Asha looked sharply at the door to the street.
Lilith uses the needles to take out animal souls, and then she puts the needle inside the person she wants to change, just like injecting a drug, except she has to leave the needle inside the patient to control the transformation, otherwise the victim would become a raving monster. That’s why she always needs more needles.
It’s genius. Lilith has learned how to balance these three elements perfectly. The human soul, the animal soul, and the sun-steel needles.
“I know what she’s doing,” Asha said. She looked at Jiro. “She uses the needles to make her monsters. She used them to change Nethys and Set.”
“How?” asked Anubis.
“She stabs an animal, like an aardvark, with one of the needles. This puts the animal’s soul, or a portion of the soul, inside the needle,” Asha explained. “Then she puts the needle into her victim, sliding it under the skin, burying the animal soul inside the human soul.”
“Wouldn’t that transform the entire person?” Anubis asked. “Only Nethys’s arms and Set’s head have been changed.”
Asha shrugged. “Lilith knows something we don’t. Maybe she can control the extent of the change by placing the needles in her victims a certain way. Maybe she placed the aardvark needle in Set’s head, and a pair of bird needles in Nethys’s arms.”
“If that is true, then you can save these people,” Jiro said. “Simply remove the needles, and you remove the animal soul with it. The person will be restored.”
“Possibly.” Asha paused to think. “I would have to take the needle out very quickly to keep it from drawing out the person’s soul as well, but yes, I think that might work.”
“Then, you can save them?” Anubis asked. “All of them?”
“I think so,” she said.
“It will be difficult,” Jiro said. “You would have to subdue the creature first, before you can begin the procedure. Even then, it might take hours of surgery simply to find where the needle is buried in the flesh, let alone the skill needed to remove the needle safely.”
Asha nodded. “It will be difficult. You’ve worked with sun-steel, though. Do you have any tools that might help?”
Jiro made a noncommittal shrug. “I have many tools. I still have a small workshop in the house next door. But I can’t imagine using any of my tools to find or remove a needle from a living body.”
“I see,” Asha said.
Explore inside a body? Cutting people apart? Looking for something as small as a needle? Oh gods, Priya, don’t tell me I actually need a doctor’s help!
“Well, we should go.” Asha stood up. “Thank you for your time, Master Jiro.”
“I am only Jiro now,” the easterner said, rising to his feet. “And I apologize for drawing my blade earlier. I thought you were assassins sent by Lilith. I was mistaken. If there is anything else I can do to help you, or Master Omar, you need only ask. I did not approve of Rashaken’s dealings with Lilith, but I obeyed my orders all the same. It would honor me to have the opportunity to undo some of those mistakes.” He bowed his head to her.
Asha and Anubis left the small house by the harbor and headed back into the city.
“Why did you lie to him about your name?” she asked.
“There was no need to complicate our dealings with him,” Anubis said. “A learned man like him would undoubtedly know my name, and perhaps even suspect my connection to Set and Lilith. It’s simpler this way.”
It took most of an hour to cross back through the busy city streets, through the rising heat of the late morning and the rising noise and exhaust of the traffic. For the first brief while, Asha found herself staring all around at the colors and sounds, the creatures and machines, and the endless parade of peoples from all across Asia and Ifrica.
But eventually the exotic accents and instruments and engines just became a relentless noise, and the heat was just heat, and she stopped paying attention to the city at all. And for the rest of the walk, she simply felt the strange absence of Priya at her side, and wished that they were walking through a quiet forest glade, far away from any other people.
Finally they reached the dead-end street with the dusty fountain and Asha saw Wren and Bastet talking with a smiling young man wearing strange western clothes and a metal device strapped to his arm. A half dozen stray cats lay in the sun by their feet.
“Gideon,” she called as they walked down toward the fountain.
The immortal soldier glanced up and smiled a bit more brightly. “Asha!”
The greetings were brief, but the condolences over Priya were not. Asha saw the pain in Gideon’s eyes as he struggled to say just the right things about a woman he had only known for a few hours, and she thanked him for trying.
“What did Zahra tell you?” Bastet asked when Asha and Gideon finally sat down on the fountain wall.
“She told us that Lilith has been buying sun-steel from the Osirians,” Asha said. “And she pointed us to a retired Osirian, a smith, who made her orders. Needles. Hundreds and hundreds of sun-steel needles.”
“What for?” Gideon asked.
Asha quickly explained her theory of how Lilith was using the needles to embed the souls of animals inside her victims to transform and control them.
“My God.” Gideon rubbed his eyes. “You’re saying we need to capture the Aegyptians, tie them down or drug them, and then cut them open for hours on end while we dig through their bodies for these needles, and then yanked them out and hope we’re fast enough so it doesn’t kill them?”
“I think so,” Asha said. “This really isn’t my area of expertise. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life avoiding this sort of thing. Cutting people open, I mean. I always try to help people with medicines, therapies… gentler solutions than a knife.”
“Even if we found a surgeon who was skilled in this work,” Anubis said, “there’s no guarantee he would find the needles quickly, or remove them quickly. The patients would be kept in agony for hours, maybe days, and then they may still die.”
“Asha, do you think you could hear where the needles are?” Wren asked. “You know, with your ear?” She pointed to Asha’s right ear.
Asha touched the scaled skin through the curtain of her hair. “It’s possible, but I would have to be very close and the patient would have to be still and calm. And even then, I might not be able to tell where the invading soul is.”
“All right, well, what if we had another way to find the needle without cutting these people open?” Wren asked. “Like a compass or a magnet?”
Gideon shook his head. “Sun-steel isn’t magnetic. That was one of the first things I learned about it, way way back.”
“Well, we have to find Grandfather and the others first,” Bastet said. “We can worry about fixing everyone later.”
“You’re right,” Gideon said. “It’s time I scouted the undercity to find Bashir and see whether he’s even still human. You should all stay here for now. It’ll be safer that way.”
“No, I’m going with you,” Wren said. “I can help.”
“I know you can,” Asha said. “But this is very dangerous and right now all we need to is to find out where our friends are and whether we can reach them.”
“Dangerous?” Wren frowned. “I destroyed two fleets of warships at Constantia, as well as three airships, just using these bracelets and some aether. I can take care of myself.”
Everyone stared at her, except Anubis, who continued to gaze coolly at the wall in silence.
“Two fleets?” Gideon asked.
“By yourself?” Bastet added.
“It doesn’t matter,” Asha said. “Gideon and I will go down there, and the rest of you will wait here.”
“Right,” Bastet said. “Except for me. I’m going to go find a friend of mine who might know something about finding sun-steel needles.”
Asha paused. “All right, fine. Just be careful.”
