it the wrong way, but it was their choice. But now you’re here too. Underground. In the dark.”
“Don’t be thick,” she said. “I don’t care about palaces and treasures anymore. I care about my work, something you taught me, as I recall. And this is the ideal place for me to carry on. Plenty of aether, a source of unrefined sun-steel, and an endless supply of live raw materials.” She cast a cruel smile at the young woman with the tentacle-arms.
“To what end?” Omar closed his eyes and rested his head back on the hard edges of the straps and buckles around his neck. “I mean, what’s the point? In a hundred years, or a thousand, what are you hoping to accomplish with all this? Where is it all going?”
“I don’t know,” Lilith said. She sat down sideways in a large wooden chair beside him and draped her legs over the arm. “I really don’t. Knowledge for its own sake, I suppose. What is possible? What’s waiting for us? It’s a mystery, and I enjoy mysteries.”
“Knowledge is all well and good, but using it to torture these people is not at all well or good,” Omar said. “If you can’t learn without hurting people, then you shouldn’t be learning.”
Lilith sighed. “Is there really any difference whether this girl lives fifty years up there or five days down here, with arms or with tentacles? Is there really? She’ll die either way and history will forget she ever existed. At least this way, her life contributes to something larger. To knowledge. To the future.”
Omar rolled his eyes.
Was this really me? Did I put these thoughts in her head and these words in her mouth?
“When I first set out to learn about souls, and to invent immortality, as it were,” Omar said slowly. “I didn’t experiment on people. I didn’t even experiment on animals.”
“No, you experimented on yourself,” Lilith said. “And a noble effort it was, too. Fortunately, you managed to stumble upon exactly what you were looking for before you killed yourself, or devolved into some sort of hairy little beastie.”
Omar sighed. “You’re not listening.”
“I am listening. You’re just not saying anything I haven’t heard before, or thought of before. I’m not stupid, Bashir,” she said. “I’m not blinded by ambition or twisted by my immortal pride, or whatever it is you’re thinking right now.”
“I’m thinking that being physically tortured was less tortuous than listening to you justify torturing others,” he said. “Yes, you’re very clever, and yes, you’ve done remarkable things, and no, I don’t care about any of that. You’re a monster, living in a cave, making monsters.”
She stood up and leaned over him, her lovely face hovering just above his. “You made me first,” she whispered.
“I know,” he whispered back. “And I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m not.” She pushed away from him and crossed the room to a table covered in mismatched plates and glasses of mostly fresh fruits and breads, and she began to pick and nibble at the stolen feast. “So tell me, old man, when exactly did you have this little change of heart? I know you were still making immortals up in Rus five hundred years ago, so it must have been later than that.”
“Actually,” Omar said, “it was only a few weeks ago. Those two immortals in Rus were… a mistake. A terrible mistake. I found them in Constantia this past winter, and they were, just, well, out of control. Koschei had become a butcher, and Yaga had some sort of breakdown. He just wanted to kill, and she just wanted to die.”
“So what happened to them?”
“I killed Koschei,” Omar said softly. “And Yaga killed herself.”
Lilith sighed. “So you made a mistake. Who hasn’t? We may be immortal, but we are still only human. I make mistakes all the time. It’s called learning. It’s also called science.”
“No, this isn’t science.” Omar stared up at the blank stone ceiling. “This isn’t even philosophy. This is just a handful of people who can’t die, making the world worse instead of better. Hurting people instead of helping people. I never wanted it to turn out this way. I never imagined it would turn out this way. But here we are.”
“I see. And since you’ve had this little crisis of faith, all of a month ago, the rest of us have to pay the price for your guilty conscience?” She paced back toward him with a crust of brown bread in her hand, and she broke off small pieces to nibble one by one. “Is that why you came back to Alexandria? To kill off your little cult of Osiris, and then to kill the immortal Aegyptians, too? Tell me. Were you planning to stab little Bastet in the chest or in the back?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh? So you weren’t planning to kill her? Who exactly were you planning to kill? Me, obviously. What about Gideon and Nadira?”
Omar tried to move his hand to rub his eyes, but the shackles kept his hand up above his head. “I don’t want to kill anyone. I just want to undo what I’ve done. Yes, I came to dismantle the temple and destroy the sun-steel. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to kill anyone in the process. Yes, I knew it might be necessary, but I still hoped otherwise.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now?” Omar shrugged. “Now I’m chained to a table, and you have my seireiken, and unless you plan to kill me with it, I expect I’m going to be here for a very long time.”
Lilith glanced over at the sheathed sword leaning in the corner. Then she pranced gracefully over to it and swept it up in her arms and danced back to the table to present it to Omar. “Your sword, sir.”
He sighed.
“Oh, don’t be gloomy.” Lilith took the grip of the seireiken in one hand and the scabbard in the other, and gently slid them apart, revealing a small section of the blade. The charged sun-steel shone with a blinding white light, and tiny crackles of electric energy writhed across its surface. “Pretty.”
She shoved the sword back in and tossed it aside, letting it crash and clatter on the stone floor. “But I don’t want to kill you. I want to talk more.”
“Why Set and Nethys, and the others?” Omar asked. He had only glimpsed them briefly, in quick flashes of torchlight and starlight, as Nethys had carried him upside down, winging through the streets of Alexandria, and then hurling him down into the darkness of the undercity. And then there had been the chaos when the Indian woman showed up, dressed in her golden scales, and he had seen Horus and Isis, with their feathers and horns. “Why do this to them? They’ve never hurt you, have they? And they’re the few people in this world who understand what it means to be immortal. They could have been your friends, your family.”
Lilith shrugged. “I like them better as my servants. More predictable. And more helpful, too. But most of all, they don’t burn out or fall apart. Souls can be slippery things, and striking the perfect stability between the native soul, the invading soul, and the balancing agent can be so difficult sometimes. Using an immortal makes all of that so much easier.”
Omar shook his head slowly. “I’m so sorry, Lilith. I’m sorry for all of it. For you, and for them.” He paused. “What are you using for a balancing agent?”
“What’s this? Now you’re interested in my work?”
“I’m chained to a table with nothing to look at but a gray ceiling and your gorgeous eyes,” he said blandly. “So yes, I’m interested.”
She smiled. “I’ll show you.” She disappeared from his field of view for a few moments, though he could hear her in the next room, moving small metal and glass objects around so that they clinked and clicked softly together. And then she returned and leaned over him, and held up a small golden needle.
“A sun-steel needle?” He peered at it.
So small, so thin. Probably about the same weight as Wren’s ring.
“Exactly.” She rolled the tiny needle between her thumb and finger, letting it catch the light. “The needle draws out the aether from the animal’s blood, along with the soul I want. Careful timing allows me to control exactly how much the soul I take. And then I just insert the needle into the patient.” Lilith reached over and began rolling down his sleeve to expose his forearm. “Very simple, clean, and safe. Nothing left to chance. The placement of the needle and the size of the soul fragment allow me to target and limit the extent of the transformation.”
Omar eyed his bare arm and the needle in her hand. “I’d love to see your notes, if you have them handy. Your journal, perhaps?”
“Notes later. Demonstration first.” She smiled and leaned over him, brushing his lips lightly with her own. She whispered, “I still remember, you know. I remember what it was like to have you inside me, to hold you, to feel
