I held my hand to Charmion, my most loyal advisor. Unwillingly, she passed the dried jaw of an asp, fangs proud. I coated the fangs in the bubbling black of the cup, then punctured myarm. The poison burned up my veins, through my shoulder, and into my heart.
I fell to my knees, stunned.
Through blurring eyes, I saw Imhotep splash poison from the cup onto the god-falcon. Charmion shouted, “Betrayal!” as the god-falcon writhed and stilled, then was lifted high by Imhotep.
Imhotep sang strange words, and my spirit journeyed from my body. Betrayed or not, the underworld summoned me.
I threw my spirit deep into the river and found a magnificent presence. A goddess.
“I am dying,” I whispered. “Honor my command. Fight my war.”
The earth shook. The river parted, and a goddess rose, but not the scarlet glory of Ra. Her wings, broader than ships, were black as night.
In triumph, Imhotep shouted, “Apep!” the name of Ra’s terrible serpent enemy. He stabbed a bronze knife at the god-falcon’s breast until the scales parted. Clumpy, yellow bile spilled—the corrupted blood of an unwilling sacrifice. He scraped it into the stone cup. Globs of smoking brown-black spat from the rim.
The monstrous flint-fanged head approached us, her spread jaws dripping river water and cold mist. Her goddess voice filled me:I seek the passion of your vengeance. But the wars of your kind are without purpose. They flicker, endless as the seasons—
Imhotep threw the cup of poison into the goddess’s throat, then the twitching carcass of the god-falcon. The goddess reared and roared.
Imhotep cried, “Rise, Apep! Bring your darkness! If Egypt falls, the world falls with it!”
The silver thread of binding pierced my stopped heart, weighing it for worthiness, and our minds became one. As the poison smothered my dying thoughts, I felt Imhotep’s potion break the mind of the winged goddess. Her judgment turned hard and brittle, then fractured into fury and madness.
I came back to myself.Frantic, I yanked my dripping hand from the water and clutched at the suffocating compression in my chest. My fingers were so chilled they were senseless, but I felt my lungs inflate. My heart beat. The jeweled, olive-skinned hands I had seen were not mine.
I pushed my hand inside my coat, shivering and shocked. The familiarcold rattled my bones. Mist roiled on the ice around me. The air tasted metallic and tinny.
The open patch of water skinned with silver, crackled, then froze with snaps and pops, shuddering upward into a block inches thick. Like the Thames had frozen when I stepped from the pier onto the ice.
Yuánchi was a motionless shadow on the riverbank. The binding between us was vivid. He had shared my vision.
“What horror was that?” I whispered.
The fracture. His voice brimmed with loss.The breaking of dragon names.
“That is why no dragon song is finished? That… ritual? Why did you not answer when I asked before?”
I did not know. The fracture was a mystery. You saw a lost memory.
“Not lost. It is the memory of another dragon.” Yuánchi furled his wings but did not answer, so I voiced what I knew to be true. “That is the dragon I touch through this water. The dragon that sleeps in the Thames.”
20
CALL ME EMMA
EMMA
Harriet liftedher spoon of porridge and slowly upended it. Misshapen lumps plopped into her bowl. “I never thought I would miss Mrs. Goddard’s oatmeal.”
I smiled until I could pry my glued teeth apart to answer. “It is very wholesome.” Harriet’s answering sigh was so tremendous that I added, “We could have our luncheon at the school.”
“Will you stay that long?”
Harriet planned to spend today at the Martin school, assisting with something or other. That made me uneasy, but it was convenient as well. I had returned to the school with her yesterday, and I felt a desperate need to go again.
“I thought I would read to Nessy,” I said. “We are at an exciting point in her book.”
Mrs. Hickinbottom, the widow who rented the spare room where we boarded, scurried into the parlor, her fluttering cotton bonnet framing a hopeful smile. “Is breakfast to your taste, ma’am?”
