Chapter 53 #2
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know, exactly. My friend thought they were a kind of key, made to circumvent security made by Ka.”
“They must have been linked in somehow, then. At least tangentially integrated. Even a couple of hundred … that’s a complex system. Where did you say it was, exactly?”
“I didn’t. You seem to know a lot about it?”
Netiqret decides her secrets are more valuable than mine, and doesn’t answer.
A strange, energetic air to her as she presses on, Kiya matching her pace at a stiff trot.
“This hall houses the bulk of the iunctii down here,” she explains from in front of me as we hurry along.
She moves with assurance, seems unaffected by our surrounds.
“We have to get to the central chamber. The ib. There will only be a dozen or so in there.” Something about the last part sounds reluctant.
I watch her. Her nerves are revealing more than she wants, I suspect. She’s too thoughtless in her movements, too confident in the way she navigates.
She knows this place.
I’m not sure what to do with that information, just yet. But it’s more than I’ve had since we met.
It’s not long before an archway reflects dark emerald up ahead between the rows of the dead, set into an obsidian structure with a flat roof and sloping sides.
Golden light spills from its interior, warm against the cool greens surrounding it.
It’s ten feet high, if that. Perhaps thirty across.
Beyond, I can see walls of eerily lit iunctii continuing to stretch away.
“The ib. These are the ones who can make a difference,” says Netiqret, her pace increasing. No hiding her eagerness, now.
We pass beneath the arch, into the enclosed space. More iunctii in here, but just as Netiqret says, far fewer. And the slabs on which they lie are lit in gold, rather than green.
I stumble to a stop as I take them in.
They’re all children.
“Why?” I take a half step toward the nearest, as if there was something I could do about it.
Netiqret quickly puts out a hand to stop me. “They’re more flexible, mentally. More capable of adapting and learning, taking on information and problem-solving in creative ways.”
Her voice is hollow as she says it, though.
I shiver as she bends to listen to a whisper from Kiya. The older woman hesitates, then nods. Points. “This one.”
A small boy with a shaven head. He cannot be more than six or seven. “Why him?”
“Because he is the one I’m telling you to use.”
I scowl, but arguing isn’t going to help at this point. My skin crawls as I approach the boy. His eyes are shut. He seems almost peaceful.
I touch his shoulder, and focus. Think about how terrified the boy must be. Trapped. Alone.
Nothing.
I frown. This has always worked on the Overseers. Could the boy be happy here, then? Or at least content? I try again. Still nothing.
I step back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” I lick my lips. Heart pounding.
This isn’t the time for withholding. “I need a … point of commonality. Something I can relate to, in order to make the connection. With the Overseers, I usually use their sense of surprise or if that doesn’t work, being trapped.
Somewhere deep down, they all seem to feel it. But this boy …”
Netiqret hesitates. “Try exhaustion,” she says quietly. “The worst, mind-numbing, wearying exhaustion you have ever experienced.”
She nods at my horrified glance. I grimace, then lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder once more.
Think of my time training. The early days with Lanistia, those impossibly hard first mornings, injured and dragging myself from bed too soon, forcing my thoughts through the sludge of fatigue to prove myself.
Again, and again, and again. As if it were never going to end.
Connection.
I snarl, snatch my hand away and immediately lose my link at the abrupt, chaotic flood of information.
Random images flashing in unbearably rapid succession.
Faces and names and details but passing like water through a sieve, impossible to grasp, impossible to focus upon.
This is nothing like what I’m used to, nor anything like the thoughts of a normal person.
They’re too specific and too fast, not ordered in a way I can understand.
Just a flickering, haphazard torrent of knowledge.
“Did it work?”
“Sort of. He’s …” I stare at the boy. “His mind’s different.”
Netiqret frowns. “How so?”
“I don’t know. It’s chaos. When I do this, normally I only get a sense of what they’re feeling. What they’re feeling in the moment. But this was … information.” I trail off. The dismay in my voice isn’t feigned.
“Can you command him?”
“I don’t know.” I swallow. Close my eyes and brace myself.
The connection comes easily this time; the wild rush of images is still a shock but I’m ready for its impact.
Like having a thousand people screaming dissonantly at me.
Awful, disorienting to the point of painful.
But plenty of my time at the Academy, especially in the higher classes, was spent learning techniques to deal with mental disruption. I withstand it.
“Tell him to add us to the list of Ka’s chief priests.” Netiqret’s voice is distant through the maelstrom.
“I’m still trying to connect properly.” How do I get rid of the Gleaners in the tunnel entrance to the Pyramid of Ka?
Images. Forced into my mind, too many to process, too many to handle.
People screaming. Gleaners lit gold as they swarm from the tunnel.
Explosions somewhere in the west, shouts and clashes of steel in the east. Flames and crumbling stone and blood.
A hot knife through my brain. I groan and stagger back, palms against my temples, losing my connection to the iunctus a second time.
“Are you alright?” Netiqret’s concerned. More for our wasting time than for me, I’d wager.
“It’s fine.” I straighten, the pain behind my eyes easing.
It’s not fine. Perhaps there was a useful response somewhere in all of that, but I need plain answers.
Something I can use. I touch the boy’s shoulder a third time.
Grit my teeth as I connect once again. “How do I get past the Gleaners in the tunnel to the Pyramid of Ka?”
“What?” I can hear Netiqret’s confusion and mounting anger in the single word, but I’m focused on the iunctus.
He opens his eyes. They are blue and lifeless and focused on me. “Avoiding detection is impossible.”
“Can I kill them?”
“Impractical.”
“Siamun.” Netiqret, interrupting again. Purely angry this time, but we both know she’s in no position to do anything about this. The more she delays me, the longer she has to wait for what she wants.
I ignore her. “Then can I clear them out, somehow? What would cause them to leave?”
“They are secondarily tasked for emergency defence. They are activated to eliminate existential threats.”
I swallow. “What would such a threat entail?”
“Significant structural damage to the city. Disruption of primary processes or defence. The last instance of complete activation was six hundred and forty-two years ago.”
Six hundred and forty-two years. Vek. “What was it caused by?”
“Destruction of the original filtration system. Gleaners were deployed for protection, and then the prevention of riots during the subsequent panic and drought.”
“So they prioritise the welfare of the city over protecting Ka?”
“Yes.”
“Will Ka intervene if he thinks he is being threatened?”
“Ka sleeps. He would be unaware.”
Interesting. “Can you create a disaster big enough to draw them out?”
“I cannot.”
“That’s enough, Siamun.” I feel steel rest across my throat, vaguely surprised that Netiqret let me fire out as many questions as I just managed. “You tell him to add us to the records as chief priests. And Kiya as a living child. Now.”
She’s got no bargaining power here, but the edge to her voice is more worrying than the one against my skin. There’s something desperate about it, raw and furious and manic.
“Alright.” I make certain to keep still.
She won’t kill me yet. Not until she has what she wants.
“Forget anything you currently know about myself, or these other two here. Then, for as long as you’ve seen me alive within the past month, have myself and her be identified as chief priests, and her as a living child, to any iunctii checking on us.
” I point as I say the words; the boy’s dull blue eyes roll to follow my gestures and take in the faces, though his head never twitches.
“And forget anything you currently know about Ahmose al Maq. Register him as a Westerner with full access to the east.”
“Take out the provision, Siamun.” A catch to Netiqret’s voice. The blade pushes at my throat. I feel a slow trickle down my neck.
“No.”
A hiss of air releasing between her teeth that admits she has no play here, and the pressure relents. “Then tell him to remove the changes made by Kiya’s time in the Nomarch.” Kiya is suddenly being ushered forward to stand next to me. “Tell him to restore her mind.”
“What? Is that even …” I glance around in confusion, my link to the blue-eyed iunctus fragile as its torrent of images continues to assault me. Through it, though, I see Netiqret’s eyes. See the ready blade in her hand. Vek. This is why she’s here. “Alright. I’ll try.”
I focus back. Thinking furiously. Kiya was once in here, evidently.
There’s an ache to Netiqret’s voice, a desperation leaking through.
How long has she been trying to get in here and do this?
Kiya has to be a relative. Her daughter?
If that’s the case, though, then she was killed … at least a decade ago. Likely longer.
Rotting gods.
“Restore Kiya to the way she was before she was part of the Nomarch. Restore her mind.”
“That cannot be done.”
Silence, and then, “Try again.” Netiqret’s voice is almost a whisper.