"No," Thyatis said, listening with half an ear to the poet droning on about high kingdom bas-reliefs. "My friend has a document he wants translated. A very old document, from Pharaoh Nemathapi's time..." Sheshet's expression froze and Thyatis caught a flicker of calculation in the woman's eyes. Well, well, she thought, they are surely a close family, here, all loving and trusting. "Ah, you've heard the name before."
"I have." Sheshet pursed her lips, drawing out the words. "Maybe." She rubbed two fingers together. Thyatis considered the woman's sandals—worn, patched—and her garments, no more than a threadbare tunic and stola with a frayed belt. Her only jewelry was a tarnished silver ring showing a star cradled in the arms of a crescent moon, her nails chipped and dark with ink stains.
"Let's talk quietly," Thyatis said, lifting Sheshet up and striding away down the passage. They passed more openings into crowded rooms, then at the end of the hall she found a quiet corridor leading off to the right. Miraculously, the passage was not completely filled with baskets and boxes, so she set the little woman down on a crate, where they could see eye to eye.
"You are very strong," Sheshet said, straightening her tunic. For the first time, the Egyptian woman seemed to see Thyatis and the Roman felt a chill under the penetrating gaze. "You're a soldier." She reached out and turned Thyatis' right wrist over. Her cracked fingernails slid over glassy scars. "Are you an archer?"
"Sometimes, when need drives," Thyatis said, evading the question. "Your dear Hecataeus knew Nemathapi's name already—you've heard it too—has someone else been to see him, asking about a device?"
The curator's eyes glinted in amusement. "How much will you pay?"
"Tell me," Thyatis replied, "and you'll have enough for more than parchment, papyrus, ink, quills..."
The little woman laughed softly, looking down at her grubby clothing. "You mean, buy fewer books? Spend something on myself?" Sheshet shook her head. "There's not enough money for such luxuries, not in this world."
"Gold, then," Thyatis said, producing a double-weight aureus from her belt. "Who came to see Hecataeus about the old pharaoh?"
Ink-stained fingers snatched the coin from Thyatis' hand and the Egyptian woman weighed the gold in her hand. "Unclipped. Very thoughtful of you. A Western coin." Sheshet flipped it over, running a thumb across the stamped image. "A commemorative of Emperor Galen's triumph over Persia—very fresh, unworn." The woman licked her lips, thinking. "You've come recently from Rome then, drawn pay from the Imperial Treasury. You are official, aren't you?"
"Yes," Thyatis said, leaning close. Sheshet did not flinch away, meeting her eyes with an amused expression. "Who came to see Hecataeus?"
"Persians," Sheshet said carelessly, pocketing the coin. "Two of them—a big man, bigger than you, with a horseman's waist and dangerous eyes. The other, though, he's been in the city so long he speaks like a Rhakotis native... they had a rubbing; charcoal on thin parchment. They were looking for a tomb." The curator paused, wiggling her fingers.
"How many books do you want to buy?" Thyatis said, both eyebrows raised in amusement. She produced another gold coin.
"How many books are in the world?" Sheshet laughed quietly. "The poet said he needed to consult a geographica, but they wouldn't leave. So he came into my office and asked me to find some references while they waited."
Thyatis nodded, remembering the stains on the old table. "They had wine, from unfired cups."
Sheshet nodded, shrugging her shoulders. "Hecataeus is cheap, he won't buy good cups for his guests."
"What did the rubbing show? Was there a picture, wheels set within wheels?"
"No." Sheshet's interested perked. "Just some old graffiti. Scratchings from a wall—the stones were large and well cut—you could see the pattern of the chisel strokes reflected in the rubbing." The woman brushed curls out of her eyes, squinting into an unseen, internal distance. "A bronze chisel... even in the course of one block, you could see the strokes shallowing as the blade dulled... Nemathapi lived long ago, when iron was scarce. His tomb perhaps, or a funerary temple." She paused. "But there were no chips of paint shown in the rubbing—I doubt some Persians would clean the surface first. A tomb entry chamber then, unpainted."
"What," Thyatis said grimly, "did it say?"
"Oh, that." Sheshet grinned, dark brown eyes lighting up. When she smiled, her sharp cheekbones and narrow chin transformed into something almost inhuman. "The tomb had been plundered and the thieves left a message for those who might come after, both to mock any rival finding an empty hole and to deflect the anger of the gods. They were clever, the men working in candlelit darkness, chipping away at stone laid down a thousand years before..."
—|—
The echo of voices, not far away, brought Shirin up short. Stepping quietly, she turned the corner of a hallway filled with rough-hewn wooden crates. Not more than a dozen yards away, she could see the tall figure of Thyatis speaking to a short, dark-haired woman. Gold glinted for an instant, then vanished into the Egyptian woman's hand.
So, Shirin sniffed, we're back to work, are we? Irritated, the Khazar woman scratched her nose, ink-dark eyebrows narrowed in calculation. But who are you working for? The Order? The Duchess? The Emperor... your handyman is a Roman soldier—that much is clear from his boots, his hair, the long-shanked stride. So, the Imperial government again. But how?
A momentary vision of Thyatis, her wild, ecstatic face streaked with blood and sweat, standing on glittering, hot sand filled Shirin's memory. Her stomach turned queasily, thinking of the slaughter and the delight so plain in her lover's eyes.
You won out, Shirin thought, half-remembering things she had heard about the Romans and their customs. You killed all those men and the Emperor set you free. He must have taken you back into his service. The unsettled, greasy feeling in her stomach began to gel like meat fat cooling on a skillet. Now you're hunting again and this time you're here, searching for the same thing the Persians want. Kleopatra's weapon. A calm sense of certainty entered her. Fragments slid together; the grim look on the Persian faces, the dust on their cloaks, their long journey down the Nile fitting into a recognizable pattern. Shirin squinted at the woman in the ragged dress. A clerk or scribe, working here, cataloging the books. Hmm. A race to find Kleopatra's... treasure? Tomb? Hiding place? Those Persians thought it was downriver, but it wasn't, so they came to the Library, following an ancient trail. I should tell Thyatis what I heard in the inn...
Relieved and satisfied with her reasoning, Shirin started to step out into the corridor. Then she stopped, eyes lingering on the set of her friend's shoulders, her head, an escaped curl of brassy hair peeking from under the woolen hood of the cloak. Her chest felt tight and a rush of emotion made it impossible to breathe. Strong arms to hold me, a dear head in my lap, a laughing freckled face, sparkling sea-gray eyes... not a mad, contorted face, so like my husband's. My friend, my beloved...
Suddenly weak, Shirin put her hand out against the gritty, sandstone wall. Memories of her children running on a sandy beach welled up, Thyatis sprinting after them, roaring like a lion. Everyone sitting under a piece of sail, sunburned, eating red-backed crabs caught in the shallows. Thyatis dancing beside a bonfire, a sea of ebony faces laughing and clapping in time to thundering drums. The sky dark with flamingos as countless flocks burst up from a marsh. Thyatis holding Avrahan and Sahul each under a scarred, sun-browned arm, face tense, waiting, listening for the lionesses creeping in the high yellow grass. Oh, lord of my fathers, she won't know my babies are dead!
Shirin put a hand over her mouth for a moment, tears squeezing out between tight eyelids. Sometimes this life was too much for her to bear. When she opened her eyes again, Thyatis had moved aside, one hand raised to the Egyptian woman's face.
—|—
Thyatis produced a knife, and laid the shining, oiled tip just below the curator's eyelid. "I'm getting impatient."
Sheshet bared her teeth, showing glittering white incisors. "You are hasty. They
proclaimed their pharaoh, said they worked in her name, by her command. So she would take the ill-luck from their desecration and they would be spared."
"Her?" Thyatis' nostrils flared and the tip of the knife slid sideways, away from the curator's unblinking eye.
—|—
Shirin jerked back, feeling the sharp, angry motion of Thyatis' shoulders as a physical blow. The blade of a knife glittered in the dim light for a moment, then disappeared. Distressed, Shirin stepped back, into deeper shadows. Thyatis' stance radiated repressed anger and impatience. The Khazar woman drew the corner of her cloak across the bridge of her nose, leaving only the pale gleam of her eyes visible. Careless violence? A blade set to an innocent eye? You've made no friend in this one. Foolish Roman! The Egyptian woman's face, half seen over Thyatis' shoulder, was a blank, tight mask.
Is this truly you? Shirin felt sick. Not the friend, the gentle lover I thought you were?
The Khazar woman was no stranger to violence—she had killed, to protect herself—but this casual willingness to maim, or kill, turned her blood cold. I should turn away, and leave all of this behind—Persians and Romans alike... But she did not and continued to watch from the darkness.
—|—
"Kleopatra, seventh of that name." Sheshet's lips compressed and she began to radiate an encompassing sense of delighted satisfaction. "I knew immediately, as soon as I read the beginning of the invocation. Half-Greek, half-Egyptian, with the truncated spelling favored by the Ptolemies. Yes, the notorious, beloved Queen of the Two Lands broke into old Nemathapi's tomb and took away this device you're searching for. I've heard she liked trinkets. The older, the better."
Thyatis blinked. "But the Persians had already found his tomb... they were looking for hers?"
Sheshet nodded. Thyatis returned the knife to a sheath strapped to the inside of her arm. A tense knot swelled in her stomach. "Do you know..."
"...where Kleopatra's tomb is?" The curator shook her head slowly. "One of the great mysteries of Egypt, archer. Many men have looked, but no one has ever found her resting place."
"What about him?" Thyatis nodded towards Hecataeus' office. "What did he tell the Persians?"
"Him?" Sheshet whistled derisively. "He couldn't tell them anything. He can read the old languages, but he spends his time looking for naughty stories or poetry to pass off as his own, not for anything useful!"
"Good..." Thyatis produced another coin. "If the Persians come back, we were never here. Agreed?"
"Of course." Sheshet accepted the coin. "Three volumes in one day—the end of a long drought for me."
"Thank you," Thyatis said in a heartfelt tone. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Nicholas standing in the hallway, looking for her. "Good day, Mistress Sheshet."
"Good day." The Egyptian woman watched, curls clouding her face again, as Thyatis strode away down the corridor. "Good riddance," she whispered, rubbing her eyelid where the point of the knife had left a small indentation in her skin. "Stupid barbarian!"
Then she considered the heavy gold in her hand and a perplexed expression flitted across her face. "That Persian didn't pay me so much before... but he might now!" Cheerful at the thought of more books of her own, the little librarian slipped off into the shadows between the pillars.
—|—
"We'll need camels," Nicholas said in a soft voice, as they walked casually down a long, granite ramp leading onto one of the triumphal avenues bisecting the city. "Workers, shovels, picks, levers. Maybe a sled if it's too heavy to carry on a single camel."
"The poet had something?" Thyatis kept a pace behind and to one side, as a proper wife should. At the same time, she was ghoulishly amused; the position gave her a clear strike at the man's neck simply by lifting her arm.
"A fragment of a traveler's account—a lonely tomb in the desert, revealed by a passing sandstorm. The sealed door bore the stamp of the Ptolemies—and all the other tombs are accounted for—all save one... the last one."
"The notoriously famous Kleopatra," Thyatis said, pretending mild surprise. "How romantic. You think the account is real? Hecataeus didn't strike me as being reliable..."
"He isn't." Nicholas grinned over his shoulder at her. "He's careless. Someone else had gotten to him first, asking the same questions. Guess who?"
"The Persians," Thyatis replied, feeling her neck prickle. She kept walking, listening with half her attention to Nicholas. Someone watching us? The feeling was very strong. Someone I know? It was an effort to keep from turning abruptly and staring. The avenue was crowded, with shrill chanting peddlers standing on the elevated bases of obelisks marching down the center of the thoroughfare. Wagons rumbled past, dogs barked furiously in the alleys, merchants were shouting from the storefronts. Every scrap of pavement was covered with rugs laden with trinkets, little statues, gewgaws, "real rubies from Serica," pens of chickens and goats. Thyatis let her eyes lose focus, her breathing slow to match her pace.
"The Persians," Nicholas continued with grim humor, barely audible above the din. "They braced him about Nemathapi before, but he couldn't help. This time they brought some scratchings from a tomb they found down in Saqqara. Now they were looking for Kleopatra's treasure, thinking something 'like a wheel' would be hidden there. Well, he had no idea where the tomb might be and he told them so. They weren't pleased, but went on to the next antiquarian on their list."
A familiar silhouette darting through the crowd drew her attention and Thyatis blinked, focusing, and saw the little librarian moving swiftly through traffic on the other side of the boulevard. The little woman dodged behind a phalanx of chanting monks wreathed in incense from swinging censers and carrying a bored-looking calico cat on a golden pillow. Thyatis squinted, rising up on tiptoe, but Sheshet had vanished behind a moving wall of silk umbrellas. When the procession passed, there was no sign of the little Egyptian.
Off to buy those books already, Thyatis thought, shaking her head in amusement. The feeling of being watched lingered.
"Fortunately for us, the poet had a nose for profit," Nicholas continued, unaware of Thyatis bobbing up and down behind him like a giraffe in a tall stand of acanthus. "He started to apply himself, rummaging through the books and histories. Wanted to find the tomb himself, I'd wager, though he only had a hazy idea of what might be hidden there. I'd swear from the way he acted it was the first time he'd ever found anything in that mausoleum! He showed me the account—crabbed on the back of a lading document." The Latin patted his belt and Thyatis heard stiff paper rustle.
"How much did Hecataeus want for his fabulous discovery?"
Nicholas glanced sideways at the woman, a smirk dancing on his thin lips. "Not much," he said.
"What do you mean?" Thyatis picked up her pace. "How much did you give him to keep his mouth shut?"
Nicholas laughed sharply and the Roman woman raised an eyebrow at the ugly sound.
"He gave me his back," he said softly, "and I paid him in steel—five inches tempered—right at the base of the skull."
Thyatis felt a peculiar sense of dislocation, as if she walked beside the Latin soldier and also looked down upon him from a height. She felt dizzy for a moment, then the sensation passed. "What did you do with the body?" her mouth asked automatically.
"Wrapped in a robe and out the window into the garden behind a hedge." The corners of Nicholas' eyes crinkled up as if he laughed, or smiled, but nothing humorous shone in his face. "Anyone who happens to see him will think he's asleep. At least, until he starts to smell."
"We'll have the money for your camels and workers, then." The queer double vision passed and Thyatis felt herself whole and chilled by the man's careless, offhand murder. His action reminded her too much of her own threat to the little librarian and she felt a little ill. Her thoughts spun for a moment, then settled. The poet can't have found the real sepulcher. Can he? The prospect seemed remote. "Good. How far away is the tomb?"
"Not far," Nicholas said, sounding eager. "The merchant was trav
eling on the western shore of Lake Mareotis, on his way to the coast with a string of camels. When the storm had passed, he walked for a day northeast to reach the village of Taposiris, which is only a day's ride west of the city. But we can reach the area faster by crossing the lake with a barge."
Thyatis nodded, suppressing an urge to finger the amulet around her neck. The prince's bauble was cold and still and she prayed to the Hunter it would remain so. Otherwise, she thought, Nicholas will have to be paid, just as he paid poor Hecataeus.
—|—
Thunderheads grumbled in the east and the air had acquired a heavy pearlescent quality as afternoon progressed. Yellow cone-shaped flowers spilled over the garden walls, filling the heavy air with a pungent, cloying aroma. Two figures turned into the lane, walking quickly, heads bent in conversation. At the end of the lane, the muddy track vanished into the flat, glassy water of Lake Mareotis. In the green shadows under the reeds fringing the lake, a quiet, hooded figure watched the man and woman stop at a wooden gate. The man—thin, nervous face radiating impatience even at this distance—rapped sharply on the wood. A moment passed and the woman squared her shoulders and looked around curiously.
The watcher hidden in the reeds froze, lowering her head. Midges and gnats crawled on brown arms and the zzzing of patrolling mosquitoes was very loud. Time dragged, measured by the tiny, prickling movements of the gnats as they crept across smooth, tanned flesh.
Creaking hinges signaled the gate swinging wide. Nicholas and Thyatis disappeared through the archway and the sound of brisk commands and sudden, unexpected activity filtered through the humid air. In the reeds, the watcher ventured to lift her head enough to see the gate again. The tall, redheaded woman was standing inside the arch, the portal nearly closed, watching the lane. Again, the watcher grew entirely still, slowing her breathing.
A grain passed, then two, then—after fifteen grains had slipped through the glass of life—Thyatis shook her head in disgust, and closed the wooden door.
The Dark Lord Page 47