The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (165 page)

“Matakara is Hatshepsut's other name. Well, one of the many. You didn't know?”

“Of course I didn't know! Why should I? And why didn't you
tell
me? My goodness, she really is
very
old!”

Lord Maccon tilted his handsome head in that annoying way of his that was meant to be coy. “I dinna think it was of particular import.”

“Oh,
dinna
you? Wonderful. And now, do you think it might be important
now
?” Alexia thought even harder, difficult to do with the sense of repulsion pressing in against her brain. She splashed her head back down into the river, immediately feeling better. She resurfaced, wondering at the no-doubt-horrible state of her hair, pleased that someone at least had thought to remove her hat and parasol before her dunking. “But, Conall, didn't you once tell me that Ancient Egypt was ruled by werewolves?”

“Only inasmuch as Ancient Rome was ruled by vampires. There were still vampires around Egypt, even then. Hatshepsut was quite an upset. Made some people very angry. Tuthmosis, of course, put everything to rights again. He was one of
ours
.”

“It makes no sense. Why would Matakara's temple be the epicenter of the God-Breaker Plague? Why would a vampire be involved in such a thing? Her kind, too, would be exterminated.”

Genevieve Lefoux said, “May I suggest we look to the scientific evidence, and the reality of the situation first, and speculate afterward?”

“I take it you haven't yet explored the temple?” Alexia was surprised.

“I only recently arrived here myself. We were mooring when your balloon touched down. How did you, by the way, manage to convince a Drifter to carry you?”

“I am supposed to right my father's wrong,” replied Alexia cryptically, twisting up her face in disdain.

“Goodness, which of the many?” the inventor wanted to know. “Anyway, the temple is completely unexcavated, so it is still filled with sand. It would take years to dig it out. I wouldn't know where to start.”

Alexia splashed at her. “My dear Genevieve, I don't see that our answers are going to lie inside the temple.”

“No?”

“No. Remember what we have found out, that preternatural touch requires air—preferably dry air—to work? Don't you think dead preternaturals might function the same way?”

“Dead preternaturals? Is that our source?”

Alexia only pursed her lips.

“How long have you known that might be a possibility?”

“Since Scotland.”

“The artifact of humanization was a mummy?”

“Of a preternatural, yes.”

“But why didn't you
tell
me?”

Alexia gave her sometime friend a very funny look.

Madame Lefoux clearly understood. Alexia could not reveal such a dangerous scientific fact to a member of the OBO. “You think we should look for the epicenter outside the temple?”

“Indeed I do.”

“Can you manage it?”

Alexia frowned. “I can manage anything if we get some answers at the end of it.”

Thinking of the fact that she had recently fainted, Conall said, “We'll bring water along and keep your dress as damp as possible. That might help.”

“Oh.” Alexia felt guilty for maligning her husband's actions in her head. “Is that why you chucked me into the Nile fully clothed?”

Lord Maccon made a funny face. “Of course, dear.”

They paddled to shore and climbed out onto the muddy bank. The moment she was free of the river, Alexia began to feel that awful sense of repulsion against her skin.

“I think I may have to sleep in the river tonight,” she said to no one in particular.

“You've done stranger things, I suppose,” was her husband's reply.

Early the next morning, before the heat of the sun, Lady Maccon, Lord Maccon, and Madame Lefoux climbed up the hill above Hatshepsut's temple—or squelched up in
Alexia's case. She was all pruned from a night spent in the river, a kind of hammock having been made to support her while she slept. It had not been very restful at all, and she was peevish and annoyed as a result. A trail of Egyptians followed in their wake, each carrying a large urn or canteen of river water. At Alexia's signal, one would step forward and splash her with it, rather too enthusiastically and much to Prudence's amusement.

“Mama, wet!”

“Yes, darling.” Alexia could almost hear her daughter's adult commentary behind the baby phrases:
Sooner you than me, Mother
.

The sand-covered hill they scaled formed the back part of the roof of the temple, where it had been carved into the side of a cliff. Alexia took the lead, despite her damp dress hindering her stride, her parasol raised against the vicious sun. Then came Genevieve, and then Conall and Prudence. They left Zayed and family back at camp.

It was there, on the top of that hill, they began to see the bodies. Or to be more precise, the mummies. Or to be even more precise, it was where Lord Maccon accidentally stepped on a long-dead preternatural.

It made a sad, dry, cracking noise and let out a little puff of brown dust.

“Conall, do be careful! Inhale one of those and you could be mortal forever! Or something equally nasty.”

“Yes, dear.” The earl wrinkled his nose and shook off his boot.

Madame Lefoux held up a hand and they all stopped walking and simply looked. They could see down the sloping back side of the hill the eight long pathways out into the desert.

“Ghost trails,” said Alexia, repeating Zayed.

“I hardly think so. Quite the opposite.” Madame Lefoux was crouched down examining one of the bodies.

They were all mummies, or at least they looked to be mummies. As they followed along one of the trails down the hill, they eventually came across unwrapped bodies, baked and charred into a mummylike state by the dry desert sun. A thin coating of sand covered most of them, but once brushed aside, it became clear that it was these bodies that formed the octopus's tentacles. Hundreds of mummies, stretching out into the desert, spaced farther and farther apart. Maximizing the expansion, perhaps? Each one was marked by a headstone, some made of carved rock or wood. They bore no legend or the names of the dead. They were all carved with the same shape—or to be precise, two shapes, an ankh, broken.

Alexia looked out over the tendrils extending off into the sands, disappearing from sight. “My people.”

Madame Lefoux stood up from where she had crouched down to examine yet another mummy. “Preternaturals, all of them?”

“That would do it.”

“Do what, exactly?” The Frenchwoman goaded her into saying it out loud.

“Cause the plague. Dry desert air combined with hundreds of dead preternaturals, basically—oh, I don't know how to put it properly—
outgassing
.”

“That's a lot of dead preternaturals,” said her husband.

“Collected from all around the world for hundreds and hundreds of years, I suppose. There aren't that many of us to start with. Could also be that originally they were all
piled up and that forty years ago
someone
decided to start spreading them out.”

Lord Maccon glanced over at Genevieve. “That would take quite an operation.”

Alexia added, “Two operations: one to get it started originally and another to start it up again forty years ago.”

Madame Lefoux looked back at them, her dark head twisting between the two and her green eyes grave. “It isn't me! This is the first I've heard of it, I promise you!”

“Yes,” agreed Alexia, “but it is the kind of thing that might require a secret society. A massive underground secret society, of scientists, perhaps, who might not get so squeamish as others about handling the dead and collecting them from all over the world.”

“You think the OBO is doing this!” Madame Lefoux rocked back on her heels, genuinely surprised by the idea.

“It is an
octopus
.” Alexia was having none of that kind of silliness.

“No, you mistake me. The Order did spawn the Hippocras Club. I read the reports. I know we are capable of monstrous things. I simply don't believe this is us. To have such knowledge, to know what the body of a dead preternatural could do and not tell any other members? It is all very well to have a secret society of geniuses, but to keep such information secret from the members defeats the purpose. It's ridiculous. Think of the weapons I could have devised against vampires and werewolves had I known this. No, not the Order. It must be some other operation. The Templars, perhaps. They certainly have the infrastructure and the inclination.”

Alexia frowned. “Don't you think the Templars might
have done more with such knowledge? Might have developed weapons, as you say, from the technology. Or more likely, have collected the bodies in Italy to protect the homeland there. Move the God-Breaker Plague rather than expand it.”

Conall Maccon joined the fray. “You know what I think?”

Both ladies turned to look at him, surprised that he was still there. Alexia's husband had their daughter propped on his hip. He was looking scruffy and hot. Prudence was inordinately quiet and somber, faced with all the bodies. She ought to have screamed and cried with fear, like any ordinary child, but instead she had merely looked at them, muttered, “Mama” in a very humble way, and buried her face in her father's neck.

“What do you think, oh, werewolf one?” asked Alexia.

It was hard to make out her husband's expression behind all that beard. “I think Matakara started it all those thousands of years ago. I think she started it to get rid of the werewolves and it got out of hand. She might even have done it at Alexander's behest. After all, when the Greeks came to Egypt and took over, they were very antisupernatural. She might have struck up a deal. A deal that left her the lone vampire in Alexandria and everyone else gone.”

“It's as good a theory as any,” agreed his wife.

“And then what?” Madame Lefoux wanted to know.

“Someone figured out what she did. Someone who wanted to expand it.”

Alexia could guess that one. “My father.”

Madame Lefoux picked up the story. “Of course. Alessandro Tarabotti had the contacts. The OBO tried to
recruit him after he broke with the Templars. There were a number of people throughout Europe, including my father, who he might have turned to such a cause as this. Can you imagine? The promise of mass supernatural extermination? Start up a worldwide preternatural body-collecting scheme.”

“How macabre.” Alexia did not approve of this stain on the family name. “Why does my father always have to be so difficult? He's dead after all. Couldn't he have left it at that?”

“Well, you must have gotten the inclination for trouble from someone,” ruminated her husband.

“Oh, thank you, darling. Very sweet.” Alexia felt the repulsion building up, pressing against her skin. The sun had risen and it was already doing its best to see her dry and suffering. She turned to one of the Egyptians. “Splash, please.”

He made a gesture down at the nearby mummy.

“Oh, yes, I suppose water would damage it.” She moved away from the bodies, and the man doused her thoroughly.

“Lady,” he said, “we are running out of water.”

“Oh, dear. Well, I suppose that means I, at least, had better head back.” She looked pointedly at her husband and the French inventor. “Are you coming? I don't think there is much more to learn here.” Another thought occurred to her. “Should we stop it?”

Lord Maccon and the inventor looked at her, not quite understanding.

“End the plague, I mean to say. We could try. I'm not certain how. My parasol's acid worked on the mummy in Scotland, but I've nowhere near enough for all these.
Water might work, dissolve some of the mummies. It's the dry air that keeps them preserved. Just think, we might destroy the God-Breaker Plague right here and now.”

Madame Lefoux looked conflicted. “But the loss of all the mummies. The science, I don't…” She trailed off.

Alexia said, with a tilt to her head, “Do I need to remind you that you are indentured to the Woolsey Hive? You must consider the best interests of your queen.”

The Frenchwoman grimaced.

Lord Maccon interjected. “I think we should wait, Alexia. It is enough to know.”

His wife was suspicious. “Why?”

“The plague has its uses.”

“But to allow it to expand?”

“I didn't say
that
was a good idea. It might be a moot point anyway. Your father might not have known about the disruption of water. Will the plague even be able to cross the Mediterranean?”

“But if we can visit this location and discover the truth, so can others.”

The earl was not about to give quarter. “It's important to have a part of the world that is free of supernaturals.”

“Why is that?” Alexia was even more suspicious. It wasn't like her husband to argue against destructive behavior. She felt the repulsion building against her skin and decided it was an argument they might continue back at camp, preferably in the Nile. “We can discuss it later. Shall we?”

Madame Lefoux looked reluctant. “I should like to take a few samples, to see what…” She trailed off again, her eye caught by something behind them, up the hill above the temple.

A man was standing there, waving at them madly.

“Laydeeee,” the man called out, “
they
are coming!”

“Is that Zayed? What is he…? Oh my goodness gracious!” Alexia turned to look in the direction Zayed pointed, and there across the desert, running low and fast, a
thing
was moving toward them. It was a thing straight out of one of Madame Lefoux's sketches. In principle it resembled an enormous snail, its eye stalks belching gouts of flame into the air. It couldn't possibly operate on steam power, for where would one get the water in the desert? It must have multiple wheels, like those on farming equipment, under its shell. It was made of brass and glinted in the sun.