by S. M. Reine
Even the way that Waset burned was eerily familiar. Anat had left Itjtawy during riots, and the city had burned then too. But these fires were set by man-sized creatures that flew through the air. She glimpsed several through the smoke.
“Angels,” Anat whispered.
The captain helped them unload at the dock. Anat took his hand to step out onto the waiting western bank, and she drank in the sight of the Pharaoh’s grand palace. The walls were high and shining, patrolled by human guards. The torches were lit, and Anat felt she was arriving in daytime.
“Our ship to the Laconian Gulf does not leave for two days,” Yatam explained as they entered the gates of the palace. He was dressed as a man of Kemet again, with the makeup and jewels of nobility, and he passed well as belonging. “I sent word ahead that we were coming, and an old friend invited us to stay for our safety. He assures me that angels cannot penetrate their wards.”
Anat did not remember having any friends who were pharaohs, but she did not have to remain confused for long. A guard escorted them within the gates and to the gardens, where the pharaoh waited for them. The lanterns were lit there too. Musicians played under the golden glow, and the quiet drumming was often punctuated by distant explosions.
The pharaoh sat beside a fountain, attended by a pair of beautiful women. Anat was surprised to recognize him.
“Kadar, it has been too long,” she said. They had met a thousand years earlier, when he had been a nomarch in Itjtawy and a new vampire changed by the same fangs that had pierced Anat’s throat.
“I am Osorkon III now. Does godhood suit me?” He rose from his bench and spread his arms so that she could look upon his kilt and finery. He wore a lion’s tail at his belt. A leopard’s skin hung over his shoulders. He had been splendid enough as nomarch, but he looked godly indeed now. All the more impressive, considering it had been at least a thousand years since he’d drawn breath.
“It suits you perfectly.” She kissed him on the cheek. “I’m glad to see you so well-kept. Few of our ilk have thrived to such a degree.” Not in a part of the world where the sun always shined.
Yatam kissed Kadar next, a brief brush of lips upon lips. Even with the color drained from his skin by death, Kadar was much darker than Yatam, and a man of less beauty. He was rugged, a hunter—a king. “The same to you,” Kadar said. “Your marriage has treated you both well. What brings you to Waset? Your letters were intriguingly lacking in detail.”
“King Teleklos has invited us to speak before the Ecclesia about the First War,” Yatam said. “He desires to bring about an end to the fighting.”
Kadar huffed. “Of course the humans would. They’re treated as the cattle they’re meant to be, and they complain when the predators do what predators are meant to do. I’m sure that chickens would also like to stop dying on the dinner table too. Why are you entertaining him? A man has little leverage over the matters of Heaven and Hell.”
“I have leverage over my mother, and I’m willing to listen,” Yatam said simply. “That is influence enough over Hell.”
“You haven’t been to the infernal planes in centuries, have you?”
“My husband is well-traveled.” Anat couldn’t go with him when he traveled far afield of home, and he never left her for long, but he wasn’t without responsibility for his people. “He’s offered counsel to a dozen of Dis’s queens and is regarded as a demon of supreme wisdom.”
“By some,” Kadar said. “Many will never fall in line with you should you waste time with mortals.”
“Mortals such as these?” Anat asked, waving to the celebrants throughout the gardens. Some were vampires, marked by their pallor and sharpened fangs. They were as likely to be loopy on opium as they were on the blood spilling over mortal flesh from pinpricks at their throats.
“Food for my coven,” said the pharaoh.
Anat wore the sickle-sword that Yatam had given her years earlier, and she ached to reach for it. She didn’t know why. Most of their ilk regarded humans as such cattle. She gripped her hands behind her back. “I need time to rest and refresh myself after our journey.”
“Of course. Your ship was early, so your rooms are still being prepared. We’re understaffed as a side-effect of this war.” He waved an impatient hand at the torn sky. “I will have you taken to Ipet-isu so you may say your thanks to Khonsu, who will watch you across the sea. I will command the priests to permit you inside Amun’s Hall.”
They murmured their goodbyes and blessings, and Anat kissed Kadar again before leaving. His breath smelled like human blood.
Ipet-isu was the largest religious complex throughout the known world—a marvel untouched by war, even quieter than the pharaoh’s palace in the middle of the night. The wab priest who allowed Anat and Yatam inside looked sleepy, though he’d donned his papyrus slippers and linen robes in preparation for serving the gods.
Silence waited for them within Ipet-isu. The lights had been extinguished for the night, so the priest carried a clay lantern roped to a long stick, holding it above them so that they were bathed in the gentle glow. Columns like stocky reeds held up the flat roof of the main hall, where Amun was worshipped. The ritual lake was visible beyond the windows. The walls were painted in vivid hues of gold and blue.
Anat gazed around the grandeur of the temple and felt the ache of bittersweet nostalgia. This was far larger than the Temple of Maat, where she’d spent much of her short human life, yet it was the nearest she’d gotten to her old home in a millennium. She felt young and human again—a vulnerable sensation. It had been so long since she had felt the kiss of death’s slow approach for her soul.
“I feel a cold wind,” she said, shivering.
“There is no chill here, lamb,” Yatam said. He brought her into the circle of his arms. “There is no winter in Kemet. You’re only hungry.”
She had eaten well before they boarded the ship. For the last several centuries, she had found her dietary habits less demanding and only needed to eat every few weeks. She wouldn’t be hungry for some time. “My body wants for nothing. I feel something terrible coming.”
“Are you afraid to cross the sea?”
“Whatever I fear is not that far away,” Anat said. “I feel like it is here, in Waset. We shouldn’t have stopped.”
Yatam always took her seriously, even when she couldn’t put reason behind her feelings. He took the lantern from the priest. “We want privacy.”
The wab priest nodded and left. He must have been afraid to leave them in the hypostyle hall alone—a place where only priests and pharaohs were allowed to tread—but he must have feared Kadar’s wrath as Osorkon III much more than tradition.
When the doors shut, it echoed among the pillars of reeds. Anat shivered again. It sounded like her sarcophagus closing at sunrise.
Yatam mounted the lantern on the wall. “Tell me what you want to do,” he said. “I will do it for you. Shall we return to Kush? Flee somewhere else entirely?”
Anat wasn’t sure. For a moment, she was lost gazing up at her husband, and she remembered what it was like to feel her heart beating. With memories of life came memories of love, felt as fiercely as only the living could. He was a great demon looked up to by many as nobility or a deity, yet he still deferred to Anat, a vampire who only existed to shadow him. Yatam never failed to bring her sunlight.
“You’re not one to flee,” she said. “But we should leave early. Now.”
“Wisdom from my wife’s lips,” he said.
Her heart ached. “I still love you as much as the earliest days.”
Yatam kissed her gently, holding her body against his with reverence. “I love you too,” he whispered back.
“How sweet,” said another woman. The shadows at the edge of lantern light had coalesced into a figure much like Yatam’s. “Might I suggest you dig a deep hole wide enough for two and drag yourselves into the bottom of it?”
Anat gasped at the sight of Yatai. She made no pretense at humanity anymore. Their shared fe
atures were elongated into sharp points on Yatai. Her hair was more fog than silk. Her bared breasts were circled by geometric lines that extended onto her ribcage and down her thighs, as if she’d clad herself in infernal runes.
“Kadar told you that we would be here,” Yatam said, maneuvering to protect Anat. “I’m surprised. I didn’t expect you to still have any interest in him after a thousand years.”
“You’re not the only one of us capable of loving selfishly,” Yatai hissed back. “I parted ways with Kadar for some centuries, but now that you’ve killed Eve to foment war, I’ve nothing to do with my time but rekindle ancient flames.”
Anat gripped Yatam’s arm, and his muscles were tense with shock under her fingertips.
“I have not killed Eve,” Yatam said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.”
“You deny responsibility? Let’s weigh your sins in the matter and pass judgment.” Yatai slithered between two pillars, leaving a wake of shadows that stained the stone floors of Amun’s Hall. “Our mother was so endeared with us that she expended her strength making us immortal, yet you left her. Nügua died of grief within days of losing her son to some Remnant .” Yatai spit out the last word. “Even in her omnipotence as Lilith, she continued pining for her lost life as Nügua, and she wasn’t in Eden when Adam came for Eve.”
Yatam shook his head. “No, no—”
“Adam may have strangled Eve, but you’re the reason nobody was there to stop him!”
Anat and Yatam shared shocked looks. Neither of them had known Eve well enough to mourn her personally, but what Yatai was talking about was deicide. There were only three gods in the pantheon. Losing Eve would destabilize the universe.
If this was true, then a few burning cities would only be the start of it.
“I will accept no blame for that,” Yatam said. “We are on a mission of goodwill, sister. We seek to end the war with negotiations on Tinos.”
Rage turned Yatai uglier, more wretched. “The world can burn for what’s happened to Eve.” She swirled around Anat. They came face to face, their noses only a breath apart. Anat was trapped within the shadow. “I haven’t forgotten your role in all of this, Remnant. First you kill Ereshkigal’s husband and kill his kingdom, and now you triggered the events that killed Eve. It has been a hundred years since her passing, and I have killed every single Remnant of Inanna but you.”
“Let me go!” Anat drew her sword and slashed with it. She could not cut through Yatai’s darkness. For all the power that Anat had gained in her undeath, it was naught but a flicker against the bonfire of Yatai’s might.
Yatam gave his sister only an instant’s warning. “Stop!”
And then lightning cracked through the air, and the temple smelled of lamps gone out. When Anat’s vision cleared, she saw Yatai bleeding on the floor and Yatam standing over her with a look of mingled regret and anger.
“I don’t want to be your enemy, Yatai,” he said. “Leave us to our lives. You cannot have Anat.”
They fled the same night, without returning to Kadar’s palace. It was too risky. Yatai would recover all too quickly. The ship they had chartered to take them was not due to arrive for days, so Yatam hurried across the docks, seeking another that would be available sooner. Only one was willing to leave before sunrise and had space below decks for Anat.
“We will have to travel with the Sea Peoples,” Yatam warned her, buying a few last supplies for their journey. Anat would have to sleep through it, but Yatam would remain alert against dangers and need to interact with the crew. He needed to avoid arousing suspicion with the mortals. He’d found a shop keep with the same build as him and bought half the man’s wardrobe with an absurd quantity of gold.
“Will we be safe?” Anat asked. “The Sea Peoples are marauders.”
“Raiders, yes, but they know the sea as no others do. We will be safe with them.” He drew her against him and hurried toward the gangplank. The ship looked fast and old, held together by little more than tar, ropes, and the desperation of the captain. Anat would survive the ship sinking, but not one of those boards plunging through her unbeating heart.
They had only just set foot upon the ocean-slicked deck when sudden fire blazed on the docks. Something had flown from the sky and struck the market.
The ship’s crew shouted, leaping to untie the ship before the fire could spread.
A man walked out of the white-gold flames. Every one of the feathers on his long wings was haloed in light. His breastplate was dented, his skin was spattered in blood, and one of his vambraces had torn free. The angel’s sword sputtered with faint flame, then went out.
He stepped onto the air and soared across the dock to the ship.
“Angel!” cried one of the oarsmen.
The crew scattered, diving overboard. Anat backed away from the angel’s approach behind Yatam’s sheltering arms.
“You are not Yatai,” said the angel.
“I am her brother, Yatam, son of Nügua and an elder among demons,” he said. “I’ve remained far from the wars and only preyed upon mortals. I have done nothing to offend the Voice of God. What brings you here, Metaraon?”
“So you know me. Good.” Metaraon set down upon the deck lightly, toes to heels, but his wings remained lifted as if for flight. He was caked in ash and blood. “I’m here because of your sister. She is taking her rage out on my people by spreading Lilith’s curse through the fields and farmhands.”
“I have no control over her. Don’t punish me for that.”
“I don’t intend to punish you.” Metaraon’s eyes glowed white-blue in the hazy Nile evening. “If you speak for the infernal, Lilith will adhere to your decisions. And you were cast in her clay. You can negotiate the Treaty of Dis and sign it in Nügua’s blood.”
“That is where we were headed until you frightened the crew,” Yatam said.
“Then it’s lucky we cross paths. We can progress to the negotiations together. Phase across the distance,” Metaraon said. “Take your wife beyond the sea as I know you can.”
Yatam could not phase with Anat. Traversing that distance was a feat requiring quick planeswalking; he would take a lateral step into an infernal world and then back to Earth, reappearing at a different location. Though many infernal lands were sunless, other factors left them hostile to the bloodless. Anat would not survive it. Metaraon must have known that.
“I’m likelier to rip the wings from your back and use them to fly across the sea,” Yatam said.
The angel’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be capable.”
“Leave this ship or you will learn.”
“Peace.” Metaraon sheathed his sword and lifted his empty hands. “I don’t intend to fight further. I want a resolution to this madness. I will take your wife across the sea, safe from your sister. You may phase to reach us on Mount Exomvourgo, where the juncture to the City of Dis awaits. Do you know it?”
“I am to speak in front of the elders in Sparta,” Yatam said.
“Plans have changed. The Librarians reached out to us with an offer. We’re constructing a binding Treaty based in the City of Dis, and we’ll need to detour to the Palace.”
That meant that Anat wouldn’t be able to go with him at all. Not beyond the mountain. They were so seldom separated, and never when Anat wasn’t secured.
They had little choice in the matter. Kadar would soon realize they were not in his palace anymore, and once he knew, Yatai would too. She wouldn’t feel compelled to travel with Kadar. She could phase anywhere she wanted.
“I’ll go with you, Metaraon,” Anat said. She slid her sword into her belt again. “Let us leave before Yatai finds us.”
She did not say a goodbye to her husband. She knew that he would find her, no matter where Metaraon took her. She simply took the angel’s hand and felt herself lifted into the sky. A vampire had no need for warmth, or to breathe, and so she found it pleasant to be drawn through the tides of the winds at impossible speeds.
The
Earth fell away underneath her, and she saw just how small Kemet was. The fires were little more than pinpricks of starlight in the center of vast black desert. The world was so large. The scope of humanity was so small. And it was all achingly beautiful. She felt invulnerable in the sky, and she believed Yatai’s bitterness wouldn’t be able to reach her there.
Desert turned to ocean. Metaraon descended upon an island mountain, terraced for farming. They landed smoothly. Anat stepped away from the angel and nearly fell because she was so weakened by the sight of the world.
“That was wonderful,” she said, running her hands over her hair. It had been braided tightly and not a curl was out of place. “Thank you for that. It may have been the most exciting moment of my existence.”
He inclined his head, accepting the praise. “Into this cottage. Entourages of the new council members will be staying in such places for the extent of negotiations, as you cannot follow Yatam into the Palace of Dis.”
The cottage was built of gray stone. It was sturdy enough to stand the worst storms off of the sea, but it presented a major problem. “These windows are too large,” Anat said. “Where else may I stay?”
“Nowhere else is near. We are southwest of Mount Exomvourgo in a farming village settled by…” Metaraon’s lips thinned. He shook his wings, ruffling feathers loose so that they drifted to the ground. “We knew Yatam would bring one of the bloodless. We are ready for you. Come.” He took her to a trapdoor.
The cellar underneath the stone cottage was a dirty place, dark and cramped, but it would be lightless during daytime. “You’ve done well by us. My thanks.”
“Yatam secures the cooperation of the infernal forces. I don’t do it for the two of you, but for the millions of lives we’ll better.” Metaraon walked away, chin high, and swept out the door onto the wind.
He had brought a large entourage—more than a dozen tall, pale-eyed men who stood around the farmland like ghosts in the reeds. Yatam soon appeared from their midst. He had phased there before she could fly the distance, and spoken to the entourage about the humans. They were still a day away.