I know precisely what honor is, Heracles. Honor is the artifice kings sell the peasants’ sons so that they may fight and die without pay. Honor is what drives a peaceful man to bloody vengeance. Honor is what drove the Celts to behead the children of the Apache Courts.- The Egyptian God Bes
From beneath the folds of his robes, he reveals a small steel dagger. “You have tempted fate so many times already and still yield to it. Time for history to rewrite itself. Time for Tutankhamen to have a new ending.” Aten holds the hilt out to me.I stare at the dagger. The hilt is bronze, carved with sun discs that glow when they catch the sun. “What do you want me to do with that?”Aten smiles a white, gaping grin. “Kill Tutankhamen and carve out his heart.
Ahhh." Anubis narrows his eyes at me. “I’ve given you inspiration. Now you’re thinking about bringing the lightbulb to ancient Egypt. It would be a hit––all those dark tombs.”You. I was thinking about you. His eyebrows rise. “Huh? Me?”Fluorine uranium carbon potassium. I said that out loud. "I mean," I stutter, "I was thinking about…unimolecular reactions.
He stares blankly, then leaves the room like a ghost—never truly here. I gaze at the doorway. I do not know if he means for me to follow him. It’s a choice then.And I realize that this is no choice at all, but rather a sentence. By love or by evil, somehow I am bound to Tutankhamen. It’s not a choice any more if I will follow him, but a question of what I will do when I catch him.
Do you really think that Tutankhamen would have taken a chance on some pale girl with pretty eyes had you not been the priestess of Anubis?”“You did.” The words fall out of me.“What?”I look up at him. “You took a chance on me.” I sit up, breath heavy in my throat. “When I was nothing but a dead, lost thing.
I bet if I were pharaoh, I’d have had my tomb planned and designed by the time I was ten. I've always wanted to be five steps ahead of where I am. And my mind does it right now: I picture the king on his deathbed, and Ay delivers the awful news to me, but I'm the best embalmer in Thebes thanks to Anubis, so I'm alone in a dark room, and I cut open his soft chest, and take out a heart filled with dreams and love and sadness.
If I wasn't discovering something, if I wasn't studying, well then, what was I doing? I know I wouldn’t be happy unless I made a difference. So what was the happiness of a moment worth against the happiness of my life?" I let out a breathy laugh and squeeze his hand. "I guess it doesn't matter now.” I stare out over camp, but a glassy sadness blurs my vision. “Have you ever wanted something so much that everything else in the world seemed so small?"He tilts his head toward me, narrowing his eyes. "I'm beginning to.