Heshtat, while not exactly a wise man, was undeniably an experienced one. In his mind, that counted for more than wisdom anyway.

  So it was that he’d been correct in his assessment; the journey from the temple of Sebek, hidden among the dunes of the Endless Dessert in the corner of Idib’s small province, through the lands of Khaemwaset and up to the very gates of his capital city, had taken only a single ten day cycle. Where he had been wrong was to assume that a journey of a cycle was a simple thing.

  They’d seen evidence of further subsidence as they travelled the dunes, great stone pillars and obsidian statues clawing their way free from the scorching sands. They’d been stalked by a pack of howling wind spirits, only Ahhotep’s intervention eventually banishing them back to the Otherworld from whence they came.

  They’d even been waylaid by a trio of starving children—administering aid and seeking to return them to their lost parents before Harsiese had noticed the sharpened teeth within their sore-blackened mouths and identified them for the Possessed that they were. That had been a grim fight, though Heshtat had to admit that he and Maatkare had mostly been decorative, for their part in the battle.

  Ahhotep had again proved himself essential, creating a binding ward of gripping shadow that snared two of the three impossibly mobile undead monsters. Neferu had reached into one of her many pouches and blown silver dust at the remaining one, and that had stopped it from circling around them on wings of swirling wind.

  Harsiese had then got to work with his great axe, and that in and of itself had been a sight to see. The way he moved, the speed and agility that he displayed as he ducked and spun and cut and chopped. It had left Heshtat with an intense feeling of loss; to know he had once moved like that and now could only stand on the sidelines. But it also quickened his heart, for that power might soon be within grasp again.

  If he could only obtain the impossible and survive this suicidal mission, then he could cultivate once more. He could again feel divine power flow through his soul, could once more walk the dreamscape of the Other in his sleep without fear. No more bowing to petty criminals, no more scrabbling for favours and counting coins just so he could blunt the claws of the cruel tyrants that ran free in his home. If he could only survive, then he could change things. He could have everything he’d ever wanted.

  Cleo had promised they would set Idib to rights, and despite whatever resentment and enmity he may still harbour in the deepest, most bitter parts of his mind, he knew for a fact that her word was good.

  She will betray you.

  The memory of that rasping voice made him flinch, and he glanced at Ahhotep out the corner of his eye, watching the old man lean heavily on his staff and speak in jovial tones with Harsiese. His shadow was short in the bright light of the midday sun and there was no hint of anything amiss. But Heshtat couldn’t forget that vicious little voice.

  They’d arrived a few hours ago with the dawn before the crowds had swelled to their current size outside the gate, and stood huddled in the shade of a great pillar a few hundred yards from the gate of Men-nefer—the capital of Khaemwaset’s province.

  Men-nefer was a marvel. One of the seven wonders of ancient Amansi, the bridge city was famous the world over. Even in Heshtat’s often cynical opinion, it more than lived up to its name.

  It spanned the great Nikean river, rising out of the dunes on one side like a chain pulled from the earth itself to rest once more among the green and fertile delta basin on the other bank. The bridge, at least half a mile wide, crouched above the rushing water on many legs; a silent, unmoving centipede carved from great granite blocks taller than a man and twice as wide.

  Upon its back nestled a city in truth—thousands of buildings, hundreds of thousands of people, and a civil engineering corps perhaps more famous than the structure itself. Spires of shining white stone and temple complexes of myriad design speckled the city, and between those wonders were markets and houses, taverns and barracks. All the thousand structures of civilisation crammed into orderly lines within the leviathan bridge.

  A great gate guarded the city from the horrors of the desert, and they had found themselves on the wrong side of it. The gate itself looked like something out of myth; looming, imposing, a great edifice of stone that was clearly meant to stop titans in their tracks.

  Like everything in Khaemwaset’s province though, attempts had been made to beautify what was once military. Pillars of stone, wrapped in verdant vines boasting purple and white flowers, lined the path towards the gate for several hundred yards on either side. The guardian statues that flanked the gate—titanic works of stone and divine majesty akin to the ushabti dolls he’d so often met in tombs—were carved in acts of worship, their animal-headed features picked out in exacting detail.

  The gates themselves were covered in carvings, hieroglyphs proclaiming the triumphs of Khaemwaset and his province. There were many to list. Gold was prominent, sheathing the corners of the gate, so that the sun caught it and reflected its own majesty back against the sky, and the white walls further pulsed in the desert sun. It wasn’t all gold and white though—opals and rubies were resplendent amongst the carvings; brilliant blue, vibrant purple and verdant green all glazed the stone walls in parts, illuminating the founding myths of Amansi—Great Amin-Ra and his Ennead performing feats of legend uncounted.

  They huddled in the shade of one enormous pillar, several hundred yards from the main gate. It was open, but soldiers flanked it—what looked to be an entire company standing ready to repel any invaders. A few bureaucrats stood within the gate itself, ushering people from the milling crowd gathered out front; checking their goods and grilling them on their purpose.

  Heshtat caught sight of a woman in priestly garb, a twisted staff of lacquered wood carved into the shape of a snarling serpent in one hand, and a golden ankh hanging heavy around her neck. Her nemes-style headdress was typical of the priesthood, though he wasn’t sure from which cult she hailed, and he had no doubt she was there to look for people of interest and prevent any with power or ill intent from sneaking in without oversight.

  It was for that very reason that he and his party stayed back out of the crowd. They were not the only ones, of course—this was a busy area, with enterprising food-sellers setting up stalls to ply their fried dough balls and grilled vegetables to the hungry and impatient masses that wished to enter Men-nefer.

  Maatkare had excitedly partaken, being a fan of all things fried and doughy, and had managed to persuade Harsiese to indulge as well. Ahhotep had declined, to which Heshtat was eternally grateful. The priest had declined to put down the tome in his right hand during their entire journey so far—Heshtat was relatively sure he slept with it in grasp, too—and while the priests of the mystery cults were known to be strange, if Ahhotep unveiled his skeletal hand to eat, Heshtat suspected there would be murmurings that would travel too far and too wide for their anonymity to survive long.

  Heshtat dearly wished they could simply stride into the city and arrange their transport in peace, but alas. It was hard to keep a low profile when most of his companions were thoroughly interesting, especially to a Pharaoh like Khaemwaset. A high-priest of Sebek with a schizophrenic shadow, a bodyguard and likely spy for a rival queen, an adrenaline junky with more connections than there are sands in the desert, a loquacious former dungeon-delver and now proud teacher of the youth, and himself; a depressed enforcer for a serpentine crime-lord. And they all walk into a bar…

  He looked around again, keeping an eye on any suspicious people or groups with instincts that had never quite left him despite the lack of practice. He let his companions eat and joke, waiting for Neferu with a patience brought about by long experience.

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  When she returned, it was in the shadow of a hulking man. He dwarfed Maatkare, and made even Heshtat feel small, all rippling muscle and angry glower. He was more than a match for even Harsiese, at least on the surface. His scarred arms were free from the restraint of the tunic that wrapped his chest and covered his no doubt tree-trunk legs, and his beady eyes tracked each of them as he stomped over behind their diminutive rogue.

  Neferu waved, seeming happy as a mouse in a cheese-store, beckoning them over. Heshtat took the lead, slipping around behind the nearest pillar and out of sight of the soldiers at the gate.

  His companions joined moments later, and the big man looked them up and down, glower not diminishing in the slightest. Neferu kept her good cheer though, and nodded Heshtat’s way.

  “This is Nimlot. He can ferry us into Underbridge today, no questions asked,” she declared cheerily.

  “For a price,” the man rumbled, shifting to cross his arms over his muscular chest. Heshtat noted the two long daggers sheathed on either hip.

  “How much?” Heshtat asked calmly.

  “A deben of silver, or three of copper. If you have Stater, I’ll take half that.” At Heshtat’s raised eyebrow, he continued. “The Pharoah is encouraging all his subjects to use the local coin, now that his deal with the Helexians is at an end.”

  Heshtat filed that away, then fished in his coin bag, bringing out a handful of small silver bits. He weighed them in one hand, judging for a moment, before adding a couple more and passing the handful—a full deben—over. The big man did the same, nodding and pocketing the valuable metal into a similar bag hanging on his waist beneath his robes.

  “Much obliged. Follow,” he said simply, turning to stride down the small dune away from the raised road leading to the bridge city.

  Hehstat held Neferu’s gaze for a moment longer. “Can we trust him?”

  “Gods, no,” she snorted. “He’d cut our throats as soon as look at us in normal circumstances. But he’s more scared of the man he works for, and that man owes me a favour, so we’re good.”

  “Thank you,” Heshtat said sincerely. Then he hesitated. “How did you earn that favour?”

  “I worked with him for a time a few years ago.”

  “And what is it exactly that you did?”

  “This and that,” she said vaguely. At his raised eyebrow, she laughed. “Come on, we’d best not delay. This wasn’t easy to arrange, and it will only get harder the longer we leave it—the afternoon rapids can be hellacious during spring.”

  ***

  Heshtat had always had a healthy respect for Khaemwaset.

  The immortal Pharaohs of Amansi were not rulers that required the respect of mortals, by any means, but Heshtat had spent more time than most around the powerful and divine, and he had built up a healthy scepticism of them. He would be considered by many an iconoclast—not quite a heretic, but skirting the edges of it, certainly—for his opinions about many of the undying cultivator-kings that oversaw the golden sands of the Endless Desert and Great Oasis.

  The Pharaohs did not rule their provinces actively, and nor were they divine in truth. They occupied a vague middle-ground between the two. Within their provinces, their word was law, and outside of their strongholds they were held in check only by the power of their rivals.

  But Amansi was still ruled by mortals. From Queen Cleosiris in the backwater province of Idib to the Council of Elders in Xiexic province, mortals administered and ruled. Hereditary royalty, nominated Prefects, an ever-changing priesthood or even brute warlords, there were as many systems of governance as there were provinces in the ancient land.

  Khaemwaset, Hefatiti and Iset… these immortal cultivator-kings sat above such mortal concerns, handing down the occasional edict from on high and enforcing their borders with a silent and unspoken might that all below them felt.

  Naturally, such power existing in the same world as the deprivation that Heshtat had seen first-hand in the various provinces left him with a low opinion of those meditating within their golden pyramids. He’d seen how quickly Cleo had addressed the rampant poverty in Idib, and that was the poorest and weakest of Amansi’s twelves provinces. It was partly why such crime and rampant injustice still existed within the city despite her rule—she simply lacked the resources to correct them. Such excuses could not be claimed by the three remaining Pharaohs.

  Hefatiti, in particular, drew much of Heshtat’s ire. The Empty Throne, as he was known, oversaw the richest province in Amansi and the wealth and prestige on display in its capital was awe-inspiring, among many other less savoury emotions. Many of the original dozen undying Pharaohs were long dead—a contradiction that none in Amansi seemed to worry over—having departed through the Final Door when they grew bored of immortality, or sustained wounds in their great inter-dynastic struggles. Of those still living, while Hefatiti was the worst, there were not many that Heshtat would consider to have a positive impact on society.

  Khaemwaset was perhaps the only one. He was known as the great builder—an architectural genius on top of his divinely granted unassailable power. He had fashioned a corps of civil engineers that was the envy of the world and constructed more great buildings and projects than many of his contemporaries combined.

  While it was said to be Great Amin-Ra that had pulled the Nikea from the earth, transforming the Endless Desert into the Great Oasis, and the Ennead that had made the desert bloom for humanity’s settlement, it was Khaemwaset that had come closest to the wonders of antiquity—that ancient time when the gods still walked amongst mortal-kind. Before the God-Plague. Before The Desolation. Before all of this chaos and blood and the uncountable problems that nobody with any real power seemed keen to address.

  All that is to say that Heshtat had had a relatively positive opinion of Khaemwaset. Entering the bowels of Men-nefer did not change such an opinion.

  After following Nimlot, they had emerged onto the bank of the Nikea with the bridge city looming above. A small skiff had been tied to a rickety wooden mooring post at the edge of the fast-flowing river, and they’d sailed out towards one of the great supporting pillars that held the ancient marvel aloft above the swollen waters below.

  Their small skiff had no sail and didn’t seem to use the wind at all to power itself, but they nevertheless scythed through the water beneath the bridge at quite a pace. Heshtat suspected it was a novel application of a channel to one of the many water or river gods worshipped in Amansi, though which aspect of the soul that channel was made through was a mystery. Sekham or Bah most likely—the Power or the Personality.

  Nimlot stood at the prow with his arms crossed, looking like a sailor out of myth. He rolled with the boat, as at ease as if he were on dry land while the rest of them hunkered down and winced with every jolt and bump. Only Harsiese seemed to sport a grin, his hair whipping in the wind of their passage and his eyes alight.

  They arrived at that great circular pillar soon enough, and their ferryman brought the skiff to a stop in the shadow of the great structure. Frowning, Heshtat looked around for a jetty or mooring post before Nimlot grunted and pointed up at the pillar itself. Heshtat squinted, making out a sturdy wooden ladder lashed to the stone with old rope, moss and lichen colonising much of the surface. He looked uneasily back at his companions, but Neferu pushed past with a breezy smile.

  “My thanks, Nimlot!” she called to the big man over her shoulder. “I’ll pass along my commendations to our shared contact.”

  And then she was scuttling up the ladder like a monkey in the rigging, no doubt grinning like an idiot all the while. It was as if risking her life was the only way that woman could feel alive. Heshtat sighed, sharing a somewhat nervous glance with Maatkare, though his friend just laughed.

  “Cheer up, my friend! We were long overdue an adventure together, and this is shaping up to be a fine one, indeed.”

  Watching Neferu climb up in the shadow of the titanic bridge some several hundred feet above, with only empty space hanging between her and the rushing torrent beneath, he felt some of his courage return.

  “Harsiese—bring up the rear. The rest of you, let’s go,” he said, and stepped off the wobbly boat, onto the slippery wooden rungs lashed to the pillar. Not only was the man the most physically capable, in case Nimlot attempted an inexplicable last-minute betrayal, but he was also the most likely to catch anyone who fell from above. Knowing an adept of Khet was climbing behind helped settle Heshtat’s somewhat frayed nerves. He wasn’t afraid of heights, by any means, but he had to admit to a little nervousness at the scale of the climb he was undertaking, given his mortal frailty.

  One hand in front of the next, eyes fixed studiously on the rope and wood covering the smooth stone in front of his face, he climbed ever upwards. It felt like an eternity, but he distracted himself by noting the gradual change in flora covering the ladder. Greens and yellows near the base where river-spray was common, slowly lightening until faint purple and blue branching lichens crept along the wood in strange swirling patterns. It helped lend grip to the otherwise slippery planks as well, so Heshtat sent a silent prayer to Weneg, goddess of the undergrowth and the unseen.

  All trials and tribulations pass though, and Heshtat soon found his hand slapping against stone, Neferu reaching down to pull him up onto a thin shelf jutting above the river far below. Standing, he looked around at the small walkway nestled beneath a sky of pale stone stretching to seemingly the horizon. The reality was only a few hundred feet across the river, but he was so close to the roof of rock that he couldn’t see much without twisting and ducking—something he was very much not willing to do on his current perch.

  Still, he’d made it. Men-nefer.

  Now they just needed to find their crew in amongst the mass of humanity and avoid the attention of an immortal cultivator-king in the heart of his own city. Easy.