“Maybe.” Anubis crossed his arms and frowned.
Asha said, “Well, it’s an idea. Do any of you know how to break souls and move them around into other people?”
They all shook their heads.
“Grandfather was very careful with his secrets,” Anubis said.
Asha sighed. “Very well then. Tomorrow, we’ll go down to the undercity and see for ourselves. Perhaps I can find a way to save Omar and the others.”
They all nodded glumly.
“Do you have somewhere to sleep?” Bastet asked.
“No,” Wren said.
“Then you’ll stay with me.” The Aegyptian girl smiled. “It’ll be fun.”
Anubis grunted and stepped away from them. “I will see you in the morning, then.” He nodded curtly, and cracked the butt of his staff on the street, and his entire body shattered into a white mist, which blew away on the evening breeze.
Asha and Wren stared, their mouths hanging open.
“Oh, right,” Bastet said with a giggle. “That’s a little trick he and I learned. We’re the only ones who can do it, so far. Don’t worry though, it’s not a long walk back to my place.”
The young girl grabbed Wren’s hand and started off down the road back toward the intersection. Asha slipped down from the fountain wall and followed them slowly. She glanced back once at the silent stone fish, but the fountain gave no hint of what might lie beneath it, so she turned back again to catch up with the others.
Immortals. Monsters. Gods. What sort of place is this?
Bastet led them back down the main thoroughfare in the direction of the new temples and the new palaces, the large gated estates where elegant colonnaded mansions sat amidst vast flowering gardens, and where all manners of soldiers and guards paced quietly through the shadows, ever vigilant against the threat of thieves and assassins.
The eager young girl with the cat mask on her head trotted down a small side street to an old watch tower between two fine houses. A rusty chain hung across the rusty iron grate on the door, but Bastet merely drifted through the iron bars as a shimmering mist and appeared on the far side. “One moment!”
She fiddled with the lock and the chain, and the grate swung open, allowing Wren and Asha to enter while Bastet relocked the door. Inside, they climbed a sturdy stone stair and found themselves on a landing high above the street overlooking the two neighboring houses with the Middle Sea sparkling in the moonlight to the north and to the west they saw the great white eye of the enormous lighthouse sweeping across the horizons.
The room itself was filled with pillows and blankets from wall to wall, so that every place was a bed and every bed was decadently soft and inviting.
Bastet curled up in one corner of the room, covered in soft fabrics of every color. “Asha?”
Asha sat down in the opposite corner and set her bag aside. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry about your friend. The blind lady. I saw what happened. I’m really sorry.”
Asha nodded and whispered, “Thank you.”
Strange. I passed an entire hour without thinking about Priya on the very day that she died. It’s already begun. My life after Priya. My life without her. And I didn’t even notice.
Wren sat down gingerly in her own corner, moving carefully as though she was afraid her shoes might tear the huge nest of bedding.
“Good night, Wren,” Asha said. “And don’t worry. We’ll find your friend soon. And if we don’t, then you can come back to India with me, if you want. But either way, I don’t want you to worry about being alone. All right?”
“All right.” Wren hesitated, and then said, “Asha, are you serious? About going to India?”
Asha shrugged. “Perhaps.”
Wren paused. “Good night.”
“Good night.”
Chapter 6
Asha woke the next morning from a dreamless sleep and sat up, squinting around the huge bed in some small state of confusion. Gradually the memories settled back in. Priya and Omar. Wren and Bastet. The tower. She looked over at Jagdish curled up in the dark red mass of the northern girl’s hair.
Little traitor.
She stood and stretched, and leaned out one of the narrow unglazed windows to look out over the bright blue waters of the Middle Sea sparkling in the early morning sunlight. Gulls were crying and steamers were tooting and all around her rose the chorus and chaos of life. People were already up and about, working and playing, fighting and laughing. Animals lumbered through the streets, and Asha’s golden ear heard the patters and thrums of their souls, some huge and rhythmic and deep, and others small and melodic and light. It was a dull storm of noise, not unlike standing in the middle of a crowded marketplace filled with voices speaking strange languages and musical instruments playing out of tune and out of time with each other.
Asha remembered a time when the soul-sounds were oppressive, when they drove her out of cities, even out of small villages, leaving her to wander the wilderness alone where she could hear her own thoughts. But time had overcome that pain and distraction, and she had learned to cope with the noises of cities, and now it all merely roared quietly in her golden ear and did not trouble her at all.
Bastet slept curled up in a tight ball on her side, wrapped up in her blankets, and sighing softly into her shining black hair. Wren, on the other hand, lay sprawled on her back with the blankets kicked off, the side of her face shining with drool, and a growling snore marking her every exhalation.
Asha shook her head.
That was me, once.
She turned back to the window to watch the tiny boats sailing out from the harbor, the little fishermen cutting through the water alongside the massive freighters and trawlers.
Priya, where are you? Are you sleeping in the earth, or in the sky? Will you ever wake up and walk in the world again? I suppose you will, some day. Your soul was so strong, so vital, and so loud. I don’t think I ever told you that. I should have.
And when you do wake up, I know you’ll find someone else to help. Someone else to teach. And you should. But, if there’s time, if you can find me, then find me. Please.
She sighed and pulled back from the window, lost her balance on the soft carpet of pillows and fell back into a pair of strong arms.
“Careful,” Anubis said softly.
“Thank you.” Asha stood up and looked at him, and then at the entrance to the stairs. “You didn’t come in through the door, did you?”
“No.” He raised an eyebrow, and turned to wake his little cousin.
Asha woke Wren, and when everyone was done stretching and wiping their eyes, Anubis said, “I went back to the fountain at dawn to check on the entrance, and I found an old friend of ours there, waiting. But he can wait a little longer. I had a thought last night. Zahra.”
Bastet scrunched up her face into a thoughtful pout. “You want to talk to her? Really?”
“We need to learn more about how Lilith has been transforming people into slaves and beasts,” Anubis said. “But at the moment, all we know is that she needed sun-steel for her soul-breaking, and that she got her sun-steel from the Temple of Osiris.”
“Too bad we can’t ask the Sons of Osiris about her,” Bastet said.
“Sorry,” Asha said, without a trace of regret in her voice.
“Don’t be. Not all of them died when the temple fell,” Anubis said. “There is a place where they often go to do business with foreigners. The Cat’s Eye. The woman who runs this establishment may know something valuable about the Osirians, or the sun-steel, or Lilith. I thought we might visit her this morning before she opens her doors to her usual clientele. It will be quiet now. Less chance of trouble.”
Asha nodded. “All right. But if it’s a dangerous place, I don’t want Wren to come.”
“Agreed.” Anubis looked at the younger girls. “The two of you might want to go back to the fountain and keep our wayward friend company until Asha and I return.”