She still meant every word of it.
MILDRED RECOGNIZED a hypnagogic state of consciousness, and Krysty was deep in the throes of one. The inability of her eyes to respond and track her finger had been the tip-off. If the state had been induced by drugs, then the ankh would probably do little to ameliorate it.
She hadn’t gone more than twenty yards down the corridor when she sensed rather than heard a stealthy someone falling into step behind her. Pivoting sharply on her heel, she saw the Set-headed Incarnate looming there, a metauh rod held across his left breast. Fright leaped through her, dried the saliva in her mouth, set her heart to racing.
“Just keep going,” he said tonelessly.
“To where?”
“To where I tell you.”
Mildred did as he ordered, walking through what seemed like acres of shadowy, pillared halls. She knew she was back in the quarters of Mimses, and that he had sent one of his Incarnates to fetch her.
They went down a curving staircase with Set nearly treading on her heels. The stair ended facing an open doorway. She hesitated, peering into it, trying to see or hear what lay beyond it.
With the serpentine quickness of his namesake, Set clapped his hand over Mildred’s mouth and passed his other arm around her waist. He jerked her off her feet and carried her swiftly through the door. Mildred flailed at him with her fists, but the big man seemed impervious to her blows.
The room was lit only by a single, sputtering taper, and Mildred saw bleak, bare walls and a wooden bench in a corner. She also saw a metal ring bolted in the wall, well above the level of her head. From it dangled leather cuffs. Set yanked up her wrists, slid the cuffs around them, tightened the straps and released her. She hung with her arms above her head, only the balls of her feet touching the floor.
Hearing a footfall from a corner, she turned her head, looking over a shoulder. Mimses was swathed in a gaudy crimson-and-yellow robe, the big sleeves decorated with gleaming silver and gold braids. He smiled at her, vulpine lips spreading in an oily smirk of mock sympathy. Mildred felt his eyes running up and down her near naked body.
“You son of a bitch,” she said calmly.
“Call me what you want, brown sugar. It’ll only shorten your life.”
Mimses stepped close to her, lightly stroking her bare back. The smirk was fixed on his face, but he saw the disgust flickering in her eyes and his lips compressed in anger.
“You stole from me.” His tone was strident.
Mildred didn’t reply.
Growling deep in his throat, Mimses raked his fingers over her body, clawing away her clothing. When her breastplates were stripped away, the ankh clinked to the stone floor. Mimses stooped to pick it up, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
“Danielson told you about the power of this,” he said. “I should’ve guessed. Life in Aten has softened me. What did you do with it? Did you make copies?”
“Copies?” Mildred echoed. “Why would I do that?”
Mimses didn’t answer, but Nefron did, in a cold voice from the doorway. “She’s lying.”
Shock and despair enfolded Mildred. Tears suddenly burned against her eyes, but she blinked them back angrily. Nefron stepped up beside her. Mildred didn’t meet her gaze, and trying to keep her voice steady, she said, “I had my suspicions about you. I wish I’d acted on them.”
Nefron’s reply was a breathy, amused whisper. “You are more intelligent than I gave you credit for. You figured out the workings of the ankhs, how they set up a damping field that Pharaoh’s power cannot penetrate.”
“Or yours,” Mildred said.
“Or mine.”
“What’s your agenda, Nefron? Why are you using us as pawns?”
Nefron shrugged. “In Aten, everyone is a pawn to one degree or another. The answer to your question is simple—I want the throne and I want that red-eyed monster dead.”
“And you can’t have one without the other.”
Nefron chuckled. “See, Mimses? I told you she was brighter than the usual women you take a fancy to.”