It nods.
Do you have a name? Tell me softly, if so. Knowing, having a word that the iunctii identifies as itself, seems to help.
It opens its mouth, and a faint, wavering groan comes out. I clench my fists. I can’t risk looking, but it sounds as though it has no tongue.
Then, to my wary surprise, it uses its burning obsidian blade to illuminate something on the nape of its neck. A tattoo. Neat and small and black. I look closer.
Duodecim is your name?I grimace as it nods. Written out rather than the number, but it means “twelve” in Vetusian. I doubt it’s a birth name.Check the next few tombs without looking at me, Duodecim. Do it as slowly as you can without arousing suspicion. I can’t risk it laying eyes on us in case Ka is watching through them.
I wait until Duodecim has moved obediently away before whispering into the renewed darkness. “It worked.”
Caeror and Tash’s silhouettes emerge from behind the sarcophagus, and I feel as much as hear my friend’s excitement as he grips my shoulder in enthusiastic celebration. “Welldone.”
“Now we just need you two safe. I could tell the Gleaner to distract the others in front of the garden, draw them away so you can—”
“No.” Caeror’s interruption is gentle. The creature in the tomb over finishes its checking quicker than I’d have liked and emerges, red light temporarily splaying over us as it moves to the next. Caeror’s expression is taut but sure as the darkness reclaims it. “Too risky. They’ll know something’s wrong, and you getting into Duat is too important.”
“Then what?”
“I have an idea, but we don’t have time for explanations. Every second we wait is one that the other Gleaners might notice this one’s missing.” He unloops his Vitaerium from his arm, presses it into my hand. “You’re going to need this.”
I shove it away. “So are you.”
“There are a couple of spares past the garden. And if I can’t get in there in the next hour, I’m dead anyway. But if you want to survive what you’re planning …”
I hesitate, caught between the need to argue and the frustration of knowing I can’t. I conceal his Vitaerium and then mine by strapping them to my thigh, shivering at the fresh flush of power. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I’ll take my job over yours.” He chuckles shakily. As terrified as I feel. His rictus grin briefly lit crimson again as the Gleaner slides to the next tomb over. “And Vis? What you’re about to do? It’s all that matters. You have a chance to save the people we love. You have a chance to saveworlds, and if there was anyone I would choose to give that responsibility to, it is you.”
He embraces me briefly and fiercely, then rips himself away and retreats with Tash into the darkness of Qabr.
I am left alone in the shadowed archway, and though I know what I have to do next, fear arrests me.
A pain promised is often worse than pain itself, my mother used to say. Dread anticipation makes me vacillate, red light ebbing and receding as Duodecim moves on yet again. I surely don’t have long before its absence becomes suspicious.
I retreat into the tomb. Focus on the link in my mind.
Come back and search the first tomb again, Duodecim. I crouch down behind the sarcophagus.Look thoroughly, and when you find me, act as you normally would, but stab me so that I survive. Make sure it looks to anyone watching that you’ve killed me. I convey the spot on my chest I think it should aim for. Missing lungs and arteries. Not obviously far from my heart.Then put me with the other bodies and when it is time, make sure to get me to Duat alive.
Seconds pass. Then red light slinks into the room. Creeps across the stone. I huddle farther into the shadows of the sarcophagus, despite myself. Mouth dry. Breath painfully short. I am living a nightmare from which there is no waking.
The Gleaner fills my view, its red blades blinding. I scramble back. Fiercely resist the urge to change my mind, to command it just to leave and hope I can find another way. Caeror is gone and everyone else here is dead. This is my only chance not just of getting into Duat, but survival.
It strides forward and I put my hands out in an instinctive defence; it bats them away, slicing deep, leaving stinging gashes across my arms that match the wounds of those I saw earlier.
Then it raises its granite blade and with a smooth, swift motion, spears it into me.
I try with everything I can not to react and yet still release an agonised, shocked shriek. Fire pulses through my chest. I taste blood as I bite down on my tongue, reducing the sound to a low moan. True panic clouds my mind along with the pain. This won’t work. Thiswon’t work.
I am being picked up by my skewer; the blade cuts deeper and a soft moan escapes my lips. Every muscle screams against the instinct to bunch up, to shift and try to ease the injury the blade through me is doing. But I do all I can to school myself to stillness. Take a shaky, shallow breath, though even that allows the razor edge of the stone to cut new slices in my flesh. The pain is still there but it’s encroached upon. Not fading, but more overwhelmed by the rush of fresh vitality that flows from the blade into me. Through me. Pooling around the injury, in particular, and sealing it as best it can. The worst of the agony suddenly washes away, even if the burning remains a searing discomfort.
I allow myself to go limp.Let me see through your eyes, Duodecim.
The stomach-churning twist of vision, the disconnect between what I’mseeing and what my body is doing. But I’ve practiced this too. I watch as the Gleaner dispassionately delivers my bloodied form to the line, pulling its burning blade from my chest and then rising, rejoining its peers in guarding the space again.
I lie there. Seeing myself distant below. My Vitaeria keep me awake, keep the wound from being fatal. Every breath is cautiously shallow and strained and agonising. At least one rib is cracked. Cuts that are smaller only relative to the chest wound cover my arms. Bright red lines that refuse to bleed, thanks to the imbued Will in me.
I feel obvious, but none of the other Gleaners even glance at me, their questioning of the dead apparently done with for now. There is pain for longer than I can say, and then movement. Other Gleaners, collecting some of the far forms.
