R. LaFevers - Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos

I could only hope a great idea on how to solve the whole toppling of Britain would come as easily.

I WOKE UP TO THE SOUND OF SAWING. Well, it sounded like sawing. When I managed to pry my eyes open and look around, I saw Isis raking her claws on the door, trying to get out. She’d left big raw gashes in the wood. Father was going to kill me.

I leaped out of bed. She took one look at me, arched her back, and hissed ferociously. Clearly whatever magic I’d woven last night was gone this morning. Heart sinking, I opened the door and watched her dash out of sight.

My eyes were gritty with sleep, so I washed my face, then changed into a clean frock.

Starving, I hurried to the sitting room to start breakfast, hoping Mum had thought to bring some supplies from home. When I reached the sitting room, I stopped to sniff. “Is something burning?” I asked Henry.

“No. Mum’s making us breakfast,” he said, fidgeting and banging his heels on the bottom rung of his chair.

“But Mum doesn’t cook,” I reminded him.

“Well, today I decided to,” Mum announced as she carried a plate of charred toast and an eggcup over to Henry. “I’ve neglected you horribly for months. I want to make it up to you.”

I stared at Henry’s blackened toast. By poisoning us?

“I’ll start one for you.” She went back to the sideboard and slipped a thick piece of bread onto the toasting fork. “How many eggs would you like?”

I watched Henry pick up one of his blackened toast strips and boink it against his egg. He frowned. It was supposed to dip, not boink.

“Only one,” I said, my eyes still glued to Henry’s plate.

“Coming right up, dear.”

Henry boinked his toast once more, then gave up. He picked up the egg and took a bite.

“Mum?” I asked.

“Yes, dear?”

“How do you decide which artifacts to bring back with you when you’re on a dig? You mentioned that you had to leave lots of things behind, so how do you choose?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes it’s because we don’t have anything else like it in the museum, or it might be one of a kind. Mostly I just rely on instinct.”

Ah! Perhaps Mother was mistaking a tingle of warning for an instinct. Surely this ability of mine came from somewhere. “Instinct?”

“Hm-hm. I let my instincts guide me as to which will make the most striking exhibit.” She carried a plate and eggcup to the table and set them in front of me. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.” I stared at my egg for a moment, then lifted my spoon and sliced off the top. Just as I feared. Hard as chalk. “Do you ever get the willies when you’re down in the tombs? Just you and all those ancient relics?” I asked.

“What a ridiculous question! Of course not.”

“Who actually knew about the Heart of Egypt, Mum? Knew that you’d found it?” I took a small bite from an un-burned corner of toast and began to chew.

“Well, there was the work crew, Nabir, Hakim, Stanton, and Willsbury. And the director of the Antiquity Institute. I had to tell him so I could get permission to take it out of the country.”

I choked down the bite of toast and took a sip of tea. “That’s quite a lot of people.” I had hoped there were only one or two. Then it would be easy to trace the leak directly back to who was responsible for stealing the artifact.

I looked over at Henry, who’d stopped banging his feet and was listening intently.

“Oh! And von Braggenschnott knew. He was the one who helped convince the director to let me take it out of the country.”

There it was! I knew I’d heard that name before. “Who is this von Braggenschnott fellow, anyway?” I asked as casually as I could. “I heard you and Father talking about him.”

“He’s the head of the German National Archaeological Association.”

“What are the Germans doing in Egypt?”

“Oh, they’ve always been in Egypt. Just like us, the French, Americans, Italians, they all have archaeological teams over there.”

“But didn’t you say there were more Germans than usual this time?”

Mother frowned. “Yes. That’s true. They’ve been increasing their presence there over the last four years. Ever since von Braggenschnott took over.”

I studied my egg. Surely there was a way to avoid eating it without hurting Mother’s feelings.

“He’s a rather disreputable fellow, I’m afraid. Which is unfortunate as it casts a taint over all of Germany’s excavations.”

While Mother wasn’t looking, I fished my handkerchief out of my pocket, snatched the egg out of its cup, and shoved it into the crumpled linen. “What makes him so disreputable?”

“He deals in black-market antiquities and smuggles artifacts out of the country for private collections. Among other things. Why all the questions?”

“No reason. Just trying to get a feel for how things work over there.”

She cast me a puzzled glance, then shook her head. “I’m going to be down in Receiving cataloging the new things if you need me.”

“Thanks for breakfast,” I said, slipping the wrapped egg into the pocket of my skirt. “It was very thoughtful of you.”

“My pleasure, dear. We’ll have to do this more often.”

Henry rolled his eyes at me and I gave him a sharp kick under the table. When Mother had gone, I reached over and took the newspaper from Father’s place. He hadn’t even touched it yet so I tried not to wrinkle it too badly. I wanted to see if there was any mention of the adventures over in St. Paul’s churchyard the day before.

As I scanned the paper, a headline caught my eye. “Crop Blight Appears in Northern Counties. Record Shortfall Expected.”

Lord Wigmere’s words rang in my ears: plague, pestilence, famine. At the word “famine,” my mind turned to the bleak, hungry faces I’d seen yesterday. I had a good idea what famine looked like.

I turned back to the paper and began reading about the record flooding and freezing temperatures in the north. Henry came round the table and began reading over my shoulder.

“What’s a pustule?” he asked.

“It’s disgusting, is what it is,” I told him.

“No. I mean, what is it?”

“Where did you see it?” I asked.

He pointed to a small item on the bottom-left corner. I leaned over and read the headline: “Virulent Illness Strikes Dozens in Hampsford.”

“Bother. Now all we need are locusts.”

“What’s a locust?”

“It’s a big, beetley grasshoppery type thing. Eats crops,” I explained, my mind churning furiously.

“Do you mean like that?” Henry asked, pointing to a big beetley grasshoppery thing clinging to the outside of the windowpane in the pouring rain.

“Oh, lovely.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I wondered how hard it would be to get in touch with Lord Wigmere. Mum had just launched the end of civilization.

NOW I HAD TO DO SOMETHING. There was simply no choice. Not with the Heart of Egypt’s curse beginning to do its damage here in Britain. I glanced back down at the paper, intending to read the article again, hoping I might be wrong. Instead my eyes landed on a photograph on the right-hand corner of the front page. “It’s him!” I said, startling poor Henry so badly that he dropped his last piece of toast — butter-side down, of course.