Chapter III
Cairo, 1926

Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae (I recognise the traces of an old flame)

- Virgil

paused at the foot of the steps of the local museum, and surveyed the city around me. Cairo looked a little the worse for wear compared to when I had been here last. It seemed to have suffered a meteor storm or something of that ilk, and lots of disconsolate-looking locals with unpleasantly disfiguring boils were sweeping up prodigiously large quantities of dead insects into little mounds on street corners. At least they seemed to have been spared the frogs. I hoped that the young lady with whom I intended to reacquaint myself had managed to avoid being smited by these sundry plagues, partly because I was still very fond of her, and partly because I needed her advice. I glanced down at myself. The dust and grime of the desert still clung to me like an importuning crowd of street urchins. This would not do. I surreptitiously cast The Gentleman's Toilette, the sudden swirl of magick banishing the stains of travel and exertion, leaving my clothes freshly laundered and myself scrubbed clean. Then I headed into the museum, bearing gifts. Attendance was decidedly slack at the moment, consisting of an elderly tourist, a couple of Egyptian students in frock coats and spats, and one other individual whom I could not actually see, but whose cane I could hear tapping ponderously through the neighbouring galleries. For some reason, Egyptology seemed to be a science without honour in its own country. The object of my search was in the library, sitting at a desk. The library itself looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane; either that, or she had felt a need to protect her sinecure by devising an even more obscure and idiosyncratic classification system, and rearranged everything accordingly. Even with the Pattern to assist me, I would have thought twice before trying to look anything up in here without her assistance. The idle notion occurred to me that if the Ways of Chaos had been made of paper, then this was what they would have looked like. From my vantage point by the doorway I watched her at work on a mouldly-looking papyrus, her face half-hidden by the piles of books that ringed her like a henge constructed by dipsomaniacs. It was in all truth a hard face to forget: fair skin, large blue eyes, dimpled cheeks, all framed by a barely tamed profusion of dark curly hair. It was a face that habitually wore a determined frown that kept on threatening to break out into a smile of such unbearable sweetness that diabetics keeled over whenever she walked by. Currently she seemed to be attired in her librarian's uniform of flat shoes, tweed skirt, high-buttoned blouse and an oversized cardigan, the traditional glasses perched on the end of her nose. I've never understood why I found this sartorial conspiracy against her natural beauty so attractive. Esmée would have muttered "Make over" and dragged her off to the nearest changing room. However, my ex-girlfriend the librarian would have looked beautiful in a gorilla suit. I decided that it was time to make my admiration less discrete, and to announce myself. I stepped forward. "Hello Evelyn," I said. She jumped up, startled. A pile of books began to topple, and I extended an index finger to arrest its precipitation. "Lord Mortlake!" she exclaimed, looking flustered. "Why so formal?" I asked, restoring the wobbling tomes to the vertical. True, it had been the better part of a year since I had last been in this Shadow, and I had been obliged to depart in something of a hurry, but my recollection was that we had parted on good terms. Possibly too good, I considered belatedly. However, it seemed that some other consideration was exercising her, a consideration in which she saw not me but her own sweet self as the guilty party. She ummed and ahhed in embarrassment for a while, before finally blurting out, "We went to Hamunaptra without you." This much I'd guessed, given the state in which I had just found the New Kingdom's hidden necropolis. I'd had to shift Shadow for the better part of a day just to find a way into the shattered ruins. I decided against mentioning this, however. "Who's 'we'?" I asked instead. "Oh," said Evelyn, "well, there was me, and Jonathan ... You remember Jonathan?" I certainly did. Due to some quirk of heredity, she shared the same mother and father as a member of the genus Mustela. "And Rick," she said, colouring somewhat. Ah, so there was now another gentleman in her life. "But he's gone now," she sighed, flopping back into her chair, "Wretched man." She fixed me with a look that was somehow sardonic and melancholy at the same time. "At least you didn't make me any promises, Damien," she said. "None I wasn't prepared to keep," I said, placing the first oilskin-wrapped package on the table. Evelyn's eyes lit up. The square heavy shape was a somewhat distinctive one. "It's not," she said, a half-hearted talismanic warding against disappointment. The wrapping sailed off into a corner. "It is!" she breathed, as the beaten gold exterior of the sacred Book of Amun-Ra glinted in the dusty sunlight. She ran her fingers over the engraved glyphs. "How did you find it?" she asked, "I thought we'd lost it forever." "I was passing and I happened to chance on it," I said modestly, "And I said to myself 'Isn't that the Book of Amun-Ra that Evelyn was just dying to lay her hands on?'. So I brought it with me. Consider it an unsolicited donation." Evelyn looked at me, looked at the book, and then turned on the smile. My knees started complaining about how much I weighed. Then she bounded round the desk to throw her arms around my neck and plant a kiss on my lips. Painstakingly stacked volumes went flying. I returned her kiss amidst the cascading tomes of Egyptological lore, until her glasses came between us. She disentangled herself so that she could straighten them. "How can I ever thank you?" she said. I held up a finger. "One," I said, "join me for dinner at my hotel. And two ..." I hefted the second package onto the desk. Evelyn's smile vanished immediately. "Oh no," she said, backing away as I unwrapped the Amtuat, "Damien, take it away. It's dangerous." "I just need a couple of sections transcribed," I said mildly, "The Breath of Osiris and The Coming Forth From Amenti. That's all." Evelyn was shaking her head vigorously, then stopped, and frowned. "I don't remember those bits," she said. She was intrigued despite her better judgement, but her better judgement still had the upper hand. "Ah," I said, "This is the original unexpurgated version. Predates all the others, you see. Bound to be a few chapters that got shed along the way. But if you can't help me ..." I began to rewrap it. Evelyn groaned. "You villain," she said, "You just know me far too well, don't you?" I smiled innocently. The way to a girl's heart is through her accessions register, but an appeal to her academic curiosity never goes amiss either. "All right," she said, "I'll transcribe them for you. On one condition. Just don't. Ever. Read them. Aloud." "Not in this world or the next," I promised. I'd already checked to see if the mummy case was in this Shadow. It wasn't, so I felt reasonably safe in giving such an assurance. Satisfied but still wary, Evelyn resumed her seat behind the desk. She caressed the Book of Amun-Ra briefly, in a way that made me feel mildly regretful that I hadn't been born a cartouche, and then turned her attention to the sinister-looking black inscriptions of its companion volume. I handed her the odd, shuriken-shaped key, and watched as she unlocked it with an air of trepidation that suggested she was half-expecting it to bite. There wasn't much danger of that - I'd disarmed all the traps and wardings on it years ago. While she levered open the heavy engraved slabs that passed for pages, I thought I heard a faint tapping from outside, the click of something metal on stone. I wandered over to the door and peered outside. A shadow was just disappearing off around a corner in the direction of the Ptolemaic Galleries. The tapping receded. I had possessed an unaccountable sensation of someone dogging my footsteps ever since I had arrived in Cairo that morning, and it was starting to annoy me. I was half-tempted to follow the now inaudible wanderer, but I didn't want to leave Evelyn alone with the books. Not that I didn't trust her with them - quite the contrary - but the fact was that her possession of them did put her in some slight smidgen of danger. And not just from rival collectors, either. She looked up as I returned, a quizzical scowl etched on her lovely brow. "Damien," she said, "Some of these glyphs I don't even recognise. They look pre-Dynastic, except ... if they were, they'd be cruder and the vocabulary wouldn't be so extensive. I can guess at their meanings, but as for how they were pronounced ... Are you sure you want a transcription rather than a translation? And if so, why? You promised you weren't going to try and read them out loud." She regarded me a little dubiously. "I've developed an interest in the philological aspects of comparative thanatology," I said, which was true enough, if you viewed necromancy as essentially the applied branch of the thanatological sciences. Evelyn looked thoughtful. This was a sufficiently baroque area of enquiry for it to appeal to her. "Maybe I can use the Book of Amun-Ra as a kind of Rosetta Stone," she mused, "It's more recent, and if I can work out which glyphs correspond to which, then I can work backwards ... It may take a few days," she warned me. "If anyone can do it, you can," I told her, which was not mere gallantry but simply the truth, in this and at least a thousand other Shadows, "But why don't we make a proper start tomorrow? It's getting late and I believe we have an appointment for dinner." The two books were deposited in the museum's strong-room, upon which I cast a warding spell that would alert me to any overnight interference. And then, once Evelyn had changed, we went to dinner. I had apparently missed rather a lot during my search for the mummy case, not least her accidental resurrection of some long dead priest with rather spectacular elemental powers, and who sounded suspiciously like a Shadow-echo of Nephren-Ka. She had eventually put him back in his box, metaphorically speaking, with the help of some American called O'Connell, who had then had the temerity to walk out on her in search of adventures that did not involve walking corpses and flesh-eating scarab beetles. I made a mental note to have words with this fellow should I ever chance across him. Evelyn, however, had left the moping stage behind as soon as the Book of Amun-Ra had landed on her desk, and by the end of the evening our former passion had re-ignited itself. We whiled away the rest of the night in my hotel room, fanning the flames. The next few days took on a semi-regular routine. By day, Evelyn would pore over the two tomes and fill reams of paper in her round, careful hand, occasionally referring to the Table of Canopus and Champollion's Summary of the Hieroglyphic System of the Ancient Egyptians, while I righted fallen bookcases and amused myself by flicking through Lepsius. His Königsbuch der alten Ägypter had little to say on the subject of Nitocris, and nothing at all on Nephren-Ka, while his Totenbuch der Ägypter bore the hallmarks of the deliberate suppression of certain passages. I wondered if the old Prussian scholar had perhaps had some inkling of their true meaning, or indeed, of their efficaciousness. I also noticed, amongst the haphazard stacks, a copy of the Dusseldorf edition of the Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten of Lepsius's early contemporary von Junzt. "It belonged to my father," said Evelyn when I pointed it out, "I've never read it. Some kind of early Theosophical text, isn't it?" "Something like that," I muttered, seating myself by the window and picking my way through the musty pages. Von Junzt, at least, had known a few things. By night, we just made up for lost time. The idyll, naturally, did not last. Her brother Jonathan turned up, with a box of votive figurines from a dig at Thebes, or so he said. I suspected he'd probably let someone else do the digging, and had then acquired them by cheating at cards. Or quite possibly by simply pilfering them. Evelyn pronounced them not wholly worthless, but of little value to the museum. Undeterred, he tried to sell them to me. I suggested a hand of gin to determine their final disposition, whereupon he changed the subject. He still owed me twenty guineas from my last visit. "By the way, old boy," he said, just as he was leaving again, "Some Arab fellow was looking for you. Said he left a message for you. In a book." I glanced round. Useful intelligence indeed in an extensive and still hopelessly disorganised library. I returned to von Junzt, only to find the pages humming with a faint magick. I let the book fall open at random, and read:

The rites of old are not expunged by the priests and their crosses, nor by the blind march of the natural sciences, but pass into new forms better that they may lie hidden. But the oldest and most terrible of the ancient cults are unchanging, for those who command them wield power over death itself, and the rites that have served them in aeons gone by will serve them also in the aeons to come.

It goes without saying that the passage sounded even more portentous in the original German. In the margin, a dry, staccato hand had inscribed: The Black Sphinx, Khan al-Khalili suq. In one hour. As I watched, the faded marginalia rearranged itself into a quite cursively distinct cross-reference to the Hidden Masters mentioned in the Book of Dzyan, and then the magick seeped away, its mission complete. Someone wished to impress and intrigue me, and had at least partially managed the latter. I turned to Evelyn. "It seems I have an appointment in the suq," I told her, "Can you do without me for an hour or so?" "Hmm?" she said, not looking up. I took that as a yes. The Black Sphinx was a run-down bar located in a fetid alleyway just off the Khan al-Khalili suq. It looked like a watering hole for expatriates who were so far down on their luck that even the mangiest street dog could with justification regard them with a certain smug Schadenfreude, as well as for those locals who had broken so many of the tenets of Islam that the consumption of hard liquor could only improve their chances of Paradise. I arrived early so that I could watch it for a while before arriving for this mysterious meeting. The comings and goings of the clientele only confirmed my worst suspicious of the place. In the end, I decided to get it over with, and ducked under the low lintel into a gloom that smelt of sweat and despair. My quarry was easily recognisable, sitting alone at a small table that the other denizens were assiduously avoiding. Clad in a white linen suit and wearing a fez, he was a thin, wiry, almost wizened individual of indeterminate age, long fingers wrapped around an Anubis-headed walking cane. The by now wholly familiar aura of ancient magick that swirled around him made it unlikely that he was a mere Shadow. Abd Reis had definitely gone up in my estimation, and not just for proving damnably hard to kill. However, gentlemen don't have to be polite to murderers, even if they are powerful sorcerers and can travel between worlds. "If I'd known it was you I probably wouldn't have bothered coming," I told him, taking the seat opposite, "But since I'm here, you might as well tell me what you want, so that I can say no and leave again." Abd Reis smiled thinly. His skin looked like parchment, and I had a suspicion that it would probably tear if he smiled any more. "So eager to hurry back to your lady friend the librarian," he said, his voice dry and sibilant, "Does she know that you have enlisted her aid solely in your pursuit of another woman?" This sounded like a preamble to blackmail; blackmail, I was guiltily aware, to which I was not wholly unsusceptible. "Miss Carnahan and I are merely colleagues engaged in research," I said blandly. "Your fellow hotel guests complain that your research keeps them awake," noted the sorcerer snidely. "Knowledge always has a price," I retorted, "Not that it's any of your business. Get to the point." Abd Reis leaned forwards. His eyes, I noted, were blacker than recollection might ordinarily have allowed. "You make my point for me," he said, "Abandon your current line of investigation. Leave the dead to the dead. These matters are of no concern to you, and will bring you only misfortune. The curse of Nitocris is a potent one, and you would do well to fear it." If this was the best he could do, then I was definitely wasting my time here. "You forgot the bit about meddling with powers that men should not wot of," I reminded him. He looked puzzled for a moment, and then waved the comment away. "Will you desist?" he inquired of me, "while you still possess both your life and your sanity?" I smiled. "You've already tried to dissuade me with force," I observed, "And I think the only reason you're talking now is that it failed, and you haven't any other cards left to play. So let me make a counter-proposal. Stay out of my way." "I had hoped for another answer," said Abd Reis with patently insincere regret, "but it was the one I expected of a descendent of Oberon. However, if my hand appears empty, to use your metaphor, it is because my cards have already been played. I think your quest may not go so smoothly without the Book. Or your translator." Wilkes was out of its holster, cocked, and jammed just under his left cheekbone before he had barely uttered the last syllable. Drinkers took a closer interest in their drinks, while the barman continued rearranging the grime on his glassware. "Are you intending to kill me in cold blood?" asked Abd Reis politely, deigning to take some slight interest in what I might have to say on the matter. "I was thinking more in the heat of the moment," I said, noting that his personal wardings were probably bullet-proof. He'd obviously learned his lesson from our encounter outside Giza. "It won't save her," he noted calmly. "Maybe not," I said, pulling the trigger, "but it'll save me time later." I was already out the door as the smoke began to clear, leaving Abd Reis sprawled on the floor. I knew I hadn't killed him, but if I had a choice between making sure of him or making sure of Evelyn's safety, then he would just have to make another appointment. I carved a swathe of overturned stalls, vendors and tourists through the suq, and adjusted the Shadow until a car presented itself. I roared off towards the museum, cursing myself for having fallen into his trap. If anything had happened to Evelyn ... Evelyn was in tears. "How am I ever going to explain this?" she wailed. I hugged her in relief, noting as I did so that both the Amtuat and the Book of Amun-Ra were safe on her desk. Then I saw the legs protruding from beneath the newly collapsed bookcases. "I was trying to restack some of the shelves," she said, "He startled me, and I overbalanced, and they all fell down again, and he was underneath ..." I handed her a handkerchief, and she blew her nose while I peered at the late intruder. "It's all right," I said, "I think he was already dead." I hauled the body out. It was dry and hard, and was leaking what looked and smelt like badly-mixed gunpowder. It was still twitching slightly. Such is the fate that awaits those who try to borrow books without a ticket. Evelyn stared at it, horrified. "Oh, bugger," she finally said, "Not another one." That was when the jackals burst in through the windows. Things got a trifle confused from thereon. Evelyn took refuge on top of her desk, and for want of a better weapon, grabbed the Book of the Dead and waved it at the wild dogs that jumped and snapped around her. I started kicking the animals away from her, shot a couple of them, and then located my sword under a bookcase. The corpse took the opportunity to revive, undismayed and unhindered by its multiple fractures, and started to lurch towards Evelyn while the jackals got in my way. I shouted a warning, and she turned and shrieked as it clutched at her skirts. Then she hit it with the Book. The inertia of the heavy tome unbalanced her as bits of skull and dried resin exploded out from under the impact, and she tumbled off the desk on top of the staggering mummy. I was wading through the jackals to get to her when Jonathan arrived, gurgled somewhat at the sight that greeted him, and then grabbed a chair with which he was soon defending himself with the air of a lion-tamer seeking alternative employment. I reached Evelyn's side to find her kneeling on the mummy's chest. It was scrabbling at her blindly and with mounting signs of ill-temper, due in large part to the fact that she was frantically pressing down on the Amtuat with all her strength, slowly crushing what was left of her desiccated assailant's head. I skewered the mummy in the shoulder joint and levered its right arm off. Its left arm managed to seize Evelyn by the wrist, so I just hacked the hand off. Evelyn threw all her weight onto the Book. There was a final splintering sound, and the mummy's legs beat a frantic tattoo on the side of the desk, and then it lay still. The pack, with half their number dead or injured, was milling about bewilderedly, as if unsure what it was they was supposed to be doing. Jonathan naturally took it upon himself to focus their attention again by thrusting a well-chewed chair in their faces, whereupon they turned on him, snarling. I helped Evelyn to her feet. "Are you all right?" I asked. She nodded uncertainly, then glanced down at her wrist. A detached, wizened hand was still gripping it. "Yuck," she said, shaking it off. The hand landed on the desk, its fingers tapping as if in irritation. "Er, help," said Jonathan, who was being backed into a corner. I sighed, and waded in. The jackals, seemingly now bereft of purpose, quickly scattered, some leaping back out the shattered windows, others dispersing into the museum via the door which Jonathan had thoughtfully left open. Irate cries and screams soon began to echo back through the galleries. Evelyn rushed over to attend to her brother, but he had escaped with only a few minor nips and scratches. The jackals, I deduced, had merely been cannon-fodder, allowing the mummy additional room to manoeuvre as and when required. However, Abd Reis's plan had obviously failed to anticipate Evelyn's domino trick with the bookcases. "What was all that about?" demanded Jonathan, "It's not Him again, is it?" "Not at all," I said, "It's an entirely different high priest. He's after the Amtuat." The Carnahan siblings refused to find this reassuring. "You didn't tell me about this," said Evelyn accusingly. "Of course not," I informed her, "I didn't know until about twenty minutes ago." Further recriminations were postponed by the arrival of a sharp-featured Egyptian in pin-stripes, who seemed a trifle upset. I recognised Dr Kerim, the acting curator of the museum. He surveyed the shambles of the library open-mouthed for a moment, taking in the dozen or so dead or wounded jackals and the partially dismembered mummy. "I should have known," he fumed, "Miss Carnahan, what is going on here? Just as things were starting to return to some semblance of normality, I suddenly find wild animals attacking our visitors. Do you think you might just possibly be able to shed some light on this?" "Um," began Evelyn, throwing me a pleading look. "And what," continued the doctor, pointing at the remains of the embalmed intruder, "have you been doing with Rameses III?" Ah. I'd thought the old fellow had looked somewhat familiar. "Miss Carnahan has just foiled an attempted theft," I said breezily, "although unfortunately the thieves got away. You're lucky to have her on your staff." Dr Kerim made a small choking sound, suggestive of a man of rational habits having his credence and sanity subjected to a unnatural degree of stress. Perhaps Evelyn's tenure was going to require a more vigorous defence. However, it seemed that the good doctor's certitude was being tested less by the idea that Evelyn might be an undervalued boon to his establishment, than by the thing that was making a dry rickety sound behind me. I turned. Rameses III had lumbered to his feet again. He pointed his remaining stump at me. "Ygh ighenk ogher, Orklayg," he said in something barely recognisable as Abd Reis's voice, the words mangled by a pulverised face and dislocated jaw. "I'm disappointed," I told him, "Is this the best you can do?" The mummy shook his head, his flapping mandibles twitching in what might have been an attempt at a grin. "Ngok ak awaw," he said. There was a surge of sorcery, and he suddenly exploded into flames. Little rivulets of fire began radiating out from his feet, and the nearest book case ignited in sympathy. "The books!" shrieked Evelyn, grabbing the pail of sand that passed for the library's fire-fighting equipment, and flinging the contents as hard as she could at the late pharaoh. Evelyn's strengths as a scholar and an explorer are numerous, albeit criminally unrecognised by her contemporaries. However, eye-hand co-ordination is not one of them. A shower of sand dowsed Dr Kerim, leaving him blinded and choking. Judging by the small encrusted lumps that remained clinging to his person, the sand bucket had also at one stage doubled as a litter tray for Evelyn's cat. The library continued to burn as the mummy turned in a slow arc, scrolls and tomes combusting as the sorcerous flames raced around the room. Jonathan ran for the door, which disobligingly slammed shut in his face. "Help!" he yelled, wrestling with a treacherous doorknob, "Help!" A small whirlwind began to develop around the pyromaniacal cadaver, whipping up scattered papers and fanning the flames. I could see where this was heading - an indoor tempest of wind and fire from which nothing was intended to emerge unbroken or unsinged. With the door out of commission, the only means of escape were the three broken windows, two of which were blocked by burning book cases. And between ourselves and the third stood the gesticulating pillar of flame that was Rameses III. I waded into the growing storm, dodging burning books and smoking jackals as a hot wind spun them towards me. The mummy's stump emitted a burst of flames in my direction, singeing my hair. Then I ran him through the chest. Rameses took a step forwards, trying to walk down the length of the blade to engulf me in a fiery one-armed embrace, so I twisted it to catch between his ribs, halting his progress and providing me with the leverage to swing him round and into the body of the whirlwind. Once he'd gained the necessary impetus in the desired direction, I jerked my sword free, and watched as he trailed a flaming parabola across the room and out the window. There was a crunch from outside, and almost immediately the magick began to fade, and the storm fell apart. The door jerked open under Jonathan's frenzied tugging, causing him to stagger backwards into the curator. Both of them went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The library however was still burning, fueled now by paper and papyrus alone, and I turned to behold Evelyn trying to beat out the flames with her divested cardigan. Priceless manuscripts and irreplaceable relics were being lost, a treasury of knowledge devoured, so I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I went for a walk. A brief once around the nearest gallery sufficed. Fire-fighting measures were bound to kick in sooner or later; I was interested primarily in influencing the speed with which they did so. As I arrived back, a dozen or so museum attendants were converging on the library bearing slightly more pristine buckets of sand, while in the distance, the clanging of a fire engine was growing louder by the second. "Save the books!" Evelyn was shouting, so I organised the attendants into two chains, one passing fire buckets in, the other passing books and scrolls out. I took a brief peek out the window to see how Rameses was doing. Abd Reis was evidently trying to regain control of the focus for his magickal assault, because the mummy, now little more than a collection of charred bones held together by its distant master's will, was clambering to its feet again. Then a British army fire truck ran it over, and that was that. Back inside, the tide was slowly turning to the fire's disadvantage. The room however was now full of smoke, making it difficult for people to see what they were doing. Dr Kerim groped his way past me, coughing and spluttering, to stick his head out the window. I wandered around the room a couple of times, rescuing books that were in imminent danger of combustion, whilst trying to bring the Pattern to bear on the situation again. Unfortunately, making it probable that paper won't burn is a little tricky without shifting oneself into a Shadow with a completely different set of physical and chemical laws, but at least I seemed to have diminished the remaining conflagration somewhat, and a gentle breeze was sucking the smoke out through the windows. I went over to Evelyn, who was currently a walking pile of scrolls, resembling nothing so much as one of those hieroglyphs with a little pair of legs protruding from beneath. "Are you all right?" I asked, relieving her of some of her burden. She just looked at me blankly, the tracks of tears streaking her smoke-smudged features. "My books," she mumbled in a dazed fashion. I could see that it was going to take more than dinner to make up for this. Behind us, Dr Kerim had recovered sufficiently to start being unhelpful again. "This is the final straw," he declared, raising an admonishing finger, "Miss Carnahan, you are no longer ..." At this point a jet of water arced in through the window and hit him in the back of the head, so we were spared the rest. The final casualty list consisted of two hundred and seventy four books, forty one of which were unique, eighty six scrolls, all but twelve of them unique, ten boxes of manuscripts, the acting curator's pride, and Evelyn's tenure. "I'm sure I could persuade him to change his mind," I said. "I think you've done enough damage already," she replied bitterly, not looking at me. The Carnahans and I were sitting on the steps of the museum, watching the sun setting over the pyramids. I sighed. "You've still got the Book of Amun-Ra," I pointed out. She was sticking to it like a limpet. "Damien's right, old mum," said Jonathan cheerily, "Once we find a buyer for it, neither of us will need to work for anyone ever again." Coming from a man who had never done an honest day's work in his life, this was not calculated to go down well. "I'm not selling it," growled Evelyn, before subsiding once again into a sullen silence. "Oh," said Jonathan. He gave me a "Talk to her, Damien" look. "You're quite right," I told her, "That's your career you're holding. Universities and museums will be trampling over each other to offer you fellowships and curatorships because of it. They won't be able to ignore you any longer." I'd decided this much on the way out, with a rider to the effect that it was highly unlikely that the scapegoat-seeking Dr Kerim would be confirmed in his post when the museum trustees next met. Jonathan snorted in disgust, but Evelyn finally looked up and managed a small rueful smile. "And how long do you think I'll be able to hold onto any job they offer me?" she lamented, "I mean, trouble just seems to follow me about." "Firstly, they'll be terrified of losing you to their rivals," I replied confidently, "and secondly, I shall be departing Cairo as of today." "Oh, well, toodle-oo, old boy," said Jonathan quickly, shaking my hand before I changed my mind. Evelyn looked alarmed and not a little upset again. "You can't do this to me," she protested, "Not with this other sorcerer running about. What if he comes after me again?" I shook my head. "He's only interested in me and the Amtuat," I explained, "And these." I patted my pocket where the slightly crisped transcriptions now resided. They were incomplete, but they would have to do. "So once I'm gone, you'll be perfectly safe." Mentally I crossed my fingers. Abd Reis would surely be too busy trying to get to the mummy case again before I did. Lingering for any petty revenge would from his point of view be counter-productive. I hoped. But if I stayed, he would assume that it was only because I still needed her expertise, and I wasn't prepared to subject her to that kind of risk. So I would have to do the decent thing and leave. Evelyn still didn't seem happy. "You don't have to go," she said in a small voice, "But then I suppose you've got what you wanted ..." Oh dear. I really didn't want to part like this, but fortunately I was saved by the simultaneous arrival of a coterie of academic-looking fellows converging on our group from a variety of directions. "Miss Carnahan? Miss Evelyn Carnahan? I'm from the Metropolitan Museum of New York ..." "Excuse me, my dear fellow ... Miss Carnahan, I represent the Fitzwilliam ... Oof!" "Whoops! Miss Carnahan, the Faculty of Archaeology at Oxford is very keen ... Urk!" "As I was saying, my dear, the Fitzwilliam Museum ..." "Do you gentlemen mind? Miss Carnahan, is there anywhere a little more private where we could discuss your recent application to the British Museum ...?" Evelyn was starting to look a little overwhelmed. I don't think she was used to men fighting over her. "What do I do?" she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Tell them to form a queue," I suggested, "You'll be fine. Goodbye, Evelyn." I kissed her for as long as the growing clamour allowed, then I tucked the Book of the Dead under my arm, stepped over the scuffle that had developed between the Oxford and Cambridge men, and left.

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