then melted Koschei’s pendant with the sword’s heat. And Koschei’s mother, well, she just decided her time had come. She never wanted to be immortal, not really. She was happy, in the end. Happy that it was over.”
“So Omar killed her too?”
“No,” Wren said softly. “She killed herself, and died in my arms. And then Omar destroyed her pendant.”
Bastet looked up past the other girl’s strange black dress and curling red hair and blue glasses and saw the pained look in her golden eyes. “I’m sorry. Were you close to her?”
“In a way. But it’s all right now,” Wren said. “It’s the way it should be. Everything back where it belongs, more or less. It just took a lot of time and pain to get there. A lot of pain. And death.”
Bastet nodded.
And you’re all of twenty years old, aren’t you? Wait until you’re four thousand. The pain and death are always out there, always with us. But you know that now, don’t you? Poor thing.
“Come on.” Bastet smiled. “Gideon isn’t like that at all. He’s not like any of us, except me, maybe. I guess that’s why I like him. He never got old on the inside. He’s fun!”
They hurried through the streets, slowing down a bit as more and more people, animals, and carts trundled out from their homes, stables, and carriage houses to begin the day. By the time they turned the last corner and saw the dusty fountain with its little stone fish, the traffic on the main road was quite loud and the vapors escaping from the engines and the animals were eye-watering.
But none of that mattered, because there, lying precariously across the narrow lip of the fountain wall with his hands folded behind his head, was Gideon.
He’d changed his clothing quite a bit since the last time she saw him. No more Persian silks or Indian coats. Now he wore a machine-tailored white cotton shirt under a brown leather jacket, both of which looked to be Mazigh, as well as his wrinkled canvas trousers and tall brown leather boots. But one thing was still the same. Over his boots he still wore his battered old brass greaves from his days as a soldier of Damascus.
“Gideon!” Bastet let go of Wren and dashed down the lane. She reached him just as he started to sit up and she nearly knocked him into the empty fountain as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “It’s been so long! How are you?”
“Fine, fine. And it’s lovely to see my favorite little cat goddess again. I swear, you’re growing like a weed!” He beamed and held out his hand by her shoulder. “Why, just last century you were only this high!”
She shoved his hand away. The joke itself was stale beyond measure, but the ritual of hearing him say it each time they met was like its own sort of homecoming, proof that he was really there and still himself. He didn’t look any older than Wren, with his soft brown cheeks and deep brown eyes and thick black hair shining darkly with oils that smelled faintly like sandalwood.
“Don’t be silly,” she said haughtily. “I’m twice your age, and don’t you forget it!”
“I’ll try,” he said with a smile. “And who is your lovely young friend here?”
They both looked up at the girl holding the mongoose.
“This is Wren,” Bastet said. “Wren, Gideon.”
“A pleasure.” He took her empty hand and kissed it. “Always nice to meet new friends, especially ones bearing gifts. Is he for me?” He reached for Jagdish.
Wren smiled and deftly moved her furry friend out of his reach. “Absolutely not. He’s not even mine. I’m just watching him for a friend.”
“Oh, I see,” Gideon said. “A friend. Of course.”
“A mutual friend,” Bastet said. “Someone you’ve already met, I think.”
“Someone I’ve met with a…” His eyes widened. “So they are here? Asha and Priya? Oh, thank God, I’ve been so worried about them. It’s been a couple months now since I’ve seen them, and I felt so bad about leaving them on their own before, and I’ve just been worried ever since. And then I ran into Nadira and she told me about the business with the dragon. Do you know about the dragon?”
Bastet nodded with a grin.
“And I’m rambling, aren’t I?” Gideon laughed.
“It’s all right, it’s good to hear you ramble. It means you’re still breathing,” Bastet said. “What I want to know is, what is this ugly thing and why are you wearing it?” She wrapped her knuckles on the brass and steel contraption strapped to his right forearm.
“Ugly?” He feigned shock and offense. “Ugly? How dare you! I’ll have you know I paid a lot of money to a very nice woman in Marrakesh to make this for me. It’s a one-of-a-kind original sort of thing, and you’re lucky I’m even letting you look at it.”
“Mm hm. What is it?”
“My sword,” he said quietly, with a suddenly somber cast in his eyes. “I had the blade refitted into a new clay lining and mounted into this device and strapped to my arm.”
“Why?”
“It’s getting pretty dangerous,” he said. “The blade is so hot and bright now… I was in a little dust-up with some men in Numidia, and I dropped it, and it set a whole house on fire, and I…” He paused and shook his head a little. “It’s getting pretty scary, actually. I had this new sheathe built so I could never drop the sword again, and so no one could ever try to steal it, you know, by pulling it out of the scabbard. It’s just a little thing, but it’s still so dangerous.”
“You have a sun-steel sword? A seireiken?” Wren asked.
Gideon nodded. “It’s only about fifteen hundred years old, not nearly as old as some, but it’s killed more than any other, maybe more than all of them combined. It has more souls trapped inside it than any other,” he said.
“Oh.” Wren shifted her nervous look from Gideon to Bastet.
“Oh, no!” Bastet grabbed her hand. “Gideon doesn’t kill a lot of people or anything. Mostly he just kills the Sons of Osiris, and folks like them. His sword is full of souls because he uses it to break seireikens.”
“Oh.” Wren sat up a bit straighter and suddenly looked far more interested.
“Yeah.” Gideon smiled wryly. “The only thing that will break a seireiken is a hotter seireiken. So, there’s the rub. I have to use a seireiken. And each time I shatter one the aether spills out, and the souls spill out, but they mostly just get drawn right back into my blade instead of going free. It’s not really a perfect solution, is it? I’m just moving them from one prison to another. But at least this way they’re not being used by the Osirians.”
“Oooh!” Bastet beamed. “I have a surprise for you. I think I’ve solved your little sword problem. But I’ll tell you about it later. It’s complicated. Right now, we have other things to talk about. Like Asha.”
“Asha and Priya.” Gideon nodded. “Two of the more remarkable women I’ve ever met.”
“Actually,” Wren said, “it’s just Asha now. Priya… we lost Priya yesterday.”
Gideon’s bright boyish grin vanished and he stared at the girls, his face ashen and expression leaden with despair. He whispered, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” Wren said. “I… There was this man with a sort of animal head.”
“It was Set,” Bastet explained. “Set and Nethys were digging through what’s left of the temple, and Set killed Priya.”
Gideon slumped forward and rubbed his eyes in silence for a moment. When he sat up again, he kept his gaze on the road. “I saw the temple last night when I arrived. I could barely believe it. It’s just broken, just gone, just like that. How many times did I burn that place down? Four? Five? Unbelievable.”
“Asha did it,” Wren said. “She pulled the temple down. Set and Nethys came later.”
Gideon stared at her, though with a bit less amazement than before. “I see. So she really has learned to control the soul of the dragon? Asha, I mean.”
The girls nodded.
“Good for her,” he whispered.
“There’s more,” Wren said. “When Set killed Priya, a winged woman grabbed Omar and we think she took him down to someone called Lilith.”
Gideon‘s brow wrinkled. “Who is Omar?”
“You know, Grandfather!” Bastet said. “He’s been traveling with Wren, calling himself Omar Bakhoum.”
“Oh God, Bashir! Lilith has Bashir!” Gideon leapt up and turned to look at the center of the fountain with horror, as though it were a venomous serpent about to strike him. “We have to get him out of there!”
Bastet jumped in front of him. “It’s all right, we will, we will. But right now we need to wait for Asha and Anubis. They’re trying to figure out how Lilith turned everyone into monsters and things, so we can free them.”
