Nearby, a piece of torn linen dangled from a painted wooden leopard’s ear. She propped her lightstick against the wall and carefully, not wanting to dislodge anything in all this tangle and bring the whole lot down on top of herself, she twitched it free, bent down and picked up the rings. Knotting them in the linen to keep them safe, she laid them gently on top of a tiny, exquisitely carved chest that still smelled of cedarwood.

Luke’s voice was in her ears. ‘Jane, I’m back at the entrance now. Everything’s quiet here. You still OK?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice sounded hollow in this stone chamber.

‘You don’t sound too sure.’

She looked around the chamber. Behind a crooked couch, another hole loomed in the wall directly in front of her, and over on the right-hand wall, a large, dark opening was very definitely not tempting her to stick her head through and investigate. ‘I’m trying to decide whether to stay in here or venture into the rest of the tomb.’

‘You need to check it out.’

She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Suppose there’s someone in here. Suppose someone got left behind when they heard us coming.’

‘Then he’s crouching in the dark pissing himself. Trust me – he’ll be far more scared of you than you of him.’

Jane doubted this. Aloud.

‘Look, Jane, he’ll be an illegal. He’ll know who we are and what we do. We’re the Time Police, remember? We’re utter bastards. Well, most of us are. He knows the best he can hope for is arrest and a little gentle roughing up on the way to the cells. If he’s unlucky, we’ll leave him here to take his chances with scorpions and cobras. And that’s not counting the Medjay, ghosts, spirits of the dead . . .’

‘Aren’t ghosts and spirits the same thing?’

‘Go and have a look. You’ll feel much better when you know it’s empty.’

If it was empty.

‘OK.’

Reluctantly, being careful where she put her feet and trying not to stand on anything priceless, she inched her way towards the door directly ahead of her. The one leading into the annex. Every movement sounded impossibly loud in this tiny underground room. It did occur to her that poking her head through a hole into a dark and possibly robber- or ghost-filled chamber might not be such a good idea, so she snapped yet another lightstick, crouched as best she could, and peered cautiously through the hole. Light winked off even more golden objects.