The Impossible Contract

by K A Doore

  “But those are very old, very fragile scrolls that need to remain here and be handled with great care—” began Aohti.

  The head librarian lifted his foot and set it on Aohti’s big toe. She cut off with a yelp. Senousert turned his smile on Heru, but the en-marabi was already shoving past them both.

  For a moment, Senousert’s gaze fell on Thana and his smile cracked and worry leaked through. He looked from her to Heru and back again, eyebrows going up, then together, as if asking a question she should know the answer to. Thana could only shrug, almost losing a scroll in the gesture.

  “Such a pity,” said Senousert as Thana passed him. “That was a very helpful slave. She will be missed.”

  “Better her than me,” grumbled Aohti.

  The words floated after Thana and out the door into the still bright evening. She shifted her grip on the basket and risked losing a scroll to slip a hand into her pocket and feel the reassuring metal wire of her garrote. She couldn’t kill the mark before or during his meeting with the Empress, but after …

  Now that Heru had decided to make his appearance, he trotted across the courtyard with energy and purpose. Thana barely had time to register the towering gates and the gold coating every surface before they marched inside a long, broad corridor. At its end, Heru pushed through a pair of towering wooden doors.

  They burst into a chamber so large, they might as well have stepped outside. The ceiling stretched up and away. Leftover daylight trickled through layers of drifting dust to mingle with the torchlight below. A haze fuzzed the highest reaches of the ceiling. Thana thought she saw stars, but surely that was a trick of distance.

  Every inch of the room was painted or filigreed or stained gold. And etched into the gold were scenes painted black. Figures speared other figures and left them in pools of black paint. One whole section of wall was devoted to a sprawling battlefield littered with spear-struck, armless, or beheaded figures. Between the bodies crawled crocodiles, their body-crunching teeth fitted with diamonds and their eyes alive with rubies. They were demons come to drag away the defeated while the winning army advanced. Similar scenes marched around the room: the whole history of these people, or what they wanted their history to be.

  Mercifully, Thana didn’t have the time to examine the art—if it could be called that—for the mark’s pace was swift and the room’s far end demanded her immediate attention. A whole host of people waited there, hushed and still as statues. A dozen torches and a dozen tall mirrors spotlighted the crowd. Gemstones glittered and metal sparked under the light, but despite the opulence, the air was stale and still.

  A fleet of guards stood before the host, their breastplates polished to a painful shine and the white of their wraps as fine as salt. They stood as straight and rigid as the spears clutched at their sides. Behind the guards stood people in skirts stained the color of fresh blood, the fabric dragging across the floor despite dozens of knots. Some held staffs, some incense burners, and others carried rolls of parchment. While their faces were uncovered by fabric, they were hidden beneath thick whorls and loops of kohl—either writing or pretty nonsense. These must be the Empress’s marab.

  More people were scattered between the marab and a high dais, their clothing varied but equally fine and abundant, their features lined with kohl and their arms jangling with gold. Slaves ghosted between them, filling a glass here, handing a note there, their gold skirts helping them blend in with the riches on display. But all of the glitter and gilding paled before the golden chair on the dais and the woman who sat there.

  The Empress Zara ha Khatet of the Mehewret Empire watched over her court, back straight, eyes set deep in a wash of kohl. She wore a dazzling white-gold headdress that covered her hair and spilled over her shoulders. A gold diadem spattered with turquoise, emeralds, and sapphires sat on her brow. In the diadem’s center reared a stylized crocodile, its long snout bursting with diamond teeth.

  A wrap that could’ve been spun from pure gold covered the Empress’s shoulders and chest. Fine white needlework decorated its edges and a belt cinched her waist. Gold jewelry so covered her arms from her biceps down to her fingers that it was difficult to pinpoint the shade of her skin. But beneath the thick kohl around her eyes and the vermillion painted across her lips, the Empress’s natural beauty still shone. Standing in the Empress’s presence, Thana felt an urge to do or say anything that Zara ha Khatet might ask. She swallowed the impulse; Amastan liked to tease her for her weakness before beauty, but this felt different. Like a compulsion.

  Was this what it was like to be in the presence of such complete and absolute power? This was the Empress, and while Thana might not like or accept her authority, that didn’t negate the fact that this woman was the most powerful person in the known world. Anything Zara ha Khatet did or said became law. The Empress could have any or all of them raised to drum chiefs or beheaded on a whim.

  As they approached the dais, the soldiers parted, then the marab, leaving no one to stop Heru from walking all the way up to the Empress’s throne. Thana lagged behind as far as she dared, hoping to remain unnoticed. Heru finally stopped when the Empress raised a hand, the bracelets on her arm jangling a melody.

  The mark bowed. Mo and Thana followed his lead. When the Empress waved her hand, he straightened. After the jangle of her bracelets had faded, the Empress spoke.

  “Heru Sametket. You returned over a night ago and yet this is the first time you’ve deigned to answer our summons. What terrifically dire task have you deemed important enough to keep you from our presence?”

  “Research, your Imperial Highness.”

  The Empress and her court waited for two whole heartbeats, but Heru didn’t elaborate. The Empress’s eye twitched.

  “What … kind of research?” prompted a marabi, his voice nervous and high.

  “The important kind.” Heru sniffed. “Look, your Imperial Highness—”

  “Silence,” snapped the Empress. “Too often we have tolerated your indolence and your particularly childish need to hoard unimportant secrets like a miserable sand flea hoards water. Clearly this has led you to forget your place. Nearly a moon ago we sent you to that dust-covered hovel to begin negotiations—a mission that should’ve taken you at least a further moon to complete—and yet, here you are. Not only did you return early, you didn’t report to us first and, further, you had the audacity to refuse our summons.

  “We would not have suffered even the first insult from any lesser fool, but seeing as how we’ve granted similar liberties in the past, we were willing to let it be washed downriver. But a second—and third—insult is both unspeakable and unforgivable, even for our preeminent fool. You are walking a very fine line here, Sametket. If the next words out of your mouth do not fully and thoroughly explain your actions, we will personally introduce you and your foreign assistants to our imperial executioner.”

  Fear bit into Thana’s confidence. The Empress had said assistants, plural. She couldn’t have meant Thana. But who else—?

  The Empress sagged back in her throne, as if all of that rage had burned too hot and left her hollowed out. Heru, for once, appeared uncertain. He shifted from foot to foot as he weighed his words. When he finally spoke, it was with none of the aloof impertinence he’d exuded earlier.

  “I’m honored that your Imperial Highness has shown such restraint and benevolence,” said Heru, carefully picking across his words as if they were hot rocks in a fire. “She knows that my work is of the utmost importance and also the utmost secrecy. I am loath to say that my mission in Ghadid was waylaid by a more pressing and dangerous issue that has come to my attention, but that’s the truth. I am also hesitant to speak any more on such a delicate matter in the presence of so many ears.”

  The Empress raised one kohl-lined eyebrow. “If it’s private council that you desire, then simply ask.” She made a shooing motion toward the crowd. “Leave us. We’ll summon you again when we have need of you. Atrex—tell him to stay.”

 
One of the marab made a noise deep in her throat, but the others ducked their heads and started filing out. Within a few moments, it was just the three of them, the Empress, and a single guard whose white skirt was lined with black. A man all in silver had taken the guard aside before leaving and made several small hand gestures.

  “What about him?” asked Heru, indicating the guard.

  The Empress shook her head. “Atrex is deaf and never learned how to read lips. He can also cleave a man’s head from his shoulders with a single swing of his sword. He stays. But what about your assistants?”

  “She’s a healer,” said Heru. “She was with me when these terrible things first transpired. She can corroborate my story and fill in any details I might neglect. She is essential.” He gestured to Thana without turning. “This other is Senousert’s slave. She is carrying my research.”

  The Empress tilted her head, her earrings swinging with the motion. “That’s not one of Senousert’s slaves.”

  Thana’s breath caught in her throat. She forced herself to breathe as she put on a mask of confusion and glanced from the Empress to Heru. It would be normal for a slave to be alarmed. But she didn’t try to defend herself; a drum chief wouldn’t let a slave speak without permission, so surely the Empress wouldn’t either.

  “Aohti’s slave, then. She was in the library,” said Heru, as if that explained everything.

  Although Heru was no longer looking her way, Mo had turned toward her. Thana made the mistake of meeting Mo’s gaze. Mo took a sharp breath, then quickly turned away, her fingers tightening around the wooden stake she was still carrying. As if the bound might attack them even here.

  The Empress made a circular motion with two fingers, then pointed at Thana. Before she could react, the guard Atrex had shoved between Heru and Mo and grabbed Thana by her arm. He brought the blade of his sword to rest against her neck and pressed hard enough to cut through the first layer of skin. Thana hardly dared breathe.

  “Your brand is incorrect and your skirt isn’t knotted in the right places. You’re not one of our slaves.” The Empress waved her hand as if swatting a fly. “Behead her. We’ll have the slaves clean up the mess later.”

  18

  “No!”

  Mo moved first, raising her makeshift staff as terror flashed across her face. The Empress lifted her palm. The deaf Atrex and his sword didn’t move.

  “What’s this? You allow your slave to make such outbursts, Sametket?”

  “She’s not his slave!” said Thana, despite the blade pressing against her neck.

  Heru half nodded, half shrugged. “She accompanied me from Ghadid, that is true.”

  “And this other?”

  Thana’s stomach dropped as she met Heru’s gaze. He’d sold her out before, when he’d had little to lose. Now that he was in Na Tay Khet in the presence of his precious Empress, what would he do? Thana could see the words that spelled her death forming on his lips: spy, liar, assassin. In another moment, Atrex’s sword would separate her head from her body and it’d all be over. Everything she’d done, everything she’d endured, just to become a headless corpse far from home.

  “The same, in a fashion,” sasid Heru. “If you must, I would prefer if you didn’t behead her here. There will be quite a lot of blood and I’ve already had my sandals cleaned once since arriving.”

  Thana watched the Empress, waiting for the signal that would end her life. Then her mind wrapped around Heru’s words and she turned her stare on him.

  The Empress frowned. “You know this slave?”

  Heru measured Thana again with his gaze and she could all but see the calculations behind his eyes. He was summing up every ounce that she could give him and deciding whether or not she was worth keeping around, alive. He’d already made clear that to him she was a resource, a pawn—not a person. But then Mo began to speak and his gaze slid to the healer and sharpened.

  “She came with us, mai,” said Mo. “Please don’t kill her. She was there when the—the thing happened. Tell her, Heru.”

  Heru nodded to himself, as if he’d just decided something, then he straightened and met his Empress’s gaze. “She might have additional insight into the problem. Perhaps you should put off executing her until we’ve extracted that knowledge.”

  The Empress touched a finger to her forehead. “If she came with you, then why does she wear the clothes of an Imperial slave, if poorly?”

  “The three of us traveled to Na Tay Khet together from Ghadid, your Imperial Highness,” said Thana. “We were separated at the city gates.”

  “And why was that?”

  “A misunderstanding, mai.”

  The Empress’s finger slid up until her whole palm rested against her forehead. “That still doesn’t explain your presence in our library, pretending to be a slave.”

  “I was trying to catch up, mai.”

  The Empress stared at her for long enough to become uncomfortable, but Thana didn’t flinch. She didn’t dare; the guard’s blade still hadn’t moved. “A normal person might have sent word through our stewards at the front of our palace.”

  “Yes, well,” said Thana. “A normal person would’ve had to wait days for an answer, and even then been refused admittance. As a foreigner with neither name nor station, I wouldn’t have been granted even that. By the time I’d received an answer, Heru and Mo would’ve been long gone. Which, considering the circumstances and the danger we’re all in, would’ve been less than ideal, mai.”

  The Empress stared at Thana, not a single muscle moving. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest, Thana might’ve suspected Heru of something. As it was, Thana fought to hide her unease.

  After almost a full minute had passed—Thana had counted her own heartbeats, loud and demanding in her ears—a twitch of the lips broke the Empress’s blank expression. Then she leaned forward, her hands clutching the arms of the chair, and laughed. The sound was deep, almost guttural, and completely unexpected from such a slight figure. The Empress’s laughter echoed throughout the throne room, redoubling on itself and twisting into something sinister.

  Thana turned her head just enough to avoid cutting herself on Atrex’s blade to exchange a confused glance with Mo, then tried to catch Heru’s reaction. The thunderstruck en-marabi couldn’t look away from his Empress. Her laughter thinned until it was only a wet hiccupping that she smothered with the back of one hand.

  The Empress took a few deep breaths before straightening, her face once again an impassive mask. “We should have you executed for such impertinence. But it looks like this will make twice in a single day that we’ve exercised clemency against our own better judgment. Such willful disregard for authority is dangerous, but you are clearly ignorant of our customs. We hope you won’t be among us long enough to create a real problem.”

  She pointed to Thana, then opened her palm and dropped her hand. Atrex removed his blade and stepped back. Thana sagged to the floor. She took a moment to gather herself, then forced her shaking legs to hold her and faced the Empress with her head high.

  “We have danced enough around the subject of our conversation,” said the Empress, addressing Heru. “Tell us—what was so important that you came running back here without bothering to shake the fleas off first?”

  “Someone is trying to kill me,” said Heru.

  Thana stiffened, but the Empress only waved a hand. “Correct us if we’re wrong, but isn’t someone always trying to kill you?”

  “Yes, but this time the method troubles me,” said Heru. “This was no unimaginative assassination attempt by some snot-nosed kid. This was something far more disturbing—a marabi of my own training, only significantly advanced.” The fingers on Heru’s hand curled into a fist and pressed hard against his thigh. “He has accomplished things of which I’ve only dreamed.”

  “Maybe we should bring him on,” said the Empress. At Heru’s full-body twitch, she raised an appeasing hand. “Only a joke, Sametket. Now, start from the beginning, wh
en you first realized something was amiss.”

  Heru lowered his head, gathering his thoughts. When he spoke, his words were clear and precise. He outlined the first and subsequent attacks with methodical and impersonal language, never once attaching even a hint of emotion to the events, as if they’d happened to someone else entirely. He left out Thana’s own involvement in his room at the inn, weaving her appearance in later when he attended the healers a second time. He described the writing on the backs of the dead in great detail, then explained his own realization of what—or who—that meant.

  His account of their time with the caravan was clipped and short, focusing heavily on their brief encounter with Djet himself. Then he skipped ahead to his research in the library. As he did, he grabbed a scroll from the middle of the pile Thana was holding and flicked it open.

  “So far, I’ve only found a handful of secondary resources and one primary in my research, but even the small amount I’ve uncovered is enough to warrant the Empire’s attention. The creature we met in the desert called itself Djet. I knew I’d read that name in my studies before. And I was right.” Heru gestured at the scroll he held. “Djet Khentawpet was head marabi to King To of the first united dynasty, over three centuries ago. During his decade-long career, he became known for his obsession with immortality, and he was the first marabi to make use of the palace’s lower wing for his research. He conducted experiments to determine the exact properties and constraints of a jaani in relation to its body and natural forces, like death.

  “His groundbreaking research significantly expanded our knowledge of the jaan and advanced our ability to heal and quiet the possessed. It was also profoundly unpopular and eventually became the root of his undoing. Unfortunately, this occurred around the same time as the Great Division, when the First Priest to G-d declared any form of jaan coercion—at least, beyond the quieting of the possessed—anathema to G-d’s will. The Priest coined the term en-marab for those who dared question him. His singular and narrow-minded understanding of the world led to the persecution of many great men.