Just as I had resolved to put my plan into action, I felt the bronze pot I was leaning on suddenly give way, letting out a long
screech
as it slowly began to tip forward. I grasped the edge of the pot, trying to set it upright again, but it was too heavy. The only thing I got for my trouble was a load of partly coagulated grease down the front of my sweater. Once again, my fashion forward sense had been thwarted by the Afterlife and another beautiful designer creation would now, without a doubt, be resigned to the rag pile.
Sometimes I hated my life.
There was an eardrum-shattering
ring
as the pot fell forward, spilling its contents out onto the cold stone floor. The sound of metal on stone was so intensely painful that I tried to cover my ears with my hands, totally forgetting that they were coated in torture grease. So, not only did I
not
protect my hearing, but I also got rank-smelling grease in my hair.
Yummy!
“Ew!” I shrieked as I tried to wipe the remains of the grease onto my sweater, but the stuff was pretty caustic and wouldn’t come off. I was going to need way more than just a shower when I got home; I was gonna need some hard-core decontaminating.
I suppose the sound of the oil pot slamming into the floor was loud enough to get the attention of the Jackal Brothers, but I like to think that they were already coming down to the torture chamber to check on their prisoners anyway, regardless of what I had just done.
Needless to say, I was still standing in the middle of the room, rubbing my hands across my chest like an amateur You-Tube porn star, when the lock clicked and the big wooden door flew open. Immediately, the other prisoners in the room started moaning and screaming in agony—including Mr. Golden Eyes, that traitor. I had no idea what had set them off, other than the door opening, but the intensity of their howls was enough to send shivers up my back.
“Who goes there?” sounded a deep voice from across the room. I looked up to find one of the Jackal Brothers standing in the doorway, his cold, dark eyes fixed on me.
“Oh, hello there,” I said. “You remember me, don’t you? Calliope Reaper-Jones? You took me to meet with the Board of Death a few months ago . . . ? Uhm, I think you know my father.”
I finished my babbling, only to be greeted by silence—and the intermittent moans and screams from the peanut gallery.
“Oh, be quiet,” I snipped at the prisoners. “You know you’re only doing it for the attention.”
There were a couple of boos—and a hiss or two—but it seemed to shut them up for the moment.
“I don’t know why you’ve got all these people held prisoner in here with all this medieval torture crap, but it’s pretty creepy,” I said to the Jackal Brother, who stood stock-still in the doorway, his very muscular body clad in only a modest cotton loincloth.
“I mean, sure, you’re all badass in your loincloth, but what do you think you’re gonna accomplish by being so aggressive and violent with these men—and when I say
men
, I’m really only being polite. They’re barely even human anymore, the way you’ve emotionally castrated them like this.”
Did I ever mention that when I’m extremely nervous, I like to talk? Actually, it’s less that I like to talk and more that I just can’t make myself shut up.
The Jackal Brother continued to stare at me, then, finally, he spoke:
“Castration is a good idea.”
This only garnered another round of boos and hisses from my torture-chamber mates. Some inventive fellow even figured out how to lob an old, gnawed-on bone in my direction with his foot.
“Wait a minute. You totally took that out of context. That is
not
what I was talking about,” I said, my voice inching up an octave as I spoke. “Look, all of this is beside the point. I’m here for one thing and one thing only!”
Now the catcalls started. Of course, these poor guys hadn’t gotten laid in, like, a zillion years, so anything I said was gonna get turned into sexual innuendo.
“That’s so not what I meant, either, you guys, so get your mind out of the gutter,” I said loudly, over the whistles.
“And what is that one thing?” the Jackal Brother asked me—and I thought I detected a note of curiosity in his voice.
“I’m here to collect a guy for a friend,” I said, trying to sound as official as I could. “His name is Senenmut.”
Silence. Seriously, you could’ve literally heard a pin drop. I looked around the room, but all the prisoners had become very interested in the ceiling or the floor or the backs of their eyelids.
The Jackal Brother began to laugh and the sound was so horrible that it filled me—and seemingly the rest of the chamber, too—with dread.
“What does that mean?” I demanded, trying to combat the hideous laughter.
“It means,” said the Jackal Brother, “that it is upon a fool’s errand you have come.”
“It is not,” I said haughtily, thinking of Runt and how much I would miss not getting to see her anymore if I failed before I’d even started.
“But you ask for our most treasured possession,” he replied.
“So?” I replied. “I want him.”
The Jackal Brother took a moment to consider what I had just said—then he smiled.
The only other time I’d spent in the company of the Jackal Brothers, there had been absolutely
no
smiling—and let me just add that that had been a blessing, because the smile that crossed this Jackal Brother’s face was so foul, so
horrid
, that it made me want to start praying.
I tried to make myself avert my eyes from the two rows of sharp—I mean, filed down to a point
sharp
—teeth, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stare at the bits of ragged meat stuck in between its incisors and what I assumed must be its molars.
“If he is so important to you, then you would be willing to wager your own soul for his, would you not?” the Jackal Brother said, finally shutting his mouth and making me sigh in relief.
Uh-oh, this is so not where I wanted this scenario to be going,
I thought to myself.
“Sure, a little wager? Why not?” I replied, ignoring my brain’s pleas for me to shut up.
My response brought on another bout of smiling from Jackal Head. He seemed inordinately pleased with my answer, which only made me more worried about what I’d gotten myself into.
“So, if I win, I get Senenmut
and
I get to keep my soul?” I said, my hands starting to shake as I took in the magnitude of what I was agreeing to.
The Jackal Brother nodded.
“And if you lose, we will possess Death’s Daughter’s soul for all of eternity,” he cackled.
“Sure, fine. Whatever,” I said, just wanting to get the whole thing over with. “Now, I want to see Senenmut and make sure that he’s still all in one piece. Otherwise, it’s no deal.”
Without hesitation the Jackal Brother inclined his head toward the utterly silent—possibly deaf—guy with the yellow eyes.
“That’s him?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
The Jackal Brother nodded.
“Crap. Are you sure?” I asked, even though I knew with my luck being what it was, that this was
exactly
how it was gonna go down.
I turned and looked at my “new friend,” but he was back to his toe-training exercises.
This is the schmuck I am wagering my soul for?
I thought miserably.
“Are you satisfied?” the Jackal Brother said as he moved toward me. I wanted to take a step back and away from him, but the burning oil pot was hemming me in.
So, instead, I just nodded my agreement.
“I
guess
I’ll have to be.”
“Now,” the Jackal Brother said as he closed the gap between us and invaded my space, “I will explain the terms of the wager.”
“Go for it,” I said gamely, trying not to stare into his massive jaws again.
“We will measure the weight of your heart against the feather of Ma’at, Death’s Daughter, and if it is judged to be too heavy with sin and greed, we will own you, body and soul,” he finished.
Suddenly, he raised his hand and the room around us went dark. I felt my stomach clench as the floor dropped out from beneath my feet, the walls disappearing right along with it.
I got the impression that we were in some kind of anti-space—and if I failed this test, then I would be lost here, in this world of nothingness, for all time—and just the
idea
of what “all time” entailed made me shiver involuntarily.
I looked over at the Jackal Brother and he smiled at me again.
“Bring the scale!” he called into the nothingness.
I blinked and suddenly we were no longer alone—the Jackal Brother’s twin was now standing next to him, holding a set of large golden scales in the palm of one hand and a tiny golden ankh in the other. Beside him sat an incredibly strange-looking creature with the head of a crocodile and the body of a lion, its silvery blue eyes telegraphing intense hunger. Wrapped around its throat was a heavy silver chain, the end attached to the waist of the newly arrived Jackal Brother.
I instantly felt sorry for the poor half-breed thing. I mean, what kind of a life could this disparately crafted creature really have? Then the nasty croco-monster abruptly snapped its massive jaws in my direction and that ended the pity party right there.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re pointing that thing?” I said, glaring at the giant croco-monster, but only getting another round of maw chomping for my trouble.
“Fine.
Whatever
,” I said as I shrugged and shifted my gaze to a more pleasant subject: the set of shining scales the Jackal Brother was holding in his hand.
The scales were truly a thing of beauty, with intricate hieroglyphs lovingly etched into its golden body. At the apex stood a sculpture of a tiny, nude woman, one golden ostrich feather woven into her long, metallic hair. The rest of it was covered in more glyphs—none of which I could read, but a few of which I
did
remember seeing in the Hall of Death.
“Are you ready to be judged?” the Jackal Brother holding the scales said, interrupting my thoughts.
I nodded.
“Close your eyes,” he said, “and it will only hurt for a moment.”
I did as he said, shutting my eyes and swallowing hard as I waited.
“Hey!” I said as I felt a sharp pain blossom in my chest that slowly—very slowly—began to turn into a dull ache between my ribs. I looked down, my eyes nearly popping out of my head.
My heart was gone!
“What did you just do to me?!” I cried, starting to freak out as I stared down at the great, gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be.
I looked over and found the first Jackal Brother holding my still-beating heart in his hand.
“Whoa,” I said, watching my heart drip its lifeblood onto the ground. “Can I have that back now, please?”
The two Jackal Brothers ignored me as they set my heart on one side of the scales and gingerly placed a single silken ostrich feather on the other. For a moment the two sides were totally balanced, but then the side with my heart on it began to dip lower than the feather. I held my breath, fear curdling my blood.
I noticed the look of excitement that passed between the two brothers—of course, they were being
totally
obvious about the whole thing—and my stomach began to burn.
Had I really just screwed myself out of the rest of my immortal existence?
Please, God,
I found myself praying,
please just let me scrape by this one time. I promise to be a good sister and friend and daughter for the rest of my immortality, if you’ll just
not
let the Jackal Brothers get me.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that the scales had stopped dipping, and instead, the two sides were slowly moving back into a state of balance. We all waited with bated breath, me willing the scales to go one way and the Jackal Brothers willing them to go the other.
Suddenly, I felt a cool breeze envelop my body, toying with the grisly hole that had been left between my ribs.
“Where did that come from—” I started to say, but clamped my mouth shut when I realized the breeze had blown past me and was now eddying around the single ostrich feather.
“No!”
the Jackal Brothers screamed in unison, but it was too late. The breeze swirled around, lifting the feather high up in the air, then suddenly dying away as it dropped the feather
right into the open jaws of the croco-monster.
I heard a sharp intake of breath—I was pretty sure it came from me—and a feeling of intense relief overwhelmed me.
“That’s not fair!” one of the Jackal Brothers wailed—and it took everything I had inside me not to jump for joy and scream,
Yes, it is fair, you little shits!!