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“Carrrgh.”

“Khaa,” Sayyid replied, making the sound again. “Khaa.”

“Auuugch.”

Sayyid’s understanding of the Ancient Egyptian language was exceptional—which was saying something, since the original pronunciation of the words had been lost for over a thousand years. Scholars had been working to reconstruct it—most of them Americans or Europeans. It was a true challenge, since the Egyptian hieroglyphs that represented sounds only covered consonants, leaving out the vowels.

Sayyid’s father, Kamal, had quietly devoted himself to the task in his later years. While many academics had identified Coptic as the surviving tongue that likely came closest to resembling Ancient Egyptian, Kamal had drawn on his knowledge of several other languages in the region, including various dialects of Arabic, to inform his work. After all, it made far more sense that the phonemes of Ancient Egyptian would align with those of other languages of the Levant and North Africa than with Latin-based languages like English and French.

Kamal had been working on a lexicon, which was left unfinished when he died. Neil had never been able to examine it himself—it had been written in Arabic, of course, a language he was barely learning to speak, never mind read—but his conversations with Sayyid had convinced him that, even incomplete, the book must be an exceptional piece of scholarship.

“I could use a bit of help with this,” Neil prodded, suppressing any note of mischief from his voice.

With a sigh, Sayyid pulled his attention from the painting, shifting his gaze to Neil’s hieroglyphs.

“Kheper ir’ef her tah,” he read easily, making a perfectkhaain the back of his throat. “In kheper wanam’ef sen.”

Reaching the end of the line, Sayyid blanched.

“‘As for the person who disturbs this tomb,’” Neil translated with a hint of devilish glee. “‘The scarab is set against him on land. It is the scarab who will eat.’”

“Eathim,” Sayyid corrected him a little queasily. “You’re forgetting the pronoun, ef.”

“Ah yes,” Neil agreed brightly. “Let me see now. That would make it… ‘It is the scarab who will eat him.’Isn’t that colorful?”

Neil might have noticed that his foreman had a bit of a phobia of bugs.

“Scarabs are meant to be very… er, lucky,” Sayyid countered weakly.

“I don’t think they’re meant to be lucky for this fellow,” Neil countered. He read off the next line. “It will destroy you. You will perish completely.”

Sayyid cleared his throat. “This section looks very stable, anyway,” he concluded deliberately and turned away.

Neil suppressed a snort, moving on to the next line in the inscription. It was a tricky one, using glyph combinations that were somewhat less conventional for the period.

“Dashed Late Egyptian creeping in already,” he grumbled, half aware of the sound of footsteps hurrying down the stairs to the antechamber. With his concentration locked on the wall, he only vaguely registered that the figure that popped into view out of the corner of his eye wasn’t one of the workers from above but rather a young woman in a gray poplin skirt and waistcoat. Unruly chestnut hair escaped from under her straw boater hat and a spray of freckles danced across her nose.

Just Ellie,Neil thought automatically as he frowned at a chipped section of the text. “Hold on a minute, Peanut,” he said absently. “I need to figure out if this is a viper or a cobra.”

Behind him, Sayyid straightened, blinking with surprise as he looked from Neil to the woman in the doorway.

Ellie came closer, peering at the hieroglyphs over Neil’s shoulder. “Cobra,” she concluded. “It’s being used as the ‘f’ pronoun, for the masculine third person.”

“Pronouns again!” Neil grumbled—and then it clicked.

Ellie interrupting his work wasn’t unusual… in England.

But Neil wasn’tinEngland.

His eyes went wide as he whirled to face his baby stepsister, his pencil falling from his fingers. “Ellie!” he exclaimed, pulling her into a hug and then immediately pushing her back to blink at her. “But this is Egypt! You’re not supposed to be in Egypt! What are you doing here?”

“I am sorry to ambush you like this,” Ellie admitted uncomfortably as she stood right in front of him, where she absolutely should not have been. “There have been some… unexpected developments since I last wrote. I shall fill you in on all of them in just a little while, I promise, but at this precise moment I am afraid we have a slightly more urgent matter to attend to—namely whether you have uncovered any… er…” Ellie trailed off, frowning as she stared at Neil’s face. “I’m sorry. Is there something on your lip?”

“What? No!” Neil released her to rub uncomfortably at the fine growth of his nascent mustache.

“This is all very surprising,” Sayyid commented.

“Oh! I’m terribly sorry.” Ellie extended her hand. “Miss Eleanora Mallory. I’m Dr. Fairfax’s sister.”