“Ah!” I stumbled back a few steps but forced myself not to look down. My eyes were only for the priest.
Aset cried out, and Apep-Set shouted victoriously. We were running out of time. Heru was safe, but the timeline would be just as screwed if Aset died here instead.
“Hey, asshole,” I said to my priest, knowing full well he couldn’t understand me. I held up my sword and willed the blade to glow.
The priest’s eyes bugged out, an effect that was only enhanced when my sword swept under his outstretched right arm and bit through the flesh under the side of his ribcage. I dragged the sword up his body as high as I could, yanking it free when it hit the bottom of his sternum.
Turning on my heel, I stalked toward Apep-Set. He was crouched over Aset, her top half blocked by a pillar.
I stopped dead in my tracks the moment her face came into view. Her eyes—they were gone. Just empty, bloody caverns.
“No …”
“She would not let me take her brother’s eyes, so I had to settle for hers instead.” Apep-Set grinned like a devil. “I cut out her tongue, too—she always did talk too much.”
“You—you killed her.” But I promised her …
“I did.” He stood slowly, keeping his knees bent and the dagger upraised and ready. For me. “But fear not, masked one, you will not have to mourn her for long.”
“You killed her.” But I promised her …
“And now you are boring me.”
Raising my sword, I charged at him. Fury blinded me, and I no longer cared that Set couldn’t die, that killing him now would be killing me by preventing me from ever having been born. It didn’t matter. I wanted him dead. I wanted to feel my blade tearing into his flesh and bone more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life—more than I’d wanted Marcus or Heru, and more than I wanted to get home.
Bloodlust. It was a term I’d never understood before. I did now.
“Pretty sword,” Apep-Set said an instant before he sidestepped and buried a knife in my side. He held me, suspended on his knife’s blade, and leaned in.
I stared up at his face, unable to blink. Unable to breathe.
“And pretty eyes—red has always been my favorite color.”
I coughed, tasting blood, thick and salty on my tongue.
This was it—or it could be. I could let it end, all of it. I was so tired, and maybe the birth of the twins would still stand, even if Aset wasn’t there to guide my way as I journeyed backward in time. Nik would still be there, and Re, and Heru was alive. It was possible that ma’at had still been restored, that the universe was safe and stable once more. There was a possibility that I could die now and everything would be fine.
It was so very tempting just to give up, to give in. To let go.
But I promised Aset …
Apep-Set lowered me to the temple floor almost gently.
“You were … right,” I said between gasping breaths. “I will … not … mourn Aset … for long … I think …”
Apep-Set nodded sagely. For once, the darkness in his eyes didn’t seem menacing or psychotic, and Set’s features—he just looked tired … tired, and sad. “Your wound is not immediately lethal, but it will kill you. Would you like me to leave you this way, or shall I ease your burden and end your pain?”
My lips spread into a wide grin, and I started chuckling. And coughing up blood, but chuckling all the same. I sucked in a halting breath and focused my will. “I choose … option number three,” I gasped at the exact moment that the world disappeared in a maelstrom of swirling, rainbow smoke.
I reappeared in the exact same place on the floor, only a minute or two earlier. Before Apep-Set killed Aset. Because, damn it, I’d promised her she would have a life when this was all over.
I was behind Apep-Set, and I still had the breathtakingly painful stab wound in my side. I’d replaced my former self in the timeline. The same ba can’t overlap in time—it’s a temporal paradox, one of the few true impossibilities. I had no doubt that my priest was confused about my sudden disappearance from the opposite side of the hall. It was my one and only advantage.
With a hand on the wall, I climbed up to my feet and snuck up behind Apep-Set. I had little fear of him noticing me; he was too busy holding Aset up by her neck with one hand, slowly strangling the life out of her.
Gritting my teeth, I gripped the hilt of my sword with both hands and bashed the butt into the base of Set’s skull. He dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks. Aset fell just as hard.
I scrambled over Set’s body, struggling to yank Aset away from him. Her legs were tangled with his, and I had to physically lift his left leg to unhook her foot from his calf.
“Come on, Aset,” I murmured. “You’re going to be fine.”
I dragged her a few yards away from Apep-Set, laid her on her back, and held my finger under her nose. Nothing, not even the faintest stirring of air. I fumbled along the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse. Again, nothing.
“She’s dead.” The words sounded foreign to my ears, despite having passed through my vocal cords.
At the sound of movement, I glanced up. The last priest stood between the nearest two columns, his pair of daggers hanging limply from his hands and his stare stuck on Set’s motionless body.
I held up my sword at the priest and willed it to glow.
He took a step backward.
I pointed the sword at him, then at Set’s body, then at the door. I might not have spoken his language, but I could still tell the bastard to drag his master the hell away from here.
He lifted Set’s body more easily than I’d expected, and within seconds, the two were gone.
“You are not dying on me,” I told Aset, kneeling beside her. I couldn’t tell how extensive the damage was to her throat, but nothing looked misshapen, only bruised and a little swollen. “Do you hear me?” I leaned over her, adjusted the angle of her head, and cleared her airway. “You are not dying on me. Not today. I need you too much.” Sealing my mouth over hers, I exhaled. Breaking away, I took a deep breath and did it again.
I sat up straighter and stacked my hands, placing my palms on her chest to begin compressions. “You”—I pumped her chest with my hands, gritting my teeth to battle the sharp pain in my side—“are … not … going … to … die … to … day. Do … you … hear … me? Do … you?”
“My Alexandra …” Re-Nik rushed back into the hall. “Heru is with healers—he’ll be fine. I told the others that Aset had been slain, and that it was too late for her, but that they should focus their efforts on hunting down Set.” He passed between two columns, heading straight for us. “What happened—”
Aset gasped, sucking in an enormous breath, then coughing violently.
“I—I brought … her back,” I said, even as I fell to the side.
Re-Nik caught me. “You are wounded.”
I nodded, and darkness closed in all around me.
43
Stay & Go
When I came to, my mask was gone and I was lying on my back, covered by a linen shroud. Whatever supported me rocked gently to and fro, and I could hear the quiet slap-lap of water and the whispered creaking of wood all around me.
I tried to sit up and instantly regretted it. Pain speared the left side of my body, shooting outward. It left me paralyzed and whimpering. A hand gripped mine, small and soft, but strong nonetheless. Another held me down by the shoulder.
“Hush now, Lex,” Aset said, her voice soothing. “I am here. You are safe and will be well, in time.” I could see the outline of her through the shroud. She appeared to be wearing a golden yellow headscarf over her head and wrapped around her face.
“I do not … have time.” The twins. Heru. I had to get home to them, and I needed to do it before the bonding withdrawals killed me.
She unhooked a portion of the headscarf, revealing her face. “I would argue, rather, that you do not have a choice.”
“You do not … understand.” Once again, I tried
to rise, but the minor pressure Aset put on my shoulder was more than enough to keep me down.
“I understand plenty,” she said, drawing the shroud back and uncovering my face. Without the barrier, I could see that her headscarf was embroidered with sage-green vines and tiny white flowers, and that she’d changed into a long wrap dress of the same pale green, embroidered with fist-sized bunches of yellow or white blossoms. Her outfit struck me a cross between a traditional Indian sari and the garb of an ancient Greek woman.
“I understand that you need food and rest,” Aset continued, “or the regeneration will kill you even as it heals your wound. There is nothing more I need to know until this most urgent danger has passed.” As she spoke, she brought a conical copper funnel to my lips with one hand, holding up a large ceramic pitcher with the other. “This will be awkward, but I dare not move you while your lung repairs itself.” She held the funnel over my mouth. “Open, please.”
I glanced at the pitcher. “What is it?”
“Ewe’s milk mixed with honey and fig paste.” She smiled minutely. “Truly, it is quite good, and the sugars will speed your recovery.”
Eyeing her dubiously, I opened my mouth. Thankfully, she poured only a small mouthful through the funnel, then righted the pitcher and waited for me to swallow.
“We are on a boat?” I said once the concoction was down. It was smooth and sweet, and slightly warm from the sun high overhead. Rays of brilliant sunlight peeked through the miniscule gaps in the woven reed mat shielding our portion of the boat.
Aset waited for me to open my mouth, then poured another mouthful through the funnel. “We are.” Her gaze flicked up, beyond my head. “My dutiful son is ferrying us upriver to Lunet—Pepi’s old winter palace there was abandoned years ago.” A sad smile curved her lips. “The others will believe Nik has gone on a pilgrimage back to the Oasis, returning my body to the place where it belongs.” She looked down at me. “And any humans who see us passing will leave us be, assuming we are carrying one of the dead to her final resting place.”
The shroud suddenly made a lot more sense. “Me? I am … the dead … am I not?”
“Indeed,” Aset said with a nod, once more pouring some of the fortified milk down the funnel.
I swallowed. “Why … are you dressed … as a Sumerian woman?” I asked, guessing at her outfit’s origins.
Aset glanced down at herself. “Akkadian, in fact. I borrowed this from Ishtar. We were in a hurry, and it was the best I could come up with.” She shrugged one shoulder. “We could not very well have any witnesses claiming to have seen me strolling along with Nekure while he was supposedly carrying my dead body …”
Nik chuckled, and I craned my neck in an unsuccessful attempt to see him without moving the rest of my body. “I approve of your loose definition of the word ‘borrow,’ Mother.”
Tutting, Aset repositioned my head and poured another helping of the milk down the funnel. “Ishtar was careless with her belongings, leaving them so unattended.” Aset sniffed. “Besides, she has so much clothing I doubt she will notice a single item is missing. And my need was greater than hers. I could hardly march out of the temple as I was.” She grinned. “Truly, this is quite a bit more exciting than I had anticipated …”
I swallowed, snorted a laugh, and groaned.
“Careful, dear Lex.” Aset set down the pitcher and funnel to rest a cool hand on my forehead. “I cauterized your wound to stop the bleeding but nearly doubled the internal damage in doing so. Your lung was pierced by the tip of Set’s knife, and he nearly sliced your spleen in half. It was by sheer luck that he missed your intestines.”
I sighed. “No wonder … I hurt … so badly.”
“And are having such a hard time speaking,” Aset said. “So I suggest you stop trying.”
I attempted to roll my eyes but found that my eyelids were drooping closed.
“Sleep now, dear Lex. There will be plenty of time for talking when you are better.”
“No,” I tried to tell her, but I only got so far as parting my lips before sweet, painless sleep dragged me away.
***
I woke with a start and sharp inhale. I sat up on instinct, eyes popping open and left arm tight against my side in anticipation of pain. Only a dull ache throbbed deep within. It was both a pleasant surprise and an ill omen of time lost.
“Aset?” I called, scanning around me. I was in a small room with stone walls and no windows, unless the holes in the patchy, decaying ceiling counted. Only small bits of plaster remained, clinging to the decrepit skeleton of the roof, and several large openings afforded me a glimpse of a clear night sky. “Nik?”
“I am here, Lex,” Aset said, rushing into the room through what appeared to be the only doorway. “I am here.”
I shot a second cursory glance around the room. “This is Pepi’s abandoned palace?” She’d said it was in Lunet—the ancient name for Dendera, some sixty miles east of the Osiris Temple in Abydos.
Aset knelt at my side, pulling down the thin linen sheet that had been covering me and peering closely at my naked torso.
Instinctively, I crossed my arms over my bare chest.
“Stop that,” Aset said, tugging at my forearm. “You are blocking my view of the wound.”
Lowering my arms, I looked down, squishing my left breast out of the way. A pink, puckered scar about two inches long and barely a quarter of an inch wide was all that remained of what had been a life-threatening injury.
My stomach grumbled. “How long was I asleep?”
“Two days,” Aset said, straightening and looking me in the eye. “You must eat, then rest more. I believe it will take two, maybe three more rounds to return you to full health.” She reached to the side and handed me my waterskin. “Drink while I retrieve some food.”
I grabbed her forearm as she started to stand. “Aset, if I go through two or three more rounds of regenerative sleep, I will surely die. The bonding withdrawals …”
“Dear gods,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “I forgot all about that.” She sat back down and leaned in close, her eyes searching mine. “How bad are the withdrawal pains? How long do you think you have left until they incapacitate you?”
“I—well—” I frowned, surprised to find that, when I looked for it, I found no hint of a withdrawal headache. In fact, the only pain I felt was the dull throb in my side. “They have yet to start.”
Aset’s lips spread into a hesitant smile. “This is a good thing, is it not?”
Slowly, I shook my head. “I—I do not know. By my count, it has been six or seven days since I last spent time with Heru. The withdrawals should have started by now. They should be bad by now.”
“And yet they are not.” Her smile faded.
I scoured her face for answers. “I gave birth about a week ago, just after I arrived in this time.”
Aset’s eyes widened.
“Do you think—is it possible that the act of giving birth somehow broke the bond?”
“Truly, Lex, I could not say.” She touched her hand to the side of my face, tilting her head just a little. Compassion and concern shone in her eyes, silvered by the moon and starlight leaking in through the ceiling. “Where is the child?”
I focused on a barren corner of the room and recrossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself. The pain of missing them dwarfed that of the stab wound. “Children—I had twins, and they are gone. They jumped away shortly after—” I swallowed a sob, then took a deep, shaky breath. “I can only hope that they have returned home, to their father.” I looked at Aset. “And to you. But I do not know for sure, which is why I must return there as soon as possible.”
“Lex, who was with you during the birth?”
“No one.” My eyes wandered back to that lonely corner. “I was alone in the Oasis. They brought me there … it was the safest place.”
“Oh, dear child,” Aset murmured, wrapping her arms around me in a sturdy embrace. “I am so sorry you had to go th
rough all of that alone.”
Enveloped in her motherly warmth, I felt my will break, and I gave in to an outpouring of tears. They were tears of sorrow and grief, of desperation and fear. They were tears of holding on, and of letting go. They were tears of, just for that moment, weakness. Of giving up.
How many times had I been on the verge of giving up since this all started? Too many to count.
Maybe next time would be the time I actually did it. But not this time.
***
Curled up on my side and eyes closed, I basked in the hazy lull of waking up, doing my best to ignore the hunger gnawing away in my belly. I pictured my babies, remembering how they’d felt nestled on my chest, so tiny and soft and floppy.
“Are you planning on lying there starving yourself all day?” Based on her voice, Aset was somewhere behind me. “Or are you going to rouse and eat so you can regain the strength you will need to return to your family?”
Groaning, I pulled on my big-girl pants and rolled onto my back, opening my eyes so I was staring up at patches of purple and orange sky through the holey roof. I wasn’t lying on a bed, exactly. Or at all, really, but regenerative sleep didn’t care—it would knock me out and sweep me away even if I were lying on a glacier, naked and freezing. The reed mats beneath me were far from comfy, but they raised me off the ground enough that I wasn’t rolling around on loose grains of sand. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Are you still without any symptoms of the bonding withdrawals?” Aset asked from the doorway.
I looked at her sidelong and nodded. The anxiety that simple fact wound within me was nearly as debilitating as the withdrawals themselves. I felt like I had a time bomb stashed away deep inside me, ticking away … waiting …
I returned to staring up at the ceiling.
“Re and I discussed your situation at length while you slept, and he has proposed two possible scenarios.”
Ricochet Through Time (Echo Trilogy Book 3) Page 30