The Glass Falcon Read online

  Eleanor tried to shake the sensation off as if it were a blanket, but Anubis pulled her down, beyond the floor of the catacomb itself, until her hands grew raw and bloodied from clawing at the chalky ground. She reached for Anubis in a last effort, so that she would not be carried away again, but her fingers slid bloody wet across his rings, and the tomb of bones vanished. She bit out a curse as the cold of November’s Paris was swallowed by a warmth Eleanor would have known anywhere. Egypt. She could not say where or when, but she picked herself up from the ground, to stare at where she now found herself.

  “Bloody ancient god,” she whispered.

  A temple stood in silence around her, sunset light reaching warm fingers through painted columns. She stood for several long moments, only listening, but when she heard nothing and no one, and forced herself into motion. She grit her teeth together, trying to push her anger at Anubis to the side, but it would not be pushed. It was anger that carried her through, deeper into the temple that remained empty.

  The columns gave way to a courtyard, and this courtyard to a hall, and beyond even that, a sanctuary, but each was empty. Eleanor studied the walls and what she saw made little sense—especially as she tried to connect the temple to current events in Paris. She saw no immediate sign of Horus or Anubis, but rather the temple appeared to be that of Horemheb.

  “This is foolish.” Eleanor walked back to the courtyard, to stare at the darkening sky through the open roof. “Anubis!” Her voice echoed, ghostly and strange, and the cry of falcons came to her.

  Falcons of all shapes and sizes flooded down through the open roof, fluttering like bits of paper, bright and dark in profusion. The falcons wheeled toward her as if they knew her, and one alighted upon her arm. Its eyes were lapis, its feathers gold, and Eleanor knew for certain she was dreaming. Yet, the falcon’s talons pressed warm into her arm as though she were wholly awake. She reached out to touch the falcon’s breast and it too was warm, breathing and alive.

  Look you, Daughter.

  Eleanor looked, but did not see, until she focused on her hand against the falcon. Her hand should have been bloody and two shades lighter, but they were wet with clay, not blood, and darker as though she were full Egyptian and not half. Her hands were not her own, nor her face, she found as she lifted those hands to touch her cheeks, and the heavy wig resting on her head. These realizations made, her body no longer felt like her own; the press of the jackal was gone and panic welled up in its place. It wasn’t right, that absence.

  Look you, Daughter.

  “Demanding—” She bit the condemnation in half; his continued presence was both a relief and an irritant and she wasn’t quite sure what she would do without it. She did not wear his rings as she once had, and was uncertain she could get home without them, if she were in actuality here.

  She moved slowly, cautious of the falcons; the golden bird upon her arm took to the sky, called its fellows up, and they skimmed above her as shadows, softly chittering. Eleanor passed through the temple once more, trying to see what she might, but the rooms were desolate, as if none had ever walked them. Within the sanctuary, however, she found a polished metal mirror, but not even her own reflection told her anything; she looked as any Egyptian female might, a proud face decorated in whorls and lines of kohl, wig twined with lotus and—

  A single golden feather trailed from the golden circlet around her head and she carefully touched it. It was as soft as Horus’s own and Eleanor set the mirror down.

  “All right then,” she whispered. A feather was something.

  She looked around the room, finding the sanctuary much as any other she had known, but on the far side of the room, a low table crouched against the wall. Upon this table was an array of scrolls, pots of ink, and gleaming glass seals. Thousands of years in the future, she would know the weight of the largest seal in her own hand, would know its strange curves even if she knew nothing else.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Anubis said nothing. Eleanor moved toward the table; this body knew the way, knew how to kneel, spread a scroll, and write the words of the pharaoh. These hands wanted to write, but it was not the words of the pharaoh that came to mind. Eleanor could not say if these thoughts were her own, or that of the body she inhabited, but these hands longed to write about her own day, about the sunset light and the way it flooded the courtyard; she wanted to tell a story of the stars and the falcons before sealing the scroll with wet clay and marking it with her falcon seal. Her seal? Was it?

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  Anubis said nothing, but she felt his simmering rage.

  No, rage wasn’t right. Powerlessness. From a god?

  Eleanor closed her eyes and breathed.

  Though Anubis had an affinity with the dead, he knew hearts best, and she saw that he could not ease the bones within the catacomb from their displays; each time he had tried, his hands passed through them. His admiration for her own hands flooded her as he lifted her hands now, as he spread a sheet of papyrus flat, splayed her fingers, and studied them as if he had never seen such constructs before. His own hands had taken hearts from chests, yet these… These…

  Your mortal hands. You will know your people when you touch them, Daughter.

  Eleanor shuddered at the idea of touching every bone in the catacomb, so that she might know if the person had been Egyptian. But worse was the idea of leaving them where they did not belong, where they could not endure.

  It is not so many, but it is enough. They must be brought home.

  And with this, Anubis vanished. Eleanor fell onto her side, struggling for a breath that was not choked with the scent of the grave. In her mind, she saw the form of the woman spilled in the bones, and saw that it was her, and saw that Mallory scooped her from the dirt, to hold her against his warm side as she came back to herself, back to the room she supposed she had never actually left. Had never walked in that temple, nor been in the lower level of the catacomb.

  “It takes people that way, sometimes,” Dernier was saying, and he nodded as he saw that Eleanor’s eyes were opened. “The air down here, can be close.”

  Eleanor leaned into Mallory, hands dusty as if she had been digging through bones—and hadn’t she, clawing her way through the earth? She held to his arms, longing to explain but refusing to do so in front of Dernier. He would refuse such an outlandish request, and she had no mind to argue with him. Oh, Anubis said I will know by touching them, monsieur, all will be well. I will take these precious bones and go. That would certainly be welcomed and accepted and—

  Nausea rushed over her again and she focused on her breathing, looking into Mallory’s eyes when he peered down at her. She could not tell him, but thought he already knew she had been elsewhere. Elsewhen. She offered him a smile, but it felt weak around the edges.

  “I did not eat this morning,” she offered in way of explanation, at which Dernier tsked over the foolishness of women and their habits, and moved away from them, to show Auberon another facet of the destruction within the room.

  With Mallory’s help she came to her feet, and saw quite well that in the bones on the ground, there was no womanly shape; no secret message left by Anubis or Horus, and Eleanor exhaled, refusing to leave the support of Mallory’s arms.

  “I suspect we shall have quite the conversation when we depart,” Mallory said.

  “Quite,” Eleanor murmured, unable to put the screams of the dead from her mind.

  * * *

  They returned to the Mistral townhouse, Eleanor unsure how to approach the conversation en route. Mallory and Auberon asked nothing; they were always exceedingly patient with her as she organized her thoughts, given as she was to extraordinary occurrences, and for that she was thankful, because she knew Mallory had as short a temper as she often did. Auberon, keeper of his own secrets, was more even-mannered, but even he was curious as to what had happened in the catacomb.

  In the privacy of Mallory’s rooms, Eleanor told them as best she could, that
Anubis had shown her two things: a lower level of the catacomb (the screaming dead, lost in flood), and a distant temple, perhaps of Horemheb, where the glass seal had once sat. She watched their faces when she told them her story; Mallory, pouring tea for them all, was so surprised he nearly allowed the tea to overflow a cup. Auberon tipped the spout of the teapot up to stop the flow.

  “Maddening, how he won’t just tell me what he wants us to know,” Eleanor said, perched on the edge of Mallory’s couch.

  “I think he has, Eleanor,” Auberon said. He slid a cup of tea closer to Eleanor, watching her all the while. “Horus gifted you with a bone, most likely from the catacombs judging from what I’ve seen of the bones there. Anubis let you hear the screaming dead within that very catacomb. And he placed you within the body of a scribe who may have owned that seal.”

  “It may be,” Mallory said, “Anubis has told you as best he can. Sky and ground not speaking but for the horizon, remember.”

  Eleanor made a face, but could not argue. Now distant from the bones, she could think more clearly, but the memory of the screams huddled close to her and if she stopped to think overly long on them, it was as if the breath of ghosts curled against the nape of her neck.

  “All right,” she said, pressing her hands together as she pondered. “We are to presume the bones of that scribe reside within the Paris catacombs?”

  “I believe that is a solid theory,” Mallory said.

  “Which only presents us with more mysteries, Mallory, and more mysteries is not what we’re aiming for.” Eleanor leaned back with a sigh, staring at the ceiling high above. “How in the world does an ancient Egyptian scribe come to rest in the Paris catacombs? And how does that connect to the destruction of both a seal in the Louvre and the displays of bones in the catacombs?”

  Mallory tilted his head, silent. How like Anubis, Eleanor thought as she looked at him, but realized she already knew the answer. She sat up, thankful she wasn’t yet holding a teacup.

  “An ancient Egyptian scribe comes to Paris exactly as every other artifact has come. She was found and taken, wasn’t she?” Eleanor nodded to herself, knowing it must have been. “Whether through normal archaeological means or something more devious—tomb robbers, perhaps?—she is here, but not with others of her kind in the Louvre…somehow she ends up in the catacombs…we can work with that. But I hate them…the catacombs.” She shuddered, remembering the way the dead had cried out.

  Mallory leaned closer, sliding his hand warmly over hers. His touch erased the remembered cold of the catacombs and she nodded. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then looked at him once more.

  “All bare bones and seemingly not a scrap of care,” she whispered. “But they did it with intent, didn’t they?” Eleanor looked to Auberon for confirmation and he nodded.

  “The old cemetery was filled to overflowing,” Auberon said, “and they needed a solution, so the dead would not be washed away, forgotten. It is not like the tombs you have known, but it is also much like that. They wanted to save them for the ages.”

  She couldn’t stop the smile from coming. “Like those arrogant pharaohs.”

  Eleanor leaned back into the couch once more, watching Auberon and Mallory, who once again left her to her thoughts, even as she could see they both wanted to leap in with suggestions. “All right,” she eventually said, “a working theory is a place to begin, but—”

  And that was when Auberon and Mallory could no longer hold back.

  “Tell us of the temple, Miss Fol—”

  “You said it looked like Horem—”

  “Gentlemen.” She laughed at them, and they at each other, but Eleanor found herself nodding, considering. “Horemheb, who they believe began his life as a scribe, which places it sometime after Hatshepsut.” Speaking the pharaoh’s name gave her a little pang, but she carried on. “Which means the origins of the glass seal may well be untraceable—if his scribe was in possession of it, the seal could have come from anywhere, as a gift or…” Eleanor trailed off, the train of thought not sitting well with her, but she wasn’t certain why. “They have yet to find Horemheb’s tomb, however. How are we supposed to track remains that came out of Egypt an indeterminate time ago, in unknown hands by unknown means, that possibly ended up in Paris, …and were then mixed in with the unlabeled remains of a cemetery as it was collapsed and rebuilt?”

  Mallory emptied his tea cup in one long swallow and shook his head at Eleanor. It was obvious to Eleanor he was trying not to grin like an idiot as he spoke, for his mouth twitched even as he tried to remain stern.

  “Ashamed, I am. How am I supposed to court you when you cannot even solve the simplest of tasks. A gentleman likes a wise lass! Perhaps the memory of those screams are muddling your mind—” He drew wide circles around his own head as he spoke now. “We shall say it is so and humor you.” He lifted his hands to the ceiling, gesturing to the room around them, but Eleanor felt the gesture was more encompassing than even that. The building itself…

  “You have access to the heart of Mistral. If even random Egyptian artifacts entered this city, bound for the Louvre or locations more discreet, I am certain Mistral will have known about it—either on this end or that of Sirocco in Cairo itself. And you, Miss Folley.” Mallory leveled a finger at her now, eyes bright. “You have access to Irving’s own archive. If there is no official record, perhaps there is more…unauthorized information you may access.” His eyebrows went up again, lips pressed together as he strove not to laugh.

  “I am an idiot,” Eleanor murmured. She didn’t know if the experience within the catacombs had shaken her so badly, or if she simply wasn’t accustomed to the idea that she had immeasurable stacks of information at her fingers that she had never had before. “Thank goodness one of us is courting a genius.”

  V.

  The airship Veneur steamed across cold November skies, Eleanor standing at the rail of the lower deck no matter the chill. She suspected she would never grow tired of such views, nor of the way the world vanished when the ship slipped into low clouds. Eleanor could pretend she was flying and supposed that technically she was, but with eyes closed and clouds rushing past her cheeks, she believed she might spread her arms and take to the clouds the way Horus had. Only the wind and the sky.

  They were bound for Saint-Rémy, a swift flight their pilot, the steadfast Gin, promised them, if only for the hard and cold mistral wind that blew down the southern coast of France. The wind had given the agency its name, if not its demeanor. The wind propelled the airship even now, adding a little chop to the ride when the ship maneuvered out of its cold stream. Eleanor wouldn’t have minded a more leisurely journey, but this time of year it was not to be had; they would reach the city and its asylum before midday.

  The records within the Mistral archive proved useful after all, as did Cleo Barclay’s own archive in Cairo. Eleanor had spent the better part of three days working long distance with her fellow agent, determining that Egyptian remains and artifacts fitting the vague descriptions Eleanor possessed had left Egypt sometime in 1824. It was the blue glass seal that proved most useful, having been claimed by one Mercedes Teresa Urvina Moreno as she had left Egypt for Paris.

  Mercedes Urvina was notorious in archaeological circles, or had been. Hers was a life Eleanor had once dreamed of, a woman who was seemingly without care as to what any one else thought of her, pushing every boundary the world placed in her way. She had been born in deepest Ecuador and had studied and documented local mummies before any other—having found half a dozen in her own yard, perfectly preserved in mud and ice. Such discoveries left her only wanting more, so where better to flee than Egypt itself, where the mummies were younger by thousands of years but charming in their own ways. Mercedes Urvina had vanished from public life years prior, however, having confined herself to the asylum in Saint-Rémy, believing the ghosts of her past activities would not allow her to otherwise rest. She was close to ninety now, Eleanor figured, and questioned if she would b
e a reliable source at all, given her age and time spent within the asylum’s walls.

  “Miss Folley.”

  The scent of warm mulled cider preceded Virgil Mallory and she opened her eyes to find him at her side, cups of cider in hand. His cheeks were pinked with the chilled air, hair a brown-blond tumble around his face. He was rarely in complete order, somehow charming for the rumples he carried.

  “Agent Mallory,” she said, her mouth curved in a smile. “I was just thinking how good warm cider would taste in the snow.”

  Mallory grunted, but leaned in and brushed a gentle kiss over her cold mouth. Their breath fogged in the air as he withdrew, forehead resting against her own. She could think of things better than mulled cider, this being one. The connection with Mallory was so new, she wanted to rope the feelings off from everything else, so that she could brush the sand away as she did from ancient bones, analyzing each as they became visible in the sun. So far, she had found each remarkable in its own way, even those that emerged broken from the press of time. Neither of them were whole, but yet learning to be.

  “You were most likely thrilling over the idea of meeting the notorious Mercedes Urvina—just as I was.” Mallory leaned against the wall behind them, notching one foot into the worn rail surrounding the deck. He cupped his cider in his hands, snowflakes melting as they entered the cider’s fragrant uprush of warmth. “Can you imagine? I thought she was long since dead.”

  “Not yet a mummy myself!” Mercedes snapped at Mallory as she met them in the cloister garden less than two hours later, a leather map case tucked under one arm. Despite the harshness of her words, her dark amber eyes were kind and Eleanor hoped they weren’t about to unearth things the lady had no wish to discuss. She had been startled by the idea of people seeking her out—”me, no,” she had said, but had agreed to meet with them even so.