Gideon shook his head. “Sun-steel isn’t magnetic. That was one of the first things I learned about it, way way back.”
“Well, we have to find Grandfather and the others first,” Bastet said. “We can worry about fixing everyone later.”
“You’re right,” Gideon said. “It’s time I scouted the undercity to find Bashir and see whether he’s even still human. You should all stay here for now. It’ll be safer that way.”
“No, I’m going with you,” Wren said. “I can help.”
“I know you can,” Asha said. “But this is very dangerous and right now all we need to is to find out where our friends are and whether we can reach them.”
“Dangerous?” Wren frowned. “I destroyed two fleets of warships at Constantia, as well as three airships, just using these bracelets and some aether. I can take care of myself.”
Everyone stared at her, except Anubis, who continued to gaze coolly at the wall in silence.
“Two fleets?” Gideon asked.
“By yourself?” Bastet added.
“It doesn’t matter,” Asha said. “Gideon and I will go down there, and the rest of you will wait here.”
“Right,” Bastet said. “Except for me. I’m going to go find a friend of mine who might know something about finding sun-steel needles.”
Asha paused. “All right, fine. Just be careful.”
“I will!” Bastet grinned as her body melted away into a soft white cloud of aether and blew away on the warm midday breeze.
Asha stared at the spot where the girl had been sitting a moment ago.
Gods, this place is strange.
“All right, Gideon. Please lead the way.” She gestured to the fountain.
The soldier stood and stepped over the wall. Beside the stone fish, he reached down pressed several stone bumps along the statue’s base, and the entire center pedestal glided silently to the side, revealing a large circular hole in the ground. There was no stair, just a straight drop about as deep as Asha was tall, and then below she saw the tunnel sloping down and turning into the darkness.
“It looks very dark,” she said.
Gideon held up the short sword strapped to his arm. “I have a light.”
Asha held up her finger and allowed a single ruby claw to emerge from her soft brown skin. The bony weapon glimmered, and then began to glow with a dull red light. “So do I.”
Chapter 9
Bastet paused on the front porch of the green house to brush off her dress and push her hair back from her face, where she secured it by resettling her cat mask atop her head. As she glanced upward, a soft distant droning noise suddenly swelled in volume and the huge black belly of a Mazigh airship swept across the sky, blotting out the sun and clouds for several seconds as it roared higher and higher into the northern skies and raced out over the sea.
In the distance, Bastet heard a train whistle blowing, bells clanging, factories churning, trolleys rattling along their rails, and electric cables suspended above the streets humming and buzzing like busy insect swarms.
Three little girls ran down the middle of the road, laughing. One of them pulled a kite on a string, but this kite had thin metal wings like a hawk that flapped in slow circular motions as the wind blew over them. Bastet watched them tire and jog to a stop at the end of the road, and one of the girls deftly caught the toy bird as it coasted down to meet her. The Aegyptian girl smiled at them, and then she knocked on the door, waited a moment, and dissolved into the aether.
A tall Mazigh woman in a white dress shirt and blue skirt opened the door and looked at her empty porch. She had dark brown hair and eyes, and on her left forearm she wore a brass medical brace that covered most but not quite all of the burn scars between her elbow and wrist, and it was also attached to a half-glove to support her hand’s nearly useless wrist. She leaned out to look around at the quiet, empty street of her quiet little neighborhood in the suburbs of Tingis. There were three children playing down at the end of the road, and a small steam carriage puttered through a distant intersection, but nothing and no one else was near. Shrugging, she stepped back inside, closed the door, and turned around.
Bastet smiled up at the woman. “Hello, Taziri!”
Taziri Ohana jerked back with a curious smile lighting up her face. “Where did…? Bastet? Bastet!”
The two hugged, and the Mazigh woman laughed. “You scared me half to death. You should know better than to sneak up on people like that.”
“I should, but I don’t,” the girl said. “How are you?”
“Good. Tired, but good.” They stepped back and Taziri ushered her guest into a sitting room furnished with luxuriously upholstered Mazigh sofas and armchairs and foot stools, and even a pair of little child-sized rocking chairs all clustered around a long thin coffee table strewn with toys and papers. “Yuba took Menna down to his brother’s house for the afternoon. Can you stay long? I think you’d really like to meet them. Or… When did you come to Tingis? Wait, how did you come?” she asked suspiciously.
“By aether,” Bastet said. “It’s a lot faster and safer than camels and trains, you know. It wasn’t easy. I had to shift more than twenty times, though. I lost count somewhere in Numidia. And it took over an hour, too!”
“Mm hm. A whole hour to travel the entire width of Ifrica? You poor thing.” Taziri sat down on a dark red sofa with a colorful blanket spread across its back, and Bastet sat beside her.
“So, what have you been doing?” the Aegyptian girl asked. “Still flying?”
Taziri smiled. “Not really, not much. I’m teaching a few classes at the university, and I have a small repair shop in town with a few apprentices, and I just opened a little store down by the harbor, selling toys, actually.” She gestured at the little mechanical animals and people resting on the coffee table. “My daughter tests them for me. She just turned six.”
“Aw!” Bastet picked up a wind-up sivathera and admired its painted spots and antlers, and the tiny gears just barely visible behind its jointed legs.
“So, how is that cousin of yours? Anubis?”
“The same,” Bastet said. “Grumpy. Annoying.”
“And the temple?” Taziri asked warily. “Are the Osirians staying out of trouble?”
“They are now,” Bastet said, looking up at her. “The temple’s been destroyed and a lot of the Sons of Osiris died when the building fell on them. And then a bunch of other stuff happened, and that’s sort of why I’m here. I need your help. I need you to come back with me. Well, not with me, of course. You can’t shift. But you know what I mean.”
Taziri gave her a small, tired smile. “You know there’s nothing I’d like more than to run back to Alexandria with you and sit in a sweltering train for a few days while crazed cultists and mercenaries try to kill us again, but I’m not much of a world traveler anymore. Plus I have this new government contract coming up, too, a big six-month job. There’s so much to do right now. What is it you need, exactly?”
Bastet chewed her lip for a moment, and then said, “Remember how I told you once that my grandfather was missing?”
“Right.”
“Well, he came back. Last night, I guess. He came back to Alexandria last night.”
Taziri almost smiled, almost congratulated her, but then she saw the look on the immortal girl’s face. “Isn’t that a good thing? You don’t seem very happy about it. I thought you wanted to see him again.”
“I did, I mean, I do. But I haven’t seen him yet,” Bastet said. “Right after he arrived, he was kidnapped by these… Sorry, it would take too long to explain.”
“By bad people?” the engineer asked.
“Yeah, by bad people.”
“I’m so sorry,” Taziri said. “I wish I could help. Aren’t there… No, I suppose if there were police or soldiers to help you, you’d be talking to them instead of me. So why are you talking to me? How can I help? I don’t know, maybe there’s something I can do after all.”