Within the glass, guests from the royal party shuffled in and out of view. The fennec ran between legs and onto a carpet made of petals. He began strutting in circles around Hiresha.
Hiresha squinted at the memory of the Water Palace. The field of focus constricted on the fennec. His elbows jerked with each stride, and tremors ran down his limbs as if he were uncertain where he wanted to place his paws. All natural grace had been stripped from him. A snarl twitched the black corners of his mouth amid white fur.
“The poor dear struggled for control,” the reflection said.
Hiresha's fingers throbbed around the newly implanted jewels as her heart beat faster. “So it wasn't animal training.”
The memory of the fennec completed his third circuit around the enchantress' purple skirt. In his following bow, the muscles in one leg tensed, and part of him tried to stand.
“The possession ended here.” The reflection pointed, and in the other mirror, the fennec leaped and latched his fangs into the closest person, his newly chosen bride. “He was confused and scared, so we'll have to forgive him.”
“I was chosen.” Hiresha massaged her fingers. Shards of anxiety began bursting within her head. “If not by a god, by a Soultrapper?”
“The Lord of the Feast was right.” The Feaster slammed her jeweled fist against the glass, cracking it. “The Soultrapper knows what you did to his apprentice, and now he's out to kill you.”
“I am uncertain of that assessment.” Hiresha reviewed the faces of those she had met. People blinked by in the mirrors in a whir of humanity, but she did not observe any significant facial slips that would hint at murderous wishes. She recalled the Lord of the Feast mentioning this Soultrapper would be ancient. He could theoretically hide within a tomb, she thought, and control people and petite animals without. “A Soultrapper would complicate my escape.”
“You have to find him,” the Feaster said, “and kill him first.”
Hiresha lifted ten colored diamonds in her palm. “This might explain what the thief Inannis said. That the vizier knew to find us at the south docks.”
The reflection said, “We'll have to take the fennec with us, too. We can't leave him to be some nasty man's puppet.”
The thought of having to overcome a Soultrapper daunted Hiresha. With his powers of possession, he might turn the whole city against her. The way things have progressed, perhaps he already has. She did not think the Soultrapper had attempted to control her own mind yet. I must be ready to resist.
Freedom would be hard won for her and Chandur, she could see that. She would have to find corpses the Soultrapper had defiled with his glyph and remove the magic seals to weaken him. Her confidence still lit the jewels around her with rippling flashes. Now she had knowledge of what she faced and a means to surmount it. She felt that acknowledgment was due.
She nodded first to the Feaster in her mirror then to the smiling reflection. “I concede that you both have your uses.”
“Let me out.” The Feaster scraped her hands against the glass. “I'll track the Soultrapper. Sniff the coward out.”
Hiresha placed a blue diamond on her tongue.
“I'd even rip the Lord of the Feast apart if you have to.”
Tilting her head back, Hiresha swallowed. The jewel scraped her throat, but she Attracted it down to her stomach and held it there in case of an emergency. “I will do this my way. With enchantment and a plan.”
The reflection asked, “What's the plan?”
“To be ever ready to come up with a new plan.” She trickled the rest of the diamonds into her mouth.
A cool nose greeted Hiresha the next morning.
The paws of the fennec balanced on her neck. His furry chin grazed her cheek as he snuffled. Whiskers kissed her.
Hiresha wrapped three fingers under the fox's chest and between his forelegs. She lifted him as she sat up. “I'd not forgive any man who struck me, even if anger possessed him,” she said to the fennec. “You, however, are surprisingly affable, for a fox.”
The fennec angled his ears upward as she spoke. He then shifted in her grasp to scratch the inside of one ear with a back foot.
Maid Janny bustled into the room like the professional bustler she was. “Talking to animals now, are we?”
“You forget, Maid Janny, that I am an educator at the Mindvault Academy. Compared to the pupils I'm forced to teach, an animal audience is more of a lateral move.”
“Huh.” The maid stood in profile, moving a hand down a motherly bulge along her waist. She winked. “Am I beginning to show?”
Hiresha struggled with thinking through her drowsiness in the mornings, as well in midday and the afternoon, to be fair. When she at last understood, she said, “I presume you hid the jewels in your dress.”
“The priest sent a few stooges snooping for them, so I stashed the sashes,” the maid said. “Soon as you want jewels, just reach down between my baby kegs.”
“I should think not.”
Janny dressed Hiresha into a white gown traditional to the city while also clucking over the enchantress' hands. “Enjoy sticking yourself with jewels?”
“I'd sooner explain it to the fennec. Do make yourself useful and fetch me some pebbles.”
Janny left grumbling at the odd request. Hiresha glanced out a round window and noticed pilgrims thronged the temple compound even at the early hour. The sight of her holding the fennec sent them into a frenzy, with much waving of the arms and whooping. Guards on camels kept order, more of the riders than she cared to see. The pyramid shadowed all.
Uncertainty pattered its chilly feet up and down Hiresha's back. It was not that she feared to put her new enchantments to the test. She merely thought it best if the initial experiment involved fewer participants.
Janny returned with pistachios, saying they were as close to pebbles as she could find on short notice in a city. Hiresha took one shelled nut at a time, intending to practice her aim for throwing enchanted jewels. She hurled the nuts at a chair inlaid with silver.
The pistachios flew past the furniture to strike against a wall mosaic, hitting a painted guard crouching over a pyramid. The edible missiles pattered off his hooked sword and against the foxes stacked on his other arm, and on the lion by his side. One nut even found its way to land on the chair.
“This will not do,” Hiresha said, “I need a standing target. Maid Janny, against the wall.”
“Not happening.” She was tying twine around a rolled rug.
The fennec sprang down and retrieved a nut. The enchantress thanked him and rewarded him by stroking him down his back. As Hiresha continued practicing, the fox yipped with excitement, picking up each nut between his teeth and laying it at Hiresha's feet. His tail did not wag as she might have expected from a dog but tufted straight upward, proud as a flag. Of the two of them, the fennec seemed completely unconcerned how most of the projectiles flew wide of their mark.
“Might help,” Maid Janny said, “if you keep your eyes open when you throw.”
Hiresha covered a yawn with a jeweled hand then propped her chin as she brooded. I can't afford to miss a charging guard. She had hoped to steal away out the back door at this point, but she decided she would nap, to consolidate the muscle memory of throwing. Perhaps I should practice more in the laboratory.
She slumped in the same chair that had so offended her, proving herself the forgiving sort. Her head dipped forward.
Something hulked over her.
Her eyes snapped open to see the Royal Embalmer, vulture mask in hand. Before she could gather herself to ask what he was doing here, he spoke in a hushed voice and beckoned her.
“Come, you must know something.”
The enchantress roused herself, not at all comfortable with this interruption. Neither did she care for how his ember stare lingered on her chest.
Hiresha left the fennec on a pillow. The maid watched her go with a worried expression, and the enchantress and embalmer walked around a courtyard in the dormitor
y. Green-glazed pillars surrounded a grove of fruit trees and blooms with stifling aromas. The embalmer swung his gaze on any priest or guard who approached, forcing them to scramble out of sight.
“They believe,” he said, “that I speak of provisions after the ceremony, how tomorrow I'll begin preparing your body for eternity. Tell me, Hiresha, do you mean to submit yourself to this?”
Hiresha realized that she had the option to confide in him. With her strength in enchantment combined with whatever plan the embalmer had engineered, they might escape together. She peered at the embalmer, into the deepness of his eyes, and asked herself if she could think of a reason she should trust this stranger. She wished for the clarity of her dream laboratory.
The embalmer resumed speaking before she could decide. “I'll not rescue you against your will, but you should know of the god you'd marry.” He bowed his head, and braids of a wig beaded with malachite draped over his eyes. “He was a man once, Kemtefshupabi. He clothed himself in pride and scorned men of lesser fortune. As Pharaoh, he executed anyone who trod on his shadow.”
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the mask.
“One day,” he said, “the Golden Scoundrel spied a beautiful woman. Her name was Ellakht, the fiancée of a simple artisan. The would-be god had already married seven times, but he wooed the artisan's betrothed all the same. He sent her first an ostrich feather. Then a whole ostrich. Next a flower garden. After that, ten servants. And a palace.”
Heat rolled over Hiresha. She expected to see a servant carrying a boiling cauldron past, but no one stood close to her except the embalmer. His skin had reddened.
“After she married the Golden Scoundrel, he lost interest in her. She had to petition to see him. She died bearing his stillborn child.”
“You have an exceptional knowledge of history.” Hiresha seemed to recall the Golden Scoundrel's pyramid had stood for over a thousand years.
He did not appear to hear the enchantress. “The embalmer wept as he prepared the queen for burial. He treated her body in death with all the tenderness and dedication he'd wished to give her in life.”
“An embalmer knew her?” A splinter of apprehension dug through Hiresha. “Who're you talking about?”
“Queen Ellakht had been engaged to an embalmer.” The Royal Embalmer's lips trembled, and his sweat smelled bitter. “The artisan. I thought I mentioned that. But it's of no consequence.”
The Royal Embalmer clapped a hand over the enchantress' arm and locked her in his gaze. Strands of molten gold crossed within dark pupils. His bloodshot eyes smothered her and burned away the world around them until nothing else remained.
“Hiresha, the Golden Scoundrel would neglect you in the afterlife.” His grip scorched her skin. “I would treasure you. Leave your betrothed and escape the city with me.”
“Remove your hand from me.” Hiresha found herself gasping. She feared she knew what this man was. “I'll not go anywhere with you.”
He let go, and she stumbled backward into the arms of two guards. She had not seen them, and her perceptions returned in pieces. The brightness of the day as they pulled her outside and led her to another building. The chill of stone as they held her onto a dais. The dampness of henna paste on her chest.
“This tincture contains traces of human liver.” The Royal Embalmer chafed her skin with a brush. “It will join your spirit with the Golden Scoundrel.”
Hiresha propped her head up and noticed she was naked. They must have torn off her dress. More distressing still, a glyph of brown paste scrawled its tortured lines above her breasts. She had seen a similar design on a man killed by the touch of a Soultrapper.
She jerked her arm up, to reach for the back of her throat and cough up a diamond to defend herself. Or, she would have, but he snatched her wrist and slammed her arm down.
“Do not move.” He dabbed away a smudged section of the glyph and began reapplying the henna.
Hiresha's heart thudded. Her palms sweated and pulsed with heat. She did not believe what he had said about the glyph linking her to the Golden Scoundrel. If she died, she knew all too well what would happen. The glyph would lock her spirit in her corpse, turning her into a source of power for the Soultrapper.
She vowed it would not come to that. Not after enchanting all those jewels, not with Chandur wasting away in prison. With the Soultrapper staining her skin with his glyph and fear crackling up her nerves, Hiresha did what she did best and dozed off.
No normal or even prodigious sleeper could have managed the feat under those conditions, but Hiresha was a savant. She did not attempt to draw the embalmer with her into her dream since she lacked enough of a grasp on him. The chill of her laboratory calmed her and awarded her the presence of mind to think.
The Feaster paced in her mirror. “He's the Soultrapper.”
“He's the Soultrapper.” The reflection fainted against the glass.
“Not precisely,” Hiresha said. “The Soultrapper has given us reason to believe he was the Royal Embalmer during the reign of Pharaoh Kemtefshupabi, who died one thousand two hundred and forty-two years ago. Soultrapping magic corrupts mind and flesh. It could slow decay but not stop death.”
“Why are you waiting?” The Feaster screamed at her. “Attract the diamonds out of your mouth, wake, and lob them at him.”
“As I was saying, the true Soultrapper would've died ages ago and encased his own spirit within his mummy. He controls the mind of the Royal Embalmer of today, lives through him, yet killing his vessel won't stop him.”
“It wouldn't hurt,” the Feaster said.
The reflection pushed herself upright, fanning her face with a hand. “So what do we do?”
Hiresha glared at another mirror that showed the Royal Embalmer. She commanded his image to age, his skin shriveling and collapsing. White strips of cloth wrapped him as mummy, and the bandages yellowed as dynasties came and went. He lay in darkness except for the red fluorescence of a glyph burned into his parchment skin.
“This is the Soultrapper. The man who bound his own soul to hold himself in the mortal realm. Who forced the fennec to circle me three times. Because of him, I'm held hostage in this city.” Hiresha also suspected he had played a role in Chandur's imprisonment. Anger flared within her, bright and pure like the spray of light from a diamond held to the sun.
“Why'd he say he wanted to help us?” The reflection lifted her gloves to her lips. “Oh! Was he lying?”
The Feaster snarled through her perfect teeth. “He wanted you alone, to kill and glyph you at his leisure.”
“Likely.” Hiresha examined a mirror showing the Royal Embalmer speaking. “His hatred for the Golden Scoundrel seems genuine. Maybe he wanted us married as a mutual punishment. Yet, why then would he be so incessant about me leaving with him when he could bind my soul under a glyph either way? It is most illogical.”
“It's revenge,” the Feaster said. “The Golden Scoundrel stole the embalmer's bride. Now he wants to steal you from the fennec god.”
“A fox and a Soultrapper,” Hiresha said, “not the rival suitors for which I had hoped.”
The lady in the sapphire dress asked, “So you'll find the Trapper's tomb? Tear off his glyph?”
Hiresha floated in a circle, putting her back to the mirrors of the Royal Embalmer and the mummy. “First, we proceed with the marriage ritual.”
The Feaster hissed. The reflection gasped.
“They'll carry my sarcophagus into the pyramid, close to the mummy of the Golden Scoundrel. As the Royal Embalmer of ages past, the Soultrapper all but certainly bound his soul, too, and is drawing power from it. I'll free myself and remove the glyph binding the soul of the god.”
Hiresha blinked, hurling herself back to the waking world.
The Royal Embalmer added a few last spines to the glyph then set down his brush. He ran a fingernail down Hiresha's arm and lifted her hand, tapping a garnet sealed in her skin.
“Whatever power you have,” he said, “it will
not be enough. Do not think anyone can free you from the sarcophagus once you start down that path.”
He knelt beside her, his chin an inch from her neck.
“Hiresha, some choices cannot be unmade. No matter how much we may regret them.”
His hot breath caressed her ear.
“I ask you one last time. Will you accept my devotion?”
Hiresha tried to see the dead man within the depths of the embalmer's eyes. Her breath rasped through her dry throat, but her voice was calm.
“I would rather asphyxiate.”
Chandur jerked awake at the metal squeal of the grate.
“Up with you!”
He rolled to the side, and something thumped into the sand next to him. He felt it out, a large basket attached to a rope. It lifted upward. He stepped in, and it creaked under his weight.
His chin pointed to the flickering above, Chandur considered this a promising start. True, they likely meant to execute him. That meant Hiresha had not made a deal with the priests, and she might have escaped the city. Chandur wanted to think of her free.
The rope jerked him upward. Men complained above.
He imagined the enchantress riding over the desert on an ostrich, hiding with a band of nomads in tents or secreting herself in the jungle among a tribe of kindhearted hunters. Either way, her enchantments would doubtless heal the sick, and he hoped someday she would create wonders to rival the sky streams of Oasis City. He wished his sister would grow up to be like Hiresha.
If only I can live to see it.
He leaped from the oubliette, reaching past a man's face to grab the nearest sword. His hand closed on the hilt.
Muscle-bound arms wrapped around his elbows and neck, yanking him away. Four brutes slammed him against the wall. Their skin glistened red in the torchlight, and they each wore a fan of gold and gemstone over their chests.
Royal guards, Chandur thought.
“He's a real eye spitter, that one.” Five prison guards stood nearby, all shorter and in more humble garb. One spoke with a glimmer of pride. “Was a guard once. Got up and out by himself, the first time, and knocked out Nabet and Pili.”
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