Page 63 of Empire of Shadows
“I think it was more the culmination of a whole lot of things, but yeah. More or less. My mom still writes. My younger brother, Ethan, is being groomed up to wear the mantle of Robinson, Bates, and MacKenzie. He’s not a bad guy, and better suited to the job… though I do wonder how long he’ll be able tostaydecent living in that snakes’ nest.”
Bates rose.
“We should probably call it a night,” he announced. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us. Once we’re past that fork—assuming we actually make it through the cave—you’re gonna have to start watching for thatBlack Pillarfrom the map. And trust me, hunting for a needle like that in this haystack is gonna be exhausting.”
“Yes. I suppose retiring early would be sensible,” Ellie agreed awkwardly.
They climbed into their hammocks—Bates swinging up into his with the lazy grace of practice, Ellie half-falling into her place. She managed to settle herself after a bit of precarious adjustment.
With her head resting against the rolled blanket that served as her pillow, she looked over at where Bates lay beside her. His arms were behind his head, his eyes already closed. He had turned the lantern down to a bare glimmer, leaving just enough light for Ellie to pick out the dim lines of his face.
“Bates?” she said as she suppressed a yawn.
“Yeah?” he replied without opening his eyes.
“Thank you.”
He frowned.
“For what—the beans?”
“For coming out here with me,” she corrected him a little irritably.
He looked over at her, but the details of his expression were lost in the gloom of the night.
“Get some sleep, Princess,” he said.
Ellie let herself fall into the darkness.
?
Fourteen
Ellie was in Egypt,and she was dreaming.
A hot, dry sun warmed her skin. The air whispered of dust and time as it pulled at the little tendrils of hair at the back of her neck.
She held a wood-handled brush in her hand. The horsehair bristles were ideal for gently removing debris from stone, or even—if carefully wielded—ancient wood or pottery.
Stratified deposits were visible in the wall of the trench in which Ellie, kneeling, carefully worked to remove the earth from a slab of mud-hued stone.
Looking closer, Ellie realized that the surface of the stone was carved.
She dropped her brush and used a wooden pick to scrape out the delicate lines—the curve of an arch, the distinct angle of a human profile.
Her brain began translating the symbols instinctively as she tried to balance her quick excitement with the necessary delicacy of technique.
Gratitude… sixteen… head… cattle… exchange… four?
Four hundred, she clarified happily as she picked a pebble out of another ridge in the tablet.Four hundred deben of wheat.
Wonder rose in her chest, filling her like the sun. Ellie had found a two-thousand-year-old receipt for cows.
The tablet was almost certainly part of a new cache, which meant that there would be more engraved stones hidden under the sand. Such ancient documents were unglamorous, but the mortal transactions they recorded were the stuff of daily life, offering a priceless glimpse into the ordinary world of the people who had lived in this place millennia before.
Ellie had the skills to carefully unwrap those vestiges from the earth, piece them back together, and untangle the ancient threads of what they meant.
One of the local farmers Ellie had hired to assist with her dig called to her from above. Ellie gripped the dusty rungs of the ladder and climbed out of the trench, emerging into the stronger wind of the surface.