Fatma stepped from the House of the Lady of Stars into the backstreet of Khan-el-Khalili. Siti came out a moment later.
“Is he for real?”
Siti frowned. “Who? You mean Ahmad?”
“Lord Sobek,” Fatma replied dryly. “He really thinks he’s some crocodile god?”
“Well, not the Sobek. More like Sobek’s chosen here in the mortal world. Someone in direct communion with the entombed god, a part of whom now resides within him.”
Entombed gods. That much Fatma understood of the old religionists. The faith claimed the gods had never truly gone away, but instead lay interred deep beneath the earth of Egypt—not dead but entombed within colossal sarcophagi like the pharaohs of old. Adherents believed the more people turned back to their worship, the more the old gods stirred in deathless slumber, reaching out to touch the mortal realm—bestowing followers with bits of their power. One day, they claimed, when enough chanted their names and once more made offering in their sacred temples, the gods would break their eternal fast, taking their rightful place as the true lords of this land. The thought, Fatma admitted privately, at times made her shiver.
“You alright?” Siti asked.
Fatma pushed away visions of hoary desiccated gods wrapped in mummified shrouds and adorned in shimmering crowns with the heads of beasts rising from Egypt’s depths—and answered with a question. “You’re looking for a place for this grand temple? That’s where you’ve been these past months? And you never told me?”
Siti propped back against a wall. “I told you I was out doing work. You never asked much more. Or seemed to want to know. We don’t really talk about that kind of thing.”
True enough, Fatma conceded. Still. “This attempt at opening up some public temple. That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“I thought you said you weren’t here to lecture.”
“I’m not lecturing. Just being honest.”
Siti folded her arms. “What’s your ‘honest’ not-lecture, then?”
“The country is still getting used to djinn and magic. Now you want to tell them there are ancient gods entombed beneath their feet—that you’re trying to wake up? People aren’t ready.”
Siti’s voice tightened. “How long should we wait until they’re ready? A year? Ten?”
“As long as it takes.” Fatma could hear her own tone heating. “Until people accept you.”
Siti cocked her head. “Like you accept me? Don’t you think we hide enough as it is?”
The two said nothing else for a moment, only glaring. Slowly, their faces untensed.
“Did we just have a fight?” Siti asked, a smile forming. “I think we just had a fight!”
“We had a fight,” Fatma agreed. Her irritation all but vanished at the realization. It was a wonder it’d taken this long.
“How about tonight you make it up to me—” Siti began.
Fatma’s eyes rounded. “Make it up to you?”
“Make it up to me, by taking me to the Spot. It’s still there, isn’t it?”
“The Spot is always there.”
“Then looks like you’ve got a date, investigator. Dress sharp.”
Fatma gave a slight snort as Siti turned to walk inside. She always dressed sharp.
CHAPTER SIX
The Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities sat in the center of downtown Cairo. When it was founded in 1885, its headquarters had been relegated to a warehouse up in Bulaq. It moved to its current locale in 1900—one among the wave of new constructions by djinn architects.
Fatma traced the building’s outline as she approached: a long rectangular structure capped by a glass dome. A row of bell-shaped windows lined the front of its five floors, each fitted with mechanized screens of black and gold ten-pointed stars and kites, which constantly shifted into new geometric patterns. Walking through a set of glass doors, she gave a quick greeting to a guard—a young man whose uniform was always too big for his gangly frame. One of these days, she’d introduce him to a tailor. Not breaking her stride, she bounded across the marble floor—where the Ministry’s insignia, a medieval symbol for alchemy superimposed upon a twelve-pointed star, had been formed from a mosaic of red, blue, and gold stone.
She spared an upward glance, where giant iron gears and orbs spun beneath the glass dome, like some clockwork orrery. It was, in fact, the building’s brain: mechanical ingenuity forged by djinn. Smaller replicas allowed aerial trams to self-pilot without the need of a driver. This one helped to run the entire Ministry. The building was alive. She tipped her bowler in good morning to it as well.
Her cane stopped the closing doors of a crowded lift, allowing her to slip inside. With apologies to the other occupants, she named her floor and checked her pocket watch. Still some morning left, but not much. In her head, her mother’s voice came on cue: Time is made of gold. The lift stopped at the fourth floor, and she stepped out, passing agents on the way to her office—men in black with red tarbooshes. She pulled down her bowler, avoiding their glances.
“Agent Fatma!” someone called.
She gritted her teeth. No such luck. Turning, she met a tall, broad-shouldered man in a well-pressed Ministry uniform, silver buttons gleaming. A smile lined his square jaw, and she relaxed a bit. “Good morning, Agent Hamed.”
The man frowned at a clock on the wall. “Wait, is it still morning?”
“I didn’t know you were funny now.”
He smirked beneath a short dark moustache, sipping from a cup of tea.
She and Hamed had graduated from the academy together, back in ’08. Not that they were great friends back then. He’d been older, bigger, and always bragged of coming from a family of policemen—the kind of person she usually avoided. But, by chance, they’d reconnected just this past summer. Turned out, he wasn’t all that bad. A bit stiff and conservative—like his starched white collarless shirt—but alright, once you got to know him.
“Keeping late hours,” he remarked. Then in a lowered voice. “Heard you were out
