Wardens of Eternity Read online

I stepped into the dress and lifted it up and over my hips to hang on my shoulders. The neck was a deeply cut triangle, showing more skin than I’d ever shown before, and the back was bare all the way to the base of my spine. A light cinch just below my hips gave the illusion I had hips. The hem trailed on the floor behind me, despite my height, and I predicted with the right set of pumps, it would trail just right.

  Excitement sparked at my fingertips. I felt good. I felt confident. I felt like a goddess.

  I straightened my back and lifted my chin. If I would wear something like this, then I needed to wear it ruthlessly.

  I opened the door to reveal myself.

  Nasira drew a long breath as slow and satisfied as her smile. “You look like a princess of the sun. Of Amarna.”

  I tried to hide my own smile and turned around to show her the back. The material coiled like liquid gold around my feet. “Maybe I am,” I teased.

  “I found you some shoes,” she said, and handed me a pair of cream silk pumps with a large assortment of crystals and gems sewn into the straps and silver piping. The color of the shoes’ material seemed to blend into the gold dress, complimenting it, yet detracting nothing of its magnificence.

  “The silhouette is probably wide enough to hide my asaya,” I suggested, reaching down to swing the fluttery hem.

  “I didn’t choose this dress for you on a whim,” she said, with a mischievous gleam in her dark eyes. She reached into the wardrobe and removed a leather holster with my contracted asaya already in it. She knelt in front of me, lifted the hem of my dress, and buckled the holster around my ankle and calf.

  Nasira stood. “Sit at the table and let me paint you.”

  I obeyed, watching her closely as she brought a small, eggshell-colored alabaster pot and unrolled a scrap of fabric to reveal a pair of wooden sticks about the length of my hand. She removed the pot’s lid and dipped a stick inside. When she removed the stick, its tip was a black graphite color with a faint metallic sheen.

  “Kohl,” she explained, “is powerful magic. It’s made from a mineral called galena. Before we go into battle or perform any ceremony, a Medjai should be ritually purified. This will help your heart be strong and heal your body from injury. Close your eyes.”

  She began in the inner corner of my eye, drawing across my upper and lower lids and beyond. She stopped halfway to the line of my hair at my ears and then painted my other eye. “How would you like your hair? Up or down? I’m glad you never chopped it all off like Americans do.”

  I didn’t want to tell her I would have if I could’ve afforded a cut. “You can style it however you’d like.”

  “I’ll do us both in fancy chignons,” she said with a grin. “We’ll look like sisters.”

  Those words put a smile on my own face. “How can I make my hair look as shiny as yours?”

  She frowned, and my heart clenched. “My mother taught me how to take care of my hair and my skin—and I’ll teach you. Our hair is delicate and requires a lot of care. It’s different than most kinds of hair.”

  Nasira reached for a dark glass bottle and poured a few drops of some sort of gold-colored oil into her palm. “Olive oil. Put it on your skin to make it feel soft and supple. It will do the same for your hair. Rub a drop in your scalp at night.” She rose and stood behind me. She carefully separated my hair by each spiraling lock and massaged oil into my curls from root to tip, adding extra attention to the ends. “Fruit oils, nut butters, rose water,” she began. “Add it morning and night and your curls will come to life.”

  I closed my eyes as she played with my hair. I imagined this was how a mother’s love felt. This should’ve been mine. My mother should’ve been here to teach me how to care for myself. Set was to blame for what was taken from me.

  But I didn’t want to be angry or sad tonight. I had an objective to carry out. A mission. My concentration was necessary.

  I felt myself buzzing with anticipation. I stole a glance at my reflection in the small tabletop mirror. Never in my life had I felt like a grown woman and looked the part.

  Tonight would be incredible.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Sayer parked the Delage alongside the curb a few blocks from our destination. He exited and rushed to open my door. I grasped his open hand, and he helped me step onto the sidewalk. I felt very conscious of the asaya tucked into its holster around my ankle and I tried not to swing my dress too much as I moved. Anubis’s amulet was tucked into the holster. If the immortal made good on his promises as he’d claimed he would, then I made sure I brought the amulet in the unfortunate event I needed his help.

  Sayer stepped close to me to shut the door, my hand still in his, and he dipped his head to tell me, “You make that dress look beautiful.”

  I looked up at him, smiling, and found golden stars in his eyes. “Thank you.”

  He looked quite handsome himself in his very well cut tuxedo and bowtie. Nasira shined stunningly in her silk dress of rich, shining ruby so glossy it appeared polished. She’d painted my lips a similar shade of red and had dabbed gold powder on my eyelids. I felt as though I wore a mask. No one could see through my makeup and evening gown, through my stardust and sequins, to the real Ziva beneath, the starved orphan girl. Perhaps this was the real me—the princess of a solar court once forgotten in a dusty tomb, the sparkling diamond once lost in rock. Whichever Ziva I was . . . tonight, I was the Ziva I wanted to be.

  “We are here covertly,” Nasira reminded us as she rounded the car and tucked a stray lock of her bountiful hair back into its knot behind her head. “Sayer, that means you. Do not go in there brandishing your axes and causing a ruckus.”

  “What if I’m not the one to cause a ruckus?” he asked, his tone playful.

  I gaped at him. “Do you mean me?”

  He grinned and started forward.

  “I intend to be on my best behavior!” I called after him.

  As we walked the few blocks, I couldn’t possibly fail to notice the way other people looked at me as I passed them. It was the way I used to look at the rich women wearing dresses like mine and seeing those faces from the receiving end was heartbreaking. For the first time in my life, I understood why those women pretended not to notice me when I stared.

  When I saw the limousines pulling up alongside the curb and gobs of fabulously dressed men and women getting out, I knew we’d arrived. The white limestone exterior of the townhouse gleamed in the nighttime lights and the elegant wrought iron window grills cast lovely, coiling vine-like shadows. Faint music seeped from the open windows and ushers in tuxedos guided guests through the front door.

  “We have no invitations,” Sayer said, his lips close to my ear, “so walk in like you own the place. No one will dare question you.”

  “I appreciate your confidence in my confidence,” I replied.

  “You have both,” he told me, voice firm with conviction. “I know you can do this. Nasira knows it. You are royalty. Don’t forget that.”

  His words repeated in my head as we approached, falling in queue with the rest of the guests. Nasira smiled at the ushers while I tried not to make eye contact with anyone, for fear I might be stopped.

  “Pardon, miss,” inquired an usher with a robust Metropolitan accent, his vowels harshly exaggerated. He wasn’t from this neighborhood by a long shot.

  My breath stalled, and my spine tensed between my shoulders. I felt a bit unreal as I turned to him. “Yes?” I asked.

  “May I have your name, miss? For the list?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no words.

  “We’re students of Dr. Sweeney,” Nasira chimed in, leaning over me. “With the EEF?”

  He blinked, his expression empty. “The . . . ?”

  Nasira exhaled gruffly with impatience. “The Egypt Exploration Fund! Honestly, how did you get this job?”

  “I—I don’t know anything about—”

  “Obviously,” Nasira snapped, grabbed my arm, and marched us both past
him and into the house.

  When the three of us were inside, I leaned over to her and asked, “Who is Dr. Sweeney?”

  “The archaeologist who discovered the stela,” she whispered back. “I got his name from the article.”

  We meandered through the crowd, comprised entirely of fair-skinned people in their formal best, and I felt their eyes on me from every angle. Never had I felt like anything but an ignored gutter rat. They gaped as though I was a comet blazing an unstoppable path through them, my fire devouring their faint starlight.

  I plucked tiny delicacies from the silver platters passed around by servers and something in particular, a slim fold of meat and a juicy blackberry set atop a square of cheesy toast, was quite fantastic. After I’d taken a sample, I’d spun to grab a second. As I hastened to catch up to my friends, a round white man with tomato-red cheeks intercepted me. I jerked to a stop and swallowed the last bite of my snack.

  “Where are you from?” he asked, speaking tightly as though he were holding something between his back teeth.

  I stared at him, disgusted, but I’d been asked that question a thousand times before. “Mister, I’m from New York.”

  He exhaled, impatient. “I meant, what are you? Are you Egyptian?”

  “Yes, I am,” I told him harshly, hoping he’d be satisfied and go bother someone else.

  The man leaned back, smugness filling his red cheeks until they were puffy. “How exotic. I thought so. You look it. Charlotte—Charlotte, dear. I told you. They are Egyptians.” He turned to get the attention of a slim white woman in a pink silk gown who took one look at us and held her sequin-encrusted clutch tighter to her side.

  Nasira grabbed my arm and smiled a full set of teeth at the rude man. “So, what are you?”

  He blinked at her, quite perplexed. “I beg your pardon? What am I?”

  “Why, yes,” she said, unflinchingly.

  “I don’t understand,” he said with a shake of his head.

  Her saccharine smile spread. “Of course you don’t.” Turning both our backs to him, she dragged me deep into the thick crowd and made a gagging face.

  “Nasi, that was aces,” I told her, voice hushed.

  She wore an ugly frown and her narrowed eyes were dark as they glared across the room. “They look at us like we aren’t even human,” she snarled. “Like we are on display—objects to be touched and used and paraded around. Just a few more spoils of rich Western conquest. They’ll always treat you like an exhibit, Ziva, because you threaten their perfect, little white bubble.”

  I didn’t reply; all over the floor and in every room, the well-to-do guests perused the artifacts, but there was something missing. The way they looked at the jewelry, pottery, every-day items like cosmetics applicators and furniture—there was nothing academic. These people had no interest in better understanding how my ancestors interpreted the world around them. They couldn’t see past the glittering gems and gold on the surface. They didn’t take long enough to wonder about the princess of ancient blood who once wore that necklace and used those brushes and sticks to paint her face. These people glanced, saw color, and moved on. People had looked at me in this exact same way my entire life.

  “All of the ‘imports’ here were raided from burial tombs,” Nasira remarked. “From the graves of human beings. They see nothing wrong with what they do, because they’ve dehumanized our people, who once walked around, ate and slept, lived and loved. And these sods have ‘unwrapping parties.’ Did you know people can buy mummies? The bodies of human beings? In some places the mummies sell cheaper than firewood, so venture which gets thrown into their hearths first.”

  My stomach turned with the horror of what she said.

  Nasira’s lip curled and her voice started to break with emotion. “Point any of that out to them and they get defensive and lash out at you.”

  “But what do we do about it?” I asked her, feeling helpless. “Let them talk to us like that because it’s the way things have always been?”

  The anger in Nasira’s expression eased into sympathy. “People have made you feel like your only option is to be passive about the way they treat you. I want to teach you that you don’t have to be passive. Do not diminish yourself because a little man feels threatened by your strength. It’s a waste of time to wait for things to change. If you stand up to them and tell them, ‘No, you can’t treat me like this,’ they’ll probably get angry, but it will make them think. Eventually, hopefully, someday, they will learn.”

  I stared at her and realized people had beat me down my entire life, called me whatever they wanted to call me, and none of it had ever been okay. They made me feel like I wasn’t beautiful or desirable, like I would never be important or smart or educated enough, all because my skin wasn’t white enough or my hair wasn’t straight and controlled. I didn’t fit into their boxes. As though the way I looked made me less human or something else entirely. I would be passive no longer.

  I was indeed a comet blazing through them, a force they’d never anticipated and could not stop. I had the strength and the power to obliterate their standards, their structures, and their expectations. My fire would burn them up.

  “Come on,” Nasira said. “We’ve got a job to do. Let’s finish up and get out of here.”

  Two men in belted jackets, breeches, and boots stood out and away from the rest of the guests, the visors of their caps shadowing their eyes. I couldn’t help watch them as we moved through the room. A blonde woman approached them, her back to me, her deep emerald dress rippling in her wake. From here I couldn’t hear their conversation.

  “German SA,” Nasira said quietly.

  “Soldiers?” I asked.

  “Officers,” was her reply, her attention to them scrupulous. “Unusual. I’d like to know why they’re here.”

  We found Sayer towering over many heads in the room. He caught our gazes and gestured with a nod of his head for us to follow him. I hoped he’d found the stela and we’d leave any minute. My dress suddenly felt too tight. My asaya’s holster itched.

  The next parlor over was significantly busier than the last and I could hear a man bellowing above the voices of the crowd and the music.

  “Three months struggling to survive in the blistering desert, ladies and gentlemen. We battled diseases that killed half my men, thirty-foot crocodiles that devoured half of the other half of my men, and sandstorms great enough to swallow Manhattan whole. But even the gods couldn’t stop me from making the most incredible archaeological find in history hidden within a secret room of the Ramesseum. This is an extraordinary mortuary complex built outside Ancient Thebes for Nefertari’s husband, Ramesses II, or Ramesses the Great.”

  I cringed at his needless theatricality. The man, I presumed, was the Dr. Sweeney mentioned by Nasira. He was a tall, tan white man with a deeply receding, mostly gray hairline and dressed in a very fine tuxedo. He surveyed the crowd, studying their reactions in quite a theatrical, circus ringmaster sort of way.

  “The stela of Nefertari is more significant than the death mask of Tutankhamun. Why, you ask?”

  His dramatic pause lingered far too long. Nasira rolled her eyes so hard I thought they’d fall out of her head.

  “Because knowledge is a greater treasure than gold.”

  Low, stunned murmurs snaked through the audience.

  “So cliché,” Nasira grumbled under her breath. I snickered.

  “Think of the Rosetta Stone,” Sweeney offered. “Ancient Egypt would hold far more secrets than it does today had the Stone not been deciphered. The mesmerizing hieroglyphs would still be a puzzle. Today, I unveil to you proof Nefertari was the most powerful queen in history. Greater than Cleopatra—greater than Elizabeth the First! This artifact is the twentieth century’s Rosetta Stone.”

  Nasira almost pried apart the bodies blocking our view, despite their muffled protests, and I trailed in her wake toward the front. The stela everyone marveled over was a simple-looking limestone slab about two feet tall
and a foot wide, set on a red velvet display.

  “I can’t read the inscription from here,” Sayer whispered. “But there’s no way I could get close enough with all these people staring at it.”

  Nasira lifted her chin and a look of determination crossed her face. “Leave it to me.”

  Sayer nodded and moved behind us to the far end of the crowd. I stood in my place, unsure of what I needed to do, if anything. If Nasira needed me, I hoped my instinct would charge me to action.

  “Here Nefertari is described as the queen of cardinals,” Sweeney continued, “a title of hers previously unknown to the scientific community.”

  “Perhaps it’s previously unknown because your translation is wrong,” Nasira called.

  The crowd’s response was an immediate collective gasp. Sweeney’s jaw hung wide open. After a painfully long hesitation, he let loose an uncomfortable chuckle. “Young lady,” he said as though about to scold a child. “I’m quite certain not only do I have the proper credentials but the experience in the field to make accurate translations of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.”

  People turned their heads toward Nasira and shifted away from her. “Well, you’ve identified Nefertari’s cartouche correctly,” she said with a shrug. “But any halfwit could memorize that.”

  Sweeney’s breath rushed from him and he blinked hard. “Excuse me?”

  “This doesn’t say, ‘the queen of cardinals,’” Nasira added. “It says, ‘the cardinal treasures of the queen.’ You’re reading the hieroglyphs backwards.”

  “Even if you were right—which you’re not—the script could still identify her as the queen of the cardinal points of Egypt: North, South, East, and West,” he lectured, his tone condescending and haughty. “Typically, rulers were given control over only Upper and Lower Egypt, after the two kingdoms were united, of course. This stela could mean Egypt had expanded its borders and elevated Nefertari to a position of power we’ve seen nowhere else.”

  “The stela could also mean Nefertari was given a team of winged horses to pull her chariot,” Nasira called with biting sarcasm. “Though the latter is more likely.”