“She saidfireball.”
“Oh. That is decidedly less endearing.”
Séverin clapped his hands together, and everyone fell silent.
“The convoy for the next guard shift comes in an hour. We’ve got five empty seats on that convoy to get us out of here, so let’s get moving. We know the Horus Eye is in the west quadrant and eighth hall, but there could always be unexpected surprises. Zofia?”
Zofia tore the second layer of her dress. At her touch, it broke into five strips that fell to the ground. She wrapped one strip around her hands, and it molded instantly to their shape, turning into a pair of translucent gloves.
“Forged rubber,” she said, raising her palms. “That way no object can detect a human touch.”
Laila shuddered. “Yes, let’s not get stuck to anything just by touching it.”
“And let’s not leave prints either,” added Enrique.
“Or blood,” said Séverin, glaring at Hypnos. He wasn’t going to get trapped into that letter scheme again. “Enrique?”
Enrique pointed at the shelves. “Collections are tricky things. Sometimes there’re even decoys of objects. The Horus Eye should be about palm-sized, with a glass or crystal piece in the pupil to see through, although age might have clouded it so it looks stained.”
Hypnos looked around at the group, as if he were just seeing them for the first time.
“You know, in this lighting, you lot are rather fearsome.”
“All lighting,” corrected Enrique.
The moment everyone had slipped on their gloves, Séverin led the way to the eighth hall.
“Once we have the Horus Eye, we’ll walk out—”
“That’sit?” asked Enrique, his voice rising. “But it’s House-marked—”
“Shhhh, beautiful,” said Hypnos. He held out his hand, where his Ring—a bright crescent moon—gleamed. “This Ring is welded to my skin. If it’s taken off and not delivered to a blood heir within a fortnight, the House mark fades. And I know for certain the matriarch had no time to pass it on to her abominable nephew.”
“So…” Enrique looked around the room. “Technically… we could take anything right now?”
“Focus,” warned Séverin.
Around them, the library stretched for nearly a kilometer underground. As the world’s largest purveyor of ancient Egyptian artifacts, House Kore’s shelves overflowed with Forged treasures plundered from pharaohs’ tombs and scrolls encased in glass and sand that had been lifted from the foundations of crumbling temples. But though the owners and artisans of the objects had long since passed, the power within them still crackled. Glass beetles with lightning storms flashing across their carapace scuttled into the shelves. Once or twice, a telescope’s eye turned toward him, and Séverin saw not the dirt floor and treasures mirrored behind him, but a skull hovering over his head, a ripped rose on either side of him. Shaken, he kept walking.
As they neared the eighth aisle, a cold wind gusted into the hall. Zofia reached for her necklace. Laila stood back, fingers skimming down the wooden beams of the shelves. She turned to Séverin, her chin dipping ever so slightly in a silent signal:Safe to enter.
Séverin entered first. Then stopped. He heard the others rounding the corner, the shuffle of their feet abruptly stopping. Enrique stood at his shoulder and groaned.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The entire eighth aisle… were Horus Eyes. All of them were bronze and the size of one’s hand. All of them had a perfect glass pupil and were completely identical. Only the objects stuffed between their spaces on the shelves distinguished them. Odds and ends not worthy enough to be catalogued. Silver ankhs dangled from slender hooks, and broken canopic jars were shoved alongside bits of pottery strewn about the shelves.
Zofia stepped forward. “Not all of the Horus Eyes are Forged.”
“How do you know?” asked Enrique.
Zofia touched her palm, not looking at anyone directly. “They’re just not.”
“She’s right,” said Laila, taking her hand off the Horus Eye closest to her.
Hypnos eyed her shrewdly, and Laila gestured at the shelves. “It’s nearly impossible that so many would actually be here. In existence.”
“Fair,” said Enrique. “In which case, we’re looking for a special Horus Eye amongst the decoys. Presumably, looking through the correct Horus Eye will reveal a Babel Fragment, so it won’t show the floor beneath you. It will show something else.”
