And then with a shouting, panicked gasp I am back and though I am no different and the object in my hand looks dormant, I can feel the vibratingthrumwithin it.
I almost drop the crook but manage to keep my grasp, fearful it will bounce into the throbbing pool behind. I stare at it for a second. Five. There is nothing more.
Licking my lips, I take the flail in my left hand. I’m braced but there’s no reaction, this time. What did I just see? It felt likeme. Not like a memory I never had, but like something I was genuinely experiencing, right then.
The other versions of me? That was Aequa, at the end. I’m certain of it. She looked older. Wearier.
In trouble.
I dwell for a little longer but in the end, I see no way to know, and though I let go of the crook and flail and try again, I cannot repeat the experience. Still. These have to be what Caeror—or his former mentor, anyway—was talking about. Theymustbe something to do with my being Synchronous.
I take a last look at the submerged sarcophagus and then walk back outside,unconscious relief easing taut muscles as I leave the unrelenting visual pressure of the room behind. After a moment, I shut the door, too.
Caeror was probably right about Nofret and her “curse.” But there’s no point in taking chances.
Once I’m back in the obsidian hallway, I hold up the two implements. Examine them. Finely crafted, entirely impractical. Weighty enough to make good blunt instruments, perhaps, but whatever power they contain seems … internalised.
I tap the crook against the unbreakable dark stone of the corridor. Nothing happens.
“Rotting gods. Come on.” I try again, harder this time. I’m rewarded only with a metallicthunkand ricocheting vibration up my right arm. Not even a chip in the façade. “Vek.”
Caeror—or Yusef, anyway—believed there was a weapon in that room that could usemutalisto break even this surface. It’s the only reason I came back here.
I chew my lip. Examine the hilts of both implements, try to see if any of the glyphs stir a memory. My understanding of them is still shaky, but it has improved after my time in Duat.
I see the union symbol. The glyph that indicates the number three.
And then, father down, one more that I recognise.
Blood.
I look closer. It appears on both crook and flail. Caeror and I had a long discussion about the possible importance of blood, once. Why an Instruction Blade had to pierce the heart. Why, during the naumachia, the stylus had needed my blood to protect me—and why, afterward, the man from Military took some of it to test.
I draw the stone knife I found earlier. Lightly nick the edge of my finger, so that a red droplet beads there. Surely this won’t work.
I smear it on the hilt of the crook.
There is ahiss. Steam, as if the handle is red-hot and the liquid is evaporating.
The crook pulses and flickers to life in my hand.
“Vek!” I shout it, startled, flicking the weapon away from me in instinctive panic. It strikes the polished black of the wall.
Thrum.
And the hallway explodes.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG HAS PASSED WHEN I WAKE, FUriously coughing grit from my lungs and groaning my way to my knees. I am covered with loose rubble, and wisps of fine dust still curl across through the last vestiges of the torch that threatens to gutter out on the wall farther down.
I use the sleeve of my tunic to breathe, and stagger to my feet. Shards of obsidian ripped into my arms and legs, opening slices along them, but it’s all superficial, and my face seems to have escaped unscathed. I blink more dust from my watering eyes and spot the crook poking from the crumbled remnants of the black wall. No longer flickering. I stumble over to it and, with delicate caution, touch the glimmering gold.
Nothing happens.
“Rotting gods,” I mutter in a rasp, picking it up with great care not to brush it against any of my myriad cuts. It’s dusty, but no sign of damage. “Rotting gods-damnedgods.”
Well. This is, I suppose, what I need.
I find my way back out into Qabr proper and practice for another hour, after that. Cautiously at first but with increasing confidence as I test the odd weapons’ limitations. They operate independently but in exactly the same manner, absorbing blood in order to activate. The amount of blood seems to matter, with greater amounts activating them for longer, but not increasing their intensity in any way. I soon find that if I keep an open cut pressed against the gold, it stays pulsing and buzzing and destructively potent for as long as I choose to hold it.
