Bastet watched them for a moment and then said, “I’m going to go check on the others. They were trying to catch Isis when I left them last night. Okay?”
Taziri smiled at her. “Okay. We’ll be fine here. I think we have everything we need.”
The Aegyptian girl went back into the other room, and then let herself out through the aether. At first she went nowhere, and was content to merely drift above the city harbor and watch the little fishing boats sailing out on the sparkling Middle Sea, and to watch the huge steamers chugging in and out of the piers. It was the same as it ever was, people going about their work, moving things from here to there, oblivious to the machinations of gods and princes, and immortal monsters.
No matter how the world changed, no matter who sat in the Imperial throne in Aegyptus or in Eran, no matter which gods were worshipped in the old temples or the new, no matter what language was spoken or what coins ruled the marketplaces, there would always be fish to catch and men who sailed out each day to catch them.
I wonder what it is like, having a world with the same little problems every day. Fix the net, fix the sail, find the fish, catch the fish, sell the fish. It hasn’t changed in four thousand years. I suppose it will never change. And yet there are always princes and war queens and death cults who want to rule them, to tax them, to brand them as citizens or subjects or slaves.
But the fish don’t care, and the boats and nets don’t care. I wonder how much the fishermen care, really.
Eventually Bastet glided down across the city streets and found her own little stone tower nestled in between the two old estates. She drifted in through the window and lay down on her huge pile of blankets and pillows, luxuriating in the softness of her bed compared to the hardness of Jiro’s floor.
A cat meowed and poked its head up from the stairs.
“Go away,” Bastet sighed.
The cat meowed again.
“All right, all right, I’ll go find them.” The girl slipped away into the aether again and turned her thoughts to Asha and Wren, and to Gideon and Anubis. There was no certain way to find them, no simple means to call out to them or to spot them in a crowd, but she often felt that if she tried hard enough she could sense where someone was. Just barely. Just a hint of a whisper in her ghost.
Twice she was almost certain she had felt the familiar tug of Anubis just around the next corner, just across the next street, but each time she stood on the roofs alone without any sign that her cousin might be near. For the next two hours she glided over the city, listening and sniffing and peering into dark windows as a vague cloud of cool, white aether mist until she smelled something strange. Something that reminded her of home.
That oil, it smells like… Gideon’s hair!
She plunged down through the roof of a large warehouse near the waterfront more than a league from Jiro’s house, and found herself in a miniature city made of boxes piled high and stacked in rows that reminded her of blocks, avenues, and alleyways. Near the back of the warehouse she could hear voices echoing softly, and she hurried back through the maze of crates, emerging a moment later into a wide open space where three people turned to look at her.
The first two people were Asha and Gideon, who were sitting on a pair of crates off to the left, sitting side by side, and they broke off their conversation abruptly when the Aegyptian girl walked in. The third person was hanging by her wrists from a pair of chains wrapped around an overhead beam, with her feet dangling above the floor. Her hoofed feet.
Isis.
Bastet walked out into the open space and curved around the hanging prisoner, giving her a wide berth as she came over to her friends. “You caught her.”
“We did,” Gideon said. “Thanks to Wren, mostly.” He nodded to the floor beside him, and Bastet leaned forward to see the flame-haired girl snoring on an old blanket on the ground. Gideon sniffed. “She was something else. She held Isis down with the aether while Asha sedated her, and then Wren carried the poor thing here using the aether. I’d hate to think how hard it would have been, dragging Isis halfway across the city and then stringing her up by hand.”
Bastet sat down between Asha and Gideon, and looked up at her steer-horned aunt. The immortal woman stared down at her with blank white eyes, and a faint sneer on her lip. “Can she speak?” the girl asked.
“A little,” Asha said. “Nothing very coherent. Mostly angry shouts. She wants to get back to the undercity, that much we’re sure of. But she’s all right for the moment. With those legs of hers off the ground, she can’t hurt us, or escape.”
“Oh. Good.” Bastet nodded. “Taziri’s here. She came in last night. We had a bit of trouble with Nethys, but everything’s all right now. Taziri is with Jiro.”
“Taziri?” Asha frowned. “Who?”
“She’s an inventor from Marrakesh,” Bastet said. “She’s building the magnet to take the needles out of Isis and the others. In just a little while, it’ll all be over.”
“Maybe for Isis,” Gideon said. “But I don’t suppose you managed to capture Nethys last night.”
“No. She got away,” Bastet said. “And I don’t know where Anubis is, or Horus, for that matter.”
“Maybe Anubis caught him.”
“Maybe.” Bastet hesitated. “So Nethys and Horus are still missing. Maybe I should go back to Jiro’s place. Just in case.”
“I’ll come too.” Asha stood up.
“I’ll go,” Gideon said, rising to his feet.
“No, you’re too slow, and besides, that sword of your is only good for killing, and we don’t want to kill anyone if we don’t have to,” Asha said. “You stay here with Wren and help her keep an eye on Isis. All right?”
Gideon hesitated, then nodded. “All right.”
Bastet followed Asha through the meandering paths of the warehouse out to the front doors where they could see the late morning sunlight glancing off the Middle Sea. “Do you remember the way back to Jiro’s place?” Bastet asked.
“I do. Go on ahead. I’ll be right behind you,” Asha said. “Dragons are very fast when they wish to be.”
Chapter 20
Asha ran through the arrow-straight streets of Alexandria, her long black hair streaming out behind her as her golden scaled legs flashed beneath her, her sharp ruby claws scratching the pavement with every step. The city dissolved into soft brown blurs of walls, faces, animals, and machines all dimmed at the edges as she streaked down the street, leaving a sea of confused and frightened expressions in her wake.
She stumbled to a stop outside Jiro’s home and knocked at the door, and when there was no answer she let herself in. Following the sounds of voices and the clangor of metal on metal, she went through the back of the smith’s home and found the door to the adjoining workshop where the tall Nipponese smith was working alongside a shorter woman with thick brown hair tied back with a blue scarf. The two of them were wearing leather aprons and armored goggles, and were bent over a wooden table with a small tangle of wires and metal strips between them.
Bastet sat on a stool in the corner, swinging her legs. She waved.
“Hello?” Asha said cautiously.
The woman looked up. “Hello. You must be Asha. Bastet told me all about you. Well, she mentioned your name, at least. I’m Taziri Ohana, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She spoke Eranian in a slow and fumbling manner that sounded awkward yet was easy for Asha to understand.