Chapter Text
The sun rises in Egypt with the weight of its years dragging it down. Slow and sluggish the light spills over the land like honey, seeping in the cracks of clay houses and towering limestone monuments to dynasties long dead. Across the desert sands, it creeps in corners and valleys and places long forgotten.
Hamunaptra breathes in the light of dawn, and waits.
Joe, once the Adhan has finished its echoing call and he's caught up completely with the dawn, takes an extra moment to kneel on his prayer mat and ready himself for the day.
It's painful in many ways to be so close to what he wants, close enough to brush his hands across the face of his fascination, but be held back by circumstances entirely out of his control. When he leaves the roof of his apartment building he'll walk through streets that feel older than time, and he'll walk into a world that claims to be the height of modernity which will spit in his face for daring to try and join it.
It's a little easier to bear when he trips over Booker in a heap on his front stoop, but not by much.
'Are you brewing your own whisky again?' he asks as he scoops Booker up by his underarms, trying not to inhale the potent smell of alcohol wafting off of him. 'You'll go blind if you keep going with that.'
'Not today,' Booker grumbles, finding his feet reluctantly. 'Won a bottle of Carnahan '89 from a soldier with a worse poker face than yours last night. My eyesight is safe another day.'
'I don't play poker,' says Joe once he's sure Booker can stand unaided. Booker's answering smirk is cognizant enough that he feels better about handing over his keys. 'Take a bath and get it together Booker, I'll need you later today.'
'More filling?' Booker asks, keeping pity very far from his voice and face. Joe hears the echo of it anyway.
'Plenty of heavy lifting for you.'
Booker nods and takes Joe's proffered keys with uncharacteristic reluctance.
'I have something for you,' Booker says slowly. Joe fights the urge to roll his eyes.
'Not today, 'Bastien,' Joe sighs. 'I'm on thin ice enough with the curator, he won't be pleased with me if I bring another bit of tat with no providence to his desk.'
'Not like that,' says Booker. His voice is so serious, he sounds almost sober. 'It was found in Thebes. It's… not for the curator's eyes. Not right now, at least.'
It's getting late, but something about the set to Booker's shoulders and mouth stops Joe from hurrying him along.
Spotting his chance, brief as it is, Booker digs in the inside pocket of his threadbare greatcoat.
Joe's learned to expect almost anything from that pocket, except anything of actual importance. He's been handed all manner of fakes and useless trinkets of antiquity.
It's a surprise then when Booker pulls a heavy faceted metal box from his pocket, covered in dense hieroglyphics that even at a distance Joe itches to translate.
Booker hesitates before he holds it out, which Joe notices, but he forgets almost as soon as he gets a clear look at the top of the box.
Those are serious prayers.
'I think it's something, Joe,' Booker says quietly, seriously. Joe takes the box with a steady hand that wants to shake.
The box is heavy and hexagonal. Under his fingers, he can feel a seam all the way around the middle of it horizontally, and he adjusts his grip until his fingers tuck into natural (wear, or possibly carved? he'd have to look closer to be sure) grooves.
There are seams in the top face, too. Dreamily, lost in the possible translations of the carvings on the immediate face, Joe grips the edges of the top half of the box and twists. It shifts, but not fully.
He twists the other way.
Easy as if it had been built only yesterday, the box springs open, five sides unpeeling from the centre in a curious configuration of angles and edges. A puzzle box, perhaps? Are there more secrets?
In the middle of the box though, is a folded square of papyrus. It's brittle and browned, but whole.
'I think it's something,' Booker says again. Joe barely hears him. He's too busy carefully unfolding the papyrus one-handed. It would be easier with both, but he's loathed to put down the puzzle box.
A map of the upper kingdom. He couldn't possibly date the providence of it without serious research, but the glaringly obvious cartouche in the corner helps.
'I'm right, aren't I?' Booker whispers, leaning closer. 'You recognise the seal.'
'Of course I do,' Joe mutters, scrutinising the hieratic scribbled in the corners of the map. 'Where did you say you got this?'
'It was found in Thebes.'
Joe gives him a sharp look. Booker has the decency to look embarrassed.
'If it really is something, I'll tell you. If it's not, it's not worth saying.'
'Is anyone going to come looking for this?' Joe asks, folding the map away again. 'Anyone I should want to avoid?’
‘Not today at least. I doubt tomorrow, either.’
It’s not really an answer, but it’s better than he usually gets out of Booker.
‘Let me look into it,’ Joe says quietly, tucking the puzzle box away into the folds of his coat. ‘If I find an answer for you, it’ll be later tonight.’
‘You know it though, don’t you?’ Booker pushes, crowding closer in the doorway of Joe’s building. The street around them is narrow but quiet. There are few around to hear them, but the day is starting. Booker grips Joe’s arm above the elbow and Joe resists the childish urge to push his face away to escape his breath. ‘You can feel it, can’t you? It’s—’
‘Enough,’ says Joe, gently as he’s able. He shakes his arm carefully and Booker lets go without a fuss. ‘Not here. Take a bath, 'Bastien. Tidy yourself up. We’ll talk later. The usual time, the usual place, yes?’
Booker nods, but he’s slow to step back.
‘Later, then.’
Cairo’s Lesser Museum of Antiquities lacks many things: prestige, patronage, space, but has in abundance a certain thing Joe requires. Namely: a willingness to hire him in an even tangentially-archaeological capacity. Even if he doesn’t get to use precisely the skills he wishes he could, at least he gets to use any of his skills at all.
‘Good morning, Yusuf.’
Maryam is the only member of staff whose refusal to call him Joe he accepts. It helps that she’s roughly the age his mother would have been and that she brings him tea every hour or so with a gentle tug on his beard and a kind word along with it. From her, Joe can stand to hear his full name once in a while.
‘Good morning, amma.’
Maryam lifts her cheek to accept a kiss as Joe hands her his coat and hat, and pats him on the cheek in return.
‘Is he in yet?’ Joe asks in as low a voice as he can manage while still being loud enough for Maryam to hear. She gives him a fond look and shakes her head, turning away to her samovar.
‘You’ve never yet made it in after him, Yusuf,’ she says, a laugh hidden in her warm voice. ‘You know he won’t be in for hours yet.’
‘I live in hope.’
‘A respectable man rises with the dawn,’ Maryam says, a devastating criticism from a woman so polite.
The curator is never in attendance prior to noon. Once, to general shock and confusion, he arrived at eleven. It transpired however that he had left his cigarette box in his office the night prior, and was only present to collect it.
If Joe were the curator, he would arrive first in the morning and leave last in the evening.
As it stands, Joe is an assistant librarian, and still manages both those things.
‘In the archives again today?’ Maryam asks as she hands him a steaming cup of tea in a neat silver cup.
The curator gets English tea in delicate porcelain. Of all the things he has that Joe envies, that isn’t one of them. Maryam’s blend is delicious, and made all the better by her cherished and carefully polished tea set. The curator’s bone-white china reminds Joe of nothing more than the head of a crumbled canopic jar.
‘Always,’ Joe says with a sigh, and Maryam waves him on to start his day with a commiserating smile.
The archives are dark, and ill-kept despite Joe’s best efforts. The thick limestone walls keep the dust and damp out, but little can be done about how dry and unfit the space is. Much could be done about how isolated and uninspiring the space is, but Joe’s suggestions have been at best unheeded, and at worst openly derided.
Every day, he wastes his Oxford education filing and maintaining crumbling records of little to no archaeological value, and maintaining stacks of books slipping more and more out of date with every moment that passes. The only researchers who seek the collection at the Lesser Museum of Antiquities now are those still alive to remember having written some of the books within it.
It’s not at all that Joe begrudges being a librarian. Quite the contrary, he feels it’s a noble profession.
It’s just not what he wants.
'Joseph,' Mason, the other assistant librarian, is ever formal and ever reliable. Joe doesn't bother looking up from the maps he's cataloguing. 'Joseph, there's been a delivery—'
'The day labourers arrive at noon, Mason,' Joe says to the papyrus inches below his nose. There's damage to one corner that looks suspiciously like spilt tea. He'll have to have a word with the students again. 'They'll assist you when they get here.'
'Joseph,' continues Mason, ever one to ignore what doesn't fit his worldview. 'I need you to—'
'I'll let the day labourers know you're looking for them, Mason,' Joe says, calm as the Nile at dawn. 'Whatever's been delivered can wait till then.'
At least three times a week they have exactly this conversation. Whatever petty joy Mason gets from trying to order Joe about, Joe's not about to let him have it.
'A man of your stature would be far more useful in this moment, Joseph,' drawls Mason in the thick, nasal tones of a certain breed of Englishman. 'I'm sure whatever you're doing can wait until you've assisted me.'
'Were you promoted when I wasn't looking?' Joe asks distractedly, fumbling in his desk drawer for a brush and his little pot of solvent. 'Am I addressing Head Librarian Alexander Mason?'
There's a long silence. Long enough that Joe finally looks up at his office door.
Mason's mouth is curled in a sneer. Joe smiles back at him.
'I thought not,' he says, leaning back in his chair. 'That being the case then, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for someone with whom you do have authority.'
'Men like you should learn their places,’ Mason hisses, looming as best he can in the doorway. Joe watches him and settles back into an insouciant sprawl in his chair. ‘Men like you—’
‘You’ve never met a man like me,’ Joe interrupts, half laughing as he looks Mason up and down. ‘My place is where I say it is.’
Mason looks like he’s swallowed a toad, but Joe carries on before he can speak again.
‘Go back to your office Mason, and we’ll forget about this.’
‘When I am curator—’
‘The sphinx will take flight and the sky will turn black, I’m sure,’ Joe smiles, showing all his teeth and no mirth at all. ‘Close the door on your way out.’
Mason slams the door so hard that the bookcase beside it shudders, but he leaves, and Joe can breathe again.
It’s not that he’s remotely afraid of Mason, or his particular designs on progression within the museum. He’s just exhausted. It feels like everywhere he’s ever turned in life he’s met another Mason.
Joe looks at the map of flood plains in Asyut. The tea stain extends the flood plain an extra two miles, spelling disaster for the city and a ruined cycle of growth. He should really try and clean it.
Instead, almost without his permission, Joe’s hand creeps into his pocket.
The puzzle box Booker gave him has been haunting him all day, pulling at his attention like a weight on a sheet, distorting everything as he tries to focus on anything else.
He twists it open as slowly as he can, staring at the mechanism, looking for any sign it’s not what Booker claims it is. It’s heavy and cold, solid metal of some kind, long tarnished into hiding its true colour. Bronze, perhaps? There’s a bright sheen to it still. The hieroglyphs carved into the top and the various facets look at first glance like prayers to Horus and Anubis for protection against theft; a strange combination to find on the same object.
When it springs open, Joe runs his fingertip along each edge. Each one is different, some with cutouts, some with protrusions like teeth on a key.
It’s a beautiful little thing. It would have taken immense wealth to construct.
In a dream, he plucks the map from inside it. The space it’s held in shows nothing out of the ordinary. Just a shallow little storage space under the leaves of the top mechanism. When he runs a finger around it, he can’t feel anything but smooth, cold metal. No bumps, no holes, nothing to suggest there’s another layer to the puzzle.
It closes with a perfectly satisfying click. Strangely anxious the puzzle box not be seen, even as he’s unsure why, Joe sits it on his knee under the desk, out of sight of the closed door.
The map is beautiful. Joe unfolds it slowly, carefully, gently coaxing the papyrus back into shape until it lies as flat as he can make it in front of him. It’s exquisite work, the ink barely faded at all, and the colour could have been laid down yesterday, but the papyrus is so old and dry it sticks to the pads of his fingers no matter how gently he handles it. It’s old—ancient—but perfectly maintained. It must have been locked away so well that not even air reached it for thousands of years.
The royal cartouche of Seti I sits in the upper right-hand corner. Joe’s heart beats faster at the sight of it, but he tries his best to ignore it in favour of inspecting the rest. The Lower Kingdom unfurls along the spine of the Nile like a dream, following the curve of the Pharaoh's body as he surveys his kingdom from his throne; eyes fixed on the distant eye of Horus.
Joe imagines that, to the person who drew the map, it must have been clear as day where it led. To Joe, it looks the way he imagined treasure maps would look as a child. X marks the spot, ten paces past the oak tree; thirteen paces and a spin from the rock shaped like an eagle. The hieroglyphics and hieratic scribbles don’t particularly help. They speak of ways to request royal permission to access somewhere, and prayers that need to be said to both the Pharaoh and the gods before a site can be seen, but they don’t specify what site.
Joe knows what site. The missing information from the map is screaming from the back of his mind.
Hamunaptra.
It’s pure myth. He knows it. Every Egyptologist worth their salt knows it. Hamunaptra doesn’t actually exist . It never did. It was a metaphor for Seti I’s power, and his grip on Egypt. Challenge him, endanger him, and the wealth and power of Egypt could be drowned below the sand in an instant.
This map, if it was real, suggested otherwise.
‘Joe?’
The map really was stunning. Isis was painted in one corner, and every feather of her wings was individually picked out in perfect lapis blue, bright as the Nile that bisected the other side of the map. Did she indicate the temple of Isis at Philae? Possibly, but unlikely, if the rest of the map meant what he thought it might.
‘Joseph?’
Perhaps the puzzle box held more secrets than it first appeared, perhaps the prayers and invocations carved on it were a key to the map in some fashion? Perhaps if he decoded it, he could decode the map’s secrets too.
‘Yusuf!’
Joe jumps in his seat, the puzzle box falling from his knee to clunk heavily against his ankle. He only saved crumpling the map between his hands thanks to the long-ingrained instinct to hold his hands still when holding fragile antiquities.
Booker stares at him from the doorway, far more put together than he had been when Joe saw him last.
‘You’re early,’ says Joe weakly, twitching the various maps on his desk around to disguise the treasure map. Booker raises an eyebrow, looking singularly unimpressed with Joe’s efforts.
‘I was twenty minutes late,’ Booker drawls, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. ‘And I’m due to leave again now. What have you been doing all day?’
He smirks when Joe can’t help but look down at the map spread out under his hand. He barely managed to cover it at all. The royal seal is still visible.
‘Tonight, you said?’ Booker prompts, every inch the cat who caught the canary.
‘Perhaps sooner,’ Joe manages.
‘I told you.’ It’s been a long time since Joe’s seen such brightness in Booker’s eyes.
‘You found it in Thebes?’ Booker nods. The brightness in his eyes doesn’t dim, as such, but something enters his expression, something very much like guilt. ‘Is the dig still going? We can be in Thebes by Thursday if we leave in the morning.’
‘It was found in Thebes,’ Booker says, slowly. ‘But I didn’t say I got it there.’
Joe drops heavily back into his seat, groaning and rubbing at his face.
‘This is good news, Joe!’ Booker insists, finally stepping into the room properly and closing the door behind himself. ‘I promise.’
‘Good news how?’ Joe asks, glowering at Booker from under heavy brows.
‘Because the man who found it is in Cairo.’
Cairo prison is a looming panopticon of a building, half-carved into a hillside halfway between Cairo proper and Giza. Clay and stone walls honeycombed with crowded cells tower around a wide courtyard, punctuated with guard posts and gallows, constantly visible to all prisoners. The main gate is crowded with people every day, hoping for a glimpse of their loved ones.
Most leave disappointed.
Booker gets them past the English soldiers on duty with a heavy handshake and a light pocket. Joe, as he does every day, straightens his spine, looks down his nose, and tries to look like he belongs.
‘A dig in Thebes?’ Joe hisses when the soldiers finally wave them through, vaguely directing them towards a short Egyptian man, shouting at a group of passing prisoners in the broadest local accent Joe’s heard anywhere outside of the fish market.
‘I never said that,’ Booker mutters back, nodding in greeting to the shouting man, who falls silent when he notices them. ‘I said it was found in Thebes. That’s very different.’
‘Found where—’
‘Gentlemen,’ says the loud man, opening his arms wide, his grin stretching even wider. ‘Right on time! What good fortune for you!’
Around them, prisoners and guards alike gather to smoke and sweat under the noon sun. There’s no shade at all in the courtyard, and misery hangs heavy over it. The foreman’s jovial tone cracks like a whip through the atmosphere, drawing more eyes than Joe would prefer their way.
‘Moeshe!’ Booker is just as effusive, entirely unlike himself in every way. ‘You old dog, you know fortune smiles on me. How has she done so today?’
‘You can speak with him before the noose does,’ says Moeshe with a grin like the edge of a blade. ‘That’s how.’
Alarm has been sparking in Joe’s chest since Booker first told him where they were going. It catches fully now, low flames that rise in his blood. With his volume lowered though, Moeshe has ceased to draw quite so much attention towards them. Joe resists the urge to loosen his tie, but only barely.
‘We appreciate the opportunity,’ Booker says, quick and cheerful. ‘Just a few words, I’m sure you understand.’
‘Of course,’ Moeshe’s face is ill-suited to the snivelling smile he wears. It’s better suited to the glare that comes over it as he turns to bellow orders at a group of guards behind him.
‘What have you gotten us into, Sebastien,’ Joe hisses, low and quiet as they follow him at as much a distance as they can get away with. ‘How do you know him? Or this man you want to speak with?’
‘After, mon frère, I promise you. I will tell you after,’ Booker whispers back. He huddles his shoulders in his coat, the way he always does when he’s about to say something Joe won’t like. Joe can already feel his blood pressure rising at the sight of it. ‘I won’t be speaking with him though.’
‘What?’
‘This will go better for us if you do,’ Booker says, his words slurring together slightly with how quickly he speaks.
Before Joe can reply, or turn and walk away, or any number of other things he’d prefer to do than talk to a potential criminal in Cairo prison, Moeshe stops ahead of them. Eager not to crash into his back, Joe stumbles to a stop and shoots a glare at Booker when he catches him by the elbow.
‘Fetch the priest,’ Moeshe calls through the thin wooden bars of a cage that surrounds heavy metal doors. Joe looks at Booker again, askance.
‘A priest ?’ he hisses, just under his breath, in Booker’s native Occitan, rather than the Cairo-accented Arabic favoured by Moeshe. ‘A fucking priest, Book?’
Booker shakes his head, once, eyes fixed on the heavy cell door.
Joe turns to stare too, furious and frightened by turns. His heart pounds in his chest as the door bursts open, half a dozen men spilling out in a loud and chaotic jumble.
It takes a moment for Joe to make sense of it, but when he does he’s more confused than ever.
Five guards surround possibly the least priest-like man Joe could imagine. With his long, wild hair and scraggly beard, broad shoulders and strength enough to drag two of the guards off their feet just by pulling on his shackles, he looks more like a wild animal than a clergyman.
It takes the guards several moments to force him to his knees before the bars. The prisoner fights them all the way, only buckling when one gets a lucky hit in at the backs of his knees.
He glares out at them through the bars, and even from a distance, Joe is arrested by the ferocity in his gaze. His eyes are huge in his face, light as the sun on the sea in the morning, and he is furious. He doesn’t so much calm down once he’s on his knees as slides back into a waiting posture; a panther settling in to watch for the next kill. His sudden placidity is as far from reassuring as anything could be. Joe watches him with not a little horrified fascination and flinches when Moeshe speaks beside him.
‘Father Nicolò,’ he crows in heavily-accented English, delighted as the ringmaster who holds the whip above the lion. ‘You have visitors in your final moments! A gift from God perhaps?’
Nicolò’s expression is placid, under his unkempt beard. His ferocity is all in his eyes. If looks could kill, Moeshe would already be on his funeral pyre.
‘Two minutes,’ Moeshe says over his shoulder to Booker, when Nicolò declines to answer. ‘He has an appointment I intend to assure he keeps.’
Moeshe steps away, leaving barely an illusion of privacy’s worth of distance between them, and Joe sends one more glare at Booker before he approaches the bars and Nicolò’s ferocious gaze.
Thankfully, he isn’t actually looking back at Joe.
His eyes are fixed on Booker.
‘I know you,’ Nicolò says, quiet but clear. Given his name, Joe should be less surprised to hear he has an accent. ‘Step closer. Let me see you.’
Booker cringes, his shoulders rising to meet his ears.
‘Di Genova,’ Booker says, in the tone he uses to charm the curator into buying some useless piece of tat. ‘It’s been a wh—’
‘Closer,’ says Nicolò again, shuffling forwards on his knees towards the bars of the cage. The guards around him watch him closely, but let him do as he likes. It’s not like he can go anywhere, caged and shackled and surrounded.
Booker steps closer again, brushing past Joe’s elbow until he’s inches from the bars.
‘You’re not still upset about that thing in Alsace are you?’ Booker asks, peering through the bars at Nicolò.
Nicolò gives him a warm smile through his raggedy beard, and then quicker than Joe can quite believe, reaches through the bars of the cage and catches Booker by the loose knot of his tie. By the time the guards get their hands on his shoulders, Nicolò’s already pulling hard on the fabric, tipping Booker off balance enough that he slams his face into the cage and crumbles to his knees.
There’s a cacophonous moment of yelling and fighting in the cage before the guards settle again. Nicolò, after that one quick moment of violence, is as placid as ever. The fury in his eyes has banked to something like disgust though, and he lingers on Booker’s crumpled form.
‘Mr… di Genova?’ Joe asks, wondering if he’s making a terrible mistake here.
Nicolò’s eyes are even more arresting when Joe meets them directly.
‘Mr di Genova, my name is Joe al-Kaysani.’ In polite society, Joe would be holding his hand out to shake at this moment. The urge is so ingrained his wrist twitches with it. ‘My…colleague here suggested you might be the man to speak to about a certain artefact that’s made its way into my possession.’
‘Made its way,’ repeats Nicolò softly, looking back at Booker momentarily as he does.
Booker at least has the grace to remain silent and prone.
‘Quite,’ Joe says, all his English education rushing to cover how unnerved he feels. ‘The artefact contained…well. It contained a certain map, which raised certain questions.’
Nicolò blinks, catlike and heavy.
‘You’re not here to ask me about any artefact,’ he says, with the heavy finality of absolute confidence.
‘Am I not? I thought I was.’
‘You are here to ask me about Hamunaptra.’
It would be ludicrous to show his hand, he knows it, but Joe’s never been particularly good at hiding his excitement.
‘So it’s real then?’ Joe asks, quiet as he can be. He steps over Booker’s crumpled form to get closer to the cage, di Genova watches him closely every step of the way, his big eyes fixed on Joe’s face. ‘The city?’
‘It’s very real,’ di Genova says. His voice is surprisingly soft for someone so rough looking.
‘How do you know?’
Di Genova blinks up at him, and Joe shifts to the right slightly to block the sun from his face. Di Genova gives him a shadow of a smile for it.
‘Because I have been there,’ he says, like it doesn’t change the entire course of history for such a thing to be true. ‘How else should I know.’
‘You swear?’ Joe breathes. Somehow without his noticing, he’s curled his hands around the bars of the cage. One of the guards frowns at him, clearly thinking him an idiot for getting within range of di Genova, but he doesn’t reach for his cudgel and that’s permission enough.’
‘Not often,’ di Genova says, still staring at him. ‘My mama did not look well on it.’
It’s an incredibly silly joke, but Joe can’t help smiling at him. A bit.
The corner of di Genova’s mouth twitches in return before he speaks again.
‘I swear it,’ he says in his soft voice, looking up at Joe. ‘I have walked those sands, and I warn you. There is nothing to be found there but tragedy.’
There’s a ring of prophecy in his words, but Joe brushes them aside as an inescapable side effect of the combination of his accent and his voice.
‘Could you tell me how to get there?’ Joe asks, so close to the bars he’s almost pressing his face against them. ‘Please?’
‘You really wish to know?’ asks di Genova, rising very slightly on his knees to bring his eyes in line with Joe’s. The guards around him twitch, but don’t reach for him.
‘I do,’ Joe breathes, eyes fixed on di Genova’s.
‘Truly?’
‘Truly!’
Fast as lighting, di Genova darts forward again and catches Joe by the chin. Joe has just enough time to fear getting the same treatment as Booker before di Genova pulls him into a thorough, but surprisingly gentle, kiss.
‘Then get me out of here, yes?’ he whispers against Joe’s mouth, before the guards tear him away.
Moeshe is shouting something behind him. Booker has finally sat up from where he fell. The guards drag a struggling di Genova back into the dark recesses of the cell they pulled him from, and Joe?
Joe touches his lips and blinks at the space di Genova had occupied, the outline of him burned in Joe’s vision like he looked at the sun for too long.