I flinch, hand straying for a weapon I don’t have, as a figure appears from the same shadows Netiqret had concealed herself within. My concern only abates a little as I recognise the small form, long braided hair looping over her face. “Gods. What isKiyadoing here?”
“We need her. Come on. We don’t have much time.”
I stay planted in place. “Need her for what?”
“Siamun. I have spent a great deal of capital in ensuring that this hallway is unattended, tonight. But we have minutes, not hours.” She stares at me with stony resolve, then starts ushering Kiya down the stairs.
I grit my teeth but, left with little choice, follow.
“There really won’t be any Overseers on guard?” I ask it to the back of her head as I descend. My voice echoes off the obsidian walls.
“Not down here. Any closer than the hallway above, and they can become unstable.”
“Unstable?”
Silence, then, “Dangerous. To the iunctii down here, as well as the living.”
I frown. Has Kiya told her this? Netiqret has been cagey about how she knows so much, but since my conversation with the small iunctus, I’ve suspected.
We come to the end of the stairs, which flatten out into a short corridor with a sealed obsidian door at the end. Netiqret shepherds Kiya over to it and then waits patiently as the young girl begins pointing out symbols around the doorframe, which Netiqret confidently presses. Not four or five as I’ve come to expect, but a full dozen in quick, careful succession, each one lighting up an ominous green.
And then the door folds away.
“This is the Nomarch,” says Netiqret, somewhat unnecessarily, as Kiya wanders unfazed ahead of her.
The hall before us is vast; for as far as my eyes can see, lines upon lines upon lines of prone bodies are arrayed, each one lying atop its own obsidian slab edged in pulsing green. They stretch away not only into the distance but upward for hundreds of feet as well, stacked atop one another on the ledges of parallel black walls that cut the space ahead into narrow pathways.
Every single one of the green-tinged forms, barely clad in strips of thin linen, is motionless. Eyes closed. As if they are sleeping.
“Clothed. Not stabbed. Maybe even still have their eyes. Could be worse,” I mutter uneasily to myself. Astounding in scope, undoubtedly. But not entirely unfamiliar.
Netiqret’s been watching me with a frown. “You’ve seen a Nomarch before?” Probably, I imagine, expecting a more perturbed reaction than this.
“No. Not exactly.” I keep gazing around, brow furrowed, trying to find where the lines of bodies end. I can’t. “It was smaller. A room … I don’t know. Still big, but tiny compared to this. There were a couple of hundred of iunctiiin there, maybe.” I decide not to mention the blades, or the fact they were all naked and eyeless.
“Where?”
“In some old ruins. A long way from here.”
Netiqret looks fascinated, even as she urges me forward again, between the lines of bodies. “There are smaller Nomarchs in the other cities, but I’ve never heard of anything elsewhere. What did they do?”
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know, exactly. My friend thought they were a kind of key, made to circumvent security made by Ka.”
“They must have been linked in somehow, then. At least tangentially integrated. Even a couple of hundred … that’s a complex system. Where did you say it was, exactly?”
“I didn’t. You seem to know a lot about it?”
Netiqret decides her secrets are more valuable than mine, and doesn’t answer. A strange, energetic air to her as she presses on, Kiya matching her pace at a stiff trot. “This hall houses the bulk of the iunctii down here,” she explains from in front of me as we hurry along. She moves with assurance, seems unaffected by our surrounds. “We have to get to the central chamber. Theib. There will only be a dozen or so in there.” Something about the last part sounds reluctant.
I watch her. Her nerves are revealing more than she wants, I suspect. She’s too thoughtless in her movements, too confident in the way she navigates.
She knows this place.
I’m not sure what to do with that information, just yet. But it’s more than I’ve had since we met.
It’s not long before an archway reflects dark emerald up ahead between the rows of the dead, set into an obsidian structure with a flat roof and sloping sides. Golden light spills from its interior, warm against the cool greens surrounding it. It’s ten feet high, if that. Perhaps thirty across. Beyond, I can see walls of eerily lit iunctii continuing to stretch away.
“Theib. These are the ones who can make a difference,” says Netiqret, her pace increasing. No hiding her eagerness, now.
