Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [37]
She sat back down with Sesehaten, picked up a bowl of beer from the tray, and drained it at a gulp. ‘I double as a bouncer.’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘One of the reasons the old bastard keeps me on. The other one is he’s trying to get into my dress. It’s just the same as Sedjet. It’s just the same as Sabalom. He pays the bills, eventually he’ll get what he wants out of me.’
‘There must be some noble who would have you as his bodyguard.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m too well known, I’ve lost the element of surprise. And I’ve lost my novelty. Sedjet showed me off too many times. So much is changing around here. I thought maybe one more change wouldn’t make any difference . . . ’
‘There are thousands of years of ma’ at to overcome,’ he said, trying to sound consoling. ‘Changing that is too great a test for one woman.’
‘Who fails the test feeds the Devourer,’ she muttered.
‘What?’
She fixed him with a dull eye. ‘I hear a lot of politics, you know,’ she said.
‘Just one man’s changing all those thousands of years of tradition.’
‘Yes, but that one man happens to be the Pharaoh.’
70
‘When I tried to join up, you know what I found out? Hardly anyone’s going abroad to fight any more. There was a punitive campaign to Nubia, and a few troops sent to some of the vassal princes. But you know where most of the army is? Right here. Where the Pharaoh needs ’em. Because he’s changed everything around. He’s messed around with ma’ at. And nobody’s happy.’
She waved vaguely at the tavern’s inhabitants. ‘You should hear them start on their dreamer Pharaoh, when they’ve got a few bowls of beer inside them.
It’s like a huge wheel trying to turn, but it’s stuck on a rock and there’s friction and sparks. Resistance.’
‘I used,’ said Sesehaten, ‘to be a priest.’
‘Is that right?’ Tepy ran her finger around the rim of her bowl. ‘There used to be a lot of gods, and now there’s only one. And you’re not allowed to worship any of the ones that Mr. Pharaoh killed. Which god did you worship?’
Why did you mention the Devourer?’ asked Sesehaten.
‘I had a dream.’
‘Tell me about your dream.’
She was walking, descending on a long, labyrinthine path. There was a cold pain in her right wrist, and when she looked up, she realized she was being led by the hand.
The White Lady turned to her, as if wondering why she hesitated. The Lady had no face, only smoothness, like a pearly mask. Ace saw her own features reflected in that mask, and snapped her eyes away from it, worried in case the White Lady tried to take her face for her own.
They went through huge halls, great pillars shooting up towards the roof, the walls covered in the chiselled scrawl of a million scribes. There was incense everywhere, fogging the air, and through it Ace could make out figures, seated in rows, holding knives or busy with papyri. Sometimes eyes looked back at her through the scented clouds, and the eyes were not always human.
They came to a huge hall, huger than all the rest, seeming to stretch away into infinity. At the far end, miles away but perfectly clear and visible, was a raised bier, its roof covered in cobras.
‘And inside the bier sat a green-faced man, attended by two ladies, with a lotus at his feet,’ Sesehaten whispered.
Tepy had been staring into her bowl of beer. Now she dragged her sleepy eyes up to him. ‘What is it?’
‘The Hall of the Judgment of the Dead,’ said Sesehaten excitedly.
‘The pit of hell,’ said Tepy. ‘I thought all that stuff was banned.’
‘It is,’ said the scribe, ‘but I don’t think the law extends to dreams. Go on.’
∗ ∗ ∗
71
There was a long, long row of figures sitting against one wall. Perhaps half of them had human faces. Each one held an ostrich feather – or was it a knife?
Ace tried to squint through the smoke at the bizarre jury, but the White Lady’s sharp grip was pulling her to one side of the hall.
There were figures standing in the hall, figures that rang tiny bells in Ace’s mind. She’d seen them at the Museum, her schoolfriends touching their tiny hands to a fallen arm of Ramesses,