Asha dropped the chain and reached into her bag for the needle, and she held it up to the light to make certain the sedative was still thick on the steel point. Then she hurled it down through the aether into their prisoner’s shoulder, and a moment later he wheezed and lay back flat on the floor, breathing noisily through the narrow slits in his beak.
I didn’t think, I didn’t remember… all I could think about was beating him down with my armored fists and burning claws.
I never used to think about such things. I always reached for my bag first, for my tools and herbs and seeds. And now I reach for weapons.
I was an herbalist. A healer. Can I still say that?
What am I now?
Wren lowered her hands and came over to help her with the chains. Together they bound Horus’s wrists and hauled the chains over the rafters, lifting him up to hang a few paces away from his mother, which Wren made easier with an updraft of aether.
When their second prisoner was secure, the two women went back over to their crate and slumped down to rub their sore hands and shoulders.
“He’s heavier than she is,” Wren said. “A lot heavier.”
Asha nodded. “You did very well, just now. You handled it very… I’m impressed. And thank you. If you hadn’t…”
She couldn’t bring her thoughts together to say what she meant, or even to know what she meant.
“You’re welcome,” Wren said brightly. “Always happy to help. Not that you really need it. I’m sure you could have handled him. Anyone strong enough to tear down a temple with her bare hands can probably capture one person with a feathery head.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“So that’s it then, right?” Wren asked. “Horus and Isis. And the others are… accounted for. So wherever Bastet and Gideon are, they’re okay. And Anubis too.”
“Wherever they are.” Asha nodded.
“Then that makes this a good day.” Wren leaned back and smiled as Jagdish hopped up into her lap. “Everyone can sleep safe and sound in their beds, and we don’t have to worry about anything at all.”
“Except Omar,” Asha reminded her.
Wren sighed. “Except him.”
“And Lilith.”
“And her.”
“And all of those other poor souls trapped in the undercity, deformed and enslaved down in the darkness,” Asha said softly.
And this is only one city, one place where immortals live, one place where this insanity has festered. How many more are there, out in the world?
“I thought you were going to get supper,” Wren said as she petted the mongoose curled up on her belly.
“Right. I’ll do that.” Asha stood and headed for the doors of the warehouse for the second time that hour.
“Don’t forget your bag,” Wren called.
Asha looked back and saw her medicine bag lying on the floor in the shadows at the edge of the ring of starlight falling through the broken roof. The bag was a soft hempen weave with a cloth strap that always felt comfortable on either shoulder, and it had a dozen little pockets inside for vials and jars and paper packets, and the bottom was strong enough to hold the weight of her tools and needles, even her little mortar and pestle.
She had carried that bag for years, from the great rivers of Ming over the high mountains of Kathmandu, through the forests of India and Rajasthan, across the vast plains of Old Persia, and here to the shores of Ifrica. She had never gone anywhere without it before. It was no mere thing. It was a part of her, a part of her hands and a part of her mind, without which she was only a shadow of the healer she had been trained to be.
And now it looks like a relic from another life.
Asha came back, slipped the bag onto her shoulder, and left.
Chapter 24
Omar lay on the table, no longer feeling the chains and shackles cutting into his wrists and neck, no longer bothered by the hideously soft creeping sensations coming from his right arm. The tears had dried on his cheeks hours ago and all that was left now was the soreness in his throat. He faced the wall, his eyes closed.
“Oh, come now, Bashir, I think you’ve moped long enough,” Lilith said from the far side of the room.
“She’s just a little girl,” he whispered.
“Who? Bastet? My God, you don’t even know if she’s dead.” The woman sat in a chair drenched in pillows and blankets, and she slipped dark red grapes one by one between her dark red lips. “It could be anyone. Maybe it’s that frigid cow Nadira, or those foul-mouthed Rus people, or that Indian prince of yours you never like to talk about. Did you ever think about that?”
Omar opened his eyes and looked at the servant woman by the doorway. She looked even paler and sweatier than before, swaying drunkenly as she struggled to stand upright while keeping her milky tentacles from brushing against her legs. He asked, “How did this happen?”
“How did what happen?”
“This. All this.” Omar coughed and tried to clear his parched throat. “You were an artist. A scientist. A philosopher. You were beautiful, so beautiful, from your flawless face to your bright, shining soul. You were a wonder. A jewel in the dustbin of humanity. I couldn’t believe my own good fortune in finding you. I felt privileged just to speak with you…”
He felt the tears coming again, but he blinked them away.
So many times I’ve thought that I had reached the end of my very, very long life. In fire and flood, war and torture, by hand of man and the fang of beast, and even by the heartless power of machines. And yet I survived, only to come here, only to see this.
Why, Lord? Why now? I already repented what I’d done. I already resolved to undo it. I came here to make good on that promise.
Why now, at the threshold of my redemption, when I am finally ready to do something truly good and pure for the world, when I am ready to serve the natural order instead of my own desires…
Why now would you deliver me into the hands of the one person, perhaps the only person in the world, with both the will and the means to actually kill me?
“Such kind words,” Lilith said. “I never hear such things anymore. I made my servants to serve, not to love. Perhaps that will be my next great endeavor. To conquer more than the flesh, and more than the will. To conquer the spirit itself. To enslave the heart.”
“And then?” Omar’s voice cracked and he paused to master himself. “What then? When you’ve enslaved all the world, bent it to your every whim and desire, tasted everything that this world has to offer, and everything that you can create, what then? Whether it takes fifty years or five thousand, what then?”
Lilith laughed. “You see, this is the problem with you religious people. You’re looking for something nobler, something deeper, something that can elevate your little lives, something to give your lives meaning, because you’ve failed to find any meaning for yourselves. Even you, Bashir, after all these millennia, even you have failed to find your own meaning for your sad, empty existence.”
“And what meaning have you found?”
“There is no meaning!” Lilith stood up and strode to the side of his table. “A moment ago you spoke of tasting everything in the world. Well, I have tasted much of what this world has to offer. I have placed the hot and cold flesh of countless plants and animals in my mouth, and devoured them. I have felt indescribable joys in my mouth, and in my belly, again and again. And I wish to go on tasting and devouring them over and over again, and
