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The birds were so realistic, she could see the ruffling of each gold feather. Dried brown dregs stained the cup’s bottom.
    “I’m afraid to move,” she said, her hand pressed to her mouth in wonder. “I don’t want to break anything.”
    Herrington had come up beside her, his warmth and size a comfort in the dark. “The conservators have removed anything that looked too fragile. It’s safe enough to walk around.”
    “But it looks as if the queen just stepped out! As if she drank from that wine cup mere hours ago!”
    “Luckily for us, the sandstorm sealed that door as soundly as a tomb. Better, really, because so many burial sites have been looted. And there are no windows in this room—for defensive purposes, we think, from the records that were left behind. Apparently, Queen Tou had enemies.”
    “Queen Two?”
    He spelled it for her. “We think that’s how it’s pronounced. Scholars have been able to link the Old Kingdom hieroglyphs to a modern dialect, but we don’t know how much drift there’s been in vocalizing sounds.”
    Beth was no linguist, just a stunned admirer. Feeling as if she were dreaming, she moved toward a painted wall. Its colors shone vividly beneath the dust. The paint followed the carvings: delicate, precise shapes worked into sandstone. She found the image of an egret, then a snake and a crocodile.
    “Those pictures spell out a warning,” Herrington said from behind her. “‘Let any man who breaks the sanctity of this chamber feel my eternal wrath.’”
    The muscles along Beth’s spine shuddered. “That sounds like a curse.”
    “I wouldn’t worry. The desert broke the sanctity of this chamber long before we did.” Herrington panned his own torch slowly across the writing. “Tou-Hhamoun was a powerful queen by all accounts, even allowing for official exaggeration. Bit of a mystery, actually. Scholars have been puzzling over it for years. She went from being an orphan, cast out by her tribe for theft, to supreme ruler of Upper Southland in a mere decade. She married thirty princes, each from powerful families. According to legend, they all begged to marry her.”
    He gestured toward a line of blue and gold hieroglyphs. “Here she says, ‘My rule stretches four by forty,’ whatever that means, ‘and my rivals fear my’—vigor, I think that word is—‘just as they fear my great armies.’ I’m not sure who she intended to impress by writing this here, but that’s what it says.”
    “Perhaps she read it to her husbands as a bedtime story.”
    “Perhaps,” Herrington agreed, a smile in his voice. “Tomorrow the conservators will begin removing these artifacts. We need to stabilize them from the change in atmosphere. Eventually, I’m hoping your government will agree to return them here. Then visitors will be able to admire them in situ, as we do tonight.”
    “What a wonderful idea,” Beth said, her eyes pricking with how deeply she meant the words. “Everyone should have this experience, especially the Bhamjrishi. This is their heritage, after all.”
    “Well, that’s a ways down the road. My government will have to agree to the plan as well. The process would be technically complex. But Hhamoun could end up being a huge tourist draw. I doubt your secretary of the treasury will mind that.”
    He looked quietly satisfied by the prospect, and for the first time Beth saw him only as a person. Not demon, not diplomat, not even her in-law, but just a man with a dream that he was hoping to bring to pass.
    It made her wish she had a dream herself, instead of simply wanting to escape the mundane life her family had planned for her.
    “Thank you for bringing me here,” she said, feeling more humble than she could express. “This is a night I won’t soon forget.”
    Lord Herrington offered her a gentle, unconcealed smile. “I enjoy sharing my discoveries with those who can appreciate them.” He tipped his head to the side, a definite glint of mischief entering