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Have you been quarrelsome? shrieked Second Last.
You must protest your innocence! Dog-breath told his prisoner, tiny at the
feet of the god of Death. But the Doctor just looked him in the eye and kept
silent.
Tell us! Tell us! Haste and Quarter To started a pitched battle with their
feather-knives.
Who cares for you? Ace heard herself shout. You re nothing but a pack of
pen-pushers! We ve faced worse than you!
The Doctor was smiling, just the corner of his mouth turned up. In contempt
of the court.
The bird-headed god glanced at his wrist-watch. Isn t there anything you d
like to tell us?
He died, said Ace.
Silence fell like a stone. The gods leant forward, listening.
It came out reflexively from her throat. He died.
We know that-bit, said Bird-brain. Everyone here is dead. You re dead,
he s dead. This and he gestured with his brush is an ex-Time Lord. What s
your point?
He left me, she said in a tiny voice. He didn t come back for me.
The jackal-headed man stepped forward, carrying something Ace hadn t
been able to make out clearly before. Now she saw it was a pair of hearts.
In one of the scale s pans an ostrich feather was sitting, heavy, dragging the
balance down towards it. The word truth and the word feather are the same
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in hieroglyphs. Ma at, the White Lady was hissing in her ear. The dead man s
heart is tested by being weighed against ma at.
What is it? Ace whispered. Her throat had tied itself in knots.
Truth, justice, and the Egyptian way. The order of the universe, the order
of society. If his heart is heavier, he fails the test.
But that s not fair, Ace was trying to say. He has two hearts.
Who fails the test feeds the Devourer, the White Lady whispered in her ear.
Under the tipping scales, the moving thing resolved itself into a patchwork
she-monster made out of pieces of animals, her mouth wide and hungry as a
crocodile s.
As Bird-brain started filling in a papyrus in triplicate, the guards stepped
smartly away from the Doctor, leaving him alone in the centre of the floor.
The rose over his left heart blazed.
The Devourer came for the Time Lord.
He started to laugh.
You know the weirdest thing? said Tepy. I felt like I was just a bystander, an
extra. Like it was his dream, and I just happened to be there.
A funeral dream, Sesehaten said, indicates grief. It is good, it means that
there is something left of him inside your mind. It is good to dream of friends,
especially when we can t see them again.
I don t want to dream about him, said Tepy heavily. I don t want to think
about him, I just want to get on with it. And I m not there s no I m not
grieving.
You don t believe he s dead, do you?
You don t know him. He s crukking unstoppable. Crukking unkillable. The
only way he d die is if he planned it himself. She blew out an angry sigh. If
he d have landed here instead of me, he d be telling the Pharaoh how to tie
his shoelaces by now. He d have the Zargoids eating out of his hand. Cept
there are no Zargoids.
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. You know, I was always
dependent on him, too. And he could always get me to do what he wanted,
one way or another. I can t move without him. He never stops moving, only
one thing could stop him moving. And I saw it happen, I actually saw it
happen. And I didn t care.
Sesehaten said, When Sedjet s first wife died, he hired a bevy of wailing
women to tear their hair and throw dust on their faces. He never shed a tear
himself. But he had to keep up appearances. His lip curled. Mourning when
you feel no grief is just an elaborate lie.
Don t I love him? Didn t I love him? Her voice was cool, even with therich
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beer. He didn t even die for a good reason. Slike the Sarge used to say,
anything you can do can get you shot, including doing nothing. And I don t
care. I just don t care. I didn t really love him, and now he s gone. And I m
stuck here. Wasted. Because I can t fit into a box.
Listen to me, said the scribe. You re a separate person. Are you the eye
of your friend? Are you his hand? He s dead, but you are still alive. And not
everyone shapes themselves into a box.
Tepy s eyes were watery with booze. She wasn t listening. One thing about
the Doctor, wherever you go, he always has powerful friends, and if he doesn t
have them he makes them, and if he can t make them he becomes powerful
himself. People think he s a god or an official or something. But I threw away
the only powerful friend I had.
You said you were an Egyptian. But you don t fit in. Sesehaten sighed. I
can t imagine you fitting in anywhere.
Yeah, I m a woman of Set, she snorted. What the smeg does that mean,
anyway?
Sesehaten opened his mouth, closed it, then spoke with precision. Before
our beloved Pharaoh established his new religion and built this city to worship
his Aten, Set was worshipped as the breaker of rules, the upsetter of order.
Chaos is just as much a part of the universe as order; the Nile swells every
year at the same time, but sometimes it floods the villages. We pay our taxes
but we get drunk. Ma at says you should be a lady. But some of us have to
break the rules.
I can break all the rules I like, said Tepy. I m still stuck in this crukking
tavern. I m off the board, out of the game. I m going to die here, and someone
will paint me with tar and bury me in a patch of sand. Jesus, listen to me. You
said you d been looking for me, she said abruptly. Why?
The scribe took a mouthful of beer. You know that stretch of desert you
used to visit? Where Sedjet found you? She nodded. I just wanted to warn
you that demons have been seen there. You should avoid the place for a
while.
Demons? Tepy let go of her hair, pushed it cut of her flushed face. What
the cruk kind of demons?
Some soldiers saw them. Giant scarabs, or some kind of insects, shining
like the sun.
How many? What were they doing?
I don t know the details. The report was garbled.
Tepy stood up, grabbing the edge of the table for support. Oh cruk, she
said. Oh cruk. The Zargoids are here.
Tepy, said Sesehaten, alarmed, What s a Zargoid?
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The people who killed the Doctor. They ve come looking for me. Whatever
they are. She pressed her hands to her face, trying to think. They ll scan for
high-technology equipment. Oh cruk, Sedjet
This is the home of the Lord Sedjet.
In the courtyard, torches are burning, sending thinning curls of smoke into
the sunset. A soft wind blows the smell of ash over the surrounding fields,
carries it through the rooms of the mansion.
Inside the main hall, the braziers have burned low, filling the room with
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