “Uh, thanks. So I’m guessin’ that’s how you picked up English, too? And why you’re not having a total ing-bing over how different this world is from the one you knew?”

  “Ah… If I understand you properly, then yes, you are correct.”

  “You did that on purpose!” Tsura whispered.

  Well, yeah. Wanted to see how well he’d picked up the language.

  “I… Look, we’re all standin’ around like a buncha mannequins. Can we sit?”

  “Be welcome.” He lowered himself back to exactly where he’d been, again with the strange creaking.

  Oh, right. Probably the wrapping, hidden beneath the stolen rags. Sure, it all started as fabric, but after the resins to protect it had set for a few thousand years, a whole lotta it musta been stiff as plaster.

  Tsura took a chair upholstered in a shade of orange I can only describe as “rodent vomit after binging on carrots.” I planted my keister on the desk, pushin’ the lamp aside to make room.

  “I think maybe you oughta tell us what’s goin’ down,” I said. “Why you’re even awake, alla that.”

  “Why should I tell you this? I appreciate that you appear not to be my enemy, but neither are you my friend.”

  After all the damn work I’d put into finding him, I sure as hell felt entitled to hear the whole rumble! But he had no way to know that, of course, and it might notta meant much to him even if he had.

  “Look, pal, there’s more people’n just me gunnin’ for you, and I’m one of the friendlier of the bunch. You got no reason to believe me, but I’m interested in keepin’ their mitts offa you. So what’s it gonna hurt to sing for me? If I’m tellin’ you the truth, you’re helpin’ both of us. If I ain’t, well, I already found you. Knowin’ how you ended up here isn’t gonna make you any more found.”

  “This is true enough,” he agreed. “I awakened fully several days ago, when my ka sensed the presence of something unnatural in the vicinity of my new resting place. Had it passed by only the once, it might perhaps have gone unnoticed, but it returned time and again. It felt not entirely unlike you do, Mick Oberon, but with several fundamental differences.”

  “Ramona.” It wasn’t even a guess.

  “You know this individual?”

  “She’s one of the others comin’ after you, on behalf of someone I really don’t want gettin’ hold of you.”

  “I do not, either. Your culture has no respect for the deceased. I will not hold either of the two of you accountable for actions you yourselves did not take, but think not that I am either ignorant of, or content with, my current existence as… entertainment.”

  Tsura swallowed hard and blushed, obviously ashamed on her boss’s behalf. Her own, too, even though it ain’t as if she’d played any deliberate part in it. I patted her knee in sympathy, but now wasn’t the time to get sidetracked.

  “Yeah. For what it’s worth, I ain’t thrilled with a lot of modern society either. But to be square, I’m a lot more concerned with these people havin’ access to your magics than with how much respect they would or wouldn’t show you.”

  “As am I. This is the primary reason I returned to my ha and awakened myself entirely back to the land of the living.”

  “The body,” I whispered to Tsura before she could ask. Then, to Nessumontu, “You mind if I ask what you can do? What spells and magics you carry? What kinda threat do you actually pose if someone snatches you up?”

  “The extent and power of my heka I will not tell you, Mick Oberon. I have no cause to trust you anywhere near to that extent. Besides, they cannot force me to practice my rites and spells on their behalf if I choose not to.”

  Okay, I hadda admit that was fair, at least the first part. Didn’t know how true the second half was, but I let it go.

  “As to what they might do or learn, however, that is another tale.” He opened his coat, tapping a finger on the stiff and age-hardened wrappings I’d figured were there. “I was a sorcerer of some power in life, and my burial rites were appropriate to one of my standing. The spells and benedictions are many, and I cannot know how easily or how well modern sorcerers might master them.

  “The preponderance of them, of course, deal with life and death. Preservation. Protection. The Underworld. Much of the heka has faded from them over the many years, but one sufficiently knowledgeable and skilled might use them to ward off a death that should come, or to curse the healthy with a death that should not. They might hear again the voices of those who have gone forth by day, calling them from the realm of the dead and learning secrets the living must never know. It may even be that such a one could use these spells as the basis of an even greater one, to raise the recently deceased back to life.”

  “Um…” Tsura said, hugging herself.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I don’t want anybody in this rotten town anywhere near that kinda mojo.”

  “Understand that the worst of this is possibility, not certainty,” Nessumontu continued. “It would require one with sufficient mastery of heka to extrapolate from the simpler, base spells inscribed upon my burial raiments. I know not if any such even exist in this day. I have sensed enough of the unnatural beings in your city, however, to beware the possibility, however remote. It sounds as though you and I are in accord on this.”

  “Better believe we are.”

  He nodded—loudly, thanks to the resin. I wondered if that was somethin’ he’d picked up lately, or if the gesture meant the same three thousand years ago on the other side of the world as it did here.

  Either way, he continued spinnin’ his yarn.

  “I decided immediately that I could not remain in the vicinity of the bazaar.” By which I figured he meant the carnival. “If the presence I had sensed indeed represented a threat, then that would have been the first place it would resume its hunt for me. Of course, I knew nothing of this city, precious little even of this world. I had to flee, but where to?

  “I opened my senses to the ebb and flow of heka and the energies of my past life, of ages gone by. It was those that drew me to your museum.”

  Yep. I’d guessed pretty near the mark on that one, it seemed.

  “The curators there are far more skilled and respectful in their treatment
of the dead than those of the bazaar, though still greatly lacking. I thought to find relics of power that might aid me, perhaps even another such as I—another whose ka remained with sufficient might to call the remainder of its being from the Underworld—but it was not to be. No power remained to any of them, either in body or ib, nor were any of the grave goods possessed of useful heka.”

  “Um, if you don’t mind that I keep asking…” Tsura began.

  “The ib is the heart,” I said. “Part of the soul and body both. It’s removed during mummification and placed in somethin’ called a canopic jar.”

  “Those I’ve heard of, at least.” She forced a weak smile. “Guess you can’t get into one without a canopener?”

  Me’n the stiff both stared at her.

  “I do not understand,” Nessumontu said.

  “You don’t wanna. And you, kid…”

  “I’m sorry. I’m nervous.”

  “You sure you’n Pete ain’t related?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Back to the mummy. “Please go on.”

  “I do not know that I’ve much more to tell. I took the opportunity to study bits of history between my time and this one, and then departed the museum. I have done little but remain here and attempt to stay inconspicuous.”

  Which brought up a question I hadda ask, but Tsura beat me to the punch with a different one.

  “So how come Ramona and Baskin haven’t found him? If they have that scrap of wrapping…”

  Nessumontu frowned—or maybe scowled; it was hard to tell one expression from another on that mug—but said nothin’. Maybe he wasn’t too keen on the notion that somebody else had a piece of him, though he hadda know it was a possibility.

  “Maybe the magics haven’t worked. I’m sure you’ve got wards or protections, of some sort, right?” I asked.

  “Indeed.”

  “Or maybe they got some idea where he is but aren’t sure what to do about it. Remember, Baskin thought he was gettin’ a nice, cooperative corpse with nifty occult secrets scribbled on it. If he’n Ramona have figured out that they’re dealin’ with someone who has the option of deciding not to cooperate—a potential prisoner, not a prize—it coulda gummed up their entire operation.”

  Tsura was tappin’ that foot again. I’d hoped she might leave that particular fidget behind at my office.

  “Still, do you suppose maybe we ought to take this somewhere else? All three of us, I mean? We found him here, so it’s possible someone else—”

  “I will not leave this place, Tsura Sava,” Nessumontu insisted. “I have protections here beyond my own, means of hiding myself to which I would have no access elsewhere.”

  That was a tidy segue into the question I’d been wantin’ to ask if ever there was one.

  “Let’s talk about that, pal. How’d you even wind up here? Ain’t exactly the sorta place I’d expect to attract a wanderin’ mummy. How’d you know about it? Pay for it? Why’d you pick it? Why’d somebody in the back office order the desk clerk to admit you?”

  Just once, while he was ponderin’ on how much to tell me, Nessumontu drummed his fingers on his knee. It was the most human thing I’d seen him do, and it reminded me how little any of us—mortal or Fae—ever really changed.

  “As I was departing the museum,” he said, “I encountered one of your city’s sorcerers.”

  What?

  “What?” Tsura asked, startled.

  “Yes. I cannot say how he located me, but perhaps it is to do with his particular practices. He demonstrated for me some of his magics, and they are quite dissimilar from the heka I know. He recognized me for what I am, and after convincing me that he intended me no malice, he arranged this place for me. Here, he suggested, I might stay safely until we could determine a way to prevent any in this city from obtaining the spells I carry. Just as you do, he fears such a possibility.” The mummy scowled, then—and yeah, this time it definitely was a scowl. You ever see a dead guy scowl? It ain’t attractive. “The rivalries between sorcerers and beings of the Otherworld here must be severe indeed.”

  “They can be,” I muttered. I had a sinkin’ feeling in my gut over all this. I mean “The Lusitania shakin’ hands with the Titanic”-levels of sinkin’. “How’d he persuade you to trust him?”

  “Primarily by making it very clear that, had he wished me harm—or to claim me for himself—he might have done so immediately. He was well warded against mystical attack, and he had with him a great many heavily armed men. I am not intimately familiar with the weapons of your world, nor—as I have told you—with his form of magic. Neither do I know precisely how readily I might be harmed as one newly returned to the world of the living. For all that, I must say, had he intended me any ill, I was as vulnerable to it then as ever I would be.”

  Funny, that didn’t sound real convincing to me.

  “Don’t suppose you’d care to share this Good Samaritan sorcerer’s name with me?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  Figured. “Anythin’ you can tell me about his mojo, at least?”

  “Mojo?”

  “His magic. Tradition. Practices.”

  “Only that I recognized many of its precepts as rooted in numerology.”

  Yep. That sinkin’ feeling? Now good’n truly sunk.

  See, for him to recognize even that much, he hadda be familiar with the base language behind the symbology and incantations of the practice. I already knew it wasn’t Egyptian, since he’d said it wasn’t a heka-based practice. So what other languages would a dead guy from his era know in passing?

  Sanskrit? Ancient Greek? Sure, yeah, possible, but I didn’t know too many guys in Chicago who made use of those, for the occult or otherwise.

  Hebrew, though…

  “Kabbalah,” I said.

  Tsura sucked in a breath. “That’s bad.”

  “Yeah. I mean, sure, there’s any number of Kabbalists who’re perfectly good eggs, but we only know one who’s already stuck his schnozz into Nessumontu’s business. And he ain’t a perfectly good egg.”

  I still couldn’t work out why, though. Nessumontu’s spells were about useless to a pure Kabbalist. The traditions weren’t at all compatible. That was the same reason I hadn’t wanted to put Fleischer at the top of my suspect list earlier. Still, I’d have to puzzle out “why” later on, since it was pretty clear now that he was, indeed, my “who.”

  “That’s why they sent him to stay at this hotel, instead of someplace he’d stand out less!” Maybe Tsura was no Second City native, but she was no bunny, either. She knew how the Mob boys liked to handle things. “He’s probably part owner, or has something on the owners.”

  Yep. Wasn’t as if a guy like Fleischer woulda had much interest in any place much crummier than this one. Hell, just ’cause the place wasn’t real swanky meant we were already on the low end of the sorta hotel he’d…

  Oh. Fuck me.

  Dunno what she saw on my face, but she saw somethin’.

  “Mick, what’s wrong?”

  “If this is Fleischer’s place, he’s got eyes and ears on staff. We—”

  “They’re here!”

  To me, the teensy clank of a key in the lock sounded louder’n any gong—but these guys were good, and I’d been tightly wrapped up in tryin’ to piece everything together. Without Tsura’s warning giving me an extra half-heartbeat to move…

  I yanked the L&G from my coat as the door flew open with a bang, rebounding off the wall. I got a quick glimpse of three or more thug-shaped heaps of flesh and suit, all of ’em carrying even uglier masses of wood and steel, barrels rising.

  I fired first, siphoning huge swathes of luck from the lot of ’em, though I didn’t have time to aim as precisely as I woulda preferred. Only one of the choppers failed completely, trigger clicking and hammer thumping without effect. The other two opened up, squirting a hailstorm of lead that chewed through walls and furniture until the whole room was obscured in a cloud of smoke, wood dust,
and splinters. The goons shootin’ at us managed to get in each other’s way, though, thanks to their sudden lack of fortune, jostlin’ elbows and missing anything that woulda felt the impact.

  Whole buncha those slugs woulda been in my back and ribs without Tsura’s premonition. Right. No more trying to ditch the oracle.

  If we both lived through this, anyway.

  I was already movin’—well, still movin’ really—before the gunmen could fire a second volley. Nessumontu was gonna have to look out for himself. I came outta the spin snaggin’ Tsura’s hand, yanked her to me for a better grip around her waist, and lunged. A stream of slugs followed us as we bounced over the bed, sending up geysers of fabric, feathers, the occasional spring. Even as we tumbled off the edge and onto the floor on the opposite side, I was weavin’ the luck I’d just stolen into a quilt all around us. Then, lyin’ on top of Tsura—I may not care much for bein’ shot, but it ain’t as bad for me as it’d be for her—I reached out and dragged the already perforated mattress over so it provided a little extra cover while still leavin’ me room to pop up and squeeze off a few blasts of my own, if I had the chance.

  “You havin’ fun yet?” I asked her, quietly as I could while still bein’ heard over the thunder of the Chicago typewriters. “Ain’t this so much better’n the carnival?”

  She didn’t answer with anything more’n frightened panting. Shocking, I know.

  Wouldn’t be true to say there was no pause in the barrage of the Tommy guns; not even those monsters, with their hundred-round drums, can keep their rate of fire up indefinitely. These guys were good, though. They traded off bursts, never lettin’ either their sprays or their breaks between ’em fall into predictable patterns. Woulda been a roll of the dice for me to poke my head out’n shoot back, and with the way those dice’d been loaded against me lately, I didn’t wanna chance it. Sure, I coulda burned up some of the good luck I’d gathered to do it, but right now I was more concerned with usin’ it to keep Tsura from gettin’ fulla holes.

  Thing is, I ain’t addle-pated. The shootin’ they were doin’ now? They weren’t tryin’ to hit anything in particular. I mighta quit the business of war before you lot invented automatic weapons, but I understand the basics of battle and I keep my ears open. So yeah, I recognize suppressive fire when I’m under it.