“You need her.”
“I need her,” I agree.
Another long pause, and then he nods. Seems to break from his sombreness and introspection, just a little. “Then we need her.” He gives me a tight smile, and the tension eases from the room. “So. Did you see the funeral?”
“We even went into the Temple of Ka.”
“You got into the courtyard? You saw Ophois open the gates to the west?” He sighs regretfully when I nod. “I saw it once, as a child. I always meant to go again.”
“You obviously did.”
He pauses, and then chuckles. “True. But I didn’t much get to appreciate it, the second time.”
A lull. I gaze at my dim reflection in the metal in my hand. “What was it like?”
“Dying?”
“Dying.” I’ve wondered, plenty of times, since we met. Have thought about asking before. “Sorry. I don’t know if that’s rude, or …”
“No. Not rude.” He’s contemplative. “You know something’s wrong. Something’s different. I was ill, but I’d been ill before and this felt … worse. Not in terms of the pain. It wasn’t even that painful. But I could feel my body not resisting. I could feel it giving in. I wanted it to fight, but it just wouldn’t.” He says it all in a vaguely melancholy murmur. Like it’s the first time he’s really thought about it. “Then there’s a point where you know everything is stopping and you start to panic, you want to call out and get help, but you physically can’t. And then that fades and it’s like going to sleep. You’re tired,and there’s just … nothing.” He glances up at me. “Not until you wake up again.”
“Were you happy when you did?”
He dips his head. “For a time,” he says softly. “You start out knowing that even without the promise of the Field of Reeds, the work needs to be done for those remaining in the east. The three-and-thirty years is a sacrifice most are willing to make, and I believed—we all believed—that Ka would not bring anyone back who was not worthy of the task.” He shakes his head. “Then, the days start to drag. You begin to feel less than you were. You begin to feel trapped, and you wonder if maybe there’s a kind of beauty in simply fulfilling a purpose, and resting. But then you fear, because those thoughts are profane, and the profane do not reach Aaru. You hate yourself for your doubt. So you keep going.” He finishes quietly, staring at the bodies on the ground.
Neither of us say anything for a while. I regret asking the question; we have strayed too far into a topic that Ahmose still struggles with. It took him a long time to accept that Aaru, the Field of Reeds, is just another of Ka’s lies. A false promise of paradise to coax everyone into line. Even now, I can see the vestiges of anger and dismay warring on his face.
Eventually, I stir. Decide to move the conversation on. “Have you seen Kiya, since the attack?”
“No. Not since you left. I imagine Netiqret told her to stay locked in her room.” Bitterness at the last part.
“I haven’t seen a iunctus as young as her before.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Nor I. There are no children in the west.” The observation seems to draw him out, just a little. “There is an assumption that if a child dies, they are taken straight on to the Field of Reeds. Netiqret would not be able to take her out often, I would imagine. It would risk …”
He trails off as we hear footsteps on the stairs; a few moments later, Netiqret herself appears. She crosses her arms and purses her lips as she surveys the gore and damage, apparently not having overheard anything of our conversation. “What a mess,” she mutters. Her gaze goes to Ahmose. “I apologise for what happened. They were instructed not to harm you.”
His eyes widen slightly at the concession, and even I admit to a flicker of surprise. Ahmose has assured me previously that the living never, ever apologise to Westerners. “I understand.” Deferent to a fault, even in this.
Netiqret nods brusquely, then turns to me. Examining me with an uncomfortably assessing stare for much longer than I’d like.
“I have a way in, and it’s only a few months away,” she says eventually.
I see her hesitation. “But?”
Her lips, for some reason, quirk in wry amusement.
“But you’re not going to like it.”
XLII
I HAVE HEARD, AND TOLD, MORE LIES THAN I CAN COUNTover the past few years, and as antithetical as it seems, they often benefit from the outrageous. Sometimes the selling of a lie is in its absurdity, in making it so extreme that it must surely be true because by its nature, no one would be so bold or so foolish to fabricate it.
I know this. I have done this. I still cannot believe Veridius is lying.
Dusk, and the cooler air and blurred outlines it brings, drapes the hemmed-in sanctuary of the Academy’s Quadrum. We walk a slow circuit around its white, silent edges. Past the torchlit Bibliotheca, and the gymnasium, and the Curia Doctrina once again. The stillness makes it a hollow corpse of my time here. Veridius and Aequa and Eidhin keep careful step with me. Watch me. As if I might break.
“Stop if you need to,” says Veridius gently as I falter a step.
