Alberto grunts and leaves thegaffir’s tent.
In ancient tombs, there were public parts, and private spaces. The public space was where visitors could mill. The private part was where the deceased was actually buried. A shaft was dug perpendicular to the floor of the tomb, and then a small burial niche was carved out horizontally at its base. After a coffin was lowered down the shaft and tucked into the burial niche, a limestone slab or blocks would have been placed in front of the entrance to the chamber. Then the shaft would have been filled with sand and dirt, and another limestone slab would have capped it, sealing off the entrance to the private part of the tomb.
That slab was moved aside weeks ago; if Wyatt is confident that we’ll be entering the burial chamber tomorrow, it means that the shaft is very nearly clear as well.
From the corner of my eye, I watch him down the glass of hot tea in nearly a gulp, and then clap Omar on the back. Abdou ducks into the tent, apologizing for the interruption, and hands Wyatt a stack of papers. “Three more hours and we’ll probably quit for the day,” Joe tells me. “It’s too fucking hot to be here after twoP.M.”
“Inshallah,”I answer, and he grins.
“You ready?”
“To bend myself into a figure eight under a natural rock ledge? You bet,” I say. “There’s a reason grad students are your age, and not mine.”
I’m following Joe out of the tent when I hear Wyatt’s voice. “Dawn. A word?”
Joe raises his eyebrows:Good luck with that. Thegaffirtakes the glasses and teapot outside, leaving me alone with Wyatt. He is seated, and from where I am standing, I can’t read his expression. Then I realize that he isn’t holding a stack of papers.
“That’s my iPad,” I say, stupidly.
“Technically,” Wyatt answers, “it’smine.”
Immediately my heart starts hammering. Was I supposed to bring it with me to thegaffir’s tent, lest it get stolen? Did he look at my work, and find it lacking?
Is this the moment he sends me home?
I watch him flip it open, scroll through the work I have saved. He enlarges one of the areas I have been tracing, one with considerable damage. In the back of his throat, he makes a small sound. “I can do better,” I blurt out.
“No, you can’t,” Wyatt says, and everything inside me turns to stone.
He flips down the magnetic cover and hands it to me. “I have never seen anyone as good as you are at drawing hieroglyphs,” he murmurs. “It’s like you’re a scribe yourself.”
I feel blood rush to my cheeks. “Thanks.”
“Clearly it’s going well,” he says.
“I’m glad I can be helpful.”
“Likewise,” Wyatt replies, tipping back the brim of his hat so I can see his eyes. “Although I still am not quite sure what I’m helping with.”
Desperate to avoid this runnel of conversation, I clutch the iPad to my chest. “Sounds likeallthe work’s going well. Do you really think you’ll get to the burial chamber by the end of today?”
He nods. “We may even get some of the men to dislodge the stone blocks at the bottom. Although then I have to technically wait for Mostafa to get here before I can go inside and see what’s what, and that may very well kill me.”
“Technically,” I repeat, and I know that Wyatt is thinking exactly what I am thinking—of another discovery, another inspector. Of rules that were broken.
“Have you found anything in the debris?” I ask.
He beams at me. “Nope.”
All the sand and dirt that is cleared from the shaft has been sifted by the workers, in case an amulet was dropped, or if there is a discarded floral collar or a brokenshabti. The fewer funerary finds in the rubble, the more likely it is that this tomb has an intact burial—acoffin with a mummy that was never violated by grave robbers.
“Wyatt,” I say quietly. “That’s…”
“Fucking amazing. I know.”
I imagine how quickly his academic profile will rise, if this discovery pans out. I wait for jealousy to wash over me, but it doesn’t. This isn’t the life I chose to lead.
I find Wyatt staring at me like I am a crossword he cannot finish, even though he’s read all the clues three times over. I glance toward the tomb, where a line of local men are back to excavating buckets of sand, the white sails of theirgalabeyaslike the sails of a fleet crossing an ocean.
