Priya’s dead.
Asha shivered.
I should have… If I had only…
She swallowed and glanced at the strange girl at her side, but Wren merely paced along in contented silence, her arms crossed to hold her many silver bracelets quiet as she moved.
Priya should have lived, and I should have died. I should have died saving her. Priya had so much to teach, so much to share to make the world into the paradise we both wanted. And now she’s gone. Completely gone. I don’t even have her soul to talk to.
All that’s left is me, and I can barely remember a fraction of what she taught me. About life. About balance. About peace. All I have is a power I can barely control, a power that’s wild and vicious. I’m as dangerous as all the doctors in Ming and all the Sons of Osiris combined.
But Priya’s dead, and I’m still alive.
What do I do now?
Where do I go?
What am I for?
“I think he smells something,” Wren said, touching her arm.
Asha looked down at the small hand on her arm and then up into the girl’s dark golden eyes. “He… Jagdish.” She looked down at the wriggling mongoose, which was leaning out over her left elbow and sniffing loudly.
They turned to look down the darkened street and saw a dead end. The road continued past the intersection for a hundred paces to a dusty old fountain, and then simply stopped. The walls rising around the fountain looked a bit newer than the ancient stones of the temples, markets, and obelisks they had seen during their long walk, but these new walls left no way out of the street. No alleys, no doors, not even a grate in the ground for waste water to escape.
Frowning, Asha walked down the dark road toward the fountain and stroked Jagdish’s fur. The mongoose huddled lower in her arms and by the time she reached the end of the street, he was no longer sniffing the air at all. He was shivering.
Asha circled the fountain. It was wide and round, all made of rough red stone that had chipped and cracked in a thousand places. The bottom of the basin had been tiled once, but now only a grid-work of crumbling mortar and a few porcelain squares remained of whatever pattern or mosaic had been there. In the center stood a wide stone dais supporting a gray statue of a fish, its body arched as it leapt into the air. A small metal pipe where the water had once emerged was visible in the fish’s mouth.
Looking away from the fountain, Asha saw only piles of trash, bits of paper, and shreds of cloth that had blown down the lane and been stranded in the corners and shadows of the dead end. She glanced at Wren, who shrugged, and then she looked down at Jagdish and found him sleeping.
“Thus ends our search,” Asha said. “I’m sorry, Wren. I don’t think we’ll be finding your friend tonight.”
Wren nodded. “I thought it might be a long shot since we were relying completely on your little friend’s nose.” She smiled briefly.
“We should find a place to sleep for the night,” Asha said.
“Yeah.” Wren looked up at her and Asha saw a rather different girl for a moment, one who was very young and uncertain and lost.
“Don’t worry,” Asha said, forcing a smile. “I have some money and the place we stayed at last night seemed safe enough. Everything will be fine. I promise.”
Wren nodded and sighed. “All right. I just… I’m about a thousand leagues from home, and I can barely speak the language, and I’m not sure…”
Asha put her arm around the girl and they leaned together.
“I’m sorry,” Wren said, looking up. “You just lost your friend. I should be… I should be helping you, and not… Sorry.”
“It’s fine. And you speak Eranian just fine. Better than I do. It’s not my first language either.” Asha patted her back, and stepped away. “Let’s go. It’s late. Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“All right. And don’t worry. Tomorrow, we will come back and keep looking for your friend Omar.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Wren said. “You don’t have to stay, or take care of me. I don’t want to impose on you, not after everything that’s happened.”
“It’s not an imposition. I don’t have any… I want to help.” Asha paused to steady her voice. She glanced away for a moment, and then looked back again. “Besides, I have questions for your friend, when we find him. I want to know more about the immortals.”
They started walking again, side by side, circling back around the fountain to head out to the main road, but Asha stopped short. There were two people standing beside the fountain just a few paces away. She hadn’t heard anyone approach, not with her plain left ear and certainly not with her golden right one. But now she could hear the strange new harmonies of the young man and younger woman standing before her.
Divided souls. They’re both immortal!
The young man was tall and slender with muscular arms, prominent cheek bones, and a perfectly shaven scalp. And his skin was impossibly black. Asha had seen many dark-skinned peoples in India and Eran, and even more since reaching Ifrica, but this handsome and silent youth was a different sort of black. A perfect black. The contrast was all the more striking against his bright white tunic and golden bracers, and the gold-ringed staff in his hand. He also had a black mask hanging from his belt over his right hip. A mask with sharp canine features.
The young girl beside him was practically common by comparison. She was short and still a bit baby-faced for her age, which Asha guessed to be about twelve. Her skin was a more recognizable brown, and her hair a slightly wavy black. She too had a mask, but hers was perched atop her head, and it had a blunter muzzle and smaller ears. A cat, perhaps. Her dress was dark, trimmed in red with many small details that Asha couldn’t discern in the shadows of the unlit street.
The girl was smiling. The youth was not.
“If you’re looking for immortals, you’re certainly in the right place,” the girl said. “And if you’re looking for the man who was taken from the temple tonight, you’re also in the right place.”
“Not that you’ll be seeing him anytime soon,” the sullen youth said. He lifted his staff.
Asha stepped in front of Wren and pushed Jagdish into her arms, and began to search for a wellspring of anger that might bring back the dragon to protect them.
Immortals? Shiva, save us. Can I fight an immortal? Two of them?
But the black youth merely spun the staff across his fingers, turned his back to them, and sat on the lip of the old fountain, and stared at his sandaled feet.
The young girl with the cat mask on her head sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind Anubis. He’s always like that.” She smiled brightly at Asha. “I’m Bastet. Who are you? And what’s it like having horns and a tail? Does it hurt? And does it ever tear your dress?”
Chapter 5
Asha stared at the girl, and then at the youth, and then back at the girl. “I’m sorry. What?”
The girl who called herself Bastet went over to the fountain and hopped up on the stone ledge beside the black youth, and she wrinkled her nose as she said, “Your tail. I saw you grow it at the temple today. Does it hurt?”
“Well, no, not exactly,” Asha said cautiously. “You, both of you, are immortal, aren’t you. Like Nadira and Gideon?”
“Yes,” sighed the youth called Anubis. There was no pride or annoyance or anything else in his voice. There was only a hint of fatigue, which coupled with the faraway look in his eyes to make him look older than he had at first appeared.
