“What we Jackals are meant to, hey?” Karim gripped the corners of the box’s lid. “Now move aside.”
He took a deep breath and threw all his weight into it with a grunt. The lid moved with a harsh grinding noise that reverberated through the dark space. Karim heaved again and again, until the huge stone lid toppled to the floor with a deafening crash. One of the corners cracked and crumbled, but it otherwise remained intact.
Panting, his brow beaded with sweat, Karim took the torchback from Djet and shone it into the box. Inside, carved in the shape of a man, was a wooden coffin painted almost entirely in red. Its golden face stared back at Karim with piercing eyes, its expression inscrutable. Golden hands were crossed over its chest, holding a crook and flail dotted with black and blue. Between these, inlaid approximately where his heart might be, was a large blue amulet made of lapis lazuli. It was cut in the shape of a scarab beetle, with more Khetaran writing engraved on its surface.
“It could be his name,” Djet whispered, leaning over to look. “You think?”
“You might be right.” Karim pulled a copper chisel from his pack. He wedged it under the edge of the amulet and began prying it loose. The chisel slipped in his sweaty palm, and the blade raked across his finger.
“Ach!” Karim hissed, pulling his hand back.
“Are you well, sen?” Djet asked.
“Fine, fine,” Karim said. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding, splashing red droplets across the top of the coffin. He sucked his finger, then wrapped a rag from his pack around it. He picked up the chisel to try again. He squinted. The blood splatters had vanished. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks in the dark?
He wielded the tool more carefully now, and after inserting the chisel with greater precision, the amulet finally came free from the coffin.
“There we are,” Karim said with a smile. He held the blue stone to the firelight. It felt heavy and warm.
Then came a sigh. Like a released breath, right next to his ear.
Karim jumped. He took a step back from the box and glanced at Djet. The boy stood a few feet away, the stub of candle in his hand. “Was that you?”
“Was what me?” Djet cocked his head in confusion.
Karim blinked and shook himself. “Nothing,” he muttered,and turned his attention back to the amulet. It was the largest piece of lapis he’d ever laid eyes on by at least tenfold—it alone was worth a fortune. He laughed in disbelief. “What a day this has been.”
Djet’s eyes were hungry at the sight of the stone in Karim’s hand. “We are rich, then, hey? Rich as kings!”
“We’re getting there.” Karim agreed. He glanced up at the torch. Like the candle, it would burn out soon without more kindling. But he had to know what else there was to find, what else he might want to tuck into his pack, before going back to tell the others.
He thought about the other Jackals, reconsidering his earlier plan to share everything equally. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Babu—
No, that was just it. Hedidn’ttrust Babu. The man was a snake, and as likely to slit Karim’s throat in the night as share the spoils of this place.
Perhaps Babu would surprise him and dole out the treasures fairly, but in case he didn’t…
I have to look out for myself.
“Go back to the first room,” he told Djet in a rush. “Gather up whatever you can fit inside your pack. Jewelry, gold, anything valuable. I’m going to search the next chamber. When I’m finished, we leave. We must return to the others and tell them what we’ve found.”
Djet nodded and was about to take flight when Karim gripped his shoulder. “We tell them about the tomb, yes. But we don’t tell them about the contents of our packs, hey? That we keep to ourselves.”
Djet grinned, an impish glint in his eye. “I take your meaning very well, sen,” he said and disappeared back the way they’d come.
Slipping the scarab amulet into his pack with the other treasures he’d already picked up Karim turned toward the last door. His mouth was suddenly dry despite the wine. It looked darker than the others had, somehow filled with a deeper, thicker blackness.
Your eyes play tricks on you, he thought. Spending too long in utter darkness can make a man go mad.Hurry, else you begin to act the fool.
He stepped through the portal and a wave of confusion washed over him. The innermost chamber usually held the treasury—the most valuable items in the entire tomb. But there was no more treasure to be found. No precious jewelry, no fine cloth, no solid gold baubles of any kind. The room was smaller than the other two and looked almost empty save for a large statue dominating the space.
Karim took another step forward and stumbled over something on the floor. He knelt and found a tiny wooden man, one of its legs now splintered in two. The floor was covered with them. Hundreds of tiny wooden men, each one the same as the last, were arranged in orderly lines throughout the room. They all faced the far wall and the statue of the strange animal-headed god he’d seen painted on the back of the chair, its long ponderous snout and tall ears carved from the same black granite as the stone box outside. It held a gold looped cross in one hand and reached out to the army of tiny men with the other, its open palm extended in welcome.
There’s nothing here worth taking. But something compelled Karim to look further. That invisible rope around his chest pulled him in.
Tucking the damaged figurine into his pack, he tiptoed through the army of wooden men and approached the statue. An engraving of a long oval with writing inside decorated the statue’s open palm. At a glance, Karim guessed they were thesame symbols as the ones on the amulet. The name, perhaps, of the man whose tomb they were robbing.
Not man, he corrected himself,king.
