Doctor Who_ Set Piece - Kate Orman [39]
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 74
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