Teppic realised he was staring at the girl. There was something hauntingly familiar about her which he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘Let her go,’ he said.
‘His Greatness the King Teppicymon XXVIII, Lord of the Heavens, Charioteer of the Wagon of the Sun, Steersman of the Barque of the Sun, Guardian of the Secret Knowledge, Lord of the Horizon, Keeper of the Way, the Flail of Mercy, the High-Born One, the Never-Dying King, has spoken! Tomorrow at dawn you will be cast to the crocodiles of the river. Great is the wisdom of the king!’
Ptraci turned and glared at Teppic. He said nothing. He did not dare, for fear of what it might become.
She went away quietly, which was worse than sobbing or shouting.
‘That is the last case, sire,’ said Dios.
‘I will retire to my quarters,’ said Teppic coldly. ‘I have much to think about.’
‘Therefore I will have dinner sent in,’ said the priest. ‘It will be roast chicken.’
‘I hate chicken.’
Dios smiled. ‘No, sire. On Wednesdays the king always enjoys chicken, sire.’
The pyramids flared. The light they cast on the landscape was curiously subdued, grainy, almost grey, but over the capstone of each tomb a zigzag flame crackled towards the sky.
A faint click of metal and stone sprang Ptraci from a fitful doze into extreme wakefulness. She stood up very carefully and crept towards the window.
Unlike proper cell windows, which should be large and airy and requiring only the removal of a few inconvenient iron bars to ensure the escape of any captives, this window was a slit six inches wide. Seven thousand years had taught the kings along the Djel that cells should be designed to keep prisoners in. The only way they could get out through this slit was in bits.
But there was a shadow against the pyramid light, and a voice said, ‘Psst.’
She flattened herself against the wall and tried to reach up to the slit.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m here to help you. Oh damn. Do they call this a window? Look, I’m lowering a rope.’
A thick silken cord, knotted at intervals, dropped past her shoulder. She stared at it for a second or two, and then kicked off her curly-toed shoes and climbed up it.
The face on the other side of the slit was half-concealed by a black hood, but she could just make out a worried expression.
‘Don’t despair,’ it said.
‘I wasn’t despairing. I was trying to get some sleep.’
‘Oh. Pardon me, I’m sure. I’ll just go away and leave you, shall I?’
‘But in the morning I shall wake up and then I’ll despair. What are you standing on, demon?’
‘Do you know what a crampon is?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s two of them.’
They stared at each other in silence.
‘Okay,’ said the face at last. ‘I’ll have to go around and come in through the door. Don’t go away.’ And with that it vanished upwards.
Ptraci let herself slide back down to the chilly stones of the floor. Come in through the door! She wondered how it could manage that. Humans would need to open it first.
She crouched in the furthest corner of the cell, staring at the small rectangle of wood.
Long minutes went past. At one point she thought she heard a tiny noise, like a gasp.
A little later there was subtle clink of metal, so slight as to be almost beyond the range of hearing.
More time wound on to the spool of eternity and then the silence beyond the cell, which had been the silence caused by absence of sound, very slowly became the silence caused by someone making no noise.
She thought: It’s right outside the door.
There was a pause in which Teppic oiled all the bolts and hinges so that, when he made the final assault, the door swished open in heart-gripping noiselessness.
‘I say?’ said a voice in the darkness.
Ptraci pressed herself still further into the corner.
‘Look, I’ve come to rescue you.’
Now she could make out a blacker shadow in the flarelight. It stepped forward with rather more uncertainty than she would have expected from a demon.
‘Are you coming or not?’ it said. ‘I’ve only knocked out the guards, it’s not their fault, but we haven’t got a lot of time.’
‘I’m to be thrown to the crocodiles in the morning,’ whispered Ptraci. ‘The king himself decreed it.’
‘He probably made a mistake.’
Ptraci’s eyes widened in horrified disbelief.
‘The Soul Eater will take me!’ she said.
‘Do you want it to?’
Ptraci hesitated.
‘Well, then,’ said the figure, and took her unresisting hand. He led her out of the cell, where she nearly tripped over the prone body of a guard.
‘Who is in the other cells?’ he said, pointing to the line of doors along the passage.
‘I don’t know,’ said Ptraci.
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’
The figure touched a can to the bolts and hinges of the next door and pushed it open. The flare from the narrow window illuminated a middle-aged man, seated cross-legged on the floor.
‘I’m here to rescue you,’ said the demon. The man peered up at him.
‘Rescue?’ he said.
‘Yes. Why are you here?’
The man hung his head. ‘I spoke blasphemy against the king.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘I dropped a rock on my foot. Now my tongue is to be torn out.’
The dark figure nodded sympathetically.
‘A priest heard you, did he?’ he said.
‘No. I told a priest. Such words should not go unpunished,’ said the man virtuously.
We’re really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn’t possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. ‘I think we ought to talk about this outside,’ he said. ‘Why not come with me?’
The man pulled back and glared at him.
‘You want me to run away?’ he said.
‘Seems a good idea, wouldn’t you say?’
The man stared into his eyes, his lips moving silently. Then he appeared to reach a decision.
‘Guards!’ he screamed.
The shout echoed through the sleeping palace. His would-be rescuer stared at him in disbelief.
‘Mad,’ Teppic said. ‘You’re all mad.’
He stepped out of the room, grabbed Ptraci’s hand, and hurried along the shadowy passages. Behind them the prisoner made the most of his tongue while he still had it and used it to scream a stream of imprecations.
‘Where are you taking me?’ said Ptraci, as they marched smartly around a corner and into a pillar-barred courtyard.
Teppic hesitated. He hadn’t thought much beyond this point.
‘Why do they bother to bolt the doors?’ he demanded, eyeing the pillars. ‘That’s what I want to know. I’m surprised you didn’t wander back to your cell while I was in there.’
‘I – I don’t want to die,’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t blame you.’
‘You mustn’t say that! It’s wrong not to want to die!’ Teppic glanced up at the roof around the courtyard and unslung his grapnel.
‘I think I ought to go back to my cell,’ said Ptraci, without actually making any move in that direction. ‘It’s wrong even to think of disobeying the king.’
‘Oh? What happens to you, then?’
‘Something bad,’ she said vaguely.
‘You mean, worse than being thrown to the crocodiles or having your soul taken by the Soul Eater?’ said Teppic, and caught the grapnel firmly on some hidden ledge on the flat roof.
‘That’s an interesting point,’ said Ptraci, winning the Teppic Award for clear thinking.
‘Worth considering, isn’t it?’ Teppic tested his weight on the cord.
‘What you’re saying is, if the worst is going to happen to you anyway, you might as well not bother any more,’ said Ptraci. ‘If the Soul Eater is going to get you whatever you do, you might as well avoid the crocodiles, is that it?’
‘You go up first,’ said Teppic, ‘I think someone’s coming.’
‘Who are you?’
Teppic fished in his pouch. He’d come back to Djeli an aeon ago with just the clothes he stood up in, but they were the clothes he’d stood up in throughout his exam. He balanced a Number Two throwing knife in his hand, the steel glinting in the flarelight. It was possibly the only steel in the country; it wasn’t that Djelibeybi hadn’t heard about iron, it was just that if copper was good enough for your great-great-great-great-grandfather, it was good enough for you.
No, the guards didn’t deserve knives. They hadn’t done anything wrong.
His hand closed over the little mesh bag of caltraps. These were a small model, a mere one inch per spike. Caltraps didn’t kill anyone, they just slowed them down a bit. One or two of them in the sole of the foot induced extreme slowness and caution in all except the terminally enthusiastic.
He scattered a few across the mouth of the passage and ran back to the rope, hauling himself up in a few quick swings. He reached the roof just as the leading guards ran under the lintel. He waited until he heard the first curse, and then coiled up the rope and hurried after the girl.