The Great Tomb Robbery Page 3

  “It’s a Great Mystery!” Khepri said gleefully. “Even you can’t deny it this time, Ra.”

  It was true. I couldn’t. Though part of me wished I could. There was always the chance that Anubis was involved, and he’s one god you don’t want to mess with.

  “Er…maybe we should let the Vizier handle this,” I said.

  “The Vizier?” Khepri slid down Miu’s fur and landed at my feet. “Ra, it’s a royal tomb robbery. And you’re Pharaoh’s Cat. You have a responsibility here.”

  My tail was no longer bristling, but I had to admit he was right. A royal tomb robbery was exactly the kind of case Pharaoh’s Cat ought to take. “All right, all right,” I conceded. “We’ll investigate. For a bit, anyway.”

  “Hooray!” Khepri raced up to my head. “Quick! The guard’s taking the Vizier and the Scribe to the scene of the crime. Huya’s going, too. Let’s go with them.”

  * * *

  In the end, we hitched a ride on the Vizier’s litter. Not that the Vizier approved.

  “Stay out of my way, you beasts,” he grunted.

  Ignoring him, I dug my claws into a prize cushion and watched the sculptor Bek stroke Sabu and hand-feed him small morsels. Sabu took them like a ruler accepting tribute.

  Probably just more bits of dried-up pork, I told myself. Nothing that could excite the discerning palate of Pharaoh’s Cat. But my stomach growled anyway. How come Sabu’s getting snacks and I’m not?

  I turned as the Scribe approached, hoping he would refill my snack bowls. Instead he pushed Kenamon toward us. “Take the boy with you, Vizier. He can draw pictures of the damage to the tomb. I’ll need them for my records and reports.”

  The Vizier looked down his nose at Kenamon. “Can’t he walk with you, Scribe?”

  “The guard and I can keep up with you, and so can Huya,” the Scribe said. “But the boy will slow us down.”

  “Very well.” The Vizier gestured for Kenamon to board. “Sit with the cats, boy.”

  Kenamon seemed pleased to join us. For his benefit, I struck a magnificent pose and held it. The boy reached for his paint box, and I saw admiration in his eyes.

  It was almost as good as a snack.

  * * *

  We were halfway down the Valley of the Kings when I realized that something terrible had happened. “My collar!” I meowed in distress. “We left it in Set Ma’at.”

  “Don’t worry,” Khepri said. “It’s not like it’s missing. Neferhotep is looking after it.”

  That didn’t make me feel any better. My necklace wasn’t supposed to be in the goldsmith’s twitchy hands. It was supposed to be on my neck.

  “It’s probably safer in Set Ma’at, anyway,” Miu pointed out. “If you lost it in these cliffs, you’d never find it again.”

  “You’re missing the point,” I protested. “That collar is part of me. It was a gift from Pharaoh.”

  Miu looked askance at me. “You know, Ra, cats don’t need jewelry.”

  “This one does,” I said miserably. Oh, slender gold chain! Oh, little gold beads that go clink! “If you had any yourself, you’d understand.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Miu said. “And somehow I survive.”

  “Same here,” Khepri chirped. “Cheer up, Ra.”

  I wasn’t consoled, and when we reached the site of the attack, I felt even worse. It was so hot my fur almost blistered.

  “Ouch!” I picked up my paws as fast as I put them down. “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!”

  From his perch between my ears, Khepri urged me on. “Follow Miu. She’s doing just fine.”

  “Miu’s a kitchen cat,” I told him. “She’s used to heat.”

  “You’ll get used to it, too,” Khepri assured me.

  Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one scorching his paws on the oven-hot cliffs.

  One more painful step, and then I was saved: Kenamon scooped me up. “Forgive the liberty, Ra the Mighty, but you look like you need help.”

  It was a liberty, and in ordinary circumstances I couldn’t have permitted it. But as it was, I forgave him right away. What a thoughtful boy!

  Lolling in Kenamon’s arms, I asked Khepri, “Who’s that between the Vizier and the Scribe? He looks just like Huya.”

  Well, not exactly alike, since this man was half a head taller and his mouth wasn’t twisted in a smirk. Still, the resemblance was strong.

  “That’s the Captain of the Guard,” Khepri told me. “Shhh. He’s talking about the attack.”

  In his rumpled uniform, the Captain looked as if he’d been up all night. “That’s where we found the guards, left for dead,” he said, pointing up the cliff.

  “When did they go missing?” the Scribe asked. He had propped his staff between two rocks, and he was jotting down notes on his writing board.

  The Captain rubbed his nose, looking embarrassed. “It’s…er…hard to say. Things were a bit irregular last night, what with the holiday and the feast.”

  “I don’t believe it.” The Vizier looked outraged. “Is there anyone in this place who believes in doing his job?”

  “Oh, we went out on patrol, my lord,” the Captain said hastily. “We’re short-staffed right now, but we know our duty. It’s just that we thought those two guards were taking shelter from the sandstorm that hit in the small hours of the night. When they were still absent this morning, we sent out a search party. They were in bad shape when we found them.”

  “And what’s all this about Anubis?” the Vizier asked.

  “Both men say they saw the god right before they were struck, my lord. And one saw treasure in the god’s hands.”

  The Vizier’s eyes narrowed. “I want to question them.”

  “They’re not here, my lord,” the Captain said patiently. “They’re recovering from their injuries at the guard post—”

  “Send for them,” the Vizier barked. “Now.”

  After the Captain reluctantly gave the order, the Scribe asked, “Which tomb was robbed?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” the Captain admitted. “The sandstorm has covered up any footprints, and the entrance seals are intact on every tomb we’ve checked so far. There’s no damage anywhere. But we found this.” He pulled a gold ring from his pouch and passed it to the Scribe. “I think I’ve read the writing on it properly, but I’m no expert.”

  The Scribe examined it. “This is from the tomb of Setnakht.”

  Setnakht? That was one of my Pharaoh’s distinguished forefathers, owner of Pamiu, my ancestor. Both Setnakht and Pamiu had been legends in their day, and the sarcophagus that held Pamiu’s mummy was supposed to be legendary, too. Fashioned from gold and wood, it was said to resemble a living cat, with golden fur and eyes of glowing amber.

  “Setnakht, eh?” The Captain nodded. “I thought that’s what it said. We checked his tomb, and it’s still sealed tight, but someone must have found another way in. We’ll need to open the seals and see what else has been stolen—with your permission, my lords.”

  Instead of answering, the Scribe passed the ring to the Vizier.

  The Vizier clenched the ring in his fist. “Captain, how can you ask us to disturb Setnakht’s sacred place of rest? For all we know, this ring never entered the tomb. Perhaps it was misplaced when Setnakht was buried, more than a century ago.”

  “It was found out in the open, near one of the attacked men,” the Captain said. “It’s unlikely it’s been sitting there for a century, my lord. This area is patrolled regularly, and work crews pass through here. And gold catches the light.”

  The Vizier scowled. The Scribe crossed out something on his writing board.

  “No one wishes to violate the sacred seals of a tomb,” the Captain went on. “But if a robbery is suspected, we must act. If you cannot give permission, I must go to Pharaoh himself.”

  The Vizier reddened, though I c
ouldn’t tell if it was with embarrassment or anger. “Very well,” he snapped. “Open the tomb.”

  * * *

  If the Vizier was red-faced to begin with, he turned positively purple when they finally unsealed the tomb. Our eyes had barely adjusted to the dim torchlight in the inner chamber when he began wailing.

  “Thieves! Traitors! Heretics! They’ve disturbed Setnakht’s eternal rest! They’ve robbed him of his treasures!”

  From my perch in Kenamon’s arms, I stared in shock at the tomb.

  It was a wreck.

  The thieves had stripped the statues of their gold. They’d hacked at the gilded furniture, probably to get jewels. Worst of all, they’d pried open the enormous stone sarcophagus that held Setnakht’s mummy, and they’d yanked off his priceless amulets and collar.

  “They even took his heart scarab,” Khepri said softly, looking at the mummy’s bare chest.

  Placed on a mummy’s heart, the scarab-shaped stone was supposed to ease his way into the afterlife. Setnakht’s heart scarab would have been large, and probably made of jasper or amethyst. Very valuable, in short.

  “Sacrilege!” the Vizier screamed, and I had to agree.

  But then, when I jumped down to the floor, I saw something even worse.

  “Khepri!” I cried “Miu!”

  Miu rushed to my side.

  Khepri clutched at my fur. “What is it, Ra?”

  I pointed with a trembling paw. “Look!” I had to shield my own eyes from the sight. “My great ancestor Pamiu—that’s his mummy dumped on the floor. The robbers stole his golden sarcophagus!”

  On the Hunt

  I forced myself to look again at the helpless cat mummy. The ears were broken, the bandages loose. Across time and space, I seemed to hear Pamiu’s voice: Avenge me, Ra the Mighty. See that justice is done.

  How could I ignore a call like that?

  “The Great Detective is on the case,” I promised out loud.

  Khepri coughed. “Great Detectives, you mean.”

  “That’s right,” Miu agreed. “We’re a team.”

  True. We’d settled on that after our last case. “But this feels personal,” I told them. “It’s my ancestor lying there. So it’s my duty to take charge.”

  “We’re in this together.” Swishing her tail, Miu stepped toward Pamiu’s desecrated mummy. “Do you think I’m not upset, Ra? A cat is a cat.”

  “But this cat was special,” I reminded her. “After all, not every Pharaoh’s Cat gets a golden sarcophagus. That honor is granted only to the very best, and the most beloved.” In a low voice, I confessed, “To tell the truth, I’m kind of hoping for one myself.”

  Miu sighed and glanced up at Khepri, and I went back to staring at Pamiu’s poor tattered mummy. No doubt the robbers would strip his wonderful sarcophagus of its amber eyes and melt down the rest for the gold.

  The humans took a while to catch up to us, but eventually the Scribe discovered Pamiu’s mummy. “Vizier, look at this. The cat’s sarcophagus was stolen, too. Another priceless object gone!”

  “Make a list, Scribe. Make a list.” Recovering from his initial outrage, the Vizier roved around the burial chamber. “Put down everything missing, everything that looks out of place. And above all, find where the thieves broke in. We can’t catch them till we know how they did the job.”

  Instead of sitting down with his writing board, the Scribe jabbed his staff at Kenamon. “You there. Start sketching. I want a record of all the damage we see.”

  “There’s no sign of entry anywhere,” the Captain said, still scanning the walls. “I don’t understand how they did it.”

  As he lowered his flaming torch, the chamber darkened, creating a distinctly spooky atmosphere.

  “Anoooooooooooooobis.” It was the faintest breath of a whisper, but my fur stood on end when I heard it. Everyone stopped in their tracks, and the Vizier and the Scribe stared at each other wild-eyed.

  Miu nudged me. She was watching Kenamon, and I noticed he was the one human who didn’t look scared. He even had a twinkle in his eyes. I remembered how Sabu had said the boy liked to monkey around. Did that mean he played jokes? Was he the whisperer? Or was it the god of the dead, warning us away?

  I glanced back at the tunnel entrance, then gasped in alarm. Two stiff-legged figures were coming toward us, moaning a little, their cloth wrappings fluttering in the eerie light of the flames.

  “Mummies!” Wailing, I darted behind a canopic jar.

  “Vizier,” said the Captain, “these are the guards who were attacked on the cliffs.”

  Oh.

  “An easy mistake to make,” I told Khepri, who was chortling on top of my head. “All those bandages are very misleading.”

  I came out of hiding.

  “Tell the Vizier what happened to you,” the Captain prompted the men.

  Nursing his arm in a sling, the taller man kept his head bent, as if it pained him. “We were out on patrol together, my lord. It was a moonless night, so it wasn’t an easy job. But we had the stars.” He stopped and bit his lip.

  “Go on,” said the Captain.

  The man’s head drooped even lower. “Just after midnight, we heard jackals howling in this canyon. They don’t usually make that much noise, so we thought we’d better investigate. And then they turned on us—dozens of jackals, all at once, running straight for us and splitting us up. I climbed to get away from them, but when I turned…” The man shut his eyes, as if he didn’t want to remember.

  “What?” the Vizier demanded.

  “I saw a huge jackal’s head.” The petrified man could barely get the words out. “It was the god Anubis, and he was angry. And that’s the last thing I remember.”

  The shorter man had a bandaged head and a tightly wrapped leg. “I ran, too, my lord. But then I heard a cry. That’s when I saw the great god Anubis, rising up before me, his hands full of gold and jewels.” His voice shook at the memory. “The p-power of the god overcame me, and he wiped my mind blank. The rest is gone.”

  The Vizier looked unnerved. So did the Scribe. To tell the truth, I was feeling a little unnerved myself.

  I looked at Kenamon. He seemed as spooked as the rest of us. The twinkle was gone.

  “I don’t know what to think.” The Captain glanced around the tomb uneasily. “We questioned the men separately, of course, but the details match. And they both swear their testimony is true.”

  The torch flickered, and the chamber grew darker still. In the uncanny setting, it was easy to imagine a dark, wolfish face looming against the night sky. As the silence stretched out, you could almost hear the jackal god’s stealthy footsteps coming our way.

  I shivered. Khepri dropped down to the floor, as if he needed the comfort of solid ground beneath him. Even Miu looked unsettled.

  “Could it be true?” The Captain’s voice was hushed. “Does Anubis walk this Valley?”

  The Vizier stared at the wall painting beside him, of the black-headed jackal god weighing the hearts of the dead. My eyes were fixed on it, too.

  “The tomb was sealed.” The Vizier sounded faint. “And we have found no other entrance.”

  “Only a god could enter,” the Scribe whispered.

  He and the Vizier gave each other a long, uncertain look.

  “I need fresh air.” Pressing a hand to his sweaty forehead, the Vizier stumbled toward the tunnel. With a shudder, the Scribe followed him out, gripping his staff tightly and clutching his writing board close to his chest.

  I crouched down, trying to avoid the golden eyes of the Anubis painting.

  No one is braver than Pharaoh’s Cat, of course. My friends always say so. (Well, not Khepri and Miu. But everyone else.) Yet a god is a god, and a cat’s powers can hardly compare. Our purr can make you humans talk, but that’s all we have. And that isn’t much help when you
’re dealing with the guardian of the afterlife.

  “Honestly, this whole Anubis business gives me the creeps,” I said to Miu and Khepri. “How about we leave right now?”

  Khepri clicked at me in reproof. “We’re Great Detectives, Ra. We don’t let our fears get the better of us. We search out the truth.”

  “That’s right,” Miu agreed. “We need to look for evidence—cold, hard facts.”

  “Fine,” I said, still crouching. “How about we look for them outside?”

  “Ra, if we go out, they might not let us back in,” Khepri said. “We need to search this tomb while we can.”

  “If you’re scared, you don’t have to stay,” Miu said reassuringly. “We’ll get the job done and meet you outside.”

  “Who’s scared?” I forced myself to stand up. If anyone was going to avenge Pamiu, it was going to be me. “It’s just that it’s kind of dark in here, and stuffy.” And spooky.

  “Let’s see if we can work out how the robbers got in.” Khepri scrambled toward the corner of the room. “Check the walls, especially down low. Oh, and the floors. Humans never pay proper attention to floors.”

  The Captain and his men and Huya were examining the main chamber and the tunnel that led to it, but Khepri was right: they weren’t paying much attention to anything below their knees. Only Kenamon seemed to be inspecting everything, and he was making very slow work of it.

  Khepri, Miu, and I got down to business. We paced the perimeter of the chamber, keeping out of the way of the humans, sniffing (me and Miu) and scuttling (Khepri) as we went.

  We were under a gilded chair, examining a section of floor the humans had skipped over, when I said, “You know, this is hard work.”

  Miu pressed her nose to a crack between two stones.

  “The kind of work that makes you hungry,” I said.

  Click, click, click, went Khepri.