Her mummy cases had been among the most rewarding of her medical career. There was nothing in the world like the feeling of knowing you had personally undone the damage of a couple millennia of entropy. Whenever she got particularly depressed Greta would remind herself how lucky she was to be able to do things like drastically improving a patient’s quality of life with a few hours of work and some extremely basic supplies, and the clouds would lift a bit. She loved what she did in general, of course, she always had, ever since she took over her father’s practice, or she wouldn’t be here—but sometimes she really loved doing it.
“We’ve been putting this off,” she was saying, drawing little metatarsal bones on her desk blotter, planning how she would shape and refine the lightweight nylon replacements. If she ever won the lottery she would set up a 3-D printer to make exact replicas of her patients’ bones, but at the moment hand-carved prosthetics were about the best she could do. For some very fiddly procedures she had consulted the one underworld dentist she knew who did veneer and implant work on vampires; Renenutet’s feet were less delicate a job. “The longer you put weight and strain on those, the more difficult it’s going to be to replace them. I know the prospect of being off your feet entirely for a couple of days while the resins have time to properly cure is not all that appealing, but you really will be much better afterward. Able to lurch around without a cane.”
“Do you really think so? It’s been ages since I could do any real lurching,” he said wistfully. “Mentuhotep did say you did wonders on his back, and of course Ibi’s actually able to move again, poor man—”
“I’m sure of it. Look, come in next week and we’ll have another X-ray and plan out the surgery properly.” She was already picturing the technical challenge of the repair work, the subject of burned monks entirely driven out of her head. “You’ll be up and about again by Christmas; I ought to have done this in the first place instead of trying to reinforce them in situ, but it won’t take me long to extract the damaged bones and replace them with the plastic prosthetics.”
The difficult part would be attaching the prosthetic tendons and ligaments—woven elastic strapping—to the existing bone, but Greta had pioneered a couple of techniques for exactly this type of procedure, including dual-cure resin compounds and very tiny titanium screws. “I think you’ll find your pain levels will drop significantly once you have the replacements in place, and you’ll have a lot more stability. Then we can start thinking about your back.”
“It would be awfully nice,” Renenutet said, “not to sort of feel them grinding when I walk, if you know what I mean.”
Greta winced. “I can just about imagine. All right, things are … a bit hairy just at the moment but if you make an appointment next week we ought to be able to get started. Do you have any questions?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Oh—when you do the surgery, can you have someone say the proper spells over the new bones before you put them in? It really does help.”
“Of course I will. I’m still not good enough at pronunciation to try doing it myself but I’ll have Nadezhda do it if no actual mummies are available.” She kept meaning to get better at Egyptian but never seemed to have the time. Nadezhda wasn’t completely fluent, either—but then again she was a witch, and her magic and that of the Egyptian spells seemed to be compatible.
“Thank you so much,” he said at the same time as a tap came on her office door and Anna stuck her head in.
“You’re very welcome,” she told Renenutet. “I’ve got to go, I’m afraid, but call up to make the appointment next week, all right?” She hung up, and hoped very much that she would be able to see him next week. That there would be a next week for everyone.
The thought that there might not be made her shiver, and she pushed it away as hard as she could.
Anna was looking apologetic. “Sorry,” she said, “but it’s a bit urgent. There’s a ghoul who says he needs to speak to you in private right away.”
“Which ghoul?”
“I didn’t catch his name, but he’s wearing a sort of cloak thing made out of what looks like rat pelts,” Anna said. “He doesn’t look very well, but then they never do, do they?”
“That’s Kree-akh,” Greta said, getting up. “He’s the chieftain of the northern city clans. Tell him to come in.”
Fastitocalon kept his hand on Cranswell’s shoulder, trying not to draw more energy from the contact than he could help—it was difficult not to, but thoroughly impolite, like taking a sip of someone else’s drink.
He could see the way quite clearly in Cranswell’s thoughts. They threaded their way through the people sitting on the museum steps, not bothering very much about avoiding brushing into anyone just yet. Up the steps to the Great Russell Street entrance, and inside, into the pale-green-painted lobby with the suggested donation box; Fastitocalon told himself he’d come back when visible and actually part with a fiver, but right now he had more important things to do. And then they were in a vast white echoing space with a glass ceiling, surrounding a central chamber: what had been the British Museum Reading Room the last time he’d been in here and was now apparently used for various other exhibits.
Cranswell led them to the left, into the Egyptian exhibit hall, and Fastitocalon remembered why he didn’t spend much time in places like this: the intense, knotted, crisscrossing trails of time and metaphysical significance that hung around collections of antiquities were exhausting to experience, and the older the object the heavier its weight on reality. The things in here were old.
They skirted around the group of people looking at the Rosetta Stone and moved on, past Old Kingdom sarcophagi, past statues of Bast, through the Assyrian section, into the Greek statuary. The way was still very clear in Cranswell’s head, which made it a bit easier to withstand all the intense and complicated input, and—
Fastitocalon really did try not to read people’s minds, because it was rude, but this was barely reading so much as being unable not to overhear: Cranswell was both fiercely proud of this place and his privilege to be part of it, and profoundly afraid that he had fucked the latter up beyond repair by doing this stupid, impulsive, uncharacteristic thing that he and Fastitocalon were now here to remedy. Taking the books had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, prompted by frustration and stress, not a deliberate, premeditated choice.
Fastitocalon could not say anything aloud, even if he had wanted to let on that he knew what Cranswell was thinking, but he squeezed Cranswell’s shoulder again, lightly, as if to say, Don’t worry. I’ve got you. This will be all right.