XXXI

DEATH, EIDHIN ONCE INSISTED WHILE explaining the ddram cyfraith, is our most important horizon. It matters because we need an end to what we can see. Without it we would drift, overwhelmed, nothing to orient ourselves against. Without it, we would never be able to focus on what is truly important: that which is in front of us.

That discussion comes to mind again as I watch the pallid stream of ceding, faceless iunctii shuffle through Neter-khertet, all but their eyes wrapped in white cloth, and even that tinted jade by the virulent illumination that seeps from every edge of the surrounding mirrorlike black surfaces. Duat’s roof sits a thousand feet above, distantly echoing the colour and motion of its captives below. An eternal, roiling green night sky above the massive western district that houses its dead.

Ahmose and I mimic the shambling crowds. Eyes down, focused on the faint reflection of whoever is in front of us. No talking. Just movement from one place to another as we pretend to the strange, semi-willing slavery of this place.

“Siamun. There’s an Overseer.” The nervous murmur from Ahmose is soft enough that it reaches only my ears.

Vek. I don’t look up, don’t pause in my steady shuffling. “How far?”

“A hundred or so cubits.”

I let my eyes flicker forward about fifty feet. A woman with her face uncovered, dressed in black. A motionless island, openly scanning the stream of other iunctii as they flow around her. Each of them unwraps their head covering as they pass, allowing her inspection. “Time for a detour.”

“Me?” Ahmose is, typically, nervous. “Again?”

“Don’t worry. You’re very good at this part.”

“Condescending kataht.” His whisper’s somewhere between amusement and panic, but leaning toward the latter. Not really the type to use quips to ease his tension. “Fine. Next alley.”

We walk for another ten seconds. The Pyramid of Ka looms ahead, towering in the distance above even the tallest buildings. Its gold-highlighted surface always motionless, long stairway completely empty. Protected, Ahmose assures me, by hundred-foot-high walls that pulse with mutalis.

I still haven’t been close enough to confirm it myself. It’s on the eastern side of the river, where the living reside. It may as well be a world away.

Ahmose breaks from the column; it takes all of a heartbeat for the Overseer to notice the figure sliding away into the relative dim of the alley. The dead scatter before her as she bursts into motion, arrowing after Ahmose. She knows as well as we do that there are no ways out here, no shortcuts. Neter-khertet is a prison; everywhere the green light touches is built to funnel traffic along the main roads. There are only closed doors down that way.

Neither she nor the dozens of passing denizens look around as I follow.

A quick right corner and we’re away from prying eyes. Ahmose has stopped—more from necessity than anything else, with the way ahead a tall wall of smooth, reflective black—and the Overseer is almost upon him.

“Display your face.” The words are emotionless and empty as they seep from her lips.

Ahmose falls to his knees. He must see me over her shoulder, but we’ve done this plenty of times before, and he knows to keep his gaze fixed firmly on her. “Glory to the Lord of Maat, Overseer. Must I?”

“Yes. It is a necessity that—”

She cuts off, a small flinch as my hand touches the back of her neck. Confusion. The barest hint of physical resistance.

And then, nothing.

It’s easy for me now. Almost effortless after weeks of constant necessity. None of the disorientation, none of the mental dissonance or queasiness I used to get. I use her surprise to connect, then instruct her not to communicate anything that may raise suspicion. To obey my commands fully, answer my questions with truthful detail, and remain still.

“Why are you checking identities here tonight?” It’s easier to communicate aloud. More natural. I say it in Vetusian. I haven’t spoken Common in months.

“Potential sighting of fugitive Ahmose al Maq two hours ago. This was an anticipated direction.” Monotone.

Vek. “Was it confirmed?”

“No. Report of matching description only.”

One of the other residents must have spotted Ahmose without his face covering, then. “Are there any other Overseers nearby?”

“No. Sighting was considered unreliable, and another was reported in the riverside district.”

Ahmose has moved back up to us, chiselled features still hidden beneath his wrappings, joining me behind the woman. Cautious, if less categorically fearful than he once would have been.

He glances at me, and I nod. The diversion we arranged has paid off, at least.

“Do you know of any plans to capture Ahmose al Maq?”

“No.”

“Can you find out?”

“No. I am an investigative iunctus only. That information is inaccessible.”

The same answer I’ve had a dozen times, but I had to ask. As far as I can tell, Ka isn’t alerted by these fruitless queries.

Ahmose shuffles behind me. He knows as well as I do that detaining the Overseer for any length of time is risky; every extra second it spends away from its assigned task could be one Ka realises something is wrong.

“Do you have any recent information on someone called Netiqret?”

A pause. Her eyes flash black. “There are eleven residents registered to that name. One requested an extra allocation of grain due to the growth of her children. No other reports.”

I grunt, displeased but unsurprised, and then ask several more quick questions. Standard ones, ones I’ve asked a dozen other iunctii, not expecting any different answers and not receiving them.

Eventually, I focus and give the Overseer my parting instructions. She’s to remember remaining at her post for her allotted time and seeing nothing unusual. Afterward, she made some enquiries and believes we may have found an alternate route closer to the western wall. She will suggest that future blockades focus there.

I release her, walking carefully around so that she never sees me as she turns to go back the way she came; my head wrappings are secure and she shouldn’t report any of this, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth taking chances. I don’t take back my imbuing, either. Thanks to Caeror’s Vitaerium I have enough Will to imbue two iunctii now, and as long as Ahmose and I are in the vicinity, it’s wise to maintain access to her.

The dead woman drifts away, her black robe faintly tinted by the green, a jade shadow in the polished black street beneath her.

She rounds the corner, and disappears from view.

“We’re safe,” I tell Ahmose.

“Hm.” An unconvinced response, as usual. Still uneasily focused on where the Overseer vanished.

I sigh and clap him on the back, making him start. Ahmose is far from the bravest man I know, but it’s hard to begrudge him his anxiety; the Concurrence has been searching for him—distributing his description, setting up checkpoints like the one we just avoided—since that first night I set him free.

And as Ahmose has continued to evade capture, our options have gradually decreased. More Overseers, more checkpoints. Random searches of Neter-khertet, building to building. Only my ability, and the fact that everyone here is a iunctus, has saved us thus far.

But we can both feel the net slowly closing around us.

We make our way back onto the main street, rejoining the slow stream of bodies and passing the Overseer without issue. Duat’s west lours green around us, mute but for the shuffling of feet. The distant roof to the east reflects a golden glow, almost orange, from the Pyramid of Ka. Softer and deeper than an hour ago. It adapts to the time of day, on that side of the river. It’s the equivalent of dusk in here.

A few more turns and then we detach again from the main flow, which has already thinned as the weary dead return to their abodes. All the equivalent of Octavii, from what I can tell: there are no clear pyramids here but every single one of them is seemingly ceding to either Ka’s priests, or his officials, or the Ka-shabti, or even other more privileged iunctii. We merit no interest from them as we slide away down an echoing street, hurrying to the base of one of the two great Colossi of Ka that guard the exit of this district.

“You’re sure about this?” Ahmose cranes his neck to take in the brooding stare of Duat’s ruler, flicking his thumb with his little finger. A sure sign that he’s doing everything he can to keep his nerves under control.

I don’t respond, carefully examining the black stone that sits at the base of the hundred-foot statue on the right.

“Ka-sheut. Siamun?” The sound of several sandals slapping against Duat’s hard streets. Not far away.

“I’m looking.” I ignore the steadily increasing sound and locate the familiar set of symbols, sitting slightly apart from the inscription. Rapidly stab the combination Caeror had me memorise. Each glyph glows a brief green beneath my finger before fading.

There’s a soft grinding, and then a panel in the ground is folding away.

“Done.” I let Ahmose lead us down the white-lit stairs, quickly jabbing the symbol to close the entrance again as we pass, and exhaling as Neter-khertet’s dark emerald streets vanish behind us. We reach the bottom quickly. The triangular passageways of Duat’s underbelly stretch away, lit by relieving cool white rather than the ubiquitous green of above. I grin at Ahmose. “Told you we could make it.”

He sniffs. “Yes. You had it completely under control.” Making a valiant effort at cheer but eyes still twitching, unease still in every line.

We walk for a few minutes, me carefully tracking the openings we pass and comparing them to the map in my head. It’s not quite the Labyrinth, down here, but the maddening uniformity of it all means that losing track of our position would still be a very big problem.

“You never did answer my question before, you know. Before we left.”

“Hm.” I’m only half paying attention, mentally checking off another passageway on our right. “Which was?”

“What makes you so sure we can trust this Netiqret?”

“He helped someone get out of the city. If he knew how to do that, maybe he knows how to get us across the bridge,” I answer absently.

An exhalation from Ahmose. “That is called knowledge, Siamun. I asked why we should trust him.”

“We shouldn’t.” I slow as we come to our exit. Turn to face him. “But we both know we can’t survive much longer in the west.”

Ahmose’s expression is the dubious one he makes every time I talk about Netiqret. I’ve been searching for the man for weeks, ever since I finally accepted that some of Caeror’s information about Duat’s tunnels was catastrophically out of date. They still exist—Ahmose and I would have been caught long ago otherwise—but their route beneath the Infernis is gone. The underground passageways that should have led beneath the deadly river are completely choked with white stone. Old, I think—the thick layers of dust and grime suggest decades—but solid and cut to fit, very deliberately blocked. I spent days trying to clear a way through anyway, without even a hint of success. I suspect I could spend a lifetime and arrive at the same result.

Which leaves one way, and one way only, to access the eastern half of Duat.

We approach the doorway at the end of the tunnel. “You could still try to command the Overseers to let us across.”

I just shake my head, a tired response to a conversation we’ve had a hundred times. “I can control two at a time. Maximum. And you said yourself, there’s never less than a half dozen guarding the entrance on either side.” Controlling one Overseer doesn’t allow me to alter what the others know, either, I’ve found. They’re just as Caeror described them. Tools to relay information. Semi-autonomous limbs answering to a distant, inaccessible mind.

My thoughts flash briefly to the friend I left behind in Qabr, as they have so often over the past weeks. Guilt and hope mixed in the remembrance. He wasn’t captured, otherwise these old ways beneath Duat would have been compromised long ago. But I also know that if he was faced with being taken by the Gleaners, he would have rendered himself useless to Ka before allowing it.

I trust again, desperately, that he found a way out.

Ahmose grimaces but doesn’t dispute or complain, for once, as I start tapping the glyphs to remove the obsidian wall blocking our way. The shaven-headed man with the large hazel eyes has been a mercurial companion, at times, these past six weeks. Jumpy and irritable, often difficult to convince to go along with even a simple plan of action. Unconsciously wary of me, too, I think. Hard to blame him for that.

And to be fair, I did consider—seriously consider—imbuing him, during our first, tense week together here. Finally hidden in the relative safety of the tunnels, Ahmose balled up and all but refusing to move as he tried to contemplate what he had been meant to become. To accept that this wasn’t some divine test, and that the afterlife he had been promised was not the afterlife Ka actually intended for him. I explained what I could about his false god and how maat, the laws of Duat and supposedly the universe, were nothing but a means of control. Railed, and cajoled, and pleaded with him for days to pull himself together. He was in too fragile a state to leave alone for long but I needed food, and water, and to get my bearings in case the tunnels were not as abandoned as I hoped. My forays away from him were brief and largely unsuccessful. It would have been so easy to command him to obedience, even just temporarily.

But Ahmose is not like the Overseers or the Gleaners. He is not a mindless tool of Ka. And as Eidhin would say, there has to be a line.

I step back from the glowing glyphs as I hit the last one, the two of us relaxing only once the dark stone folds away to reveal an empty street beyond. I slap the iunctus on the shoulder, making him flinch and glare around at me. I grin back and push him forward. Glad, again, that I made the decision I did. For all his testiness, Ahmose is also brave when it matters. Determined. He knows I’m an enemy of Ka, knows I’m planning something, and is increasingly intent on helping.

He’s become a true companion. A real companion, flaws and frustrations and all. I’ve needed that, hiding like a rat beneath the living tomb of Neter-khertet.

“The building the message told us to meet behind won’t be far. It’s right near another tunnel entrance. Next to the river. We should be safe.” The banks of the Infernis are generally avoided, even by the iunctii. It’s no secret what will happen to anyone who falls in.

We make our way along quiet green-lit streets, the heavy menace of Neter-khertet glowering around us. It’s not just the colour meshed with the darkness of the obsidian surface. It’s that it’s so clean. So unremarkable in its uniformity. There are no cracks, no scars on any surface. There are statues and obelisks, astounding colonnades and temples inscribed with thousands of intricate gilded symbols. But it is all oddly characterless. Lifeless.

It embodies Duat’s western half so well, I suppose, that it’s impossible for its inhabitants to ever forget its purpose.

I lead us around a corner and down a series of stairs, quickly reaching the deserted courtyard behind the building. The river is visible from here, not a hundred feet away, the warning green lines running along its depths illuminating the rushing water. Another option I’ve considered, and reconsidered, and discarded each time. It’s one and a half miles wide, at least. Certainly swimmable. But even if it wouldn’t mean leaving Ahmose behind, and even if Caeror’s extra Vitaerium protected me enough that my body did not succumb to the poisons in the water, it’s too open. I would almost certainly be seen.

“There’s the entrance.” I nod to the seemingly blank wall as we stop. No way to open it from out here, but I did use this exit a few weeks ago. It was the easiest route out after another discovery of a filled-in tunnel.

“You think it’s a coincidence?”

“I doubt it.” The way beneath the river might be blocked off, but there are plenty of other areas in Neter-khertet this tunnel can reach. And Netiqret, from what little I’ve been able to glean, is nothing if not private. I close my eyes, check the location of the Overseer I’m still imbuing. She’s to the north, perhaps twenty minutes away. I instruct her to move in this direction as far as she can without raising any suspicion.

We wait in uneasy silence, undisturbed, for a while. Alternately watching the entrance I know is there, and the eerie green luminescence of the Infernis. From somewhere across the water, the wails and chants of a funerary procession echo to us.

“These iunctii appear to be from not long after the Rending,” I mutter suddenly.

At my side, Ahmose twitches uneasily. “What?”

“I…” I blink. Brow furrowed. “I don’t know. Sorry. Lost in thought.” There was more there, too, for a second. Gone now. A strange phrase to have so absently jumped to mind, though.

He casts me a confused, mildly worried glance, but before either of us can say more, there’s a soft grinding and we both tense as the triangular door I knew was there folds away, revealing access to the illuminated set of glinting black stairs.

The woman waiting on the other side looks to be in her fifties, perhaps older. Handsome and poised, more than a few touches of grey in her black hair, which is a thick, shoulder-length bob. She smiles. Her eyes, shadowed with makeup, do not as they sweep the area.

Behind her there’s movement, and to my vague consternation I spot a small child. A girl, not more than ten years old. A cherubic face and long hair plaited into three strands, one down her back and one over each shoulder. She stands oddly, unnaturally patient, her hands clasped behind her back. Just watching as the older woman finally speaks.

“Thank you for coming.” Vetusian, but it’s a rich, cultured accent, clipped and precise. “I trust you had no trouble getting here?”

“None,” I assure her before Ahmose can reply.

“Good.” The woman assesses our surrounds once more. “Remove your head coverings.”

Ahmose and I do so. The woman considers us, then steps back and bows her head. The child with her leans forward and whispers something in her ear.

“Neither of you arranged this meeting with Netiqret.” She addresses me, apparently deciding I’m in charge.

“I did. Just not in person.”

Her lips purse. “And how did you come by his name?”

“It was mentioned by a friend.”

“The name of this friend?”

“Djedef.”

She frowns. Bends down to listen to something else the girl has to say, then straightens and nods a curt acknowledgement to me. “Come.” Without waiting for a response, she swivels and starts back into the yawning stairwell.

“You’re taking us to Netiqret?”

“Yes.”

“What proof do we have?”

“None.” She hovers her hand over the symbol to shut the doorway. “If you need more, you are free to leave. But if you do, I would not try contacting him again.”

I exchange a glance with Ahmose, who gives a defeated sigh.

We step after the woman into the triangular tunnel.