Rae started walking, slow but steady, keeping her eyes forward. In her peripheral vision, the curtains covering the barracks fluttered in the breeze, but she didn’t look, and she didn’t stop.
Before she knew it, she’d reached the armory doors.
Omari made it too. The two cloth-bearing men were behind him, each now carrying a lit rushlight. They must have stopped to light them on the burning braziers when they arrived. Meanwhile, the other four men proceeded slowly around the inside perimeter, pouring the contents of their jars along the walls, saturating the bottom edges of the barracks’ heavy curtains with a black viscous liquid. They were the same jars that Asim had shown her back atthe meeting place, hidden in his heavy sack.
“What is it?” she’d asked him.
“Naft,” Asim had replied. “It comes from under the water. Not easy to find.”
Rae had never heard of it. “What does it do?”
Asim told her. She’d been fascinated, and wished she could see it work with her own eyes. But as she watched the men pour the evil-looking stuff onto the ground, she changed her mind. If things went as planned, they wouldn’t need to use it.Let us pass a quiet night, she prayed,and calamity never find us.
Tearing her gaze away, Rae refocused on the armory, which was bolted shut. “Help me with this,” she murmured to Omari.
He stepped up next to her, and together they quietly slid the wooden bolt free and pulled open the double doors. It was utterly dark inside the windowless chamber, so Rae turned to one of the cloth-bearers, holding her hand out for his rushlight. It was a simple thing, just a section of reed dipped in animal fat, but it cast enough light around the room for Rae to see what was inside. Her eyes widened.
Asim had guessed at what might be inside the armory, given what he’d seen the Medjay carrying on their patrols around the city. But it was better than that. Much better.
There were spears and javelins lined up against the wall, as well as a dozen khopesh much like the one the young guard had been carrying. Daggers and short swords lay on tables in neat, gleaming piles. They were all expertly crafted, fitted with bronze blades and fine wooden handles. Nothing like the improvised weapons the rebels had made from smelted farm tools and spare lumber. Rae was delighted to see several slingshots and two composite bows among the stash as well. But those weapons, though impressive, weren’t what caught Rae’s eye.
She spied a strange object tucked into a corner that glitteredwhen the firelight passed over its surface. It looked like a pair of golden wings folded over each other, each feather an intricately formed scale of overlapping metal.
While Omari and the other men began rolling armfuls of weapons tightly into the heavy cloth they’d brought, Rae walked over to the object, transfixed. Upon closer inspection, she discovered it was scale armor. The wings were meant to wrap around the warrior’s chest, secured by two crisscrossing straps of leather around the back. It looked old and impossibly beautiful. She wondered where it came from.
“Rae, come on!” Omari whispered harshly. One man had already finished bundling up the compound bows and most of the blades, effectively silencing any noise the weapons might make as they were carried. Omari and the other man hurriedly rolled up the spears and javelins.
Nodding, Rae picked up the armor and was surprised when another object slipped out from inside it. A handle with a heavy head—a mace, perhaps? Her hand shot out to prevent the thing from falling, and as soon as her fingers wrapped around its hilt, a crackle of energy passed through her body, so strong she almost dropped it.
What was that?she wondered, but the shock was gone as quickly as it came. She brought the weapon closer to the light.It’s not really a mace, is it?she thought. It had a long head like a paddle, made of some kind of gray mottled stone and engraved with two eyes and sacred words. The handle was made of highly polished cedar, its grip wrapped in soft leather. Like the armor, it looked old and very, very valuable. She wondered if both items had been plundered from Rahotep’s palace long ago, and had been sitting here collecting dust ever since.
Wait a minute, she thought.I know what this is.She’d seen one painted on the outer wall of the king’s abandoned palace, back when she and her friends used to play there.It’s a sekhemscepter.More a ritualistic object than a weapon, sekhem scepters were a symbol of authority and associated with the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.
Her fingers drifted to the little Sekhmet amulet hanging around her neck, and her thoughts to the man who’d given it to her.Strange…
“Rae!” Omari interrupted, his tone frantic. “We have to go! We’ve already lingered too long!”
“I’m coming.” Rae quickly threw off her robes and slipped her head through the winged armor. The metal feathers jingled softly as they settled onto her shoulders, cascading over her chest like liquid gold. Then she stuck the scepter and a few slingshots into her belt and pulled her robes back on. One of the jar men had come inside the room and was pouring the black naft over the remaining weapons that wouldn’t fit inside their cloth bundles.
“Go, go, go!” Omari muttered to the man with the last cloth bundle, sending him back out into the open. He was waving Rae and the jar man out of the door when what they’d all dreaded came to pass.
“To arms!”a ragged voice shouted into the night.“To arms! We’re under attack!”
The young guard had wakened.
Rae’s heart leaped into her throat as fear and regret overwhelmed her.
I should have knocked him out cold instead of choking him unconscious.
I should have tied the gag tighter.
I should have—
Omari froze, and turned to her with wide eyes.
Calamity, it seemed, had come knocking.
“Run,” she said, and tore through the armory doors, pulling Omari along behind her.
