Jiro sighed.
Chapter 23
Baggage
Asha sat on the wooden crate beside Wren all afternoon, watching the shadows slide across the floor of the warehouse and listening to the soft tinkling and jangling of the chains that held Isis suspended above the floor.
For a time, Asha had stared up at Isis purely as a healer, trying to understand what was happening to this person’s body, what she was feeling, what she was thinking. The physical changes were like nothing she had ever seen on another living creature. Hairy steer flesh, toes fused into hoofs, horns erupting from the skull.
And the eyes.
The white-in-white eyes that looked almost milky and blind up close, but from a distance, looked stark raving insane.
From time to time, Isis would shiver or shudder, or just twitch, and the chains would make some small sound, but otherwise she hung there perfectly still, almost as though she were sleeping except for those hideous eyes staring down at her captors.
“It’s been hours now,” Asha said. The windows above them were all dark and the sounds of the city had long since faded into the muted murmurs of people looking for suppers and beds. “No word from Bastet. No word from Gideon. I’m worried about them.”
Wren nodded. She had pushed back the black scarf from her thick red hair and was gently stroking and plucking the fine red hairs on her strange fox ears atop her head.
“You must be worried about Omar,” Asha said. “Just remember what I said. I won’t leave you alone. Whatever happens, you won’t be alone.”
Wren looked up and smiled a little. “I’m not worried about Omar. Concerned, a little, maybe. He’s complicated, you know. Sometimes he gets so wrapped up in an idea or a project that he doesn’t bother to eat for a month, and sometimes he gets so upset about his past that I worry he might actually touch that sword of his and end it all. Four and a half millennia of doing strange things can make a man strange, I suppose. Hm. But he’s not mine to worry about. I like him, and I’ve learned a lot from him, but if it’s his time to die, then it’s his time to die.”
“Oh.” Asha narrowed her eyes as she stared at a faint stain on the dirt floor. “I thought the two of you were closer than that.”
Wren shrugged. “He’s my teacher and my friend. I’ve known him for almost two years now. He’s saved my life plenty of times, and I’ve saved his, so to speak. It’s hard to say with an immortal. I don’t want him to die, or suffer, but it’s out of my hands at the moment, and worrying won’t change anything, so why worry?”
Asha nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s true.”
“What about you? How are you doing?”
Asha blinked.
Priya is dead because I led her into danger.
Set is dead because I ran off on my own.
Nethys is dead because I lost control.
Priya is dead…
And for all I know, everyone else in this city could die soon because of something I’ll do, or won’t do, or maybe something that I’ve already done.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little tired.”
Wren laughed. “Does everyone in your country lie as badly as you?” Her expression softened and she touched Asha’s arm. “I can see the pain in your eyes, in the way you stare at the wall. More like you’re trying not to think, not to feel. Trying to be numb, trying to get away from the demons inside.”
“You can see that, can you?”
“Even without all that, I can feel the sorrow in you,” the northern girl said. “I can feel it in the aether curling off you like smoke. Full of darkness and emptiness. Death and suffering hover around you like a shadow. I can help you with that, if you want.”
Asha managed a wry smile. “I don’t think I need any help. No more lessons, or sermons, or sutras, or whatever you call them in your country. I’ve heard more than my share, believe me. Priya never stopped… Priya did more than any person could ever hope to do to enlighten me about death and life. It never really took. I’ve never learned how to let go of the things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. The people I’ve lost.”
Wren moved a little closer and rested her head on Asha’s shoulder. Her tall vulpine ears flicked and gently batted against Asha’s black locks. The girl said, “In my country, we don’t solve problems by talking about them. Valas don’t give sermons. We heal. And when called to, we fight, too.” She held out her arm to display four of her silver bracelets, each one with a slender golden wire wrapping around it. “These are all rinegold. Sun-steel. Or whatever you call it in your land. They hold the souls of dead valas and witches, shamans and healers, bonesaws and alchemists, from all over the north. Mostly, they teach me things about plants and aether. I can also use the bracelets to stir the aether, the way I did to capture our poor Isis here.”
She pulled off her right glove to reveal a slender sun-steel ring on her finger. “And I can also use my ring to dream-dive. To visit your soul, to see what you’re feeling and to help you confront it, or master it, or dispel it. Whatever you need. I can do this for you. Right now, if you want.”
Asha paused, wondering what exactly the girl meant. She understood that a person could speak to the souls trapped in sun-steel, and she had seen the girl bending the aether to her will, but dream-diving?
I’ve never even heard of anything like that before.
Maybe I should. Maybe it will help.
Or maybe I’ll hurt her, or the dragon will hurt her, if there’s still any difference between it and me anymore.
“Maybe another time,” Asha said softly. “But thank you.”
Wren shrugged, and leaned away again. She peered off to the side and whispered in a sing-songy voice, “Jagdish? Oh, Jagdish? Where are you, little one?”
The mongoose scampered out of the deep shadows and leapt up into the girl’s lap where he promptly curled up in her pleated black skirts and closed his eyes.
“He likes you,” Asha said. “More than he ever liked me, at least. Would you like to keep him? A mongoose can be a very useful thing to have around, you know.”
Wren smiled up at her, a bright and cheerful smile that almost glowed in the evening darkness. “I’d love to, thank you.”
Asha sighed. “Are you hungry? Maybe I should go find us some supper. I have a little money. And I can stop by Jiro’s place to see whether Taziri is back yet with the sun-steel.”
“Sure, I can eat.”
Asha stood up and set her medicine bag on her shoulder and glanced up at their prisoner. “Will you be all right here by yourself? With her?”
Wren smiled. “It’s night time. The air is cool, and the sunlight is gone. The aether is only going to grow thicker for the next few hours. I don’t mean to brag, but right now, I’m probably stronger than you are.”
Asha smiled in spite of herself. “You think so?”
Wren nodded. “Mm hm.”
Asha turned to leave. “Well, maybe when this is all over, you and I will have a little contest to…” She stopped and shook her head.
I can’t believe I would even think such a thing, let alone suggest it.
“I’ll get us something to eat,” she said quickly. “I’ll be back soon.”
Wren waved and leaned back on the crate, petting the balled up mongoose in her lap. Asha headed down the shadowed alleys between the stacked boxes, wondering what was in them, and who owned them, and why they were just locked away inside a huge house for boxes in the first place.
These people are all mad.
She stepped out into the street and fell the cool evening breeze in her hair and smelled the nearby harbor full of fish, oil, smoke, and salt. She turned left, pointing back toward the lighthouse and Jiro’s home, and started walking. As she reached the corner of the warehouse, she heard a sudden crash of wood breaking, and an avian monster screamed inside the building.
Asha turned and bolted back to the doors and down the narrow paths through the warehouse to the open space in the back where she found a brigh
t pool of starlight falling through a large, ragged hole in the roof. Wren was on her feet, hands raised, bracelets gleaming. The pale light fell across Isis’s face and the immortal squinted up at the night sky. And in the shadows behind the prisoner, a large shadow moved.
“Wren, get back!” Asha curled her hands into fists, searching through the confusion and panic of the moment for one of her memories, one of her triggers, something to give her the dragon. But she couldn’t focus because there was nothing to focus on. Only a shadow, and a girl she was worried about.
“I have him,” Wren said softly. She lifted her hands and a thin white wall of vapor rose up from the dirt floor. Then she shoved her hands forward and the wall swept across the room, smacking Isis in the side and crashing through the shadow behind her. Something large and heavy fell against a pile of crates, which clattered but did not fall.
“Is it Horus?” Asha asked. “Is it one of Lilith’s creatures?”
“If it isn’t, then I feel sorry for the woman who gave birth to him.” Wren swept her empty hands through the air, bracelets ringing as they slipped up to her elbows and back down to her wrists. The aether raced across the floor again, and a voice cried out in the darkness, screeching as fists and feet beat upon the crates. Then Wren drew her hands back toward her chest and the aether rushed back toward her like a tide and pulled the creature into the moonlight.
Horus lay on his back, legs kicking and clawing at the dirt floor, his talon-hands grappling with the intangible aether wrapped around his soul and dragging it along with his body. His sleek feathered head rolled back and forth as his falcon’s beak snapped at the air and his huge falcon eyes blinked white-in-white in the dim evening light.
“I have him,” Wren said. Her face was lined with concentration and she never took her eyes off the man on the floor.
“All right, just hold him there while I get those chains back there.” Asha pointed as she dashed across the warehouse floor to the far wall where the rest of the chains hung, along with coils of rope, balls of twine, and various pry bars and hammers and other tools for opening and closing crates.
She pulled loose a length of chain and ran back to the open space where the girl in black held Horus prisoner on the ground with nothing more than a thin white cloud that writhed and swam across the man’s body like a living thing.
Asha held up the chain, trying to figure out how she might lash the man’s hands with the chains and hoist him up onto the rafters like his mother.
Do I throw them over the top first? Or bind him first and then lift him up?
How did Gideon do it with Isis? I can’t remember. Maybe I’ll have to strike him unconscious before we can…
Oh, no, I remember now…
Asha dropped the chain and reached into her bag for the needle, and she held it up to the light to make certain the sedative was still thick on the steel point. Then she hurled it down through the aether into their prisoner’s shoulder, and a moment later he wheezed and lay back flat on the floor, breathing noisily through the narrow slits in his beak.
I didn’t think, I didn’t remember… all I could think about was beating him down with my armored fists and burning claws.
I never used to think about such things. I always reached for my bag first, for my tools and herbs and seeds. And now I reach for weapons.
I was an herbalist. A healer. Can I still say that?
What am I now?
Wren lowered her hands and came over to help her with the chains. Together they bound Horus’s wrists and hauled the chains over the rafters, lifting him up to hang a few paces away from his mother, which Wren made easier with an updraft of aether.
When their second prisoner was secure, the two women went back over to their crate and slumped down to rub their sore hands and shoulders.
“He’s heavier than she is,” Wren said. “A lot heavier.”
Asha nodded. “You did very well, just now. You handled it very… I’m impressed. And thank you. If you hadn’t…”
She couldn’t bring her thoughts together to say what she meant, or even to know what she meant.
“You’re welcome,” Wren said brightly. “Always happy to help. Not that you really need it. I’m sure you could have handled him. Anyone strong enough to tear down a temple with her bare hands can probably capture one person with a feathery head.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“So that’s it then, right?” Wren asked. “Horus and Isis. And the others are… accounted for. So wherever Bastet and Gideon are, they’re okay. And Anubis too.”
“Wherever they are.” Asha nodded.
“Then that makes this a good day.” Wren leaned back and smiled as Jagdish hopped up into her lap. “Everyone can sleep safe and sound in their beds, and we don’t have to worry about anything at all.”
“Except Omar,” Asha reminded her.
Wren sighed. “Except him.”
“And Lilith.”
“And her.”
“And all of those other poor souls trapped in the undercity, deformed and enslaved down in the darkness,” Asha said softly.
And this is only one city, one place where immortals live, one place where this insanity has festered. How many more are there, out in the world?
“I thought you were going to get supper,” Wren said as she petted the mongoose curled up on her belly.
“Right. I’ll do that.” Asha stood and headed for the doors of the warehouse for the second time that hour.
“Don’t forget your bag,” Wren called.
Asha looked back and saw her medicine bag lying on the floor in the shadows at the edge of the ring of starlight falling through the broken roof. The bag was a soft hempen weave with a cloth strap that always felt comfortable on either shoulder, and it had a dozen little pockets inside for vials and jars and paper packets, and the bottom was strong enough to hold the weight of her tools and needles, even her little mortar and pestle.
She had carried that bag for years, from the great rivers of Ming over the high mountains of Kathmandu, through the forests of India and Rajasthan, across the vast plains of Old Persia, and here to the shores of Ifrica. She had never gone anywhere without it before. It was no mere thing. It was a part of her, a part of her hands and a part of her mind, without which she was only a shadow of the healer she had been trained to be.
And now it looks like a relic from another life.
Asha came back, slipped the bag onto her shoulder, and left.
Chapter 24
Legacies
Omar lay on the table, no longer feeling the chains and shackles cutting into his wrists and neck, no longer bothered by the hideously soft creeping sensations coming from his right arm. The tears had dried on his cheeks hours ago and all that was left now was the soreness in his throat. He faced the wall, his eyes closed.
“Oh, come now, Bashir, I think you’ve moped long enough,” Lilith said from the far side of the room.
“She’s just a little girl,” he whispered.
“Who? Bastet? My God, you don’t even know if she’s dead.” The woman sat in a chair drenched in pillows and blankets, and she slipped dark red grapes one by one between her dark red lips. “It could be anyone. Maybe it’s that frigid cow Nadira, or those foul-mouthed Rus people, or that Indian prince of yours you never like to talk about. Did you ever think about that?”
Omar opened his eyes and looked at the servant woman by the doorway. She looked even paler and sweatier than before, swaying drunkenly as she struggled to stand upright while keeping her milky tentacles from brushing against her legs. He asked, “How did this happen?”
“How did what happen?”
“This. All this.” Omar coughed and tried to clear his parched throat. “You were an artist. A scientist. A philosopher. You were beautiful, so beautiful, from your flawless face to your bright, shining soul. You were a wonder. A jewel in the dustbin of humanity. I couldn’t believe my own good fortune in finding you. I felt privileged just
to speak with you…”
He felt the tears coming again, but he blinked them away.
So many times I’ve thought that I had reached the end of my very, very long life. In fire and flood, war and torture, by hand of man and the fang of beast, and even by the heartless power of machines. And yet I survived, only to come here, only to see this.
Why, Lord? Why now? I already repented what I’d done. I already resolved to undo it. I came here to make good on that promise.
Why now, at the threshold of my redemption, when I am finally ready to do something truly good and pure for the world, when I am ready to serve the natural order instead of my own desires…
Why now would you deliver me into the hands of the one person, perhaps the only person in the world, with both the will and the means to actually kill me?
“Such kind words,” Lilith said. “I never hear such things anymore. I made my servants to serve, not to love. Perhaps that will be my next great endeavor. To conquer more than the flesh, and more than the will. To conquer the spirit itself. To enslave the heart.”
“And then?” Omar’s voice cracked and he paused to master himself. “What then? When you’ve enslaved all the world, bent it to your every whim and desire, tasted everything that this world has to offer, and everything that you can create, what then? Whether it takes fifty years or five thousand, what then?”
Lilith laughed. “You see, this is the problem with you religious people. You’re looking for something nobler, something deeper, something that can elevate your little lives, something to give your lives meaning, because you’ve failed to find any meaning for yourselves. Even you, Bashir, after all these millennia, even you have failed to find your own meaning for your sad, empty existence.”
“And what meaning have you found?”
“There is no meaning!” Lilith stood up and strode to the side of his table. “A moment ago you spoke of tasting everything in the world. Well, I have tasted much of what this world has to offer. I have placed the hot and cold flesh of countless plants and animals in my mouth, and devoured them. I have felt indescribable joys in my mouth, and in my belly, again and again. And I wish to go on tasting and devouring them over and over again, and whatever else I can discover in this world.”
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