Because the poor idiots buying what they think is the real thing can’t ever be sure it is genuine, not when they’re paying cheap prices for it. For that matter, they can’t be sure when they’ve paid a small fortune for it. He had even, once or twice, had an ermine-wrapped social lion come slipping in on the sly, having gotten the chills from some of the real stuff, and not wanting it about the house. Borderline sensitive, they were, and he was all sympathy with ‘em, poor things. They had to have something to stay current with fashion, but couldn’t bear the presence of anything tomb-touched.
And I have the solution right there in my display room. They would choose one piece or several, and he would give them what they needed to make it look genuine. He’d make a couple of inconsequential chips in places, write up as nice a forged article of “genuine provenance” as ever you saw, charge the client the same price as for one of his fakes, and promise not to breathe a word to anyone about it. What harm was there in that? The lady’s status-climbing spouse would be happy he had something to show to the lads in the curio cabinet, and she wouldn’t be getting so many nightmares she’d be taking to the laudanum every night.
He was toying with the notion of having his men try their hands at making articles of modern use in the ancient fashion. Umbrella stands, perhaps? Writing-desk accessories? Articles for a lady’s dressing table? That might be exactly the right direction to go in; a lady would never use an artifact on her dressing table when she never knew what it originally contained, but she could surround herself with alabaster hair receivers, faience cologne bottles, carved unguent jars and powder boxes from his works, happy in the knowledge that she was the first and only user, with no long-dead Egyptian princess coming to stare back at her with long, slanted eyes in her vanity mirror.
As he lifted vases and ushabtis from their packing crates, he marveled, as he always did, at the craftsmanship. These men took real pride in their work, and it showed. The alabaster of a replica oil lamp glowed in the light from his lantern, so thin was the stone of the lotus blossoms on their curving stems. And the tender expression on a goddess meant to protect one corner of a sarcophagus brought an answering smile to his lips; a sad smile, for he knew what the original had looked like, and who it had been for—and that all four of the sheltering goddesses had borne the lovely face of the dead Pharaoh’s grief-stricken wife.
Oh, poor little Anksenamun, no more than a girl, and not only weighed down with grief but in fear for your own life. Wonder whatever became of you? Did you just fade away in mourning? Did you fly to safety somewhere? Or did you die at the hands of ambition and greed? Well, you died, sooner or later, a thousand years and more ago. May your gods keep you and your Tut together forever.
Beautiful. And all of it free from the taint of the tomb, of the faint miasma of the rage of an impotent former owner. He often wondered how anyone could bear to have genuine artifacts anywhere near where they lived and slept.
I certainly couldn’t. I’d wake up with terrors three times a night.
The scent of Egypt and warmth came up from the excelsior along with the artworks: dust and heat; incense mingled with dung; a hint of lotus. By the time he finished with his inventory, for once finding nothing missing, broken, used as a container to smuggle opium or hashish, or otherwise amiss, he was tired and the ache in his knee gnawed at the edges of his temper. He was glad enough to replace the last figure in its bed of excelsior and close the lid on the packing case. A cozy coal fire was sounding better by the moment.
Roast beef and ‘taters, and good mushy peas. That’s what will get me warmed inside and out. Bit of trifle, or pudding, or maybe treacle tart.
“Night, Cap’n,” the night watchman saluted from his stool beside the door, as Peter left the warehouse. Peter hadn’t been “Captain” Scott for a good six years and more, but the grizzled and weather-beaten night watchman had been one of his old hands, and habits died hard.
“Good night, Jeremiah,” he replied, with a return salute. “Fog by morning.”
“And hard luck to them on the water,” Jeremiah said with sympathy. “Or off it. Keep an eye to your back on your way home. Fog’s a blessin’ t’ them as is no better’n they should be, so mind ye take care.”
“That I will,” Peter assured him, and limped out onto the dock, listening to the water lick at the wooden pilings. But something in the sound of the water stopped him, just beyond the night watchman’s line of sight. He listened again. Someone swam, gently and quietly, just beneath the pier. Just beneath him, following where he went, sending up a thin, telltale touch of magic to alert him, thin as fog, insubstantial, tasting of water weeds, a gleaming, furtive, and fugitive ribbon of palest green.
And he stifled a groan. Not tonight. Not a messenger tonight. Oh, bloody hell.
He walked to the edge of the dock, and looked down. A translucent, faintly glowing, narrow female face looked up at him from the water, surrounded by the tangle of her seaweed hair. The naiad scowled; they didn’t like the filthy water of the Thames inside the London basin, and Peter didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t have taken a swim in that filthy stuff for a king’s ransom.
“The Council summons, Water Master,” the naiad told him, her voice the hiss of foam on the sand, the hollow gurgle of wavelets in the rocks. Then, her message discharged, she dove under the surface and vanished, heading for cleaner water as fast as she could swim.
Peter cursed under his breath. “The Council summons,” indeed. He was the only member of the Council that was a middle-class, regular working man; the rest were moneyed. Some were “professional” fellows, doctors or lawyers or stockbrokers; some were titled or had other forms of inherited wealth. None of them were tradesmen. They didn’t have to be up at dawn to mind the store. They wouldn’t have to somehow find a bloody cabby at dockside, and they wouldn’t have to find another way to go home in the cursed fog! Oh, granted, Scott could use a beckoning finger of magic to lure a cabby in, but it would still take doing, and waiting!
But do they ever “summon” me when it comes time for a nice dinner party, or a bit of an entertainment? he thought sourly. Oh, no. I’m the most popular bloke on the Council when there’s something to be done at a savage hour, though. Gawd Almighty, old Kipling’s got it dead right. “Tommy this and Tommy that an’ Tommy go away, but it’s ‘thenkee Mister Atkins’ when the guns begin’ t’ play.” He wasn’t sure he had the quote dead right, but the sense of it certainly seemed to ring home tonight, in the cold and fog.
It crossed his mind, as it did every time he was called unexpectedly by the Council of Masters, to go directly home and tell them that their bloody Council could go straight to hell for all he cared. But the problem was that the Council was useful; without them, there would be open warfare between Elemental Masters and no doubt of it. And they did good work; the White Lodge had put down a couple of nasty bits of work, even if they couldn’t do much about blatant idiots like Aleister-damn-his-eyes-Crowley. He couldn’t quit, not in good conscience. Not while there was evil crawling around that no purging of the sewers was going to get rid of, and not while some arrogant, damned Elemental Masters thought the way to settle a quarrel was to ruin decent, normal folks’ lives with floods, earthquakes, storms, and conflagrations.