Chapter 53 #3
I do. The wording slightly different, the intent the same. It elicits an identical response. Kiya just stands there absently, staring down into the mirror of the iunctus, arms hanging loosely by her sides. Netiqret is next to her. Holding her hand. Smoothing her braids out of her face. “Again.”
“Netiqret—”
“Again, Siamun. Word it differently. Tell it to reverse the effects, this time.”
I do, to the same response. I gaze at the boy sadly. Breath short as I battle to maintain the connection. Through the chaos of his thoughts—if that’s what they can even be called—I can feel his profound, unending exhaustion.
And then the iunctus to the right—a girl, maybe eight or nine years old—opens her eyes and stares at the roof.
“Netiqret. It’s not working. We have to go.” I focus again on the boy. “Forget every question I’ve asked here. Forget our presence.”
“No. No. They said it would work,” she counters in soft, disbelieving frustration.
I look at her, and for a moment I forget what she was likely planning to do to me. Her expression is lost. Sick with a shock that I don’t think is entirely unexpected, no matter what she says.
She had faith this would work, because the alternative was unfathomable to her.
“Breach,” whispers the second iunctus, her brown eyes still staring glassily upward.
The other children’s eyes snap open. The golden light around us fades to a throbbing, virulent red. And then every eye rolls and focuses on me. Just me. As if Netiqret and Kiya did not exist.
“Breach,” they whisper together, eyes lifeless and glinting crimson.
Oh, vek. “Stop the alarm. Forget anything was wrong.”
“Breach.”
I release my connection. “It’s over. We need to go.”
“We need to try again. We won’t get another chance.”
“Breach.”
My heart drops at the manic desperation in her voice. I don’t want to abandon her and Kiya. I cannot imagine what she’s been through to get here. And more practically, if she’s caught, she knows too much.
“Breach.”
“We can try again, Netiqret,” I lie into the red beneath the chillingly intent stares. “Try something different. Once we’re out.” I edge around her and Kiya.
“Breach.”
“We’ll never get back in here. Not now.” She turns to continue facing me, but doesn’t release Kiya’s hand. The young girl hasn’t reacted to what’s going on around us at all, as far as I can tell. “Siamun, you need to—”
I run.
“SIAMUN!” She screams it after me but I don’t look back; I’m faster than her and more than that, I don’t believe she’ll leave Kiya to chase me. No sound but the panting of my breath, nothing to see but the red-drenched, open-eyed iunctii. “Breach.” My feet slap against stone. “Breach.”
Then there’s the way up ahead and I take the ruby-tinged stairs two at a time.
No sign of anyone, iunctii or otherwise, coming down yet.
My mind strains after the map Netiqret drilled into me.
There is only the one way out of the Sanctum, and if I’m compromised—if the Nomarch just saw my face, as I suspect it did—then the Overseers will know exactly who to look for.
I spill out of the stairwell into the shadows of the colonnade. The cavernous space echoes with the screams and laughter of festivities continuing in the distance, apparently uninterrupted by the alarm we’ve raised.
I stop, just for a second. Catch my breath and think. The Nomarch said that it was unable to create a distraction large enough to draw out the Gleaners.
Still.
I jog cautiously, only once having to hide as a group of priests—I think they’re priests, not iunctii—hurry past my concealing shadows, muttering to one another in anxious low tones.
It doesn’t take long for me to reach the enormous open path to the triangular tunnel, the warm glow of the pyramid blinding as it looms up ahead.
My heart sinks as I reach the short shadow of the tunnel entrance and my eyes reluctantly adjust. Nothing’s changed.
Dark forms still hang on the wall, dormant and silent and ready to wake the moment I step foot on that obsidian bridge.
The intrusion into the Nomarch doesn’t seem to have disturbed a single one of them.
I turn to go back to the main hall—if I can find the woman who let us in the secret entrance, it stands to reason I can force her to let me out again—and spot the Overseer.
The black-clad woman is distant, at least a hundred feet away, and I’d be little more than a silhouette against Ka’s Pyramid. But she’s running. A dead sprint, directly at me.
It takes only a breath to realise that even if I can make physical contact with her, it won’t be before she registers who I am. And that, in turn, will tell the Nomarch exactly what I can do.
I dive into the nearest passageway, and run.
Left. Right. Skidding around corners but I don’t know where I’m going, have no idea what this section of the Sanctum even is.
I can hear the sound of pursuit. Not gaining, but not falling behind.
My heart pounds through my chest. Reminding me of the Labyrinth, but at least there I had some facade of control.
I simply can’t escape like this. Any turn now could reveal no path forward, and my end.
Another left, and there’s a window in the obsidian. Three feet wide, maybe. I slide to a halt. The Infernis flows below. About twenty feet to the sliver of riverbank that separates obsidian and poison.
Footsteps behind me, too loud.
I scramble up onto the ledge, squeeze through, and slide off the edge.
It’s an awkward, clumsy fall in my haste; my stomach is in my throat and then I’m hitting barren soil and stone, pain jolting through my body despite my best efforts to brace.
I fling myself back, away from the green-tinted water, lungs immediately scalding from my proximity to it.
Then I stumble to my feet, propping myself against the smooth surface of the temple wall.
Inches from the acid that flows through Duat’s veins.
A thud, dull and heavy, behind me.
I turn to find the Overseer already stalking toward me. Ten paces away. The bank is too sloped and narrow to run.
Before I can fear enough to stop myself, I step into the river.
My breath is a hissing escape as fiery pain immediately consumes my legs. It’s like the skin is burning; I groan and risk a glance down, almost weeping, but there’s no blistering. The Vitaeria concealed around my upper thigh at work. They do not stop the agony.
And then the Overseer is upon me.
I fend off grasping, clawing hands as they try to haul me out of the poison. Resist the urge to command it, my ability even now far too great an advantage to expose. It is smaller than me but its eyes are completely black, and I can feel imbued strength behind each touch.
And yet my efforts in blocking it still, somehow, seem to be effective.
My mind clears enough to manoeuvre. I stagger forward, swat away a punch and get in one strike. Two. It’s dazed. Reeling. I get in a third before it can recover and then grab its shoulder. Swivel. Wrench.
It loses its footing.
The thundering splash peppers me with agonising droplets everywhere lower than my neck, but I ignore it, determined now.
The Overseer’s eyes are wide with shock and pain as it struggles, flails.
I lunge. Crouch in the water and, snarling at the agony coursing through me, force it beneath the surface.
The water excoriates my hands, the waves of the Overseer’s thrashing flicking it up almost to my neck.
I moan but steel myself, keep exerting pressure on its shoulders.
It kicks and slips on the slick surface beneath the poison.
I weep and push harder. Through the fire, something changes beneath my fingers.
And then I’ve lost my grip. The Overseer has slipped away somehow. There is black clouding the clear green.
I barely stop myself from retching as I raise my hands to find masses of red, blistered flesh oozing between my fingers. What is left of the Overseer’s shoulders.
With a wordless wail the iunctus surfaces in a final, desperate shower of acid. Its face is drooping, suppurated and boil-covered. I can see bone where the flesh and muscle from my grasp came away.
And then it expires. Subsides and slumps and becomes an incoherent black shape beneath the surface.
I’m too pained to do anything but tremble and wipe my skin vainly against my sheer attire, watching the cloth flake away wherever I touch.
I’m beyond lucky I didn’t go any deeper, I realise shakily; my Vitaeria may have survived, but the thin straps holding them against my thigh would have undoubtedly dissolved in short order.
I gather myself enough to glance around, then up at the window through which I came. No sign of anyone, not yet, but the Overseer would have communicated where we were. Would have communicated my face.
Distantly, the sounds of revelry continue.
I stagger in the green light of the Infernis, the golden glow of Ka’s pyramid a mocking sun above. I can see the bridge a little way away. I know where I am.
I take a breath. Two. Temporarily force back the disaster of the night; my anonymity is gone and my task harder than ever, but right now I just need to find refuge.
There are plenty of ways to escape the riverbank, once I navigate around the temple walls.
And there is a tunnel not too far. With some fortune, I may just be able to make it before the Overseers intercept me.
To the faint strains of joyful music, I stagger my way back into the heart of Duat.