Monster Planet(10)

'I'm the one who taught you how to see, girl. I'm the one who made you special. When those bitches in there thought you were too small and scrawny to waste their time on, I was the one who gave you magic. So if I call you out now you'd better come running.' He grabbed her face and stared into her eyes, his fingers digging into her cheeks.

There had been a time when Jack was kind to her, when he had begged her to let him teach her his secrets. He'd believed that was the only way he could earn eternal rest. He'd killed her father, he told her, back in the other time, and he regretted it now, and he owed her a great debt. Once he began teaching her he had grown impatient and sometimes cruel. Perhaps because he'd discovered that giving her his gift wasn't enough to buy his peace. There was something else he had to accomplish first but it eluded him. Now typically when he came to her it was because he wanted something from her. He'd taken quite a bit already. Every three or four months she could count on him to wander back into her life and want something new. Information, usually, or just gossip. Sometime he had entire shopping lists of supplies he needed for purposes he chose never to reveal. She would steal what he wanted and leave it buried in the desert for him. So far she hadn't been caught.

'Are you still the girl I made my pupil?' he asked, loosening his grip on her face. The skin was soft but so cold where it dug into her. She nodded against his hand. 'Now follow me, then, and keep quiet. I want you to meet a friend.'

He lead her down the back of a dune and into the relative shelter of an old wadi that emptied into a narrow ravine, not a word passing between them as they moved like cats in the darkness. At the back of the defile he snapped on a chemical light'something Sarah hadn't seen in years. She'd thought the military issue blue glowsticks were part of the past she would need to learn to forget. In the dim illumination Jack took a carved piece of stone in the shape of a scarab out of his uniform and laid it on the bare rock between their feet. 'He'll come now, if we're respectful.'

'Who?' Sarah asked. 'Who, will come, Jack? The Tsarevich?'

The glance he shot her was colder than the desert at night. 'This is an old place.' As usual he failed to tell her anything of substance. He expected her to just get what he meant. His lessons were difficult at best and sometimes completely unfair. 'It has its protectors. They're dead but they're clean dead. There's a reason why Ayaan picked this spot to settle down in, even if she didn't know it outright she could sense it.'

'Ayaan,' Sarah moaned. Of course Jack wouldn't know what had happened.

She didn't know that she wanted to fill him in. The hurt was still too real and too personal. She didn't have a chance. A moving shadow appeared at the mouth of the canyon, outlined by darkness in the dawning gap between its walls. Others appeared behind it.

The shadows stepped up against the starlight, silhouettes out of a dread older than any words she knew. The first figure stepped down onto the slickrock and came into their light, moving slowly on legs that didn't work quite right. Sarah knew that gait all too well. Its face was obscured behind a flat plaster mask on which was painted a face with large soulful eyes and a full and sensuous mouth. The painting was in a style that made her think of mosaics in ancient Roman ruins. Below the plaster its throat and chest were wrapped tight in rotting linen bandages. Lengths of cloth dangled from its free arms and looped around its knees and calves.

A mummy. It bent and picked up the scarab carving in both of its clumsy, broken-looking hands. It held the scarab close to its chest.

'This is Ptolemaeus Canopus,' Jack said. 'You can call him Ptolemy'he likes it when you do. He doesn't talk so much for himself but he was pretty much something back in the mists of history. Now he's sort of head man of the stinky bandage brigade. I owe him a sizeable favor and now he has a sort of problem. A couple of hours ago the Tsarevich,' and Jack spat on the ground as he spoke the name, 'stole about fifty of his buddies. Just kidnapped them right off the face of the earth. He wants them back and he needs your help.'

'My help? You mean, the help of our soldiers?' Sarah asked, incredulous. She'd heard stories of mummies before but never met one. Mummies had saved Ayaan and her unit from certain death when they'd fought Gary, half a world and all of time away. They were supposed to be ridiculously strong but emotionally damaged. Sarah had always been advised to stay away from them. Ayaan had advised that. 'Listen, Jack, the Tsarevich pretty much outclasses us and anyway the unit, well, there's not much of it left, not since Ayaan died.' There. She had let it out.