Chapter LXI
LXI
IT IS AS I SKULK THE LONELINESS OF DUAT’S DARKEST corners that I finally, truly grasp how much more this place is prison than refuge.
Though I never meshed with Ahmose in the way easy friends do—I often found him to be gloomy, irritable, humourless—he was my friend, and I trusted him.
Trusted his insights. I saw this city, for the most part, reflected in his eyes.
And now I realise that even having had Ka’s lies exposed so plainly to him, he never quite viewed his home as anything less.
There are three accessible exits to the outside world: two in Neter-khertet and one in the east, highly visible ramps carved into the outer walls that climb to distant, equally visible obsidian archways.
Guarded by Overseers and used exclusively by iunctii departing to work the mines, or hauling carts of refuse to be disposed of in pits dug into the baking sands.
I watch each one for more than a day. Conceal myself on a rooftop for the first. Find a house with an overlooking window for the second, after ascertaining its residing iunctus works as a servant in the east. For the third, the eastern one and by far the most exposed option, I have to risk milling around the nearby streets with false purpose in my step.
My hands shake with tension at every pass.
Without Ahmose, there is no way to distract an Overseer wanting to check my face.
No way to get close enough for physical contact before they realise who I am.
I am not stopped, not noticed. But in the end, I learn little more than I already know.
Each entrance has an antechamber between Duat and the outside world that is only ever open on one side or the other, presumably to prevent contaminated air from rushing inside.
The iunctii who are sent out are generally healthy-looking, built for labour.
Few who leave return the same day. Those who do come back into the city drag carts filled with what look like raw metals or stone.
Their skin is red and they move with the slow effort of those in constant pain.
There are never fewer than a half dozen eyes fixed on those coming and going. Worse, I can’t even see the mechanism for opening and shutting the antechamber doors. I don’t think it’s being operated by either workers or guards. Not directly, anyway.
I’m not getting out through there.
For almost a day after coming to the realisation, I seriously consider the Gleaner’s entrance again.
I know the way back there, can get past the mutalis gate to it without any trouble.
And the Gleaners have those rooms where they seem to …
rest. If I can just reach one of them, I could get it to simply fly me out.
But it’s not practical. Far too great a risk. Those tunnels are narrow and long and could have a Gleaner walk into one at any time. All it would take is a glimpse.
Which leaves the river.
It’s loomed as an option since my escape from Ka’s temple, even if it is the most unpleasant one imaginable.
I can’t just swim out via the Infernis—I’ve seen the columns Caeror mentioned that guard the river’s exit from Duat, and they do look exactly like the Seawall at Solivagus—but the overflow area beneath remains an option.
Those pipes were large enough to allow a person through.
Just. And according to Netiqret, they don’t merge back into the river until the other side of the city’s walls.
There are two main issues. The first is that the straps fastening my Vitaeria won’t resist the poison of the Infernis, so I need a way to keep them touching me that doesn’t risk my losing them mid-swim.
I could try swallowing them—they’re probably small enough—but there’s also a chance they lodge and cause an internal problem that I have no way to fix.
The second is that, aside from the inevitable pain, it’s still not without significant danger.
The pressure of the acidic water flowing through those narrow pipes is immense.
Crushing. If there is a choke point, a sieve, anywhere narrow enough that I can’t slip through, I won’t be able to get out.
Just as surely as if I swam over the Seawall above, I’d face being trapped drowning in the caustic poison for …
I don’t know how long. Hours? Days? Gods, maybe until I die of old age.
I make very, very sure the other exits are untenable before I really consider it.
The night after making the decision, I start to experiment.
A secluded spot, hidden from the bridge and streets on both sides.
I submerge my legs for ten seconds, skin tingling and then itching and then burning until I can take it no more.
I emerge and scramble out and scrub off anxiously. My flesh remains unblemished.
So I try again. And again. A little longer, each time.
The next day, I make three cuts on my arm and—hissing between gritted teeth—pry open the wounds with my knife and jam the razor-thin Vitaeria beneath my skin.
As soon as the blade slides out again, the flesh pulls taut.
Not restored, but sealed over. The discs form uncomfortable, visible lumps along my arm, but they are never in danger of falling out again.
That night at the river, I start submersing myself.
A minute. Then three. Then five. My skin is on fire and my chest feels like it’s bursting and I know I should be swimming desperately for the surface, but I hold myself still.
Waiting for my vision to blur, my mind to start wandering, for that unnatural calm to start hitting me.
But the Vitaeria buried in my arm do their work.
Body and mind screaming at me to let it end, but I don’t need to breathe.
It’s exactly as Caeror said, what feels like a lifetime ago.
The next day I make it ten minutes under. The next, fifteen. Perhaps it will be different when I am buffeted with the unrelenting pressure of the poisoned water as well, but there’s no good way to test that.
By the end of another week, I know I don’t have enough excuses left to avoid what I need to do.
I STAND AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS THAT LEAD DOWN TO the massive underground cavern, tracing the luminous green water as it pours from the darkness above and thunders along the canal into the distance.
All is motionless otherwise. The mists seem thick today, even more cloying and sharp in my lungs.
They’re not the reason I pause, though. They’re not why I cannot bring myself to descend just yet.
The last time I felt so much dread in the doing of something, I ran the Labyrinth and ended up here.
Finally, I move. Pick my way along the overflow, across the small bridges and to the very end, where the twisted wreckage of rusting machinery protrudes from beneath impossibly large chunks of shattered stone.
I gaze into the void into which the torrent of water disappears.
A few feet wide but the water gushes freely into it.
It must not narrow significantly, farther in, at least.
I stare at the water for a while. My thoughts on a different track, now. The acrid stench, the violent green of the water, is nothing like that night at Suus.
I still hear my sister’s voice.
“I don’t want to.” Barely audible. The protest of a child who knows they don’t have a choice. “I’m scared.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t sure.” Lie. “We can make it.” Lie. “Do you trust me?”
The last things I ever say to her.
I sit. Lost in the memory. Stare at the darkness for several minutes.
The pain of losing my family and my home has become an old ache, rather than the open sore it once was.
Grief never really leaves you, but at some point it becomes remembered rather than enveloping.
My return to Suus, and time, has healed that wound as much as it ever will.
I dragged her onto that beach. Hair splayed, ghostlike, until she was out of the water.
Eyes open and chest still. I tried to breathe life back into her, just as I’d been taught.
Waves crashed and hissed and slithered back and forth along sand, flecks of dying foam in their wake as they touched us and retreated.
I tried for five minutes. Ten. Crying. I stood to leave and then dropped to my knees and began again, not convinced she was gone. I didn’t know what else to do.
My throat tightens. She would have been sixteen, now.
“Don’t do this, Siamun.”
Netiqret’s voice echoes over the water from my right. My shoulders stiffen and I turn. She’s a hundred feet away. Alone.
“I have to.”
“There’s nothing for you out there.” She’s walking toward me, but slowly. Hands out, palms down. As if calming a startled animal. She’s figured out what I’m planning, if not why. “Stay.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“Kiya said you fought an Overseer. Killed it in the Infernis.” She glances up into the darkness, as if she can see the spot where it happened.
“The Nomarch saw your Vitaeria. It’s been watching the river.
But I knew you’d think of this. And I’ve been down here a lot myself, this past week,” she finishes wryly, coming to a stop.
A cautious fifty feet away. Not wanting to spook me.
“Ahmose is dead.”
“I know. I heard.” Something approaching regret in the acknowledgement. “He made the decision.”
“He had it made for him.”
She nods. A melancholy motion. “All of us wake up one morning for the last time, Siamun.”
Silence, as we remember Ahmose. Then Netiqret exhales. “Kiya is my daughter.”
Only the rushing of water for a few seconds. I suspected it, I suppose. It was the only thing that made sense. “You can’t save her, Netiqret.” Not the compassionate response, but she needs to hear it. “How long?”
“Twenty years.”
Vek. “You have to realise that what you want isn’t possible.”