Trade Deals - 1. Trade Deals

“You little shit.”

“Uh-huh… don’t get pissy with me, bird-face, or I won’t be putting my excellent skills to use on you later.” Anubis considered the layout of the Senet board for a moment and then moved one of his beautifully carved obsidian canopic jar shaped counters to a square where one of Horus's own opals had been waiting. As well as setting his opponent back four squares, his three pieces were now safe and protected by the their alignment on the board; Anubis knew it would take a lot of bad luck on his own part to lose the game now. He gathered up the four casting sticks and offered them to Horus with a sly grin. “Your go.”

Horus smirked.

“And I thought I had my turn already?”

Anubis lay back against the pillows on his elbows, knowing the movement and the way he reclined with one foot underneath himself showed his friend an intimate view up his short green-trimmed shendyt. Horus dropped the casting sticks without bothering to look at them, and Anubis knew he’d got the falcon-headed god of the sky right where he wanted him when Horus stared at him with wide eyes, shifted his weight, and cracked his knee against the stone block their Senet board rested on with a sharp cry.

“Fuck! Dammit!”

Anubis giggled, flicking his ears back and forth at Horus’s incredibly undignified outburst. Unfortunately, Horus’s mother took that moment to arrive in the doorway.

“Are you boys still playing that game?” She rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Horus, you have packed, haven’t you? We’re leaving soon.”

“Yes, mother.” Horus sighed heavily and made to stand, but Anubis caught him with one hand around his ankle as Isis departed.

“Horus?”

“Sorry, Anu.” Horus reached down and efficiently cleared away the Senet pieces, stowing them with the casting sticks inside the wooden board for future use. “Father wants us to go up river and visit with Khnum and his family. We’re leaving on the tide.”

“Fuck it, leave Osiris to go by himself. You don’t wanna be spending time with bovids when you could be here having fun with me.” Anubis ran his fingers up Horus’s leg in a manner he knew his old friend was generally helpless to resist, and felt Horus’s flesh quiver with desire and indecision. He slipped his hand under the heavy linen of Horus’s pleat-fronted shendyt and grinned as he felt the sky god’s cock thickening under his palm.

“But I have to...” Horus panted as his chest heaved. His curved beak was open, big eyes half shuttered, and Anubis flicked his ears forwards and grinned before lifting the folds of cloth out of his way and taking Horus’s elegant erection into his mouth. “Oh Anu…!”

The jackal knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly what Horus liked, and he could’ve got the other deity off in moments. But he wanted Horus to miss the tide, and so he moved up and down his length with torturous slowness, his long fangs just grazing his sensitive skin.

“Horus!” Isis’s voice reached them from a distance, and Anubis felt his lover stiffen in a very different manner. Horus attempted to move away, but Anubis held him firmly, and a heartbeat later the falcon had a hand wrapped around the back of the jackal’s head.

“You dirty fucker, Anu,” Horus grunted the words out as his hips began to dictate the pace of Anubis’s sucking. “You know I’ve got to go.”

Anubis hummed and slurped his way up and down Horus’s cock, taking every bit of pleasure he could from the action. He knew it was risky, because even if everyone knew what they did, having Horus’s parents walk in and see the god of the underworld on his knees sucking their son’s cock in his father’s palace was not something which would go over well with Osiris. As if the universe knew what Anubis was up to, the next voice which called out did not belong to Isis.

“Horus!” Osiris had a deep voice to go with his command. “Hurry up, boy! The tide won’t wait.”

“Anghhhh...” Horus groaned, his eyes still fixed on Anubis’s own as the jackal did unspeakably delicious things to his throbbing length. His breath was shaky and uneven, and Anubis was rather pleased with himself

“Horus!” Osiris demanded again.

“Coming, father!” Horus gripped the back of Anubis’s neck hard enough to hurt and came down his throat with a groan. The jackal swallowed him and then sat back on his heels with a grin, his own black skinned cock poking up through the folds of his skirt. “I have to go, Anu.”

Anubis growled.

“And what am I supposed to do with this while you’re gone?”

Horus leant down and kissed him hard. For the smallest second, Anubis convinced himself his friend was going to just ignore his father’s command and nail him right then, but he was disappointed.

“Horus!”

“Yes! Shit...” Horus muttered quickly. “Sorry, Anu. It’s only for a while, a few moons at most. Father is leaving Set in charge.”

“Fucking brilliant.” Anubis gritted his teeth. “You’d best bloody go.”

“Don’t worry love. I’ll make it up to you when I get back.”

Anubis sat and watched his friend rearrange his clothes and blow him a kiss as he left.

“Yeah, you’d better!” he grumbled. He covered his erection with a sigh. The illicit thrill of getting caught was no longer so exciting now Horus had gone. Anubis knew pretty much everyone else would be down at the water seeing the First Family off on their journey, but Anubis didn’t bother. He smoothed his rumpled fur, straightened his favourite necklace so that the rearing cobra clasps were centred over the nape of his neck, and went the other way. He headed through the vast alabaster halls of Osiris’s palace towards the city of the dead.

He was only a hundred yards from the feet of the two tall black granite sculptures of himself which stood guarding the entrance to the great necropolis, when he saw a figure coming towards him. Anubis laid his ears back against his linen headdress as he recognised Set’s arrogant gait. The animal-headed second in command of the pantheon sneered at him as they reached each other, and though Anubis stepped sideways to avoid him, the older deity caught him by the upper arm with a vice-like grip.

“Well, well… where are you off to, Anubis?”

“Fuck off, Set.” Anubis snatched himself away from the taller figure. “You’re not as important as you think you are.”

“And yet, Osiris has gone and left me in command.”

Anubis glanced back over his shoulder at the palace.

“Aren’t you late to be wishing him off?” he growled.

Set eyed him up and down, and licked his wide lips with his long very pink tongue.

“And you are far too indecent to be wandering around like that.” Set glanced down pointedly at the erection making a tent in the front of Anubis’s shendyt. “Didn’t Horus have the time to deal with you before his daddy whisked him away?” Anubis glowered at him. “Or does he not care so much for his puppy anymore?”

“Fuck you,” Anubis muttered. He knew Set was stronger and more senior than himself, and there was no point making threats he couldn’t follow through with. He did not expect Set’s hand to return, pulling him closer, the god of storms’ eyes examining him much more closely than Anubis liked.

“Well, isn’t that a tempting thought?” Set’s voice was almost a purr, evil and glinting with devilish cunning.

“Sod you, Set.” Anubis shook himself, ears pricking forwards as his hackles rose. “You don’t like boys.”

“Hmmm… from behind, I doubt it matters.” Anubis snarled at him, but Set held him firm, one eyebrow raised, as though considering the jackal’s flesh through his clothes. “After all, it might be worth it to see the look on Horus’s face, and what would Sobek think, when they discover their favourite pet has been spreading himself for me?”

The jackal snapped his teeth, his voice half lost in his feral snort.

“You’d have to force me.”

Set only grinned once more before letting him go, and it took all of Anubis’ self-control not to run into the necropolis. Still, he wished that, like his feral appearance so admired by humans, he had a tail to press between his legs to protect himself from the thought of Set invading his flesh.

Once he was out of sight of the palace, Anubis allowed himself to sink down into the deep shadow cast by a giant obsidian cartouche topped with the cow-head of Hathor, and panted in fear and mental exhaustion. The jackal hung his head between his knees; ears pressed back over his skull as he dragged his headdress off with one hand and threw it across the bright sand. His heart hammered painfully; he was shaking, and Anubis wished his greatest ally hadn’t just left on a boat down the river with his parents. Anubis would never admit it to anyone, not even Horus and Sobek, but Set scared him all the way down his spine and into the ground. Anubis fingered the blue disc beads and lotus flowers of his necklace as he waited for his breathing to settle down. His fear had banished his erection, and the jackal was angry Set had managed to take from him the ten minutes of delicious fantasy he’d been constructing in his mind. The image of Set pushing his thighs apart with an evil grin made him shudder when he blinked. Anubis knew there would be little point sleeping that night.

Hathor would prefer it if I worked anyway, he told himself gently. Other people too. Let’s go see who needs ushering into the underworld today, shall we?

The halls of Anubis’s high temple in the necropolis were dark and silent, just the way he liked. The jackal lit a single reed torch from the basin of the ever-burning fire where tribute for the recently deceased was oft laid before his favourite statue. He took a left hand passage whose walls were carved with images and stories. Anubis had many favourites, but now he felt the need for calm and control, and on his way down into the underworld stopped and gazed lovingly in the firelight at the image of himself standing on the prow of a great boat whose figure-heads were Hathor and Nebthet, guiding Osiris and his family through a tour of the underworld and its wonders. Anubis had always liked the image and rubbed a dark velvet furred hand over his own picture. He gazed at the long clean lines of his torso and arms, his gold tipped ears and the dark eyes the carving had given him. He ran his short claws through the fur on his head and scowled as he remembered his headdress was back outside. He couldn’t be bothered to get it.

The god of the underworld took a detour to the nearest polished bronze mirror, found the stick of gold-kohl paint which he’d left sitting on its frame, and began to line his lower lids. His meeting with Set had shaken him, and Anubis wanted to feel powerful, so he elaborated his eyeliner into the symbol of the leader of the gods, the Eye of Ra, and took a moment to regard his reflection in the tall mirror.

How he wished Horus hadn’t had to leave so soon, or at all. He could have spent time with his friend, finished their game of Senet, and had lazy fantastic sex before lying around in Horus’s lavish bedchambers talking and eating and generally being lords of leisure. Anubis ran a hand down his chest, the hard planes of muscle covered in fine soft black fur, so different from the stiff portraits which lined the walls of his temple. He fingered the beads at his throat once again, adjusted his belt, and made his way down into the underworld. Souls waited for him to deliver them into the next life.

Anubis liked his work. Every day was different, and there was always someone waiting to be ferried across the dark Nile. Anubis stood on the papyrus deck of the slender craft with the long oar in one hand, and watched the spirits of the dead as they stood on the shore. Not really together, there were two distinct groups of people waiting there for him. As he drew closer, Anubis realised several held the tethers of animals, whilst the others stood stiff and expectant, clearly considering themselves too good to be associated with the rabble which followed them. Anubis smiled as he let the boat rest in the reeds and stepped over to where the people stood.

“Oh great lord Anubis, taker of souls and-” Anubis raised a hand to cut the speaker off and turned his attention to a man wrapped in hessian, who was standing with a rather friendly looking ox. The bovine lent on his shoulder and licked its own nose.

“What is your name?”

“Phet, oh sire.” The mummified soul of the field-labourer quaked in his presence. “I am sorry my lord.”

Anubis frowned.

“Why?”

“I told them they should not be here!” snapped the dead man who had first spoken. He had a harsh clipped tone Anubis associated with theologians and scholars. Instantly, Anubis didn’t like him: he was the sort of person Thoth approved of. “Servants are sent into the underworld with their masters to serve them, not hang about. Anyway,” he drew himself up self-importantly. “The god of the underworld himself does not show up for just anyone.”

Anubis scowled. It didn’t matter sometimes he expressed a similar sentiment, because the dead man’s tone made him feel like he had something to prove. The jackal barked, and his voice quelled the waiting crowd. He turned to Phet and his ox.

“And what’s his name?”

“Huh? I mean, sorry, oh sire?”

Anubis held out his palm to be snuffed by the wet nose of the ox.

“His name?”

“Hotep, oh sire.”

Anubis smiled and allowed the ox to lick him. He reached out and touched the creature’s horns, brushing the pad of his thumb along each ridged length. As his hands passed over them, gold spread across the dark keratin. Anubis stepped back with a self-satisfied sort of grin, and the ox with the golden horns snorted happily and licked his nose again.

“Well then, Hotep, I suppose you and your master better come along with me.” Anubis placed one foot on the boat to steady the craft as beast and man stepped across. He took up his flat-headed ankh-topped staff and gestured to the remaining people who waited with their animals on the bank. “You lot as well.”

“My lord, I must protest!” The self-important man strode forwards, but Anubis laid his ears back and gnashed his fangs.

“You lot can walk. After all, not everyone deserves the attention of the lord of the underworld himself.” Without looking back the sceptre in his hand lengthened, the bottom end opening out into a wide leaf-shaped oar, and Anubis pushed the ship off the bank and back into the dark water with its precious cargo of the dead.

Ushering the dead into the next life was Anubis’s job, the only one he was qualified to do, and he was the only person who could do it. The underworld was his domain, and not even Ra himself could cross the waters of the dark river and come again into the world above. No one else could enter the halls of the dead. As Anubis grounded the craft on the far side of the river, the names of each of the souls aboard were inscribed into the endless passageways of the dead. Phet and Hotep were the last to step from the boat.

“Thank you, my lord Anubis.” Phet stopped, holding Hotep’s halter in one hand, with the other, he felt around in the folded wraps of his bandages for something, and offered his hand to the jackal. “It is not much, but I shall not think I will need it where we are going.”

Anubis cocked an ear to one side, but held out his hand for the offering. He blinked in surprise at the little wooden fetish of himself, the shape of the feral jackal curved in on itself, just like a dog sleeping would be, tail curved around paws, only the two sharp pricks of his ears interrupting the otherwise smooth object. He smiled.

“Thank you for protecting us, lord.”

The god of the underworld bowed low, holding the little carving close to his chest.

*

With the First Family away, things were still much the same as they always were for the gods of the Nile delta. Khepry pushed the disc of the sun out of bed at dawn, and Anubis avoided Thoth, because the Ibis headed god was going through yet another phase of deciding to teach him and everyone else who would listen about medicine and astronomy. Ma’at and Nebthet played games of Senet using Horus’s board, though they knew better than to use the falcon and jackal’s pieces. Sekhmet and Sobek argued good naturedly about food, and everyone got on with their jobs in the day and lazed about the great palace and the alabaster city of gods. Mostly, Anubis kept to himself.

He never felt lonely in the endless granite passageways of the necropolis. There were stories and hieroglyphs enough to keep him entertained for eternity, and it pleased him to look upon the adventures of old. All over the city of the gods, there were carvings which told their stories, but the halls of the dead were especially rich with detail. Anubis enjoyed looking back at the past to the birth of the world, reading about Shu holding up the body of the sky so that Nut could not touch her lover Geb. The jackal couldn’t help but shiver, standing alone in the halls holding his single torch, remembering the way Horus had wrapped his arms around his torso the last time they’d gazed upon the image of the three gods. Nut’s star-studded body was arching over the delta, gazing down sadly at the man she adored, whom she wasn’t allowed to love.

“You know they must’ve managed it at least a few times,” Horus had chuckled in his ear. “Otherwise mother and father wouldn’t be here.”

“And humans think the world will collapse in on itself if Shu wasn’t there...” Anubis grinned.

“They clearly don’t know how often he goes for really long naps.” Horus had run his fingers down Anubis’s spine, making him shiver. “Speaking of naps…?”

Anubis had turned in his arms with a sly smile.

“What you want cannot be accomplished whilst asleep, Horus.”

“No,” the falcon admitted with a shrug. “But it is better with a bed...”

They hadn’t made it as far as Anubis’s bedchamber that time, and Anubis had ended up with his palms and forehead pressed against the hieroglyphs, panting and whining in pleasure as Horus had screwed him with ruthless abandon. But Horus was somewhere upriver a long way off, and so Anubis wandered alone to his bedchamber and fell onto his bed with a sigh.

He never felt lonely in the necropolis, but being alone in the bedchamber of his temple was a different matter entirely. Anubis would’ve given almost anything to have Horus show up. Sleepy and rumpled, his old friend sliding into the bed beside him, arms warm and familiar around his body. He could have gone to Sobek, because the crocodile god of the Nile was always pleased to see him, but Anubis had spent as little time in Osiris’s palace as he could since his run in with Set. He wasn’t sure the animal headed god would follow through on his threat, but Anubis wouldn’t put it past the sneaky bastard to try. It was late, or early, depending on how one looked at it, and Anubis curled on his side and slept fitfully.

*

“Fuck!”

“You think he’ll be there?”

“He shitting better be!” There was a frantic thumping, sounding a long way off through the enormous lump of stone Anubis used as a door. “Anu!”

The jackal opened one eye. It was pitch black, without even a hint of the dawn in the sky, and he growled wordlessly as he rolled over, grabbed at his layers of muslin sheets, dragging the material up over his head.

“Anubis!” There was the sound of scuffling outside. “Fuck, help me with this will you, Nefertem.”

Anubis pricked up his ears. It was dark, and Nefertem was trying to break into his bedchamber. Things could be worse.

“Shit!” Nebthet swore, and Anubis reconsidered his earlier opinion. The overly sympathetic goddess of those left behind after death was one of the many people he never wanted to see inside his inner sanctum. “I can’t believe he keeps it locked. What kind of deity locks their doors at night?”

“The kind who wants to be asleep!” Anubis snapped angrily. What business the two of them had with him could wait until it was light out. “Bugger off, the both of you.”

You sure? Anubis’s inner voice asked softly. The company of the boy with the lapis hair might just take the edge off being so lonely. After all, you can’t spend another morning with your right hand.

Anubis considered the idea. Nefertem was the most beautiful creature in the delta, and it was no secret Anubis wanted him. He wondered if, in such proximity to a bed, he could tempt the gorgeous boy to lie with him for a few hours. With a sigh, he released the magic which held the stone door, and it swung aside.

Nefertem looked flushed, his crown of blue lilies askew, his cheeks and bare chest coloured with exertion. The effect caused a slow grin to spread across Anubis’s muzzle, and his cock twitched against his inner thigh. Just as the god of beauty was returning his smile, Nebthet stepped between them, her feathers rumpled.

“Anubis! We need your help.”

“Evening, beautiful.” Anubis spoke around her, allowing the covers to slither down around his hips invitingly. He wasn’t wearing anything underneath them, and it showed. “Why don’t you come on over here and join me? Since you’re so eager to come in.”

“Fucking hell, Anu. Can’t you keep your mind away from your libido for two minutes?” Nebthet strode into the room, grabbed a handful of Anubis’s clothes and threw them at him. “We have an emergency.”

“Oh piss off, Nebthet. It’s the middle of the damn night. Go away.”

“No!” Nebthet stamped her foot, causing her falcon wings to rustle with the motion. “It’s not the middle of the night Anu. It’s morning.”

Anubis folded his ears back and glanced out of the high rectangular window which showed a view across the bridge towards the alabaster stone of the rest of the city of the gods.

“Neb, it’s fucking darker than the inside of a dog. What’s wrong with you?”

“She’s right, Anubis.” Nefertem’s voice was soft and delicious, but Anubis stared at him in mounting horror as he spoke. “It’s morning. The sun’s been stolen.”

“What?” Anubis felt the fur on the back of his neck rise and prickle, and his fingers fisted in the sheets, knuckles cracking. “What did you say?”

“The sun’s gone!” Nebthet interjected with a whine. She looked suddenly a lot smaller and younger than Anubis, and the jackal snarled. “It wasn’t our fault!”

Anubis roared at the pair of them, and Nebthet turned and scuttled from the room like a frightened beetle. Anubis narrowed his eyes at Nefertem. He’d imagined having the boy in his private rooms many times, but the lapis-haired boy stood there looking guilty and upset. Anubis couldn’t even fathom what he found attractive about him at the moment.

“What happened?” He slid from the bed, crossed the room to his mirror, and began to re-line his eyes in golden kohl before getting dressed. He watched Nefertem in the reflection.

“We were just playing….” Nefertem glanced at his feet, his big eyes flashing back up to Anubis. The jackal recognised the expression the boy often gave his mother when he wanted something. Nefertem was too innocent to know what flirting even was, but already he was trying to soothe Anubis’s waiting anger with his body language.

The jackal scowled, finished adjusting his jewellery by settling the rearing cobra clasps of his necklace behind him, and stalked from the room. Nebthet was waiting there, looking sheepish and combing her wing feathers distractedly. Anubis frowned, because he could already hear the sounds of other feet and voices in his temple; the other gods were coming.

“Explain quickly,” he urged.

“We were bored-”

“There was no one about-” Nefertem interjected.

“Khepry was snoring really loudly. And he’s such a bore!” Nebthet shook as she spoke. “So we thought we’d play a trick on him.”

“Go on,” Anubis growled.

“We thought if we took the disc of the sun and hid it-”

“-Where he couldn’t find it-”

“-Then woke him up, it would be funny. He was really angry.”

“He shouted at us.” Nefertem pouted, and for the first time, Anubis didn’t find him arousing in the slightest.

“No shit!” Anubis snapped.

“So we took him to where we’d hidden the sun, and it was gone!”

There was firelight drawing closer, illuminating the decorated passageways and the stories Anubis held most dear; the image of himself with Sobek and Horus, tossing flowers into the river. Anubis missed his friend with a fresh pang.

“This is important.” Anubis spoke through gritted teeth. “Where did you hide the sun?”

“In a jar,” Nefertum admitted unhappily.

“In a jar in the embalmers workshop,” Nebthet added.

“In a jar in the embalmers workshop with a jackal's head on it.”

The rest of the gods, led by Set, came around the final corner just in time to see the jackalheaded lord of the underworld strike the deity of purity and innocence around the face with an open palm.

“ANUBIS!” Sekhmet roared at him, but Anubis didn’t hear her, one hand already holding Nefertem by his pectoral decoration of yet more blue lotus flowers strung together with white marble beads.

“You hid the disc of the sun in a canopic jar of Duamutef?!” he snarled. “In the name of Ra, why?”

Before Nefertem or Nebthet could reply, the rest of the gods had reached them, and Anubis was hauled away from the lapis haired boy by Set. The older god had one hand wrapped around his upper arm, gripping hard, and he looked angry.

“What have you done?”

Anubis felt sick. He was fed up with hiding, tired of sneaking about trying to stay out of everyone’s way, and annoyed he had let himself be scared of Set. He yanked himself free of the other deity’s grip with a snarl, ears pressed back. Anubis knew how feral he looked, but he hadn’t imagined the snap of terror in Set’s eyes.

“You touch me again, and I will open you up from sternum to belly and feed your intestines to the crocodiles of the Nile.” He spat the words at the second in command of the gods of the delta. “What the fuck are you all doing in my house?”

“The sun has gone!”

“Where is it? We need it back!”

“The people are awaking and there is terror in the streets.”

“Khepry is destroying things.”

Anubis held up a hand to stem the sudden tide of noise and babble. He dragged his short claws through his fur, wishing he could rewind the last half an hour and be woken instead by Horus slipping into his bedchamber with sleepy kisses and a morning erection in need of his personal attention.

“We need to get the sun back before Osiris returns and finds out.”

The god of the underworld stared at Set and blinked.

“Are you entirely thick? The First Family went to the source of the Nile; they’re still in the delta, and it won’t be dawn there either. He knows already!” He gave Set a withering look. “It’ll be a millennia before Osiris ever leaves you in charge again! You couldn’t even control a pair of children!” Then he turned to Nebthet and Nefertem, who were both still quivering in fear. “Exactly which embalmer’s workshop did you hide the sun in?”

*

Anubis hooked his thumbs into his belt as he gazed up at the hieroglyphs carves into the lintel of the wooden doorway.

Anhktep and Sons: Embalmers to the Nobility

The jackal scowled and wandered into the workshop. The rooms were filled with the mixed scents of blood, viscera, formaldehyde, and methanol, the bustle of busy people cleaning stone slabs and refilling large clay vessels, but no one noticed the god of the underworld as the jackal picked his way carefully through the maze of little rooms until he came to the central chamber. It was empty and clear, clean, the long stone slab recently washed anew and blessed with the fresh blood of a recently sacrificed lamb. There was no one there, save a small wizened old man who knelt by the empty shelves, counting golden coins marked with the feather of Ma’at and Anubis’s own ankh into neat little piles.

Anubis stepped closer, leant with one elbow against the shelf at his side and cocked an ear to listen to the mutterings of Anhktep senior, master embalmer to the nobility.

“So cleanly done, lovely neat stitches… and he looked so good in the fine linen. So many little trinkets he took with him, pretty things, oh yes. He must protect himself in the next life, needed the little dagger we put with him, must take gold to pay tribute to Anubis. Yes, yes, yes...”

Anubis sighed. It was nothing he hadn’t heard before. Every dead man of any standing took things with them into the next life. He needed to know who Anhktep and his craftsman had been working on, because the very last thing to be placed into any tomb was the sarcophagus and the four canopic jars. If they were gone, the tomb would be sealed, and Nefertem and Nebthet would have got something right in the whole mess of this situation.

“You’re the only one who can get it back, Anubis.” The blue-eyed boy had pleaded with him, tugging on the hem of his shendyt like a worried child. Anubis had shaken him off in irritation.

“Why me? Hathor is keeper of the sun, not me. Why should it be me who fetches the damn thing for you?” Anubis turned to the assembled gods milling about in his hallway. Only Sobek lounged against one wall looking nonchalant, and Anubis rather hoped the rest of them would depart quickly so he and the crocodile headed god of the Nile could lie together in his bed and talk until the sun finally rose.

“It has to be you.” Anubis could hear the pain in Set’s voice when the elder god spoke, his flat tipped ears hanging low, showing his bitter disappointment for the situation. “If the jar is gone as Nebthet says, then only you can get it back. None of us can enter a tomb which is sealed.”

“Indeed.” Anubis smiled wickedly. “Because you are only god of storms, aren’t you, Set. You need me to fix this mess before Osiris comes home and has your head for it. Gods can die Set, you’d best remember that.” Anubis had taken great pleasure in the moment of horror which had passed across Set’s features. “I hope you have sufficient tribute to pay your way across the dark river and into the next life.”

“You impudent little...” Set had spoken through gritted teeth, but Bast had stopped him.

“Do not curse the boy you wish to save us,” the lioness snarled. “Anubis… we are all in your hands. We need you.”

The god of the underworld sighed and decided he’d had enough of the old man’s muttering. He pushed through the haze which hid him from view and laid a hand over the piles of coins still being counted and re-counted on the bare shelves. Anhktep stared, eyes wide as he followed the dark shape of Anubis’s hand up his arm, to the face of the great jackal himself.

“Master embalmer.” Anubis made his voice silky smooth as the finest polished stone. “You have done such fine work here, and I am very pleased.”

“Oh Lord Anubis, protector of the dead!”

Anubis smiled gently.

“You are a loyal servant. I shall watch over you, your ancestors, and your sons.” Anubis gestured to the empty room. “Tell me, where resides now the body of the dead you have worked such skill upon.”

“T-t-t-t-t-the great pyramid was not ready. We did not expect him to die...” Anubis waited through Anhktep’s stammers: sometimes one just had to let the human mind take its time with things. “The royal guard have sealed him against the desecration of time in a smaller tomb.”

“Yes, but where?”

“Sire, Pharaoh’s body rests in the Valley of the Kings.”

“Thank you, master embalmer. May Ra smile upon your children, and may your bloodline last for a thousand years.” Anubis grinned to himself and turned each of the coins on the shelf so they showed the symbol of the ankh. “Tell no one I was here.”

Outside, Anubis gazed up at Nut, her long body stretching over the horizon further than anyone could see. The sky between the stars was still black as his own fur, and the air held a chill none of them in the delta were used to. All around, the people were coming out of their houses and staring in fear at the darkness above, falling to their knees and calling upon Ra to deliver the sun back to them. Anubis wondered how angry Osiris would be, how quickly he would be able to get back to the palace. He might have been a god, but he could not move faster than the river flowed.

Anubis walked as far as the banks of the Nile on foot, then gazed across past the pyramids which clustered in the great dunes to the high rocks which hid the Valley of the Kings from sight. It had been a decade since he had needed to walk a person of royal blood into the next life. Anubis fingered the beads of his necklace, wondering what kind of king had been blessed to be entombed with the disc of the sun hidden among his possessions, and went forth.

*

It was the most unassuming doorway in all of the Valley of the Kings. There was no towering façade lined with columns, no statuesque figures of gods on guard watching over the entrance, no sign that this was the tomb of a king at all. Anubis stepped up to the square door carved into the rock face and ran his fingers over the long oval cartouche which bore the name of the occupant. The jackal traced the outline of a feather, the river, a bird, an ankh, and a sceptre as he tried out the shape of the king’s name.

“Nebkheperure Tutankhamun Hekaiunushema… Lord of the forms of Ra, living image of Amun, and ruler of the city of Helios. You were someone very important, weren’t you?” Anubis arched an eyebrow at the cartouche and smiled. “Well then, let’s see what else you were buried with.”

It took the work of a moment to unseal the heavy stone door of the tomb, and Anubis simply laid the flat of his hand against the door and allowed it to open outwards, admitting his slim shape into the inky blackness beyond. He had brought a single papyrus torch, and scraped his sharp claws along the floor to draw up a spark and light the dry leaves. The flame lit a small platform, and a staircase descending into further darkness. Anubis frowned.

“This tomb wasn’t built for you, was it?” Anubis spoke to himself out loud as he began to make his way down the steps. The walls were plain and unadorned, and the jackal knew the master embalmer had been right. The Pharaoh’s death had been entirely unexpectedly. Osiris’s command declared the dead must be buried within seventy days, and whatever great pyramid had been planned for this king was obviously not ready for his use.

“So you’ve been interred here?” Anubis sighed gently as he reached a set of doors which once unsealed, lead into a plain, sloping corridor. The walls were lined with wooden shelves, and Anubis recognised the jars, bottles, blades, and materials which had clearly been moved from the embalmers workshop and into the otherwise empty tomb. “It must have been very rushed, living image of Amun, if your people did not even have time to paint the walls.” The jackal stopped at the next set of doors and wondered if the seals on the entrance had been correct, or if there was no one actually there. The tomb felt empty and hollow. Anubis closed his eyes to listen with senses far finer than hearing.

A soul breathing in the dark; a man with his ka, the vital spark of his life, still glowing in his body.

Anubis smiled, and with a breath, unsealed the doors to the next room. The antechamber was packed full of the things the Pharaoh’s people felt he needed in the next life. Anubis ran his fingers over the stacked parts of four separate chariots and wondered just how committed a man had to be to his horses to ensure he could race and hunt in the afterlife. There were vases and statues, beds, several highly decorated wooden chests, beautiful amulets and carvings, cloth and clothes, and what appeared to be part of a boat. Everything a body could want. Anubis glided his touch over several objects, and gold spread from his fingertips along with his smile. But even here, the walls were smooth and plain.

The last set of the doors into the burial chamber proper were sealed with lime and plaster. Anubis carefully unwound the rope which bound the cylindrical handles together. He slipped inside as silently as a shadow and gazed in wonder at the sight presented before him. Anubis had seen many tombs, too many to count. The tombs of old, before the people learnt how to build, just pits hollowed out of the ground and filled with the dead and their possessions, sealed with stones; tombs built into secret rooms inside enormous pyramids; tombs which went on for miles of passageways and chambers; but never had he seen a single room so richly and beautifully decorated. And so full.

It was hard to see the carved and freshly painted scenes showing the occupant of the tomb with himself, Horus, and Hathor, because the entire room was filled with an enormous golden box, inscribed with hieroglyphs enough to have kept even Thoth busy for weeks. Anubis waved the doors open only to be met with another set of golden barriers. Eventually, the god of the underworld stood at the foot of an enormous granite sarcophagus and read once more the name of the king who resided there.

“Tutankhamun….”

“Go away!” a petulant voice replied. Anubis blinked in surprise. The voice sounded much too young to have belonged to Pharaoh. Anubis flicked an ear and heard shuffling within the huge coffin. “There’s nothing to take anyway. Sod off.”

The jackal scowled, gripped the heavy lid of the great sarcophagus, and heaved it aside. He stared down at….

“But you’re just a boy!”

His words made Tutankhamun sit bolt upright with a cross expression marring his soft features. The boy had obviously been awake ever since Anubis had unsealed his tomb, and had already unwound all the bandages from his upper limbs and torso. With the young king scowling at him, Anubis spared a glance to take in the smooth skin, only slightly marred by the neat and tiny stitches along one side of his abdomen, and the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed out of habit.

“I am not a boy! I’m nineteen! And I am Pharaoh! In the name of Ra, you will speak to me as such!” The boy-king’s anger slacked off, and he blinked, seeing Anubis properly for the first time. “Ohhh… Osiris’s mercy….”

“He’s not really your problem, beautiful.” Anubis grinned happily, he couldn’t help it. “Ain’t nobody here but you and me.”

“You’re Anubis.”

“Yup.”

“I mean, you’re really Anubis!” Tutankhamun stood, reached out, and took the jackal’s muzzle in one bold hand, turning his face one way and then the other. Anubis had never known anyone so confident and surprised in all his life. “You’re different than in your pictures.”

The jackal took the young man’s hand and removed it from his face, but didn’t let him go. He brushed the short dark fur of his chest with his other hand and smiled. People represented him like Horus, whose short feathers ended sharply where his smooth tan skin began in a manner Anubis actually found very attractive, though not on himself.

“I’m going to take that as a compliment. May I?” he gestured to the floor beside him, and the young king nodded. Anubis scooped him up and placed him gently outside the sarcophagus. Tutankhamun didn’t quite reach his shoulder, and the boy stretched, as though lying in his coffin had made him stiff. “Thank you, Pharaoh.”

“My friend’s call me Tut… or, they did call me Tut.” The boy glanced down at his stitches, fingering the long scar gently. “I’m dead aren’t I?”

“Yes.” Anubis wondered if he should tell the boy he was sorry. It was what Nebthet would have done.

Nebthet also put the sun in a fucking jar, his brain reminded him. Don’t try too much to be like her.

“And you’re here to take me to the next life?” Tut frowned. “The underworld doesn’t look very special from here.”

“Sorry, Pharaoh, but we’re not in the underworld, not yet. And I’m not actually here for you.” Though I rather wish I was, he added mentally. Anubis glanced inside the sarcophagus, but now, it was empty. He gritted his teeth. “Where the fuck are they?”

“Huh? Where are what?” Tut frowned at him. “I’m right here.”

Anubis sighed and dragged his short claws through his fur in exasperation once more. He didn’t want to be dealing with the mess Nefertem and Nebthet had made. He wanted to be in bed, asleep, and ideally with company. Anubis swore softly under his breath.

Well, at least I have company.

“I need a drink. You got any wine around here, you think?”

Anubis wandered out into the tomb and through the only other doorway he hadn’t yet explored, coming face to face with himself. The shrine was a good rendition of his feral shape, and Anubis petted his own slim nose as he passed the barge which had clearly come with Tut as part of his procession. It still had shoulder poles attached for being carried. He took a large wine jar from a low shelf and an alabaster cup in the shape of a lotus which had rested between his front paws. The young king was not in the burial chamber when he returned, and Anubis found the boy standing in the antechamber beside a bed decorated with lion heads, his mummification bandages lying discarded around his feet as he finished wrapping a knee length formal Shendyt with a wide green belt around his hips. When he turned to Anubis, the jackal arched an eyebrow at the lustrous pectoral decoration which lay across the young king’s chest; a pale silica scarab with gold and lapis wings. He held the wine jar aloft.

“Will you join me?”

“Yes.” Tut smiled at him. “Good idea.”

They sat on the bare floor in the doorway to the chamber, the only place where there was space which wasn’t filled with bits of carts, boxes, and other funerary items. Tut held the chalice as Anubis un-stoppered the bottle and poured for them both.

“Doesn’t feel like I thought it would, being dead.” He turned the cup in his hand, reading the inscription around the rim. “That’s clever.” His fingers traced the hieroglyphs which showed his full name, but the wrong way around. Anubis read May your ka live, may you spend millions of years, you, who love Thebes, sitting with your face to the north wind, your eyes beholding happiness. “Seems such a shame to waste it. No-one is here to see it.”

“We’re here.” Anubis smiled, taking the chalice from the boy, making sure to touch his fingers when he did so. He’d spent long enough sitting in Osiris’s palace, drinking with Horus to know exactly what the boy’s soft blush really meant.

“And why are you here, lord Anubis? Surely the god of the underworld has much better things to be doing than enjoying a drink with me?”

Anubis sighed and told the boy-king his story. Tut laughed when he recounted being awoken in the dark by Nefertem and Nebthet, and Anubis shivered with pleasure at the sound. It felt like a long time since he had laughed.

“So Osiris is on his way back, and he’ll rip Set a new one for this. Should be fun to watch.” He finished, refilling the lotus shaped cup once more. “Of course, the chances of any of us getting away with anything else for a long time is gonna be zilch.”

“And what would you be trying to get away with, Anu?” Tut shortened his name with a smile as he sipped his wine.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Anubis dipped his muzzle and drank from the cup in Tut’s hand before taking it from him with a deliberate smile.

“As long as you don’t do something as risky as losing the sun,” the young Pharaoh replied with a despairing shake of his head.

“Hey, I didn’t lose it! I’m just here to get it back.” He gestured around the room. “So you got any idea where they put your canopic jars?”

“Yes.” The pretty young man glanced down at himself, his brow furrowed. “I can feel bits of my body missing, and I know where they are.”

“Show me?”

Tutankhamun snatched the cup back from him with a grin.

“No!”

“Hey!”

“Well, what’s in it for me?” The young Pharaoh lounged back on one elbow, every inch a king in relaxation, despite being on the floor, and being dead. “Why should I let you have what you want?”

“I am god of the underworld.” Anubis reminded him.

“And I am Pharaoh. I am the morning and the evening star, lord of the forms of Ra, ruler of the city of Helios. Why should I just give you what you want?”

Anubis watched him drain the rest of the chalice and set it down on the ground by the door. The king rubbed one thigh with his hand, as though it bothered him, and Anubis glanced from him to the carts stacked high on their left.

“Is that how it happened?”

“I don’t really remember.” The king shrugged. “Fucking hurt like shit when I fell off though. I used to love racing, and hunting. Will I get to do it again? I mean, when my leg heals up?”

Anubis smiled softly, his ears flicking.

“It only hurts because I think it does, doesn’t it? Damn. I remember the race, and the damn green horse who couldn’t hold it together down the palace steps.”

“You raced down the stairs?!” Anubis gaped at him.

“Ha! You sound like my mother! They said I broke my leg, then I got sick. Then there seems to be a bunch of stuff I don’t really remember. I know my sister was with me, in my chambers, and I wanted to tell her how much fun it had been to be her brother, rather than her king… and then…. I woke up in the sarcophagus, and I knew I was dead.” He scowled in the direction of the burial chamber. “It’s a good shrine, I suppose, but hardly a coffin fit for Pharaoh.” Tut chewed his lower lip in a manner Anubis found endearing. “But I was buried with the sun. That seems important. Why should I give it back to you?”

Anubis grinned, reached out a hand and touched the lion-head of the bed beside him. Tutankhamun stared in wonder as gold spread from his fingertips.

“Well, why don’t I make you into a god?”

“You can do that?”

“Your name will be spoken for millennia. I swear it.”

The young Pharaoh cleared his throat, his eyes wide, lips parted and damp. Anubis knew he had the boy hooked.

“Show me?”

“As my lord commands.”

They abandoned the chalice, and Tut followed him into the burial chamber. The huge sarcophagus was lined with three others. Their lids were all nestled inside each other where Anubis had removed them. Now he looked at the face of the innermost one, the finest, and waved a hand over the features which looked quite a bit like Tutankhamun, but weren’t a perfect match. Under his fingers, the face changed, became perfect in their beauty, and Anubis watched Tut smile as the entire sarcophagus turned into solid gold. He furnished the image with inlay of lapis lazuli and turquoise, and into the reposed king’s hands placed a crook and a flail. The image of divinity complete, Anubis turned to the only statue which sat in the room with them.

It was a bust of the king, well carved, but Anubis couldn’t see it being especially useful to the soul of Pharaoh in the afterlife. As he picked it up, the shape hollowed out and changed, and the jackal turned the mask to face the boy who stood before him as it too became golden.

“None shall doubt that you are indeed a god, the presence of a deity on earth. Millions will look upon this face and be in awe.”

“It’s beautiful….”

“You are beautiful.” Anubis smiled, the sort of smile he usually reserved for Horus alone when his old friend came to him with soft smiles and gentle caresses. “Let me take care of you?”

Tut took the mask and kissed his features softly before placing it into the open sarcophagus. Then he took Anubis's hand in his own.

“Come to bed with me?” the young king asked.

Anubis knew he’d pitched his tone just right when he replied.

“As my lord commands.”

Tut stopped at the entrance to the antechamber, and Anubis wrapped his arms around the young man’s chest, pulling him back against his own torso. The king pressed back against him, turning his face to look up at the god of the underworld. Anubis began to nuzzle and lick at the fine soft skin of his throat. Tut shuddered under his hands as the jackal skilfully unbuckled his beaded belt and worked the fabric of his shendyt loose until the material fell to the floor. When Tut turned to him, Anubis smiled happily, because his effect on the Pharaoh was already obvious. Tutankhamun stared at him levelly, and Anubis was reminded that the boy was a king, and very used to getting his own way. Anubis had no real desire to change that.

“Strip,” the boy commanded, and Anubis complied happily, shedding everything but his faïence beads and golden armlets. He ran his long pink tongue over his fangs as he watched the boy taking him in. Anubis very much doubted Pharaoh had ever had the pleasure of a body like his own. He stroked his own fur with an open palm, stopping before he reached the heat of his erection. Tut made an involuntarily noise, and then looked guilty. “Come here.”

“Well, at least we have a choice of beds,” Anubis joked. He stepped forward to take Tut’s chin between two fingers, tilting his face up for a soft kiss. “Which would you like, my king?”

Naked but for the large gold and silica scarab on his chest, Anubis watched with one ear cocked to the side as Tut lifted himself onto the end of one of his funerary beds, placing one hand on the bust of the corpse-devourer Ammit, letting his legs dangle over the edge, his knees parted. The jackal arched an eyebrow in surprise.

“Get on your knees.”

Anubis paused. He knew that tone, the power of command, as though events could be no other way than that which was spoken. Set talked like that, and it made the jackal hate him, but Tut’s eyes sparkled with desire which held no danger, and it was Anubis’s turn to clear his throat as he came closer.

“I am your Pharaoh,” the boy reminded him gently, running his fingers up Anubis’s chest. “You will worship me in the manner I choose.”

The jackal didn’t reply but sank down between the Pharaoh’s knees, ran his hands up the inside of the boy’s thighs and swallowed the length of his pulsing erection happily. Tut’s reaction was instantaneous, and he moaned loudly. Gripping Anubis’s fur, his breath caught in his chest, panting as Anubis worked on him with his long tongue. The jackal was happy to take the unspoken instruction on the back of his skull, and pleasure the boy-king until Tut was whimpering, shaking, and trying to push him off. Anubis held him firm and drank down the Pharaoh’s orgasm as the young man’s body went suddenly slack under his hands.

Anubis sat back on his heels, feeling pleased with himself. He was unprepared to be knocked backwards onto the floor as Tut launched from the bed and pushed his chest until he was lying prone on his back. Tut straddled his hips, his hands running over Anubis’s chest and shoulders.

“Thank you.”

Anubis smirked.

“I don’t think I’ll mind so much, being dead.” Tut shifted his hips in a gentle rocking motion, and it was Anubis’s turn to gasp in sudden pleasure. “Not if I get to be with you.”

“That so?” The jackal managed to groan between uneven breaths.

“Yes.” The young king arched over him and stroked the short fur of Anubis’s cheek. “Kiss me again?”

“With pleasure.”

The Pharaoh kissed like his title, like he was in control, and revelled in his power. Anubis gloried in the sensation of the boy’s warm weight over his crotch, the sweet ache of his trapped erection, the growing frustration of his desire. Tut sat up, and Anubis let his hands roam up the young man’s slender torso, skimming over the scars and stitches on his abdomen, worshipping the body above him.

“You’re beautiful.” To Anubis’s surprise, the king blushed. The jackal rolled his hips, making the press and hardness of his desire obvious against the Pharaoh’s tender flesh. “Let me worship you like the god you are?”

“Ughnn….” Tutankhamun panted, but nodded, and Anubis brought their lips together for another kiss as he raised the young king away from his crotch by mere fractions, adjusted his position and plunged into the tight, hot sheath of the Pharaoh’s body. “Ahhh!”

“Ooh….” Anubis exhaled long between his fangs. His head fell back at the intense race of pleasure climbing through his body. It had been a very long time since he’d been in such a position, and Anubis had almost forgotten what it was like to be surrounded by the heat of another’s body. “Oh Tut, you feel fantastic.”

“Anu….” Tut took Anubis’s hands, weaving their fingers together. Anubis found himself supporting the boy’s meagre weight as Tut tilted his hips and began to impale himself over and over on the length of Anubis’s cock. “Oh fuck….”

The jackal thrust in time with the pace Tut set, lifting his hips, meeting the boy with every motion as they both began to pant and groan, losing the ability to form coherent words. Anubis growled and gnashed his fangs, unable to tear his gaze away from Tut’s beautiful body and the sight of his own dark length vanishing and reappearing between them. Tut gasped and moaned, his thighs quivering, his own flesh swollen once again and bobbing with his thrusts. The Pharaoh’s chest heaved, and his motion faltered as he whimpered, letting Anubis’s hands fall, and winding fingers into his own hair.

“Anu….”

The open display of his body was too much for the jackal to resist, and Anubis gripped the boy’s hips with one hand, wrapped the other around his cock and fucked him with a dozen irregular strokes as they came together.

“Ahh!”

“Anu!”

Anubis grinned as his vision cleared and hummed in satisfaction as he saw Tut’s answering grin.

“Oh, you’d so be worth getting yelled at by Osiris for….”

“Yeah?” Tut sounded as sleepy and sated as Anubis felt. “You’re worth being dead for.” The young king relaxed on top of him, kissing his throat and shoulder happily.

“Fuck but this floor is uncomfortable.” Anubis scowled, and Tut laughed.

They ended up lying on the wide lion-headed bed Anubis had changed into gold, pillowed on the wool stuffed linen mattress, kissing softly as Tut stroked Anubis’s fur. The jackal let his eyes fall half closed. He enjoyed the sensation of being petted and adored by the boy he’d had screaming his name not ten minutes previously. The young Pharaoh played with the beads looped around his throat, and moaned gently into his mouth as Anubis kissed him more deeply.

“Will you really have to go?” the dead king asked when they broke apart once more. “Can’t you stay here with me? We could do that again… lots.”

“Oh, dear love….” Anubis purred as the boy found the spot behind his ear which always made him melt and scratched him distractingly. “As lovely as this is, I will have to return the sun to the sky.”

“Oh….”

“Don’t look so sad, beautiful.” Anubis took the boy’s chin and brought his lips up for another series of gentle, almost lazy kisses. It felt so good to relax in easy company again. “I’ll see you again very soon. I am lord of the underworld after all.”

They arose together, and Tut watched as Anubis dressed himself in the king’s own shendyt, instead wrapping the one he had worn loosely around the Pharaoh’s slender hips. The boy king was still delicious, and Anubis couldn’t help but appreciate his body every time they touched. Tut melded against him, warm and pliable, and it took all Anubis’s self-control to cease kissing his lips .

“You will come visit me, won’t you?” Tut slipped his arm around Anubis’s waist, a hand resting in the small of his back as the deity adjusted his necklace once more.

“Oh, as often as you like my love.” Anubis clung tight to the boy, just for a moment. “Now, where are these canopic jars of yours?”

Tut held his hand tight as they passed through the burial chamber and into the treasury where Anubis had found the wine and chalice. Standing in one corner was a large white chest, decorated with ebony and inlaid with golden cartouches showing Tut’s full name.

“In here.”

Anubis opened the box, and there were the four jars, each bearing a different inscription, and each topped with a stopper carved into a different head: human, falcon, jackal, and baboon. Anubis reached for the one which looked a little like himself. Of course Nefertem and Nebthet had put the sun inside Duamutef; whether they liked it or not, he and the goddess of those left behind after death always had to be linked somehow. Tut’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“How will you carry it?”

“I am a god. I can touch the disc of the sun and live.” Anubis cast around the treasury for a moment, then seized a golden necklace which showed the horns of the golden calf holding a glazed pottery disc between them. He broke the ceramic false sun away and smiled. “This will do.”

“Here….” Tut stood on tiptoes to unclasp the rearing cobras who held Anubis’s own necklace in position. He went to hand the beads to the jackal, but Anubis smiled and made him hold onto them.

“You keep it, my love. It’ll look good on you.”

“Like a trade? Your necklace for the sun?”

“Nah….” Anubis kissed the boy softly. “My necklace to prove to you that I’ll visit you again.”

The light of the sun blazed as Anubis unsealed the jar, filling the room with a brightness neither of them could look at. The single papyrus torch Anubis had brought with him paled into insignificance against a light so hot and pure. Anubis held the disc carefully, and as he placed it between the golden horns, the glow dimmed to a tolerable red glow. Together, he and Tut stowed the jars away once more and returned to the burial chamber.

“What now?”

“You have to sleep my love, so we can see each other again in the underworld.”

“And I’ll be a god?”

“Oh yes.”

“And I’ll get to be with you?” Tutankhamun smiled at him in a manner Anubis instantly adored, all innocent and soft, but with edges hard as stone, and eyes banked with lust and desire.

“Yes, beautiful, as often as you like.”

Tutankhamun looped his arm around Anubis shoulders as the jackal scooped him up as though he weighed nothing. The god of the underworld stood over the golden sarcophagus and smiled gently at his lover.

“I promise I won’t be long.”

The young Pharaoh brushed the edge of the golden horn on Anubis’s chest without touching the sun itself, then took his jaw and kissed him. It was a good kiss, long and hard, Anubis groaned under the onslaught of the boy’s questing tongue in his mouth, the sensation of his smooth skin against his own fur. When Tut drew back, his eyes shone with happiness, and a promise of things yet to come which Anubis knew he couldn’t resist.

“Sleep now, beautiful.”

Anubis kissed him again, a simple chaste touch, but through the Pharaoh’s open lips he drew the vital spark of his life, his ka burning bright like the sun on his chest. The boy in his arms went limp, and Anubis laid him down gently in the golden coffin.

As much as Anubis enjoyed his view of the beautiful young man dressed in next to nothing, he took up the bandages and re-wrapped his charge as the embalmers had done, tucking little trinkets of gold and jewels into the folds of the fine linen. He made sure the beautiful golden winged scarab sat straight over the boy’s chest as he worked his way up, and breathed the softest of kisses on his lips before he completed the wrappings.

What would Horus say, if he knew how gentle you are with him?

Anubis scowled at his inner voice.

I don’t care. I like him.

More than Horus?

Who says I have to choose? Anubis sniped at himself. I can love them both. I love Sobek too.

But do you think he’d see it like that?

Anubis snarled gently at himself and left the question for later. He took the golden death mask he had created for the boy and waved a hand over it, inscribed the cartouche with Tutankhamun’s true name, and settled it over the boy. The jackal smiled to himself and went back to the antechamber, scooped the lotus bead necklace up from where it had fallen on the lion-headed bed, and clasped it over the mask around Tut’s slender neck. He sealed the golden sarcophagus, and then laid in succession each of the lids until he dragged the huge granite coffin into place. The god of the underworld backed himself out from each of the four shrines, sealing each set of handles as he did so, and pushed the stone doors of the burial chamber closed with a sigh. The tomb of the king was rich with wonders, even if it was unusually small, and Anubis didn’t wish for Tutankhamun’s beautiful treasures to be plundered. Back in the sloping corridor, he pulled away part of one wall as he walked, filling the space behind him with limestone chippings, securing the way into the tomb against anyone who tried to enter. When Anubis finally found himself once more standing in the Valley of the Kings, it was still dark, and a little way off, the gods were waiting for him.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Set scowled, arms folded over his chest.

“Piss off, Set. Shouldn’t you be preparing to grovel on the riverbank for your life when Osiris gets back?”

“You uppity little shit!” The animal-headed second-in-command raised his hand to strike the jackal, but a strong hand closed around his wrist.

“They’re here,” Sobek growled. “Khepry will see that the sun rises. You have more important tasks to attend to.”

Set looked like he was about to argue, but instead he tore his arm from the crocodile’s grasp, sneered at Anubis, and stalked away. Nefertem shuffled his feet nervously, and Nebthet looked deeply unhappy. The giant scarab clicked and scuttled nervously, and Anubis took the disc of the sun from his necklace with exaggerated care, knowing he was being watched.

“The disc of Ra...”

The assembled gods watched as Khepry took the red disc of the sun with gentle claws. In his presence it grew huge and too bright to look at, and Anubis turned away from the rising dawn as the giant scarab began his ascent into the sky. The body of Nut, studded with stars, began to fade and vanish before their eyes, and without even needing to hear them, each and every deity felt the rise in prayers of thanks and adoration from the people as the light spread throughout the land.

“You did well.” Sobek laid a paternal hand on Anubis’s shoulder. “He asked after you y’know. First words out of his mouth. I said you’d meet him on the bridge.”

“Thanks, So.” Anubis smiled at his friend, glanced up at the ever brightening sky, and walked away from the rest of the assembled gods. He knew they stared after him. For a small moment, he wished he’d not opened the door to Nebthet and Nefertem, and left the lot of them to deal with it on their own.

But then, he told himself, you wouldn’t have got to spend a great night with Tut.

It’s not technically night….

Anubis shrugged, and grinned.

*

“Well aren’t you the smug, self-satisfied bastard I know and love?” Horus waited, sitting on the parapet, swinging his feet idly. “I was only away for two moons, and you go and have all this fun while I’m gone.”

“It wasn’t intentional.” Anubis smirked.

“Fuck, but I missed you.” The falcon smiled warmly. He reached out and took Anubis by his belt, pulling him into the space between his knees. He ran his strong tan fingers up the jackal’s chest and wrapped a hand around the back of his bare neck. “Where’s your necklace?”

“Must’ve lost it,” Anubis lied.

“Anuket is the most tedious young woman imaginable,” Horus sighed. “You won’t believe me, but she makes Nefertem look smart and witty. I’ve been so desperately bored without you, Anu.”

“Uh huh….”

Horus hooked his thumbs into Anubis’s belt, bringing their chests together with a soft thump. Anubis knew the reaction Horus wanted from him, and though he was pleased to see his friend, he could only bring himself to smile.

“What say you and I...” Horus kissed his neck between words. “...go to my rooms, play Senet, get naked, and fuck around?” The falcon chuckled deviously, “I’ll do things to you which will make you scream...”

Anubis ran his tongue over his teeth and then stepped back out of Horus's embrace. The falcon blinked in shock.

“Babe?”

“Sounds fun Horus, but I’ve got work do to.”

“Fuck it, work can wait. They are already dead after all, remember?”

Anubis frowned, knowing it was a line he’d used himself, but hating how it sounded coming from Horus. What did the god of the sky know about ushering forth the souls of the dead anyhow?

“Sorry Horus, but not all of us have all-powerful parents to whisk us off on holiday at a moment’s notice. I’m busy. I’ll see you later.”

“Anubis!” Horus called after him more than once, but the jackal turned on one heel and jogged along the great bridge and into the necropolis.

He didn’t bother to stop in his temple, didn’t wait to straighten his clothes, check his makeup, or find new jewellery to put on. Anubis was practically naked by contrast with his usual self as he padded down the passageways of his temple, ignoring the hieroglyphs which changed from pictures and stories of his adventures and into the regimented names of the dead.

The barge was waiting for him at the river bank, and Anubis stepped aboard and took up his single oar with a keenness he hadn’t felt in years. He rubbed a hand nervously over his ears and scanned the distant reed choked bank with his heart racing in his chest.

And there was a boy.

He waited beside four beautiful chariots, one for racing, one for hunting, and two for travel and procession, each drawn by a pair of fine and lovely horses. They stood on the bank without fretting or worrying at their harness. The boy glowed. He was dressed in Anubis's shendyt, tied loosely at the waist as though he was not the form of divinity sent to earth, the green silica scarab glistening on his chest. His skin was gold, pure and shining bright as the morning sun, his hair sparkled with jewels, and his eyes shone with happiness. As Anubis drew the barge closer to the bank, he couldn’t help the smile which spread over his face, the excitement which made his hands shake as he held the oar. He was god of the underworld, and he kept his promises.

The young Pharaoh on the bank threw himself across the distance between them with arms open wide.

“ANU!”