Chapter 30
Rae
Rae’s peripheral vision vanished. All she saw was her father’s serene, emaciated face, turned up in reverence to a god who had forsaken him.
Rae didn’t care that the signal hadn’t come.
She didn’t care that if she ran to him, if she tore a bloody hole through the crowd standing between them and leaped over the yawning pit, she would be cut down long before she reached him.
She would do it. Even if she couldn’t save him, she would die trying.
Kroo! Kroo!
To the crowd, it was simply the call of a nightjar. But to Rae, it was salvation.
She reached back to grasp the neck of her dress and tore it from her body with a flourish.
Beneath was the golden armor, stolen first from the court of King Rahotep and again by Rae herself when she reclaimed it from the Medjay.
The armored wings folded over her short tunic, each feather glittering.
Then she reached for the sekhem scepter strapped to her back and pulled it free.
She held the scepter aloft, its long stone head pointed to the sky.
“For Khetara!” she roared.
The king froze, and every eye in the courtyard turned to her, as the rebels hoped they would.
“What in Amun’s name is she doing?” Meryamun said. Beside him, Sitamun gazed toward her, emotionless.
I knew we shouldn’t have trusted her, Rae thought. Doesn’t matter. We don’t need her.
“For Khetara!” she roared again. She didn’t attack, she merely stood there, a resolute colossus gleaming in the sun.
The crowd withdrew in confusion, erupting in noisy chatter. Tam vanished among them.
The head guard called to his gawking men. “What are you waiting for?” he shouted. “Take her down! She’s disrupting the ritual!”
“For Khetara!” Rae shouted a third time as the guards closed in.
A thunderous wave of sound came crashing toward them, the clamor of running feet and war cries from more than fifty throats.
Rae turned to see a horde of Horizon rebels charging from the far side of the courtyard, weapons raised—the same weapons they’d taken from the Medjay in what felt like another lifetime.
She saw Buto and Kay the fisherman, and at the front, leading the charge, she saw Menk.
Rae smiled as she recalled the words written on the scroll she’d found after Omari disappeared. A note from Menk himself.
The Horizon sails for Thonis, it said. Come what may, we are with you.
The royal guard, who had been focused on Rae, lost precious seconds to prepare to meet their attackers. While the courtiers fled screaming, the guards barely had the chance to unsheathe their khopesh before the Low Khetarans crashed into them at full force.
The courtyard fell into total mayhem.
Rae brought the sekhem scepter swooping down into a guard’s forearm as he reached for his blade.
The guard shrieked as the bone shattered on impact, then rounded on Rae, head down, barreling into her like a raging bull.
Rae sidestepped nimbly and kicked the guard in the back as he passed, sending him sprawling.
Her neck tingled as she sensed movement behind her, but when she whirled around, she found Menk pulling a spear from a guard’s chest—one who had been about to run her through with his khopesh. The guard collapsed.
Menk grinned and waggled his enormous ears.
“That was cutting it close, don’t you think?” Rae asked as the battle raged around them.
Menk scoffed. “That’s a funny way of saying ‘thank you.’ I speared him as rapidly as I could!”
“Not that! The break-in, you goose! A second longer and it would have been too late!” She pressed her back to his, and they circled around, weapons at the ready.
“Oh, because breaking into a fortress is so easy!”
“You found the conduit on the riverbank?”
“It was exactly where you said it would be.”
So, Femi’s information had been accurate.
After she’d helped him escape the palace, the former guard had told her about an underground stone channel that ran from the Iteru under the fortress wall and emptied into a cistern that supplied water to those stationed inside.
Since it was the dry season, the channel wasn’t flooded and could be traversed on foot.
When she’d first suggested the plan to Neff, the young priestess had brought up a serious concern.
There would be archers positioned along the ramparts who could easily pick off the rebels with arrows as they climbed out of the cistern.
“We need a distraction,” Neff had advised. “Something to hold their attention long enough for your people to get their feet on the ground.”
“I can do that,” Rae had assured her. “I’ll tell them to send a signal when they’re ready.
There’s still a problem, though. Once the fighting breaks out, the archers will start shooting from above.
It won’t be as easy for them to target us amid courtiers and guards, but there are still a lot more of them than there are of us. ”
“That’s where I’ll come in,” Neff had said with a smile. “I know just the thing.”
“What’s the plan now?” Menk shouted over the din, jabbing with his spear when a battle between a guard and a rebel got too close for comfort. “I thought the young priestess was going to make a move!”
Rae dodged a swinging blade and kicked out at her attacker, doubling him over. “Yes, well, somebody’s got to free her first! The situation got a little out of hand before you showed up.”
“Go!” Menk told her. “Get your father and release the girl! The boys and I will try to hold them off until you do!”
Rae nodded and turned toward the platform. Rae could see through the fray that Meryamun hadn’t moved from his position. He still stood over her father, his face purpling with rage as he surveyed the chaos.
“Keep going!” he commanded the Heka priests.
After a nervous pause, the three men resumed their chanting.
He means to finish the ritual!
Rae shoved a dueling pair aside, trying to forge a path through the crush of people. Another man hit the ground in front of her, and she vaulted over him.
Meryamun adjusted his grip on the mace.
I’m not going to make it! Fighting men jostled her from every side, blocking the way.
Ankhu watched the scene in amazement, seemingly unaware of the blow about to fall upon him. Then his eyes met Rae’s, and his lips formed her name.
“Father!” Rae screamed.
Fury rose within her, steaming up from her belly and into her extremities, filling her with reckless abandon.
It was the same fury that Omari always urged her to resist. The same fury that had led her to join the Horizon as a way to channel her emotions.
Ever since she’d come to the palace, she’d done everything she could to make herself as small as possible, suppressing her true self for fear of exposing her intentions.
She’d felt constrained, her emotions begging for release.
What if Omari had been wrong? What if that rage wasn’t a weakness, but her greatest strength?
She remembered the tahtib match with Asim. That unforgettable moment of intense, focused energy, like channeling a swath of sunlight into a concentrated beam of blinding radiance.
Let go, a voice inside her whispered, a voice that sounded a lot like Neff’s. Let go and embrace your destiny.
Wind gusted through the courtyard, and Rae’s golden scale armor chimed with a haunting melody.
She let go.
“You will not hurt him!” Rae cried and struck the head of the scepter against the ground with breathtaking force.
Upon impact, a deep fissure cracked the earth and raced toward the king, throwing men off their feet as it went.
Meryamun saw it coming, but too late. The fissure erupted beneath him.
He tripped and fell, the mace slipping from his hand.
Rae sprinted toward her father, the path before her now clear.
Also thrown off-balance by the quaking around him, Ankhu teetered on the edge of the pit.
Rae slid across the ground and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him from the brink. “I’ve got you!” Rae said in a rush. “I’ve got you!”
They lay together in the dirt. Rae didn’t want to let go.
“Rae,” Ankhu said, his voice full of wonder. “What did you— how did you—?”
“Perhaps the gods are listening after all,” Rae replied, sitting up to untie the bindings on his arms. Her body crackled with energy, and she felt more herself than she ever had before.
She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, only that it felt right.
“Come on. We have to get you and the others to safety.”
Rae surveyed the situation. Meryamun had scrambled behind the platform in the shadow of the citadel and was surrounded by palace guards. Meanwhile, arrows rained down from the battlements, and even as Rae watched, two more rebels went down. She could already count six Horizon dead on the ground.
They were losing.
Despite successfully rescuing her father, none of them would survive if they didn’t find a way to turn the tide. And soon.
“Buto! Watch out!” she shouted as she saw one of the archers take aim.
It was too loud. He couldn’t hear her.
Buto took the arrow full in the chest and dropped.
“Buto!”
Ankhu said, “Rae, the prisoners can’t defend themselves if they’re bound. Help me free them, quickly!”
Trembling with shock, Rae tore her eyes from Buto’s body and tried to focus on the knots in the ropes as men screamed and died around her.
“We need the priestess,” she said, glancing up at the platform where Neff still cowered beside the guard. “We need her help or else we’re all going to die here.” She considered mounting the platform herself to free Neff, but she was hesitant to leave her father and the other prisoners undefended.
Rae scanned the area for the curly-haired weaver. “Tam, I need you!”