'When you hit a hot enough section of chronosphere, the temperature should trigger dimensional transference. And you're on your way. An ef-fectively unlimited power source. You can keep making jumps until you end up somewhere you like.'
'I can't do that. I'd do more damage. I'll have to think of something else.'
'That's better,' smiled the Doctor.
Kadiatu looked like she wanted to hit him.
63.
Chapter 6.
In Taberna
Life is just one damned thing after another.
('Kin' Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams A Thousand and One Epigrams) Ace held up her left arm. It was covered in bangles, tight rings of gold glistening dully with lapis lazuli. They didn't go well with the loop of the force shield generator. The maid servants were wondering if she were ever going to take it off.
Sedjet hosted two or three parties a week. There didn't seem to be much else for him to do. Tonight the servants had more important things to worry about than Ace's strange ornament; they were slapping dough on the outsides of smoky ovens, unsealing jars of beer and wine and arranging flowers about the house. Overseeing it all, Mrs Sedjet moved about in her finest garments, a crimson cloak knotted over her white dress.
Ace sat in the corner, like a vase of flowers: pretty and useless, slowly wilting.
It had been a week since Sedjet's proposal. She'd asked for time to think, trying to get her head around the fact that she wasn't going to be rescued.
Perhaps he was a little hurt that she needed to be rescued from him.
But Sedjet's patience was great, even if his intellect wasn't. So now she sat on a stool, watching the servants preparing scented wax cones to perch atop rich guests' wigs, and tried for the hundredth time to make a decision.
If her Sergeant Major could see her here, going soft in a nobleman's estate.
Sedjet hadn't even put her on guard duty since their little chat such work was below any future wife of his.
For a moment she was off amongst the stars, soaring in crazy loops in a one-seat fighter, trashing Dalek platforms as they buzzed towards her in clumsy squadrons. The electrodes in her helmet passed information back and forth between her brainstem and the ship, so fast she could feel the nuclear heat in its belly, its nausea at the high-g turns.
She forced herself out of her memories and back into the real world. Which consisted of Sedjet bounding in and pecking his wife on the cheek. His pet monkey scurried up to him and his daughters called their greeting. Hi, honey, Hi, honey, I'm home. I'm home.
65.He came over to Ace, his eyes weighing up her choice of dress and jewellery.
'I think,' he pronounced, 'you should wear something more open. Something that would reveal your scar more clearly.' He fingered the long mark on her left shoulder. It was quite visible under the flimsy linen, a ragged blue-and-red line at odds with the geometry of the pleating.
She caught his hand. 'Sedjet,' she said, 'would you come with me for a moment? I want to talk to you. Just come right this way.'
He followed her, bemused, out into the entrance courtyard. The sun was just setting; the servants were lighting torches beside the path to the front gate.
Ace faced Sedjet and said, 'You've shown my scar to your wife. You've shown my scar to your scribes. You've shown it to visiting dignitaries and generals.
You've even shown it to your three nephews when they came calling.'
'But,' protested Sedjet, 'I thought you were proud of the scar.'
'I was proud of it,' said Ace, 'until you started showing me off like a bit of jewellery.'
Sedjet opened his mouth and closed it, like a goldfish. It looked really stupid. He said, 'Do you expect to be a woman warrior, and not attract any attention? Look at you!' he waved a hand, taking in her pale skin, her long brown hair, her hard muscles, her scar.
'I just want to get on with my job. I don't want to do weapons practice in front of your business associates like I was an acrobat. Right?'
He shook his head. 'I have not asked you to bear arms for the past week.'
'And I'm going stir crazy! I'm not your bloody dancing girl. I just want to do my job, okay?'
'Listen to me, sister,' said Sedjet, starting a slow burn. 'I plucked you out of the desert like a fading flower. I saw to it you were nursed back to life, fed, clothed. Even though you were a woman, even though my friends raised their eyebrows, I gave you employment. I even desired to marry you. I saved your life!'
'And I saved yours, toe-rag,' and suddenly she was laughing, 'so we're even, aren't we?'
'Tepy,' he said sharply, 'what do you want?'
She stopped in place, suddenly silent, her mouth still open.
The feel of soaring through empty space, the pock pock of Dalek shrapnel on her wings. of Dalek shrapnel on her wings.
Slowly, one by one, she took off the bangles and dropped them on the floor.
Her naked feet slapped across the faience tiles. He followed her out into the courtyard, shouting, scattering the servants. 'You never play by the rules!'
he yelled, pushing past his wife, stepping over a necklace as Ace let it fall to the floor. 'You always break the rules!'
66.'And I'm going to go on breaking them,' said Ace.
She went into the street, not expecting him to follow. But he stood at the gate, shouting out into the night.
'You're one of Set's, do you know that, you irritating little slut? You're a woman of Set!'
Ace turned, suddenly, holding the last of her bangles in her fist. She looked down at it. It was the personal force shield generator.
They stood a little distance apart, quivering in their anger.
'You're just scared to admit you're not leaving,' he growled. But now he looked like a hurt little boy, instead of a furious, wealthy, powerful man.
'If I'm stuck here,' she said, 'I'll spend my life the way I want to.'
'You're a woman of Set,' he said again.
'And you're too crukking used to getting your own way,' said Ace, more gently.
She held out the generator to him. He looked at it, that idiot expression slowly covering his features. Ace rolled her eyes and pressed it into his hands.
'Just so you don't forget me,' she said, and walked away into the gathering evening.
She didn't know whether he kept it, or hurled it into the dusty road.
She also didn't know that she would never see Sedjet again.
They were thieves, cut-throats, kidnappers, criminals of every kind. They were scarred and dirty, grinning as they downed pottery cups of raw homemade booze in the oil lamp dimness of the tavern.
The songs faded into a murmur. The ruffians looked up from their games of dice and their back street deals. They gaped at the woman standing in the doorway.
She was pale-skinned, tall and well-shaped. She was dressed like a man, in brown shirt and trousers, a leather satchel slung over her shoulders. On her head was a white hat, pristine, lacking the mud and the miscellaneous stains on the rest of her clothing.
She walked in, smiling nastily as she realised every eye was on her. There was a French pistol on her hip; she moved her satchel away so that everyone could see it.
'Ah,' she said out loud, 'a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Just what I'm looking for.'
She walked right up to the dice game, half a dozen lowlifes on stools around a badly-constructed wooden table. She picked up the beer mug of a staring one-eyed man and drained it at a gulp. 'Tastes like camels smell,' she said. 'I think I'll have another.'
67.She picked up an overturned stool and sat down at the table. The two thugs to either side of her moved a little to give her space. Excellent.
Vivant would have had a fit if he had known she was coming here a lady exposed to scum like these: a fat thief and his wife, fanning herself in the smoky atmosphere; the man with the eye-patch, his working eye running over Benny's body; a tall man and a short man in black clothes, almost a sort of uniform, with tiny bulges that suggested hidden weaponry; a drunken French soldier chewing on a cigar. She wondered who was winning the game of dice.
Probably whoever was cheating the most successfully.
In Benny's experience, the second best archaeological information came not from textbooks or learned professors, but from the locals people who had lived with, and perhaps even lived in, the ruins or remains or tombs you were interested in. If they didn't know where something was, they could find someone who did.
A bored waiter slammed another mug of beer down in front of her. Benny grinned and hefted the glass in a toast. 'Right,' she said. 'Who's for a little bet, then?'
Sesehaten the scribe took his leave of Lord Sedjet who had been in a foul mood for weeks and went to the local tavern to quench his thirst in black beer and bad singing.
Sesehaten sighed as he trudged through the streets of Akhetaten. He was carrying his sandals in one hand, feeling the intense heat of the day soaking into the soles of his feet through the dust.
He hated this city. He hated its hodgepodge of hastily erected buildings.
He thought very little of its lazy inhabitants, courtiers uprooted from Thebes in the great rush to join the Pharaoh at his new capital. Oh, the Lord Sedjet wasn't too bad an employer, even if his skull were thicker than a mud brick.
But Sesehaten hated paperwork, and a wealthy man's estate is nothing but paperwork.
There was a lot of paperwork these days. Every time the Pharaoh found some new tradition to skittle, there were more forms and plans and receipts, on papyrus or slates or bits of broken pottery.
It had been, what, seven years since the new king's coronation? And in that time, the inheritance of centuries had been knocked over like so many ducks being taken with throwing-sticks. Just trying to think about the pace of change these days gave Sesehaten a headache.
Worse than that was the thrumming behind his eyes. It came with sunset, not every night, but strongly this evening as the fierce stars began their wheeling in the sky. He knew enough astronomy to pick out Mars and Jupiter, and to name one or two of the brighter stars. But tonight there were darker 68 secrets purring in the sky, trying to push themselves into his brain, as though he had forgotten a skyful of knowledge. When this happened the only thing to do was drink the noises into silence.
So he kept his eyes in the dust, letting his naked feet take him to the tavern.
He plonked himself down on a stool in the corner. One hand automatically went to his shaven scalp, ran down the smooth skin and scratched behind his left ear. He yawned, running his eyes over the clientele. Plenty of foreigners, as there were always foreigners these days. Pretty much the usual lowlife knocking themselves out on bad beer. Or good beer, if they could afford it.
That was what Sesehaten was here for.
A woman shuffled up to his table, holding a tray full of bowls. She wore a peasant's dress which covered her breasts. Her hands were an unhealthy red colour with sunburn and washing-up.
'Tepy,' he breathed.
She lifted her head, just a little, to look at him. 'What are you doing here?'
he asked stupidly.
'I wait on tables,' she said dully. 'I'm a waitress.'
'Oh, no. I've been looking for you for more than a week. Sit down, for for Aten's sake,' he pleaded.
Ace stood there for a few seconds, as though she hadn't understood what he was saying. Then she dropped her tray on the table and dragged a stool over to him. She leaned on her elbows, looking at him blearily.
It was not the same woman. Not with those soft, empty eyes, those slumped shoulders. 'I thought you planned to enlist,' he stammered.
She snorted. 'They didn't even laugh,' she said. 'Didn't even laugh. They said no woman could fight as well as an Egyptian soldier. So I beat up a few of them.'
Sesehaten laughed, hesitantly. 'That got their attention,' said Tepy. 'So they went off to find their general. He said I fought better than some of his officers.
But a woman in the ranks would only cause confusion, break up the boys. A foreign whore in the field would ruin morale.'
'You're no whore,' said Sesehaten.
'It's only a matter of time,' she said simply, and he was suddenly aware of the eyes pressed to her body, furtive glances or overt stares from around the open room of the tavern.
'There are,' said Tepy, waving a heavy hand, 'there are little boxes which an Egyptian man can fit into. He gets one from his father, right, a little box with a label saying SCRIBE or PEASANT or PRIEST or SCULPTOR. For women there are only two boxes. Right? They're labelled WIFE and WHORE.'
'There are women who are singers or professional mourners,' said Sesehaten. 'And musicians.'
69.'Can't sing,' said Tepy.
'Oh no, that's not true. I've heard you sing, it's quite pleasant.'
'The singers,' said Tepy, 'spend the whole night telling horny boys to get lost.
Or not, depending on how strapped for cash they are. They're not married, so they must be open for business, right? Trap's closing around me, Sesehaten.
I'm being stuffed into one of those little boxes.'
'Your like a cat herding geese,' said the scribe. 'Out of place. Not part of ma' ma'
at, the order of the universe.'
There was an explosive sound across the room: wine jar and skull meeting.