The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3)

by E. Catherine Tobler

  “Anubis?”

  Daughter.

  She breathed and the warm night wind moved through the streets, lifting pieces of trash before letting them free once more. The wind that was her breath rushed toward the coast, to skim across the harbor before bursting into the open ocean waters; she breathed into the clouds, and past them, into the pinpricks of stars.

  “Why me?”

  Anubis’s laughter had the sound and weight of rocks crumbling down a mountainside. The weight of it pressed her down from the stars, back to the ground where she became aware of every stone under foot. She cradled her boots against her belly, walking, always walking, with Alexandria blurring into shadow around her. The hotel was close, but so too was Pettigrew’s home; she was aware of everything the way she had been in the Paris park—everything, every hair on her arm rising as though she had been struck by lightning.

  Daughter.

  “Is the entire world rings, then?” she asked. Anubis’s breath slid against the back of her neck, foul with the scent of the dead, and she did not look. It was not fear that kept her gaze forward, only the knowledge that Anubis was always and ever there, a part of her. “Is this what I am to do?”

  You defend, as Akila. In your own way.

  “Tell me the right way,” she heard herself plead. “Am I to keep Egypt whole and here? What of the pieces of her already carted away? The pieces in France and Britain and do you even know these places? Pettigrew had it right, no? Egypt is nothing more than a bauble people come to stare at. They do not care for her the way—”

  The way we do?

  “Why can’t you do what needs doing?” Eleanor stopped in the middle of the street, each building coming into sharp clarity around her. “Why?” She sounded like a pouting child and did not care.

  It is not my place, daughter, but your own.

  The weight of Anubis moved off—as if the humidity had gone entirely out of the air, leaving only the distant chatter of people at a café, and the soft glow of the hotel lights into the street, and Cleo Barclay standing within their golden spill. Eleanor drew in a breath and walked toward her friend, exhaustion pulling at her.

  But there was no relief to be found in Cleo’s expression; her eyes were wide and her chin trembled, metal hands clutching the ring case Eleanor had come to know far too well. This, Eleanor guessed, was when the other shoe finally dropped. She looked down at her own boots in her hands and laughed softly.

  “All right,” she said before Cleo had spoken a word. “But first, we make tea.”

  * * *

  July 1887 – Alexandria, Egypt

  I should have died.

  This was the thought that stayed with her, like a tiny purring creature curled in the space between her collar and jaw. Warm, snug, friendly.

  I should have died.

  This was the first thing that came to mind when she woke and the last thing she thought before sleep carried her way. With every breath of air through the open balcony doors, even the wind spoke the words to her.

  I should have died.

  Her sleep was dreamless, and not. She told herself they were dreams, because it was easier to call them this than to say they were memories. It made no sense that she would remember such things—the way she had been lifted, the way they bound her into honey-soaked wrappings, and then a casket of stone.

  I should have died.

  And did not.

  This idea was one she did not return to that often; it was too frightening, the idea that she had escaped death, cheated Anubis and Ammit both, that her heart still beat in her chest. She closed her eyes every night and listened, assuring herself it was so, even if it was not entirely true.

  The weight of the honey pulling her down was true. The shadows in the room were thrown by fire and not gas-light; six shadows upon the ceiling, the ceiling of stone and then plaster and then stone. She moved through rooms effortlessly, even while weighted by honey. Sweet and cloying and for weeks after, she could not look at her breakfast offerings without being nauseated. It would pass, they all said. But in the firelight—

  “She must be kept so,” said a woman.

  Cleo tried to turn her head, but was bound and could not. The wrappings against her neck were soft and cool stone pressed into her cheek, trailing stickiness when she moved the least bit. She tried to lift her arms, but also could not do this. They were not bound across her chest—that might have told her she was dead and awaiting Anubis—but rather straight at her sides. Her legs were bound as well, and feet too; when she caught a glimpse of them, she saw the wrappings, the bandages, glowing with honey that had caught all the colors of the firelight. She was being turned to amber, to gold, to—

  “Has it already had its way with her, then?”

  This voice was familiar and Cleo exhaled at the sound of it. Doctor Fairbrass. She knew him, for they both worked with Mistral. He was immaculate in his attention to detail, precise to the point of madness, but she would have protested anything less. He knew his way around the living and the dead equally well, at ease with both.

  Cleo tried to speak to them, but parting her lips only sent honey spilling into her mouth. She wanted to deny it entry, but was a slave to its sweetness. She opened her mouth and drank and drank until the flood slowed, until her lips were sticky in the wake of the golden river. She was nourished in a way she never had been before.

  “I fear so,” said the woman. “It is the blood that binds it.”

  I should have died.

  And her arms?

  From the elbow down, she was dissolved, as if her arms were nothing more than gossamer. She could not lift them or ever hold anything. She would not cradle a child, nor the ancient skull of one found in debris.

  That small bee, she thought; smooth and cool carnelian between my fingers. No more. These fingers as she felt them—oh she knew they could not exist, not as she remembered—were as cobwebs wrapped around muslin.

  “She is as you are,” Doctor Fairbrass said.

  “As I am, yes. As we are.”

  The six shadows moved against the ceiling, swaying from side to side and back once more. Cleo watched through slitted eyes, the shadows giving the impression of being underwater, yet breathing. Her breath was slow, but not labored, and she was aware of each inhale and each exhalation, certain another would not come, though it did.

  “You could have done nothing else, Doctor.”

  A low hum rolled from the gathered shadows, settling into Cleo’s bones. She closed her eyes to the room, to the cave, wherever she found herself or did not find herself. Wherever she was, she was

  Alive.

  Still that.

  Still. That.

  * * *

  December 1889 – Alexandria, Egypt

  Eleanor dropped the cloth back into the basin and stared at Cleo’s image in the mirror. The wash water was filthy and grew even more so as Eleanor began to brush her hair out. Iridescent locust wings came free, to shimmer on the surface of the ever-darkening water.

  “All right,” Eleanor said again, each word measured. It was difficult to keep her temper, given all that Cleo had told her. Mallory and Auberon being held prisoner by Pettigrew who was demanding she return with the rings? It made Eleanor scoff, and yet, she wouldn’t put it past Pettigrew to do something entirely foolish, given his history with artifacts. But, given that she trusted both Mallory and Auberon not to be such idiots, she was not going to charge into his house without more information. And the information Akila had given her was potentially something indeed.

  She set the hair brush aside and gathered her hair into three sections, plaiting as she stayed focused on Cleo. “You are telling me this honey made you immortal.”

  Cleo shifted from foot to foot, her brown cheeks flooding with a rush of pink. “I don’t know what I’m telling you, Eleanor. Here—stop. You still have …wings.” Cleo strode forward, and gently pushed Eleanor’s hands from the mess of her hair. She unplaited what little had been done and picked up the b
rush. “I am only telling you something strange happened, something I cannot fully explain.”

  The brush tugged through Eleanor’s hair and she closed her eyes. More locust wings whispered to the floor. While she had given up on calling things impossible, Cleo’s belief pushed that boundary. “Doctor Fairbrass came to tend you?”

  “Agent Auberon was there, too. He and I—”

  When she said nothing else, Eleanor looked at Cleo in the mirror. She continued to brush Eleanor’s hair, her brown gaze slowly meeting Eleanor’s.

  “We had an extremely poor sense of timing,” Cleo said. “He came to Alexandria to oversee the recovery work I and my team were assigned to. I was upset at first—the way I imagine you must have been the first time you looked upon Mallory’s ugly mug.”

  A smile flickered over Eleanor’s mouth; she would not deny that upset, no.

  “I thought Auberon meant to take the work from me, but he only wanted to help. We spent many evenings together, talking of things other than Egypt. Our parents, our grandparents—he kept his grandfather’s slave name, Oberon…and thought…” Cleo took an uneven breath and pulled the brush through Eleanor’s hair again. “Our names gave us something interesting to talk about, but it was more than that. When the ground gave way beneath me… I remember him being there, and he said it was honey.”

  “And the woman speaking with Doctor Fairbrass?”

  “I don’t know—it may well have been a dream, Eleanor. But something… I was never the same after, and perhaps no one ever would, given the loss of two healthy arms.” She lifted her mechanical arms, light running down the metal. “Doctor Fairbrass said I would have died. Said he had no choice, but refused to explain more.”

  Eleanor leaned back into the chair, exhaling as Cleo began to braid her hair. “All right. Let us presume the honey worked its magic upon you and that Pettigrew has gotten it into his head that the same will be true for him. Does he believe the rings will …what? You didn’t have rings…pardon my saying so, but you didn’t have fingers for most that time…”

  Cleo laughed, taking no offense as her mechanical fingers now divided Eleanor’s hair into three even pieces, and made quick work of a braid. This, she wound into a coil, tucking the end under before securing it with pins.

  “I don’t know what Pettigrew thinks of the rings—or why he would actually give you one, if he thought he needed them all for his plan.” Cleo smoothed a few stray wisps of hair from Eleanor’s brow. “You told me Anubis was here. That he said the rings would carry you. Perhaps Pettigrew also believes he needs you—much as the Irvings did?”

  “I am half-sick of being used for the purposes of others,” Eleanor said, her voice edged in a growl. “Still, I have to allow he may well believe that. Akila said I would take the rings and go as I must. Of course, if Virgil has them already, we have only the one retrieved from the honey.” Eleanor slid from the vanity bench, moving toward the bureau. Here, beneath her folded clothing, she withdrew a case of lock picks. “Let’s search his room, shall we?”

  Eleanor breached the lock to Virgil’s room with more ease than she had expected. Though much of the hotel had been renovated after the British destruction, an equal number of things remained untouched, door locks among them. Virgil’s room stood in shadow until Eleanor lit a single lamp. All appeared as he would have left it, tidy and in order. She did not find the ring box in the bureau, nor beneath his bed pillows. Only when she perched on the edge of the bed to ponder where it might be was she successful, hearing the faint creak of wood beneath her. She lifted the mattress to find the wood display box, its rings intact.

  Cleo offered her the third ring, cleaned now. Eleanor accepted it with a grimace, both expecting and wanting it to whisk her away the moment it touched her hand. It did not.

  Virgil and Auberon had had the corrosion cleaned from the other two and Eleanor’s heart lodged in her throat at the sight of them. They were beautiful and strange and bore the same markings as did the ring they had found in the honey. Dark and light metal, colliding in patterns that had no reason.

  “Do you… Do you suppose you put them on?” Cleo asked in a near whisper.

  Eleanor pulled the rings free of the case, setting it to the side. She contemplated the trio in her hand. “Akila said they were wedding bands,” she said. One ring was plainly larger than the other two, which were of a size. She touched the one Cleo had just given her. “This small ring was in the honey?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this larger one is from the auction I believe. Leaving the second small ring as the one left in the Mistral archive.”

  One by one, her mouth growing more dry with each ring, Eleanor slipped them on. Part of her didn’t want to—she had promised Mallory, after all. But a larger part of her craved the power she had felt when wearing Anubis’s own rings. The small rings fit neatly paired upon her ring finger, the larger still too big for even her middle finger. But she left it there and waited.

  “The world is not dissolving,” Eleanor said, annoyed and relieved both. If there were rings yet to find? Oh, she prayed not. “I am not going to bleed for these rings. I am not going to be a pawn any more—do you hear me, Anubis? If you’re listening…this has nothing to do with me, and you’ll not take Cleo, either. Not by hook or by crook.”

  She waited for something, for anything, but there was no thunder, no lightning, and the room did not crack apart. It was altogether disappointing, and left her without a clue as to where to go next.

  “Doctor Fairbrass, I suppose?” Cleo asked as Eleanor picked up the ring box and came off the bed.

  “I suppose—because if you believe you are immortal by way of a body mellified in honey…” She opened the hotel door and linked her arm through Cleo’s, keeping her close. “We should look into that, but you’re not going without me. Or Virgil. Or, dare I say, even Auberon.”

  But go they did, for when they crossed the threshold, the room around them winked out. As neat as a candle being snuffled, the hotel ceased to exist. Eleanor fell and tried to hold to Cleo, but she was also falling, and they tumbled apart, down to the ground of soft dirt. Even so, Eleanor cried out as did Cleo.

  There was only the shimmering night sky above them, clearer than Eleanor had ever seen. This was a sky unsmudged by smoke, a sky that did not know the rise of buildings against its sprawl. The city here was smaller, but the streets had still already taken on the grid pattern they would maintain for centuries to follow. Farther out, rising from the waters of the harbor, was a thing that no longer existed in Eleanor’s time. A place that had been lost to the ages.

  Cleopatra’s palace.

  Chapter Ten

  August 1887 – Paris, France

  Dear Cleo,

  I appreciated your letter very much and am pleased to hear how well the gloves fit. Do not forget that I spent a good many years as a surveyor within Mistral; it was my job to determine locations, points, and sometimes sizes of relative objects. Apparently this ability extends itself to ladies’ gloves, despite not having seen your arms. I hope they will serve you well for years to come; should you wear through them, we shall obtain another pair.

  It was devastating to hear of the difficulties you went through with the damage to a finger. I was relived to hear that Fairbrass fixed it so easily—you finished your letter to me within the week. Hopefully the knowledge that you may be so easily repaired now will set your heart some at ease?

  The weeks here are dreadfully busy. My partner remains a challenge, and I believe you and he are previously acquainted? Mister V. Mallory is unlike any gentleman I have crossed paths with before; he is one of Mistral’s best, and I look forward to working in the field with him.

  When you next write, tell me of the work you were engaged in? I can well imagine how it is to remain inside when one is accustomed to tromping about the world. Would that you were out here with Mallory and me! I am certain the day will come when you are once again out of doors. The day will come when you once again da
nce, be it in an alley or a café—a day when I ask you to dance and you say yes.

  Until then, I remain,

  M. Auberon

  * * *

  December 1889 – Alexandria, Egypt

  “Virgil.”

  From a great distance, Virgil heard his name, but could not open his eyes or turn his head toward the person calling to him. The voice was familiar, but so far away. The darkness that held him smelled like honey. And blood, the wolf inside whispered.

  “Virgil.”

  The voice was closer this time and Virgil forced himself up from the blackness. He forced his eyes to open after the drowse brought on by the drugged tea. No part of him ached; everything remained comfortably numb, a thing he supposed was good, given the bindings he found himself restricted by. Wide leather cuffs encircled both wrists and ankles, which were in turn attached to a wood and metal rack. Everything, including him, was splattered with honey. The rack rollers were pulled tightly enough that Virgil could not move, but there was no ache to tell him how long he had been racked.

  The rack was encased within a glass cell and this cell was but one of many. Other cages fanned out in a circle, the cell beside his own occupied by Auberon, also racked and splattered with honey. A closer look at Auberon’s cell showed Virgil it was more than a splattering; the honey had begun to fill the cell from the bottom up. Above each cell, a glass compartment squatted, each of these containing beehives. Virgil watched as bees went about their business, creating and filling comb even as the comb leaked honey downward into the cells. Beyond he and Auberon, one other cell was occupied, the man inside appearing asleep, but Virgil had to wonder. Was it sleep or was it death?