“And now you’ll be Sovereign over Nu,” Het said. “Instead of Merur.”
“I suppose so,” agreed Dihaut. “For the moment, anyway. But maybe not openly—it would be useful if Merur still called herself the One Sovereign but stayed above on Aeons and let us do our jobs without interference.” They shrugged again and gave that half smile of theirs. “Maybe she can salvage her pride by claiming credit for having tricked you into stopping your over-enthusiastic obedience, and saving everyone. In fact, it might be best if she can pretend everything’s going on as it was before. We’ll still be her Eyes at least in name, and we can make what changes we like.”
Het would have growled at them again, but she realized she was too tired. It had been a long, long day. “I don’t want to be anyone’s Eye. I want to be out of this.” She didn’t miss the cold, but she wanted that solitude. That silence. Or the illusion of it, which was all she’d really had. “I want to be somewhere that isn’t here.”
“Are you sure?” Dihaut asked. “You’ve become quite popular among the single-lived, today. They call you beautiful, and fierce, and full of mercy.”
She thought of the children by the river. “It’s meaningless. Just old poetry rearranged.” Still she felt it, the gratification that Dihaut had surely meant her to feel. She was glad that she’d managed to spare those lives. That the single-lived of Hehut might remember her not for having slaughtered so many of them, but for having spared their lives. Or perhaps for both. “I want to go.”
“Then go, sib.” Dihaut waved one silver hand. “I’ll make sure no one troubles you.”
“And the unauthorized lives there? Or elsewhere on Nu?”
“No one will trouble them either,” Dihaut confirmed equably. “So long as they don’t pose a threat to Hehut. They never did pose a threat to Hehut, only to Merur’s desire for power over every life on Nu.”
“Thank you.” Her skin itched, her fur growing thicker just at the thought of the cold. “I don’t think I want you to come get me. When I die, I mean. Or at least, wait a while. A long time.” Dihaut gestured assent, and Het continued, “I suppose you’ll judge me, then. Who’ll judge you, when the time comes?”
“That’s a good question,” replied Dihaut. “I don’t know. Maybe you, sib. Or maybe by then no one will have to pass my judgment just to be allowed to live. We’ll see.”
That idea was so utterly alien to Het that she wasn’t sure how to respond to it. “I want some peace and quiet,” she said. “Alone. Apart.” Dihaut gestured assent.
“Don’t leave me behind, Noble Het!” piped Great Among Millions. “Beautiful Het! Fierce Het! Het full of mercy! I don’t want them to put me in a box in a storeroom again!”
“Come on, then,” she said, impatiently, and her standard skittered happily after her as she went to find a flier to take her away from Hehut, back to the twilit ice, and to silence without judgment.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
* * *
We often talk about Ancient Egypt as though it was one simple, static thing, unchanging until, maybe, the Ptolemies arrived on the scene. But “Ancient Egypt” covers some three thousand years, and while some things may have been broadly true all through those millennia, myths and religious stories changed, were consciously edited and adapted to fit the circumstances of the time, or the intentions of the writer. There was no internally consistent, static whole that myths and beliefs added up to, no one official “right” version of any story.
So given that this is a body of (often fragmentary) myths from a huge range of time, which was always changing to fit the needs of the moment, why stay in the past? Why not move far, far into the future? And the story of the goddess Sekhmet’s destruction of mankind is so intriguing. Some older translations of the text suggest that mankind rebels against Re because he’s become old, but more recent translations don’t offer any reason at all for it. And the goddess sent to put the rebellion down is the nurturing, healing Hathor, who manifests as Sekhmet, the Powerful, the Lady of Slaughter. Who even Re himself can’t stop, once she’s let loose. She’s so dangerous you’d think the gods would be glad to be rid of her, but in other stories Sekhmet, seemingly always angry, leaves Egypt and has to be searched for and cajoled to come back. Those plentiful ambiguities and elisions are irresistible to me.
* * *
ANN LECKIE
FISHER-BIRD
BY
* * *
T. KINGFISHER
FISHER-BIRD HAD A CREST LIKE iron and eyes as dark as the last scale on a blacksnake’s snout. She had a white collar and a gray band and a belt the color of dried blood.
Fisher-Bird had a chatterjack voice that she used to cuss with, and she flew like the air had personally offended her. Her beak was long and shaped like a spearpoint, and she could see the ripples fish made when they even thought of swimming.
Fisher-Bird knew things. Not like crows know things, or ravens—not that you can ever find a raven around these parts. Not like whip-poor-wills know the taste of your soul or thrushes know the color of music. But nothing happened in the woods or along the stream without it reaching Fisher-Bird eventually.
There’s a story about the red belt, and why Fisher-Bird’s got one and her husband doesn’t. There’s always a story. I don’t say this one’s true.
Time was, Fisher-Bird was perched on a branch over the stream, looking at the fish being lazy in the water. She was thinking maybe it’d be a good thing to dive down there, put the fear of god in a couple of ’em, or at least the fear of Fisher-Bird, when she heard a crack and a crash coming through the woods.
A man came down the deer-trail, staggering like he couldn’t see. His face was swelled up and puffy, and his breath squeaked through his throat. He had blood coming out of his ears and out his nose and even oozing out from under his fingernails.
Fisher-Bird looked at him out of her right eye. He was a big man. His arms were tree-trunk thick, and he was so shaggy it looked like he was wearing a shirt. Fisher-Bird had to look twice to see he wasn’t, just a mountain lion skin draped over his shoulders like the cat was going for a piggyback ride.
Then she looked out of her left eye, and she saw he had god-blood in him, thick and stringy as spiderwort sap, the kind that clogs up your veins and makes you a hero even if you’d rather just be an ordinary soul.
Poor bastard, thought Fisher-Bird.
He fell into the stream and shoved his head into the water. All the fish remembered they had somewhere else to be, and Fisher-Bird was left alone on her branch, just watching the shaggy man soak his head in the stream.
When he came up for air, his eyes were slitted open and some of the blood was gone, but his cheeks were still huge and puffed up with lumps. Fisher-Bird saw two holes in a couple of the lumps, and she knew right off what had happened. The shaggy man had pissed off Old Lady Cottonmouth. She’s not an evil snake, no matter what people say, but she wants respect and she doesn’t suffer fools.
“Damn, hon,” said Fisher-Bird. “You look like hammered shit.”