#serwhosit

“Perhaps,” Dr Bay returns non-commitally. He folds his glasses and puts them on his desk.

Cooper interjects, as he comes out of his corner where he had been standing while Blaine presented the box and map to his employer: “Two questions: who the hell was Seti the First, and was he rich?”

“He was the second pharaoh of the 19th dynasty,” Blaine explains more than a little impatiently. He's lost count of the number of times he's explained even the easier, more commonly known aspects of his career to his older brother, but if there are two things Cooper cares about, it's money and himself. Blaine knows his brother does genuinely love him, even if he doesn't know, so he throws him a bone: “He's said the have been the richest pharaoh of them all.”

“Oh, I like this fellow, I like this fellow a lot,” Cooper says gleefully. He would probably be rubbing his hands together if they weren't in the presence of academia.

Blaine returns his attention back to Dr Bay because he really, truly believes this is a lead. Maybe the lead which will finally make the Bembridge scholars realise how valuable Blaine could be to their institution. He says, “I've already dated the map; it's almost three thousand years old, and if you look at the hieratic just here . . . Well.” He points out the hieratic in question and then pauses, his sense of drama overtaking him for a moment, because more sensible than his brother he may be but he does quite have his own sense for the dramatic, and this is an overwhelming moment on its own. “It's Hamunaptra.”

Blaine looks up to Cooper, and of course, of course his older, greedy brother has heard of Hamunaptra. He hurries over to the desk to look at the hieratic, even though his understanding of ancient Egyptian writings is minimal. Meanwhile, Dr Bay drops the map to his desk as if it were nothing more significant than a grocery list, and he scoffs: “Dear god, don't be ridiculous; we're scholars, not treasure hunters. Hamunaptra's a myth told by ancient Arab storytellers to amuse Greek and Roman tourists.”

“I know all that blather this whole 'the city is protected by the curse of a mummy' nonsense, but my research has lead me to believe that the city itself may actually have existed,” Blaine insists. He can feel his temper rising again, though he can't feel which of his anger is towards Dr Bay's thoughtless, immediate dismissal, and which is actually displaced frustration from the rejection of his application.

“Are you sure it's the Hamunaptra?” Cooper asks. Blaine huffs and glares at him; his brother is the one who brought him the map, and the only one in the room who actually could be described as a treasure hunter, amateur though he may be.

“Yes. The City of the Dead, where the pharaohs are said to have hidden the wealth of Egypt,” he taunts, although his snark clearly flies straight over his brother's head.

“Yes, in a big underground treasure chamber,” Cooper says, his voice rushed and alive as he begins to pace the room. He's building up to a speech, one which would undoubtedly be overflowing with pointed fingers and unnecessary dramatics and maybe an extreme and unfeasible plot or two, but Dr Bay cuts him off right there with a derisive laugh. Alas, Cooper is nothing if not able to turn on a dime, so he spins around and brandishes his finger at the older man, and his voice takes on an attempt at a mythical tone. “Oh, come on, everyone knows the story! The entire necropolis was rigged to sink into the sand at Pharaoh's command – turn a switch and the whole place would disappear beneath the sand dunes, taking the treasure with it.”

“As the Americans would say,” Dr Bay interrupts, unimpressed, and giving Cooper very little of his attention which is, in all truth, the best, but not the easiest, way to deal with Cooper, “it's all fairytales and hokum—oh my goodness!” he exclaims, throwing the parchment which is now on fire away from him. Blaine and Cooper both make wordless exclamations of their own, dashing round the desk and dropping to the floor to save the map from disappearing like the legendary Hamunaptra. Once it is no longer alight, Cooper opens the parchment, and they find a good portion of the etchings burnt away.

“You've burnt it – you've burnt off part of the lost city!” Cooper shouts, pointing once again.

“It's for the best, I'm sure,” Dr Bay replies. “Many men have wasted their lives in the foolish pursuit of Hamunaptra; no one's ever found it. Most have never returned.”

Cooper's response is merely to storm out of the room like a child throwing a tantrum. Blaine slowly picks himself off the floor and follows his brother in a more sedate manner, avoiding his employer's eyes, unsure whether he feels more disappointed or frustrated, with the useless, partial map clutched in his hand. He lets Cooper rant at him for a while about conspiracy theories and gold, harnessing his energy and distraction so that Blaine has some help getting Dr Bay's library back in order, or at the very least, the shelves back upright and the fallen books and rolls and papers into more organised piles.

“We'll show him, Blaine, I can promise you that. We'll find Hamunaptra anyway and then when we return, your faithless employer will have to eat his words, and if he's lucky I may even allow him to kiss my ringed fingers.”

“How?” Blaine asks tiredly. “We've lost the map, remember?”

Cooper pauses and looks across at Blaine. It is not an expression of remorse or guilt, exactly, but it is cautious and far too bright; basically the same expression he wore frequently when Blaine was growing up when Cooper had been caught sneaking out the house to go see a dame or showing up to breakfast with the aftereffects of alcohol or opium in his eyes.

“There is perhaps a chance that there is more to the story than I originally told you.”

--*--

Blaine looks up at the tall, sandy walls of Cairo prison, and then he turns his eyes to give Cooper his most suffering, betrayed look.

“You told me you got it in a dig down in Thebes,” he says accusingly.

“Yes, well, it appears I was mistaken,” Cooper says.

“You lied to me.”

Cooper pats Blaine on the shoulder in condescension and then starts walking them towards the wooden door cut into a side of the wall. “I lie to everybody,” he corrects with an air of fact. “What makes you so special?”

“I am your brother,” he says, pushing past his brother forcefully enough that their shoulders make an audible impact, though not hard enough to knock Cooper off his balance. Cooper, predictably, doesn't notice Blaine's upset.

“That just makes you more gullible,” he returns, a small grin on his face as if he is very pleased with himself. He probably is; Cooper thinks himself far wittier than he really is, and it is a trait Blaine hasn't idolised since he was fourteen.

“Cooper, you stole it from a local drunk at the local chaamara!”

“Picked his pocket, actually, so I think it's probably a good idea if you were to talk to him on your own—”

“Oh, stop being so ridiculous,” he snaps, and then raises his voice as they reach the outer cell to ask the warden, “What exactly is this man imprisoned for?”

“Well, this I did not know,” the warden says, “but when I heard you were coming, I asked him that myself.” He shouts in Arabic for the man to be brought out and Blaine asks for more details. “He said: he was just looking for a good time.”

Blaine begins to ask what, exactly, that means, but the door between inner and outer cell opens and he's distracted by all the kerfuffle of bodies moving and struggling and shouting in Arabic. They throw the man against the bars and he's – rather rugged. His hair is long and dry, and he is entirely unwashed, although his chin only bears a light stubble; it all serves to highlight the shapely line of his jaw, the freckles on his face, and the bright blue of his eyes. One of the guards hits the man's back; he grunts against the bars, and his eyes harden.

“This – this is the man you stole from?” he asks, in fair disbelief because the sense of toughness he gets from the man is far outweighed by the softness of his features, and it doesn't seem to quite fit with Cooper's nervousness.

“Yes, exactly, so why don't we go sniff out a spot of tiffin—”

“Who are you?” the man asks. His voice is high, and hard enough to reject any form of nonsense; and yet, underneath that, the part of Blaine devoted to his piano can hear notes of musicality. His eyes move to Blaine, move along Blaine's body in a way he feels to his soul, and he can't help but gape. “And who's the sheik?”

“Sheik—?”

“Oh, I'm just a local sort of missionary chap, spreading the good word and all that, but this is my brother, Blaine.” Cooper smiles charmingly and steps forward, pulling Blaine with him.

“How do you do?” Blaine says, forcing his voice to stay steady. The man's eyes flick over Blaine's body, and Blaine finds himself second guessing the bow tie and soft cardigan he'd dressed himself in this morning.

“Not bad,” the man comments.

“I beg your pardon!” Blaine exclaims, feigning indignation as a blush rises on his cheeks. Thankfully, his mixed heritage means the pigmentation of his skin is naturally darker and therefore it is much more difficult for people to notice when he's embarrassed.

The warden yells in Arabic to something going on behind Blaine, and the Egyptian man excuses himself. Almost immediately, Cooper is crowding in Blaine's space, jiggling his arm in that insufferably impatient way he never grew out of, muttering, “Ask him about the box.”

Blaine shakes him off and steps closer to the cell. “We've, uh, found,” he starts, but the man has stopped paying attention. “Hello, excuse me,” he says. When the man's attention is back on him, Blaine fixes a smile to his face, speaks calmly, and tries not to swoon like a Victorian lady when he looks in the man's eyes. “We both found your puzzle box and we've come to ask you about it.”

The man stares at him, and in the short pause, Blaine catches himself leaning forward on the balls of his feet.

“No.”

“No,” Blaine echoes slowly.

“No,” the man laughs. “You came to ask about me Hamunaptra,” he says, completely straight-faced; at Blaine's side, Cooper hushes the man, while Blaine can't stop a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“How do you know the box pertains to Hamunaptra?” he asks in an undertone, although he cannot quite stop himself his keenness from bleeding into his tone.

“Because that's where I was when I found it; I was there,” the man says condescendingly.

“But how do we know that's not a load of pig's wallow?” Cooper challenges, moving forward to get in the man's face. He's pointing at the man through the bars, like some sort of parody of a gangster. It seems as ineffective as every other of Cooper's attempts at bravado; the criminal ignores his question entirely and asks himself, “Do I know you?”

“No, I think we rather run in different circles,” Cooper says pompously, even though Blaine knows for a fact that Cooper has had his fair share of days in various gaols in England; but comprehension dawns in the man's eyes, and his cuffs rattle around his wrists as he strikes Cooper's face with his fist. The guards hit the man's back with their wooden batons while Cooper falls to the ground and rolls around, groaning. Blaine ignores his brother's dramatics, stepping over his body.

“You were actually at Hamunaptra?” he asks, almost breathlessly.

“Yeah, I was there,” the man says, a smirk slowly spreading across his face. Blaine's heart skips a beat, and he credits it to the excitement of being so close to the archaeological find of the century. This would be an even bigger discovery than Tutankhamen; the Bembridge scholars would have to accept Blaine into the university.

“You swear?”

“Every damn day.”

“I didn't mean that,” Blaine says, far too tense to joke around.

“I know what you meant. I was there – Seti's place? City of the Dead?” The man waves his hands in the air, not anywhere near as impressed as he should be.

“Could – could you tell me how to get there?” Blaine asks, a hand darting out to grasp one of the rough metal bars of the cell, ignoring the man's disbelieving expression. The warden shouts again, closer to the trio; Blaine takes off his hat to hide his face from the warden and continues in a low voice, “I mean, the exact location.”

“You wanna know?” the man asks, his voice high and countenance innocent and almost eager.

“Well, yes,” Blaine says, moving closer almost without thinking about it.

“You really wanna know?” The man's voice is secretive now, and Blaine moves even closer, until he can clearly see the other man's every eyelash.

“Yes,” Blaine breathes. The man crooks his finger for Blaine to come closer still; and then the man is grasping his chin, fingers roughened from adventures juxtaposing his soft image, lips chapped and dry and so, so warm. Blaine's eyes close and his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and his heart beats painfully in his chest, unable to remember the last time another man had even so much as looked at him.

When they part, it is much too soon, but the man's eyes are almost manic. “Then get me the hell out of here!” he says. Then the guards drag him up and Blaine jumps up and away from the scuffle when the man fights back. “Do it, Blaine,” he orders, and Blaine can only nod as his heart thunders and his lips taste of sand. The guards hit the man with their batons, the man kicks and hits them back, and then he is dragged back through the wooden door into the main prison compound.

“W-where are they taking him?” Blaine asks.

“To be hanged,” the warden answers. He meets Blaine's eyes and says, no hint of humour, “Apparently, he had a very good time. Would you like to come watch?”

He walks off, leaving Blaine standing beside his prone brother. Blaine gapes after him for a moment and then crouches down, hitting and pulling at Cooper's shoulders. “Come on, you oaf! Do you want our only link to Hamunaptra to hang?”

“Go on without me,” Cooper moans, clutching at his face.

Blaine huffs. “Oh, you are just—Fine. I will meet you outside,” he says, and then he runs after the warden.

--*--

The scaffolding is in the centre of a small arena, surrounded by three levels of cheering natives. Blaine is sitting beside the warden, anxiously tapping his toes against the floor.

He turns abruptly to the warden and says, “I will give you one hundred pounds to save this man's life.”

“Sir, I would pay one hundred pounds just to see him hang.”

“Two – two hundred pounds.”

“Proceed!” the warden calls down to the scaffolding, where the guards are looping the rope around the stranger's neck.

“Three hundred pounds.” The warden and one of the guards have an exchange in Arabic which Blaine doesn't even try to follow, which ends with the warden saying, “Of course do not let him go!” in English and the guard hitting the criminal across the back of his head. “Five hundred pounds,” Blaine says, nearing desperation.

For a moment, the warden hesitates, and Blaine feels hope begin to spread in his stomach. However, then the warden shouts down to open the trapdoor; Blaine cries out; the man drops, feet kicking out in a feeble attempt at survival, but not dead. The crowd falls almost silent, and the warden laughs. “His neck did not break!” he announces. The crowd cheers again, the people on the ground pushing at the guards to get closer, and the warden turns spitefully back to Blaine as he falls back in his seat. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” he says insincerely, “Now we must watch him strangle to death.”

Blaine looks around wildly, casting his mind every which way for a solution. Dimly, he's aware of the crowd chanting, but all he can think of is that man, the kiss, and . . . “He knows the location to Hamunaptra,” he says quickly.

The warden's head snaps around; he accuses, “You lie.”

“I would never!” Blaine says, offended.

“Are you telling me this filthy, godless son of a pig knows where to find the City of the Dead?”

“Yes.”

“Truly?”

“Yes! And if you cut him down we will give you . . .” Blaine thinks quickly; twenty-five would be a fair share, but how much should capital punishment be rewarded? “Ten percent.”

“Fifty percent,” the warden barters.

“Twenty.”

“Forty.”

“Thirty.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Ah! Deal!” Blaine says, smiling widely, pointing with enough vigour that Cooper would probably be proud of him. The warden pauses, but quickly comes to realise how he has sold himself out and groans. Still, a deal is a deal, and he shouts, “Cut him down!”

A guard cuts the rope and the man falls to the floor. Blaine breathes out the his anxiety and stands on shaking legs, allowing his smile to become a little smug when the man looks his way.

“We'll be leaving in two days,” Blaine informs the warden breezily while the guards set about freeing the stranger of his ties. “I don't know how long we'll be gone, of course, but I shouldn't imagine more than a couple of weeks.” The warden grunts at him and shouts down to the guards. “It has been . . . a pleasure doing business with you, Mr . . .”

“Djalili. Omid Djalili.”

“Well, I'm Blaine Anderson. Good day, Mr Djalili.” Blaine nods politely to the stouter man and hastens away; he needs to talk to the man to find out if he can truly take Blaine to Hamunaptra – and to find out his name, of course. If Blaine is to trust his career to a handsome man who gets arrested and kisses like a dream, he must at least find out the man's name before they embark on this adventure.

As luck would have it, Blaine finds both the man and his brother in the same place: just outside the prison entrance, Cooper cowering away from the man even though he's half a head taller.

“Oh, good, you're still here,” Blaine says to the man, more pleased than he would care to admit. “As my brother already said, I'm Blaine, Blaine Anderson, and this is my brother, Cooper.”

“Kurt Hummel,” the man replies, not looking away from Cooper. His gaze is carefully blank compared to when he was in the cell, and it unsettles Blaine in the oddest way. “Thanks for getting me out.”

“I had to cut a deal,” Blaine grumbles. “Mr Djalili – that's the warden – he's getting twenty-five percent of whatever we find.”

Kurt snorts. His eyes slide over to Blaine, and though they remain relatively emotionless, his lips are pulled into a smirk which could mean any number of things. “When do we leave?” he asks. Cooper makes a noise of disbelief but shakes his head and shuffles out of arm's length when the attention turns to him. “I said I'd take you to Hamunaptra if you got me out of there, and you did. I don't break my promises, Mr Anderson.”

“No, no, did I say that?”

“Thank you, Mr Hummel,” Blaine says. He is perhaps fawning a little, but he can't honestly be expected to think straight when he can still taste sand in the corners of his lips. “We're leaving in two days from the main dock, at nine in the morning. It's only a small boat but it's quite reputable – plus, well, there aren't many ships travelling up the Nile right now,” he finishes rather weakly, aware of his near mindless babbling but not quite able to stop himself. He offers Mr Hummel a small smile, and Blaine fancies that something in Mr Hummel's own countenance softens; admittedly, yes, Blaine has a history of seeing what he wants to see, because people are much harder to read than even the dustiest of books, but the taller man's edges seem less rigid, now, and Blaine is sure the dimple wasn't there before.

“In that case, I shall see you both in two days at nine,” he says, and then inclines his head in a way that speaks of a gentlemanly upbringing. Blaine gathers himself enough to dip his own head and say his own farewell, and Cooper's is full of false bravado and charming friendliness.

“Good Lord, old boy, can you believe that man? I really don't know if we can trust him.”

“Can or not, he's the only link we have to Hamunaptra,” Blaine says. “We don't have much choice but to trust him.”

Cooper shakes his head and lies his arm across Blaine's shoulders as they begin to walk away from the prison compound. “Oh, dear baby brother, put a pretty boy in front of you and your common sense evaporates into thin air. Don't think I didn't see that kiss in there – I only have the one bruised eye, you know.”

“I suppose you know a great deal about common sense, then,” Blaine retorts bitingly, and thankful once again for his darker skin pigmentation.

“But trust me, sport, you don't want a man like that. Who knows what he was imprisoned for? And anyway, he doesn't seem the type to settle down for a husband who spends more time around books and dusty old artefacts than his own living room. Of course, I do want you to be happy, but you can do much better than a layabout criminal who goes wherever the money takes him.”

“That sounds familiar,” Blaine says dryly, although of course Cooper isn't paying attention to Blaine, far too busy listening to the sound of his own voice as he tells Blaine what to do with his own life in that irritatingly condescending way of his; so Blaine tunes him out and runs his tongue along his lips to taste the dirty grit of sand.

He deposits his hat and outer coat in the cloakroom, lets Dr Bay know he's arrived and greets the few coworkers he sees as he makes his way to his own domain: the library.

Blaine has loved books for as long as he can remember, and ancient Egypt in particular for even longer. While the few weeks of British summer were spent at the beach, the rest of the year was spent with one parent or the other and constantly pestering them with questions, or else the entire family was in Egypt and Blaine lived in the numerous museums. They were constantly patient – though that would have had to be a virtue learnt to tolerate Cooper long before Blaine was born – and answered him in so much detail that Blaine could, quite rightly, have had a degree. Unfortunately, the blasted Bembridge scholars disagreed, and so Blaine was spending all his moments in the library instead of splitting his time between books and research.

He is kept moderately busy throughout the day. There is the perpetual cleaning away of the Egyptian sand and dust; some of these books are quite rare and old and it would be on Blaine's head if the words or bindings were eroded away. The room behind the library is full of uncatalogued, in transit to the Cairo Museum or otherwise miscellaneous artefacts and it is unofficially part of Blaine's job to keep up the state of those too, since there are far too few academics in the area. And, of course, this is a library, so books are always coming and going – to other parts of the Museum of Antiques, to other libraries, to universities around the country – and Blaine always has a rather sizeable pile of returned books to put away in accordance with Dr Bay's quite unusual, very specific system.

He lists aloud to himself as he puts away the books, them and himself balanced precariously atop a ladder, “Sacred Stones. Sculpture and Aesthetics. Socrates. Seth, volumes one, two and three. And . . . Tuthmosis? What are you doing here?” The Ts are behind him, easily within reach, even though Blaine is comparably small to most men he knows, so he juggles the books in his arms until he can place the remaining S books on top of the shelf. “I'm going to put you back where you belong,” he tells the book, holding onto the ladder with one hand while reaching backwards with the book in the other. The ladder creaks underneath him – ominously, in hindsight – because the shelf is not quite, it turns out, within easy reach. Blaine is just about to give up and place Tuthmosis to the side to put away later when the books slips into place on the shelf—

And the ladder straightens up so that it's entirely vertical. Blaine lets out an embarrassingly high shriek, holding onto the ladder with both hands while he walks between the shelves like a fool on stilts, and tries to think of a way down without hurting himself.

The choice – and worry – is taken away from him when the ladder wobbles one final time, and Blaine's entire weight falls on the most unstable top section of the S shelf. The entire bookshelf falls with a grand crash, and several smaller thuds as books fall out the other side, and Blaine is tossed from the ladder to land uncomfortably among the books. It takes a moment to get his breath back, and then he forces himself to move away to assess the damage and exactly how long it will take to fix and how much trouble he'll be in.

He watches the bookshelves fall one by one like dominos, scattering books and papers and papyrus scrolls every which way in dismay. Something made of glass breaks, and by the time the final bookshelf has fallen, completing the circuit of utter disaster, Blaine's heart has sunk past his knees.

“What—?”

Blaine whirls around, staring wide-eyed as Dr Bay looks speechlessly around the room. Blaine takes off his glasses and stands as tall as he can, hoping that if he looks confident enough, by some miracle, he will still have a career in ten minutes.

Dr Bay finally spots Blaine, and his confidence wavers somewhat, and he shuffles his feet guiltily.

“Look at this! Sons of the pharaohs!” Dr Bay exclaims, having to climb over a bookshelf to join Blaine in the centre of the circle. “Give me frogs – flies – locusts! – anything but you. Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!”

“I am so very sorry,” Blaine says as earnestly as he can. “It was an accident.”

Dr Bay smiles mirthlessly. “When Ramses destroyed Syria, that was an accident; you are a catastrophe! Look at my library!” Blaine does so – he can't help it – and tries not to burst into tears at the complete mess he's made. “Why do I put up with you?”

“Well, you put up with me because I can – I can read and write in ancient Egyptian,” Blaine says. Of course, Dr Bay is being rhetorical, but maybe Blaine can still salvage his job if he reminds his employer that it's in his benefit to, well, not fire him. “And I can decipher hieroglyphics and hieratic. And – and I am the only person within a thousand miles who knows how to properly code and catalogue this library anyway!” he finishes with a bit of steam. It is a rather exhausting and complicated system, after all.

“I put up with you because your mother and father were our finest patrons, that's why. (Allah rest their souls.)” They both have a moment of silence, and then Dr Bay huffs and brings the subject back to the topic at hand: “I don't care how you do it, I don't care how long it takes – straighten up this meshifer!” Blaine flinches away from the spittle that lands on his face and nods, subdued by both Dr Bay's outburst and the mention of his parents. Dr Bay storms away, muttering likely curses on Blaine's head as he has to climb over the bookcase again. Blaine takes a steadying breath and is about to try and figure out how to stand up sixteen bookcases at once without dropping too many books when he hears a crash coming from the back room. He despairs at the thought that something else is going wrong – he kept his job likely by the skin of his teeth, but even his late parents' patronage probably won't save him if something else breaks under his watch – but goes to look anyway. Perhaps he will be able to fix this before somebody else notices, at least.

“Hello?” he calls at the entrance to the room, and he receives a thud in response. He takes one of the torches from its bolt in the wall to serve as both lighting and a possible weapon; this isn't the first time someone has broken in to the museum, and it probably won't be the last. This will be the first time Blaine has had to face someone on his own but he's sure he can hold his own. He won most of his schoolyard fights, at least.

“Abdul?” he says, just in case it's actually one of his coworkers having business in this room or even playing a joke on him. “Mohammed? Bob?” There's a thump from behind him – the open coffin holding a preserved corpse found in the desert. Blaine slowly walks forward, his steps echoing in the cavernous room. It's a deep coffin so he can't see until he's close, and then all he sees is the corpse jumping into his face with a scream. Blaine leaps back and yells, heart not slowing until he hears a familiar laughter from inside the coffin.

“Cooper!” he growls, trying to slow his breathing as his pulse quietens from his ears. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

“Of course I do!” Cooper says, grinning his charming grin as Blaine puts the torch in a makeshift hold, although he feels he could rather hit his brother over the head with the torch and maybe give himself some relief from his brother's antics. “But sometimes, I'd rather like to join them,” he finishes. He rests the corpse's arm on the side of the coffin and his own arm around the corpse's shoulders as if they're going for a casual ride in an automobile.

Blaine puts the corpse back in its proper place hurriedly in case someone comes back here and sees what a mess his brother is making. “I wish you'd do it sooner rather than later before you can ruin my career the way you ruined yours. Get out!”

“My dear, sweet baby brother! I'll have you – know—” He stumbles as he clambers over the side of the coffin, and Blaine is forced to balance his stupid, drunk brother before he falls over and truly breaks something. “—that at this precise moment, my career is on a high note.”

“I don't even want to know what you consider a 'high note'. Please, Cooper, just leave, because I'm really not in the mood for you. I've just made a bit of a mess in the library, and the Bembridge scholars have rejected my application form again – they say I don't have enough experience in the field.” He can't help but let his frustration and sadness bleed into his tone as he finished his rant. Cooper wraps his arm around Blaine's shoulders in what definitely feels like one of his rare brotherly hugs, so Blaine allows himself a moment of sadness when he looks up at his older brother. Cooper squeezes his shoulders and smiles comfortingly.

“Those seeties don't know anything, old boy. You did mention all those artefacts I hide in the garden for you to dig up when you were a little tyke, didn't you?” And the moment is once again ruined; Blaine glares up at his older brother. “Actually, this is perfect – I have just the thing to cheer you up!”

“Cooper, I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't see how another useless piece of pottery is going to help,” Blaine says as Cooper releases him to dig around in the coffin. Blaine probably ought to stop him from disturbing the corpse again but he really doesn't have the energy to fight his brother on this anymore. “If I have to take one more piece of junk to the curator to try and . . . sell for you . . .” Cooper displays a small octagonal box, maybe four inches wide by an inch and a half deep, under Blaine's nose, a satisfied grin on his face, and Blaine trails off. He carefully takes it and looks closer. He can't quite make out most of the markings in the dim torchlight, but there are a couple he recognises that he knows only existed in the New Kingdom. “Where did you get this?”

“On a dig down in Thebes,” Cooper answers, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Blaine, please tell me I've really found something this time!”

Blaine's fingers accidentally brush over a section of the side and it pushes in – a button, which means this is most definitely a box. He shifts it round in his hands so he can better press the stiff button and the top pops open into eight spokes. And inside is a folded piece of worn parchment.

“Cooper,” he breathes. “I think you found something.”