The two guards flanking the seated figure had already had their blades drawn when Heshtat had entered, but they made no move as he dropped to the floor. The one he had thought to use as a human shield stood at ease, posture relaxed and showing not even a hint of apprehension at Heshtat’s earlier actions, nor for the trickle of blood wending its way down from the nick on his neck.

  None of the three looked remotely concerned by the display, as if they were in complete control of the situation. Taking stock of their attire, he realised that they were. The pristine white cloaks, the gold-embroidered shendyts, the ornamental greaves sheathing their shins… it could mean only one thing.

  Tomb-Guard.

  He felt sick, his lungs somehow pressured within his chest and breathing suddenly ragged. He clambered to his feet once more, almost staggered but caught himself on the wall behind him. Straightened, finally, then looked to the figure seated at his desk.

  “Leave us,” said the hooded figure, though the garment did nothing to hide her from him.

  Heshtat knew her voice well. It was slightly deeper than he remembered, tinged with age and made jagged by life’s many tribulations, but it was unmistakably her. Queen, Presider, Arbiter of the province and a hundred other titles besides.

  He knew he should kneel again – properly this time – knew he should show deference, if not for her and the feelings he held within himself, then at least for her position. But his legs would not bend. He raised a hand to his face and realised it was shaking, and whether it was rage or shame, he could not say.

  The three guards tilted their heads in a show of respect and backed away, closing the door to his little hovel and leaving them undisturbed. Alone, for the first time in a decade.

  She raised her hood, shaking free her dark hair from where it had slipped over her face. He felt his hand twitch to intervene but forcefully stilled the motion. What was he planning to do? Brush her hair behind her ear like he had done so many—

  That thought was brushed aside by one of more import, though. Why was she here? The words slipped from his mouth, more a growl than a question, and he saw the soft smile freeze on her lips as she beheld his tone.

  “Tat-Tat—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “Don’t call me that!”

  He needed to move, needed to vent, needed to do something. His face felt hot, his chest tight. Dozens of memories flashed through his mind in an instant and all cut him, though none so deep as seeing the hurt on her face as his words rebounded off the walls of the small house. Had he been that loud?

  “I’m sorry, Cleo, that was…”

  “Unkind? Uncalled for? The refrain of a brutish and stupid man?” Her eyes danced, a faint smile on her lips once more, but there was a brittleness to it. He could tell it was forced, and his reaction had affected her more than she let on. Gods, this was complicated.

  “All three, yes,” Heshtat replied, though he couldn’t take the edge out of his voice no matter how he tried. Better to cut to the chase. “Why are you here?”

  Cleo—Queen Cleosiris, to all others—sat calmly at his table and looked around for a few more seconds before answering, seeming to investigate the little hovel that had been his home for the last few years. It made him itch; to have her here, looking through his things, judging him.

  “I need you, Heshtat,” she said, and he couldn’t hide his flinch. “The general left today—for good—and things have changed significantly.”

  He spun, muttering a curse and struggling to even look at her for a few moments. “How dare you?” he said, hands clenching, throwing her own words from so long ago back at her, though the feeling behind them was far from just a mimicry.

  She frowned in confusion before her face cleared once more, and it was her turn to wince. “No, no. That was… a poor choice of words,” she said with a grimace. Then she laughed; “Gods, this is so complicated!”

  She threw up her hands to the heavens as she said the last, as if begging for divine intervention to help her navigate the quagmire that lay between them. No help was forthcoming though; they were left alone with their earthly concerns. Strange, how those seemed the most pressing all of a sudden.

  “I have a task, and there is only one person I can trust for it…” she hesitated for a moment, and he took the chance to interject.

  “Do you not trust your Tomb Guard?” He flicked his head to the door, and the men on the other side of it.

  “It is not so simple,” she said with a sigh. “I am vulnerable, Heshtat. More so than you know now that the General has departed. There are few enough I can trust in the upper echelons of power here in Idib. I have heard disturbing rumours of late, and while I am investigating these claims, I cannot afford to send away some of the few people I have capable of operating in this city effectively. I need certainty.”

  “And I am the only one you can trust?” he asked. She didn’t answer for a moment, and he scoffed. “Or am I simply the only asset you’re willing to gamble away on an uncertain result.”

  Again, the words came out with more bitterness than he had meant them. Or perhaps they were delivered exactly as he felt, he simply didn’t want to admit it. Her only reply for a few long moments was the raising of a single delicate eyebrow above her silver eyes. They were rimmed in kohl, and the contrast was striking.

  “You don’t yet know what I am going to ask. Perhaps you are the only one I trust to see the task through? The only one I deem capable enough to see it done?” She delivered the words in a clipped tone, something like frustration leaking through towards the end. “Does that soothe your ego enough for you to listen?”

  Heshtat wanted to respond with anger, but he instead sighed and considered her words. He held so much regret for the past, for how things had turned out. While he was now wise enough to know that the stones had been stacked over years and that one conversation beneath the earth wasn’t the cause of it all… He still had learned his lessons from that fateful day. Or so he had thought.

  He was no longer an adept of Jb, but that did not mean he couldn’t steel his heart and push past the discomfort of his own emotions for a few moments. He was repeating the same patterns; irrational anger, likely misplaced to begin with, and a literal interpretation of her words without a good faith attempt to see where she was coming from. A younger Heshtat would likely have taken offence to her insult, but he had grown, had he not?

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  Instead of reacting with anger, he tried to break the tension with humour. “Perhaps I am simply a brutish and stupid man?”

  The smile felt fake on his face, but when her eyes widened and crinkled at their edges, it fell beneath notice.

  “We both know that is not true,” she said softly.

  They spent a few moments in careful silence, eyeing each other like one would a dangerous animal. Unpredictable. But isn’t that what he had once so loved about her? An awkward teenager he may have been, but she had always been a mystery to him. The inability to read her now, to know what she was thinking, was far less pleasant than he remembered.

  “Give me something more, Cleo,” he pressed. “I need a reason. I understand you can’t give me everything, but I need something more than vague allusions to secrets not yet discovered.”

  “I never wanted to banish you, you know,” she said softly. “I did everything I could to avoid it, but… Expectations have a weight to them, and only the strong can shrug them off.”

  She looked up at him once more, silver eyes standing out stark against her caramel skin. She had Numidean heritage on her mother’s side, and it fought hard to be seen in her complexion.

  “I lacked power when I inherited the throne of Idib. I know you always hated the politics, but you were at least aware of it, unlike some of the others. Captains cannot be ignorant of their charges’ positions, I suppose.” She looked away wistfully, though at what he couldn’t say—the walls of his apartment were bare. “The point is that what I ask of you can change that. Not just for my sake but for yours, too.”

  It was his turn to frown, but she saw it and pressed. “You know me, Heshtat. You know me. Do this for me, and I will finally have the power to make real changes. The exiled Tomb Guard will be reinstated, or pardoned at least—whatever they wish. I will right the crime that necessity forced upon us. Alongside a hundred other tasks, of course, but I will not forget this one. You have my word.”

  She paused for a moment, then smiled. “That is my solemn vow to you, Tat-Tat. If I break it? Well… Nek tchew a-a.”

  He reeled back, shocked by the ritual words. Then he barked a laugh. He was no scholar of the language of the gods, but he knew enough to recognise the epithet for the outrageous but strangely applicable declaration that it was. So very like Cleo, too; a powerful promise, wrapped in passionate profanity.

  “What is this task?” he asked, after he had mulled over her words for a time.

  She was silent for a few more moments, marshalling her thoughts. “The Eye of Amin-Ra… I want you to retrieve it.”

  “It’s a myth.”

  “No. It isn’t.” Her voice was firm, no smirk on her face. She was deadly serious and looked every inch the regal queen he’d seen from afar. “You’ve heard, I assume, that the Nikea has not been flooding the lower cataracts as usual?”

  Heshtat nodded. Even old Sobe knew that—he told anyone who would listen often enough that it was a herald of the end times. Something was always heralding the end times, in Heshtat’s experience. Though even he had to admit that things were far more dire in Amansi than he’d ever read of in the past. A foreign general occupying a city on the Nikea would have been unthinkable a few hundred years ago—for all their faults, the undying Pharaohs certainly seemed like the preferable alternative of the realities that he had seen and studied.

  “What you may not know is that this is because the upper nomes have not been flooded in over a century now—” She paused at his outburst and agreed a moment later. “Yes, fifty-year cycles have been the standard for millennia, as far as anyone can tell. The senior clerks and astrologers, not to mention the pompous cocks that make up the architectural guild, have been warning about the possible implications for years now, but there are few enough listening, at least with the power to help, that is.”

  He rolled his eyes, not entirely surprised. Cleo had inherited a province on the decline and had needed to make difficult choices to secure it for the future. The most difficult of those, in his view at least, had just departed by ship, apparently for good. Despite her brilliance, it had taken her most of a decade just to stabilise the situation and begin to reverse the decline, hence the heavy presence of crime-lords like Senusret still within the capital and working rather openly.

  “That’s bad news, but why is it relevant?” he asked.

  “It’s relevant,” she explained patiently, “because the temple of Amin-Ra has been discovered within the Nikea itself. An island has surfaced, visible for the first time in perhaps a thousand years due to the low water levels. On it stands the Creator’s temple.”

  “Where?” he asked, before thinking again. “And why are you so sure that it is the temple in truth, not some imposter or replica?”

  It was a fair question, considering the temple of Amin-Ra, and the Eye it was said to contain, were mythical in the literal sense—they were the only remaining links between the people of Amansi and their creator god, excepting perhaps the Otherworld, though that realm had taken on a life of its own in the thousand odd years since Amin-Ra had cleaved it from existence, and bared little resemblance to its original purpose.

  Cleo sucked her teeth and let out a sigh. “Above the lands of Khaemwaset—and that is only one of the many problems. Regarding your latter question; we have no special knowledge, but others do. The palace of Hefatiti was the first to notice, and they have sent many delegations to brave the temple, as our spies tell us. I do not know if the temple is real, but the Empty Throne certainly thinks so, as does Khaemwaset and his gaggle of planners.”

  “And you are sure of this? You trust this is not simply some political ploy?” he asked.

  She let the entirety of her attention settle on him, and for a moment he forgot he was speaking to his childhood friend. Instead, he stood across from the Arbiter of Idib province, queen of a hundred thousand souls and high adept of at least three distinct soul arts.

  “When the Immortal Pharaohs march on an ancient temple in force, one would do well to take notice.”

  Heshtat found himself unable to argue.

  ***

  Cleo left soon after. The closing of his door made the single candle on his desk flicker, and when it died, he was left alone in the dark. He felt suddenly empty.

  He shrugged out of his clothes and dumped them in the corner of the room. Travel-stained as they were, they’d need cleaning, but he had no energy or care left for that now. Gods, what a day. The revelations had come thick and fast, and he’d had no time to digest any before the next came along on a silver platter and forced him to consume further secrets that he shouldn’t be privy to.

  She had managed to mollify his concern that he was simply an expendable tool by telling him the other reason he had been chosen —the true one, in his opinion. Only those without existing channels to the divine could enter the Temple of Amin-Ra. That precluded all of her Tomb Guard, any of her advisors, and most of the competent help in the city. There weren’t many that had the necessary skills and experience to survive a trip across Amansi and through the lands of a rival pharaoh—one of the few remaining True Thrones, no less—not to mention delve deep into an ancient and likely dangerous tomb, let alone those without existing awakened aspects

  She’d then confirmed that the trip was likely to be fatal, and she couldn’t in good conscience send him on a mission like this against his will. That had put a downer on his burgeoning optimism.

  Laying on his bed, the cool light of the moon splayed across his torso painting the puckered flesh of various scars in silver against his bronzed skin. He traced a few idly, letting the memories of simpler times wash over him. Each had held potential for his death once. Was this so different? Sleep claimed him soon after, but his dreams were a mess of conflicting desires and confusing spectacles.

  He stood on the edge of the Nikea beside a vision of his former self, redolent with the power of cultivation and brimming with the vigour of youth. On the far bank stood an ushabti doll puppeted by strings ascending to the very heavens themselves. It called out to him with the voice of his former lover, exhorting him to cross, and despite Heshtat’s fear, his younger self strode forward. He crossed with ease, striding atop the waters themselves, but when Heshtat tried to follow, those same rushing waters turned red and rose about him. He was washed away in a crimson tide and deposited in a desert of perpetual twilight. Feline eyes blinked closed in the heavens above, and howls echoed through the night. It was empty in every direction save the tracks of his own footsteps leading off into the distance. He followed them, heading toward the burning horizon.

  Then the Waking World beckoned him back.