that the ferryman’s head was turned the wrong way
around on his body, so he watched the place he had
come from rather than where he was going.
That had to be inconvenient.
His gaze dropped to the ferryman’s hands where
they curled around the pole. He could see the tiny bones,
bare and skeletal and white, denuded of flesh and skin.
Lokan swallowed. The boat. The ferryman. The
water reflecting the bleeding sky.
Okay, he knew where he was. Knew what he needed
to do. Somehow, he’d landed in Hades’s turf. Not great,
but not as bad as it could be. Hades was no ally of
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Sutekh or his sons, but Osiris’s or Xaphan’s realms
would have been worse.
The fact that he knew all this was a relief. He knew
the names of the forty-two gods. He knew the names
of the deities of the Greeks and Romans. The Voodoo
Baron Samedi. The Mayan Ah Puch. And all the others.
He knew those things and he knew his place among
those who juggled and jockeyed for position in the
Underworld’s hierarchy.
Yes, he knew that now. He was Sutekh’s son.
And looking at the boat before him and the river so
wide he could see no land on the far side, he knew he
was taking the long way home. He wasn’t used to
taking this route to the Underworld—soul reapers generally got to bypass the theatrics—but needs must.
The ferryman extended one skeletal hand, the draped
sleeve of his robe falling back as he turned his palm up.
