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Rae

Rae stood barefoot at the river’s edge, watching the boats sail by as the sun set. She would have preferred to sit, but the fresh arrow wound in her hip made that somewhat difficult.

With the cool breeze blowing across her skin and the sound of the river rushing past, it should have been peaceful. But inside Rae’s mind, she was still in the Garden of the Dead. Still running for her life, still hiding and bleeding in the dark as men fell like reaped wheat around her. She saw it all—the bodies, the open, staring eyes, Asim’s severed head—every time she closed her eyes.

In a way, she never left that place.

She wondered if she ever would.

A sudden noise made her jump—but it was only the clack of the cattle gate closing. Her father had finished taking care of the zebu for the night.

“Come inside, Raetawy,” he said, approaching. “You need rest.”

When she got home from the Horizon meeting the night before, despite the ungodly hour, her father had been awake. He’d been sitting at their eating table when she’d stumbled in, dirty, tearstained, with an arrow sticking out of her rear end. Upon seeing her, he had simply gotten up and started gathering ointment and bandages.

Luckily, the healer had left enough supplies behind after her encounter with the nomarch to take care of this injury too. Ankhu hadn’t said more than a handful of words the entire time and didn’t question what had happened. When he was done patching her up, he’d helped her down onto her sleeping mat, and then settled onto his own. Sleepless, she’d watched him doze fitfully in the moonlight, his good hand reaching toward something in a dream.

The arrow wound hurt very badly—but the despair on her father’s face that night hurt more.

When he reached the riverbank, Ankhu stopped to lean against the wooden staff he used to encourage the zebu to go into their pen. His bare chest was leathery from work in the sun and his rough schenti was speckled with mud. There was something about him that reminded her of Asim—two hard-bitten men, relics of another time, protecting what little was left to them. It was no wonder she’d taken to the rebel leader so quickly.

A fresh wave of grief washed over her.

It was better not to think of Asim.

Her father spoke quietly. “I know what happened last night. One of the fishermen told me. His son…” He was silent for a long moment before finishing. “Many are mourning today. I’m grateful not to be one of them.”

Rae wanted him to be angry. To shout at her and punish her for sneaking out and nearly getting herself killed.

Again.

But he just sounded tired.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Ankhu flinched as if from a blow and shook his head. “What are you going to do now?” The apology dangled in the air between them, unacknowledged.

Rae looked back at the river and the sun melting onto the horizon. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how the rebellion will survive without Asim. But it has to! Especially after the news I overheard last night. The nomarch’s men said that the pharaoh is dead.”

Ankhu’s eyes widened. “Dead?”

Rae nodded. “His son Meryamun will soon be crowned—and he sounds even worse than Amunmose himself. He’s not yet on the throne, and already he sends word to slaughter us. Last night was only the beginning. The new king means to quash any hint at rebellion in Sakesh. Unless we do something, the small freedoms we still enjoy here may soon be gone.”

Ankhu dropped his head and sighed. “You mustn’t take this burden onto yourself, Rae. We have survived hardship before, and we’ll do it again—as long as we stay together.”

“I don’t know if I can let this go, Yati,” Rae murmured, her voice unsteady. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see what happened.”

“I’ve seen plenty , Raetawy,” Ankhu said harshly. “Plenty and enough to know that if you continue on this path, the person you are now will be lost. War changes you. Do you understand? Violence changes you. Once you’ve visited that bleak country, there’s no coming back.” He leaned the staff against his chest so he could grasp her shoulder with his hand. “Please, we can talk about this more inside. It’s getting dark.”

“Not yet.”

Her father sighed but didn’t argue. She turned back to the river and listened to his slow footsteps recede.

The light on the horizon was almost gone.

She stood there for a little longer, lost in thought, her fingers tangled in the Sekhmet amulet still hanging around her neck. She might have stayed until nightfall, except for another sound snapping her out of her reverie: the sudden bleat of a sheep.

Rae turned toward it. A ram stood by the riverbank, watching her with its strange rectangular pupils.

“What are you doing here?” she asked the sheep.

Not surprisingly, the ram didn’t provide an answer.

Probably one of Baki’s , Rae guessed as she stepped toward it. It wasn’t uncommon for the shepherd to lose one of his flock when he put them in their pen for the night, but they never strayed far.

“Come on, now,” she said. “Time to go home.”

The ram didn’t put up a fight. He allowed her to lead him by the horn back toward Baki’s land, and the shepherd intercepted them halfway. Apparently, he’d already noticed the ram’s disappearance and had come searching for him.

“Rae?” Baki exclaimed when he saw her. He looked haunted, unwashed, unshaven. “Oh, thanks be to Ra, I thought you were dead! I heard what happened when I went to town this morning. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it! Asim, and the others…”

Rae blinked, and in that instant, she was transported back.

The blood.

The screams.

The whizz of arrows sailing past her head.

She inhaled sharply and felt a pain in her chest, but quickly shoved the memories back into the dark.

“Yes,” she managed.

“I can’t believe it,” Baki repeated, as if he’d forgotten there were other words to say.

“Where were you last night?” Rae said. “So many men were missing from the meeting.” She tried to keep the resentment and suspicion from her voice, but she needed to know the truth. At the time, the absence of so many of the Horizon members at the meeting seemed reasonable—it had been short notice, they hadn’t gotten the message, or they hadn’t come out of an abundance of caution. But in light of the ambush, she wondered if there was more to it than that.

“I received the message, and I was planning to come,” Baki told her. “But then I ran into the brewer later in the day, and he told me not to go. He said it was too dangerous to meet again so soon after the raid, and that we should all lie low until things settled down.”

“What?” Rae said sharply. “He did?”

Baki nodded. “It sounded sensible enough, so I stayed home. He must have spoken to some of the other men as well, because I bumped into a few of them in town last evening. Knowing what I know now, I’m glad I listened to him.” The shepherd dropped his eyes, abashed. “But at the same time, I can’t help but feel guilty for surviving when so many died. I’ll hold my son a little tighter tonight.”

Rae didn’t answer. She’d gone rigid, her body thrumming with an emotion whose presence felt like a comfort, burning through her shame and sorrow like a raging fire.

Fury.

“Maybe we survived to avenge them,” she said, slipping on her sandals.

Baki’s frowned as she handed over the horns of the sheep and started to walk past him.

“Rae, wait!” he said. “Where are you going? It’s not safe to be out this late!”

“I’m going to pay the brewer a visit,” she replied, leaving Baki and his sheep staring after her in the gloaming.

***

She kept to the shadows when she reached the city, slipping between buildings and through the alley where the fights took place each day. The streets were empty and filled with a heavy, mournful silence. She passed the darkened bakery, its workers gone home to get a few hours of sleep before returning to shape loaves for the new day.

Next door was the brewery.

Thin reed mats covered the windows, but through them Rae could see flickering lamplight and a figure moving inside. The front door was ajar.

She pushed through it without knocking.

An unpleasant, sour-sweet smell assaulted her senses as she stepped into the long, dimly lit room. The brewer stood with his back to her next to a line of tall vats nestled in piles of embers, each one filled to the brim with a bubbling brew. Shelves built into the back wall were filled with sealed jars of finished beer, waiting to be sold.

“We’re closed,” the brewer said, not turning to see who it was. He dipped a cup into one of the steaming vats. “Come back tomorrow.”

Rae stepped past the grain-sifting trays and ceramic sieves and into the lamplight. The brewer was a squat man, shaped not unlike one of the beer jars, and Rae towered over him.

“It was you,” she said.

The cup stopped halfway to the brewer’s fleshy lips and hovered there for a moment. Then he slowly set it down on a table.

“When I saw you coming out of the nomarch’s house that day,” Rae went on, still speaking to his back, “you weren’t delivering beer, were you? You were delivering information . How long have you been working for him? Days? Weeks? Or were you with the High Khetarans from the very beginning?”

The brewer turned. “Raetawy, how disappointing that you aren’t dead.”

“I should have guessed you were a traitor,” she said, ignoring the comment. “You were always the loudest voice at those meetings, preaching cowardice disguised as reason, trying your best to keep the men from fighting for their freedom—”

“ I was keeping them safe! And doing a mighty good job of it until you showed up, you stupid, stupid girl.”

“Safe?” Rae asked in disbelief. “You told the nomarch about the meeting! We walked straight into an ambush because of you! All those men are dead because of you!”

“Their deaths are on your hands, Raetawy, not mine!” the brewer countered. “I tried to warn them. I even tried to warn you! Those that listened to me are still alive. And those that didn’t?” He threw up his hands. “What can I say? You reap what you sow.”

With a roar, Rae lunged for him, grabbing his tunic and shaking him roughly. “What did the nomarch pay you in exchange for the lives of those men? For the old soldiers? For the fishermen’s son? For Asim? What did he give you?”

The brewer shoved her away, and Rae stumbled back into one of the vats, sloshing some of the hot beer onto the dirt floor.

“I would have done it for free,” he sneered, spittle flying from his mouth. “Asim was a damned fool. He had it coming!”

Rae’s vision narrowed as rage overtook her. She wanted to hit him and keep hitting him and never stop. She went to reach for him again, but then there was movement at the door. She whirled to see who it was.

Three hooded men, their faces shrouded in shadow, had slipped inside the brewery.

“Rae?” the biggest one said. “What are you doing?”

She squinted at him. “Omari?”

“Baki came to get me and Menk. He told us you were coming here but didn’t know why. Did something happen?”

She pointed at the brewer. “He betrayed us! He’s been working for the nomarch this whole time. That’s how they knew we’d be at the Garden of the Dead last night. He told them everything!”

The three men were silent.

“Is this true?” Baki finally asked the brewer. “You knew about the attack?”

The brewer straightened his tunic. “You know, Baki,” he said mildly, “I’ve always liked you. You’re not very smart, but you mean well. That’s why I told you not to go to that godforsaken meeting.”

Baki shook his head in horror. “How could you do this?” he asked. “How could you stand with us all this time and then betray us? I thought you were my friend.”

“I am your friend!” the brewer said, slamming his fist against the table. “I saved you, didn’t I? And the others!

“It was all under control until the attack on the Medjay. I’d managed to convince the nomarch that the Horizon was harmless—just a bunch of grumbling malcontents. But then, you had to go and rob their armory…

“After that, well, he was out for blood. So I made my choice—sacrifice a few to save the rest. The men who showed up to that meeting were too foolish and stubborn to be saved. They got what they deserved.” He turned to the shepherd. “You see now, Baki? I did you a favor. It’s time to put all this behind us and move on.”

“And what about us?” Omari asked. “What about the stubborn fools that survived your butchery?”

The brewer shrugged and gestured toward the bubbling beer vat. “All it takes is a few bad seeds to ruin the whole batch. Since you didn’t have the courtesy to die, I’ll be forced to pass along your names to the nomarch as traitors to the crown. You managed to evade execution last night, but it won’t happen again.”

He stepped close to Rae, his lip curling into a sneer.

“I’m sure the nomarch will take his time with you. He’s a man who likes to savor his pleasures. Maybe he’ll even let you watch when his guards collect your father and finally put him out of his misery.”

At the mention of her father, something inside Rae—already bent to its breaking point—snapped.

In a flash, her dagger was in her hand. With the other hand, she gripped the brewer’s shoulder, pulled him toward her, and thrust the blade into his ribs.

The brewer’s eyes widened. A surprised, strangled noise erupted from his throat.

“Rae!” Baki exclaimed.

She held firm, pressed close against the little man. She had always thought it would be difficult to stab someone. That it would take a lot of effort to plunge a knife through all that muscle and sinew. But it wasn’t. It was actually very, very easy.

Really, it took no effort at all.

After what seemed like a long moment, Rae released her grip on the brewer and jerked the dagger free. The man staggered back, his legs tottering under him like a drunkard’s. Rae and the others watched, silent, as he crashed into the table, knocking the beer cup to the floor. His tunic was already soaked with blood. He pressed a hand to his wound, but the blood poured over his fingers. There was no stanching the flow. No one moved to help him.

The brewer looked up at them, his face bright with hatred. His mouth opened to say something, but no words came out. Instead, he collapsed onto the dirt floor.

Nobody moved.

Finally, Rae nudged the brewer’s body with her foot. No response. She looked down at the dagger in her hand, stained crimson up to the hilt, the wedjat eye engraved on its handle staring up at her from between her fingers.

She waited for the horror. For the regret. For the self-loathing she’d felt when she’d killed that man at the House of the Medjay. But none of it came. Whatever part of her that had once held remorse for the deaths of the wicked was gone.

If you continue on this path, the person you are now will be lost.

A rustling came from the back room, where the brewer had his living quarters.

“We have to go, Rae.” Omari’s voice was soft but urgent. “We have to go now .”

“Ra forgive us,” Baki muttered, his stare locked on the corpse.

Menk spat. “Son of a dog deserved it.”

“Father?”

A young woman emerged from the shadows. Her hair and clothing were rumpled, as if she’d just woken from a deep sleep. Her eyes went first to the bloody dagger in Rae’s hand, then to the body on the floor.

Rae recognized the brewer’s daughter. His wife had left him years ago, but the girl was about Rae’s age, and she’d often bumped into her at the market.

Without her own hood to shield her face from view, the brewer’s daughter recognized Rae too.

The girl raised her palms in submission. Rae expected to see hatred or despair in the girl’s eyes—but all she saw was fear. “Please don’t hurt me,” the girl said.

Rae’s heart roiled with a thousand different emotions, and suddenly she felt dizzy. She backed away from the girl to Omari’s side.

“Take me home,” Rae said.

“You can’t go home, Rae,” Omari said, leading her to the door. “Not tonight…”

“Then when?”

Omari didn’t reply. Grabbing a robe hanging by the door, he threw it over Rae’s shoulders and pulled the hood over her head as they stepped out into the dark.

Once you’ve visited that bleak country, there’s no coming back.

Out on the street, they passed an old man who sat slumped in the doorway of an abandoned house, humming to himself and chanting orisons to whatever gods or goddesses would listen.

“The lamb,” he intoned. “The lamb, the lamb, the lamb…”