Chapter 16
Alistair stood on the sidewalk across from the burning shop, along with a growing crowd of onlookers. Sam had wanted to come with him, but Alistair had talked him into getting some sleep. There was nothing he could do right now, and if Sullivan needed him, he could call the house easily enough.
As for himself, he wanted to get a closer look. The florist shop had been Sullivan’s pride and joy—and also the place where he conducted many of his less-legal business meetings above the store.
Now it burned with a ferocity that suggested someone had destroyed all the fire-suppressant hexes before setting off the bomb.
Glass covered the street, along with scattered petals and smoldering ribbons.
Firefighters sprayed water onto the blaze, but the roof had already fallen in, and the place was a total loss.
At least the hexes on the adjoining buildings had kept them from going up, too.
Police milled around, but there wasn’t much for them to do besides make sure the crowd didn’t interfere with the firefighters.
Sullivan was nowhere to be seen, but Eddie Bellinowski was there along with some other men, his eyes narrow with anger as he watched, leaning on his car.
One of the coppers came up to talk with him for a few minutes.
Bellinowski nodded and shook his hand, no doubt slipping him some money in the process.
Once the copper was gone, Alistair strolled across the street to where Bellinowski lurked. “Any suspects?” he asked.
Bellinowski grunted. “Nobody will own up to seeing anything…but with that damn look-away hex out there, that’s no surprise. Doesn’t matter—we all know who did it.”
Alistair nodded. “I guess we do at that.”
* * *
Turner called Sam early the next morning with orders for the hexworks to continue to put out as many counterhexes to the look-away as possible, but also have the remaining hexmen and women focus on hexes for pain, keeping wounds free from infection and guns from jamming, and all the other things Sullivan would need to go to war.
Alistair had been uneasy when he came home in the early hours, smelling faintly of smoke. He hadn’t said much, other than the florist shop was a complete loss, along with anything in it, but Sam could imagine his concern.
The Pride was in Sullivan’s territory, was beholden to him for liquor once their current supply ran out. All of them turned into big cats—dangerous fighters—and Sullivan wasn’t likely to just let them stay on the sidelines.
Things were spiraling out of control, events moving faster and faster, and he didn’t know how to apply the brakes.
He passed Sullivan’s orders along when he arrived at the hexworks, then went to the lab and found Glenda already there. She barely looked up when he entered, just said, “I heard about the bombing last night. It was too late to make the morning papers, but everyone’s talking about it.”
It was only the two of them in the lab now. He hadn’t come any closer to picking a replacement for Luke last night. With the hexworks supporting Sullivan’s war with Fabiano, it wouldn’t make sense to pull someone away from their current assignment anyway.
“Then you know why we’re switching focus for today.” He opened the cabinet containing the inks and the raw materials for making more. “We’re going to be copying the look-away hexes, since they’re the most complicated and easiest to mess up. That will take some pressure off the scriptoriums.”
“The hex Luke used.” Glenda stared unseeing at the supplies he put in front of her.
“Yeah.” Sam sat down heavily. “Let’s just…just try to get some copying done. I’ll charge them so they’re ready to go.”
Ordinarily, Sam found it easy to get lost in such work, transcribing every elegant line, feeling the rightness of the shape as the hex took form, going from ink and paper to a container for magic.
Today, his thoughts wandered, and he had to throw away three hexes that he didn’t get quite right.
Glenda was no more focused than he, also making unaccustomed errors, but by the end of the day they had a neat pile of charged hexes.
As Glenda left for the day, Sam handed over the hexes to Paladino. He dithered between gathering his coat and hat and going home to rest his hands, or staying to get more hexes finished.
A knock on the door made him jump. One of the guards stood there, accompanied by Doc.
Doc’s expression was bright with excitement as he hurried inside.
“I think I found the answer in one of the papyri!” he exclaimed, carefully setting a briefcase on the table, nudging aside some of the inks to do so.
“I got permission to remove it from where the rest of the tomb’s items are being held, because I want to match some symbols to the Aten Disc, but I’m certain I’m right. ”
Sam wished he could share Doc’s enthusiasm. “I’m sorry, I should have had someone get in touch with you and saved you the trip. Right now, we’re focused on, um, other things.”
Doc shook his head. “This won’t take long.” He glanced up and met Sam’s eyes, his gaze challenging. “Don’t you want to know?”
Sam wavered. He did want to know, the thrill of discovery whispering through the fog that had enveloped him since Luke’s betrayal.
If it wouldn’t take long… “Okay,” he said, and waved away the guard at the door. “Let me get the disc and box, and you can tell me what you’ve found.”
When he returned to the main room, Doc had opened the briefcase to reveal a fragile-looking sheet of papyrus paper, covered in hieroglyphs and symbols.
“Before and after the Amarna Period,” Doc said as he peered at the box first, “the Egyptians had a fairly consistent idea of what the afterlife would be like. The souls of the dead traveled to Duat—the underworld. There was a whole journey, outlined in The Book of the Dead, which included various perils during which the gods would aid the sojourner. Eventually, the soul was brought before Osiris, the lord of death and rebirth. Virtuous souls would get their just reward, while the evil would be punished. Are you following me so far?”
“It seems straightforward enough,” Sam said.
“I’m about to make it more complicated. The Egyptians believed the soul was made up of multiple parts: the shadow, the intellect, the personality, the vital essence, and so on.
The personality, or ba, would use its tomb to travel back and forth between the land of the living and the dead.
Now, even after death, it was thought the soul could starve, so offerings were left at the tomb, usually by relatives, to sustain the deceased.
” He retrieved a magnifying glass and squinted at one of the images on the inside lid of the disc’s box.
“Of course, pharaohs had entire mortuary complexes dedicated to keeping themselves fed and happy after death.”
“People couldn’t possibly feed all their dead ancestors, could they?” Sam asked, trying to imagine the scale that would reach after four or five generations.
“No, as time passed, even the tombs of the wealthy fell into disrepair and were covered over by sand. I imagine the process was much quicker for common folk.” Doc glanced up at him. “Now, what do you remember me saying about Akhenaten?”
He felt like he was back in school, being called on by the teacher. At least he knew the answer this time. “He got rid of all the other gods, except for Aten. And made himself the focus of religion, as he and his family were the sole conduit between Aten and everyone else.”
“Exactly.” Doc smiled, though since he was looking at the disc now, Sam wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or the symbols. “There’s no more Osiris. No more Duat, even. There is only this world, ruled over by Aten, and hence by the pharaoh. So what happens to the dead now?”
“I…don’t know?”
Doc straightened. “Akhenaten proclaimed the souls of the dead must leave their tomb and journey to the temple of Aten in Amarna, to partake of offerings every sunrise, while he conducted the morning rituals along with his family. The gods no longer judged the dead—he did, and if he felt any were insufficiently loyal to him, they would be forbidden from partaking of the offerings at the temple. They’d starve alone in their tombs. ”
“That’s…grim,” Sam said. “Though I guess it’s no more grim than one of the popes excommunicating someone and damning them to hell forever.” He let go of the thought. “So what does that have to do with the disc?”
“As I said before, Akhenaten died, though we don’t know how or why.
” Doc held the disc up in his hands, the gold gleaming in the hexlights.
“Nefertiti ascended the throne as Neferneferuaten. She’d been at his side from the beginning, perhaps even helped him craft his new religion of Atenism.
The art from her tomb and from Tutankhamun’s shows her and Akhenaten together, an affectionate couple with their daughters arrayed around them. ”
He paused, then added wryly, “She wasn’t his only wife, just his most prominent.
Tutankhamun wasn’t her son; she bore only daughters.
Still, judging by the way they were depicted, she and her husband truly loved one another.
And now he was dead, and she was pharaoh… and the sole arbiter of the afterlife.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t follow you.”
“Have you ever lost anyone, Sam?”
Jake, dying after the accident with the cart. Mom, dying in the hospital.
Once a failure, always a failure.
“Yes.”
“What would you do to get them back? What lengths would you go to, if you were an all-powerful pharaoh, a goddess upon the earth, the conduit for all life and all magic in the world?”
Sam’s mouth went dry. This was starting to remind him uncomfortably of Vic, deciding who got to live, and who died so they could. “But she wasn’t. A goddess, that is. Not really.”
“Of course not. But maybe she started to believe her own propaganda.” Doc stared down at the disc in his hands.
“She created, or perhaps ordered created, a grand hex, meant to reunite all the parts of her husband, body and soul. To do so in this life, since there was no afterworld inhabited only by spirits and gods, where they might someday be together once more. A great ritual, held in the light of the rising sun…I can’t imagine how many familiars it would have taken to power such a thing. ”
Sam felt strangely numb. “Did it…did it work?”
To his surprise, Doc laughed. “Maybe you’ve a touch of the heretic in you as well, eh? Believing in vital essences and the like.”
“Heh.” Sam tried to match his mirth, but his heart was beating too fast. “So it failed?”
“From what I’ve seen—and it will take years to pour through everything from her tomb, so don’t take this as definitive—she never got the opportunity.
Her mummy is still secure in its sarcophagus, so I can’t guess how she died, but Amarna faded with her.
Tutankhamun left the city to the sands, and the gods returned to their temples, the dead to offerings made at their tombs. ”
“And King Tut had less of a motive to resurrect Akhenaten.”
“Considering he’d be co-pharaoh at best in that situation, I’d say so.
” Doc gently placed the disc back in its box.
“At any rate, now that you know what it’s for, you might have a better time figuring out how the hex was meant to work.
Though it will be a purely academic exercise, since the premise it’s based on is nonsense. ”
“Yeah,” Sam said as Doc shut the box, hiding away the gleaming disc. “Nonsense.”