“Of course. Ah, but you were still in your dragon form. Perhaps you did not see,” Anubis said. “In your fury last night, you attacked Wren several times, but each time she forced you away, hurled you aside with a wall of aether with just a wave of her hand. She is quite talented, really, for a mortal.”
“I didn’t realize. I only just met her yesterday,” Asha said.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. She was traveling with this Omar person, who apparently was the grandfather of these immortals. She had to be special.
“So we’re going to this Cat’s Eye now?” Asha studied the buildings around her, noting that once again they were moving away from the better-kept homes and marketplaces and moving into an older, dustier district. At first the transition was gradual, with slightly fewer people on the road and slightly shabbier doorways and signs. But then they crossed a wide boulevard and the transition was suddenly complete. Bits of trash fluttered about the street, most of the signs were gone or faded beyond recognition, windows were boarded over, and the only people she saw were leaning out the windows, frowning at the two people walking down the center of the road.
Asha glanced at her companion, but saw only the same stern youth that she had seen before, striding along with his staff at his side, his golden arm bands and necklaces gleaming in the morning sun.
What do I really know about this Anubis person? Can I trust him? I know that he’s immortal, I can hear the tiny piece of his soul sealed up in his sun-steel pendant. And I know he can transform his body into a cloud of aether, which I’ve never seen before. And I know he’s been spying on me at least since I arrived at the temple yesterday for the first time.
That’s not much when it comes to whether I can trust him. But he seemed genuinely upset yesterday talking about his family. If those creatures were really his parents, then I guess I can trust his motives.
Unless he hates his parents.
Asha sighed loudly.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “The tension in your face and back suggests that you’re unhappy, uncomfortable, but not about the death of your friend. You’ve moved on from that. Now you’re uncomfortable with your surroundings, and with me. You don’t trust me, and you think I’m leading you into a trap. Your concern is unnecessary.”
Asha looked at him sharply. “I… I haven’t moved on. I simply don’t have time to grieve for Priya every moment of the day. I can’t think about her and save Omar at the same time.”
“Deception, or self-deception?” Anubis glanced at her again, his face completely expressionless. “Self- deception. You are not grieving anymore, but you wish to think you are, to honor the memory of your friend. You also wish to appear strong in front of me, a potential enemy but also a potential ally. Your desire to impress or intimidate those around you is strong, but again, unnecessary. You already possess the power to defeat an army, or destroy a temple, with your bare hands.”
“How do you know what I feel?” she snapped at him.
“I can see it in every tiny muscle in your eyes and lips,” he said. “People are open books, if you only learn to read them properly.”
“Well, I’m not trying to impress anyone, and I am grieving. You’re wrong about me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m never wrong about anyone.”
They came to another intersection and Anubis paused, nodding at the building on the far corner. “That is The Cat’s Eye. Inside we will find Zahra El Ayat, her guards, and her staff. You can ignore everyone except Zahra. They all take their orders from her, and they are all extremely loyal, so it is unlikely anyone will harm you without her express order. She is one of the few women to obtain any real power within the Temple of Osiris, and she has attracted many dangerous women to her service. Try not to offend her. It will be easier than you think.”
“She’s thin-skinned?” Asha asked.
“She is vain, selfish, and immature,” Anubis replied. “She is also frequently drunk.”
They crossed the intersection and Asha knocked on the doors. And then she knocked again. And then again, much louder.
The locks clicked and the door jerked inward. A woman’s stern face looked out. “We’re closed. Come back tonight.”
“Pardon my impatience.” Anubis pushed the door open and strode inside. “We’ve come to speak with Zahra. Now. Please.”
The woman glared at him. “I think you’d better reconsider. I don’t take orders from you, and my mistress doesn’t appreciate strangers barging into her home.”
“We haven’t come on a whim,” Anubis said. “She has information we need.”
“Then you can come back later,” the woman hissed. She pointed at the open door to the street. “Now get out before I throw you out.”
Asha frowned at the smaller woman. “Are you threatening us?”
The woman reached into the wide sash around her waist and pulled out a small metal object, a device that Asha had never seen before. But from the way that the woman pointed it at them, she guessed the device to be a weapon. It vaguely resembled the smoking spears of the soldiers at the temple.
“By all means,” Anubis said, turning his thinly clothed chest toward her. “Shoot.”
“Lunatic,” the woman muttered, and the weapon fired. The noise pounded on Asha’s left ear and she winced away from it as a small puff of smoke and flash of fire erupted from the device directly at Anubis from only two paces away.
But the dark youth’s chest merely swirled with a puff of aether that drifted from his back and chest like steam for a moment, and then it faded away, leaving his chest and tunic unblemished.
They kill people with machines here? Innocent people, strangers, for no reason?
Asha lashed out, but the hand that grabbed the weapon wasn’t one of brown flesh, it was armored in gold with burning ruby claws. The woman shrieked and pulled back, leaving the weapon in Asha’s grasp. Asha curled her hand into a fist, feeling the metal of the device warping and melting in her claws, and when she opened her hand again, a charred lump of iron fell to the floor. She shook her hand and let out a long breath to quiet the dragon and make her skin smooth and soft again.
“Now.” She stepped in front of Anubis so that the woman’s eyes were on her. “Where is Zahra El Ayat?”
The woman’s strained eyes darted anxiously from Asha’s hands to her face and back. “What the hell are you?”
Asha held out her hand, reaching halfway to the woman’s face. “Is that really what you wish to discuss right now?”
She shook her head.
“We simply wish to talk to Zahra about the Temple of Osiris,” Asha said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone. We don’t care what sorts of people you work with, or what business you are in, or anything else at all. We only wish to ask questions. Do you understand?”
The woman nodded. “This way.” She led them back through the foyer and into a wide open dining room filled with round tables and armless chairs. Only a few, thin shafts of light slipped between the curtains over the windows, casting strange lines across the floor and furniture, revealing splashes and slashes of color on the tiles and the carpets and the table cloths. Red and purple and gold. On one side of the room was a huge misshapen table with only three legs and a set of peddles on one side by a bench. Asha gave it a curious glance.
“Piano,” Anubis said. “It makes music.”
Asha nodded and they stepped through a curtain at the back of the dining room. Their guide brought them to a smaller room, one with a single table and several chairs on one side of it. “This is the office. Wait here. I’ll go and get her.”
Anubis nodded and she scurried back through the curtained doorway.
“Trap?” Asha asked.
“No,” Anubis said. “Her hands shook, but in genuine fear and confusion, not with anger or malice. She fears us both, perhaps as much as her mistress. She’ll go to Zahra, and Zahra will come. Most likely with bodyguards, but she will hear us out.”
Asha turned to him. “How do you do that? How do you know so much about people and what they’re going to do?”
“I read them,” he said in his deep droning voice. “Hands, eyes, lips, the sound of a breath, the twitch of an eyelash, the flush of color in the throat and in the ears and cheeks. Humans are forever in motion, and mostly out of
