The Woken Gods (25 page)

It’s the same two gods I’m most worried about. Jackal-headed Set and horned Enki circle each other, thundering accusations. No, wait. They’re circling something else, something in the middle of the floor, and it’s not until they move out of the way that I realize it’s a
someone
, and who that someone is.

My father.

Thick shackles twist around his ankles. His wrists are bound in cuffs with a heavy chain dangling between them. They must be relics. He’s in his uniform, except with no gold stripes since I have them. The fabric where they should be is torn.

For all that, he doesn’t look beaten down. Worse, he doesn’t give off a hint of fear, even with the two gods looming around him, fighting in languages long dead, if any human ever spoke them.

No, instead, my dad is grinning. A mad grin I’ve never seen the likes of on him – and never would have wanted to. Even I know that grin is not a good idea. In fact, it’s probably what’s provoking them to go at each other. I wonder if his expression would change, if he knew I was here. Probably not.

Bronson and Rose are the only other humans in evidence, and they are also the only people relying on podiums to make them more impressive. Or they could be using them as a protective buffer. Finally, Bronson decides to intercede. “Order.” His voice is amplified by a microphone on the lectern in front of him. “Order,” he repeats once more, and waits until the noise dies to a duller roar.

Set and Enki back away from each other, wary. My impression is that either of them might lunge for the other at any moment.

Bronson continues. “We are here to let Henry Locke make his defense if he chooses. There will be plenty of time for accusations
and
for punishment.”

As he finishes, I spot the Solstice Was. It lies across a small table directly in front of Bronson’s lectern. Rose’s is on the other side of him. Dad’s back is to them and it. This isn’t going to be easy. I’d better make my way down.

After confirming Oz is still frozen (he is), I wind down the spiral staircase to the main floor. When I reach the bottom, I listen as my father states his name for the record and that he’s a senior operative in the Society for the Sun, the head of House Locke. The tricksters are subdued – as much as they can be, which means quieter but throwing off enormous force fields of energy. They ring my father at the center of the room.

“You attacked my daughter. You should be glad I’m here in chains,” Dad says. He spits toward where Set stands, with his tail lashing the air.

Set growls and his tail whips at Dad, leaving three cuts on his cheek. Dad doesn’t even flinch. His grin stays put as blood streams down his face.

Bronson interrupts. “Civility, please.”

“You’d let him take your granddaughter without protest,” Dad says. “Swallow her up in sand and do nothing? Why was he attacking her anyway, I wonder?”

Dad’s back is to Bronson and Rose. Bronson’s reaction isn’t visible to him, but it is to me. The older man’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t dispute it. Not quite. “Henry, don’t say anything you can’t unsay. I’m her guardian now. Unless you make your case for innocence.”

At that, Dad gives a wry laugh. “You know I can’t.”

“Won’t, because there isn’t one,” Bronson says. “You’re guilty.”

“Which god was
I
colluding with, do you think? Was it Set? But then why would he attack my daughter…? Enki did harbor me, but he also gave me up easily, and has no interest in Egyptian relics, even such valuable ones as a key to the Afterlife.” Dad pauses, stagily pretending to think. “Let me think who else might be willing to engage in such a scheme and I’ll point a finger.” He rattles his chains. “If I can. Undo these?”

Loud conversation breaks out again among them as they debate the request, and Bronson wheels to exchange words with Rose.

Thanks, Dad. You bought me exactly the distraction I need
.

I start across the thick carpet. With purpose, I resist the urge to check and make sure no one has spotted me, that the gods’ superior senses haven’t given me up despite the bubble. I don’t look anywhere but at my father, at the wounds on his cheek, until I’m nearly to him. Then I head toward the table with the Solstice Was on it.

The snarling face at the top of the scepter might be staring back at me. I hesitate with my hand over the metal of the staff. The moment I lay a finger on it,
bam
, it’ll disappear. But the doors
out
of the Reading Room are heavy and closed. I’ll need time to get over there and out, and suddenly everyone has gone quiet again.

“
Were
you working with anyone, Henry?” Rose asks, calmly.

But before Dad can answer, Set lets out another growl. He speaks in a way I can understand, and which I can hardly bear to hear. “I would never risk my house for such a specimen. He could not even protect his own kin, let alone wield the scepter.”

I want to tell him how wrong he is, to defend Dad. Against being called a specimen, at least. He’s doing this
for
us, for this whole stupid world, and he shouldn’t be.

But Dad shakes his head, and says, “Prove that I can’t protect her.”

“I can,” Bronson says, tone hushed. “If I choose. I can ensure her safety.”

Dad drops his head. The first time he’s given any sign that he didn’t walk in here and sign up for this trial.

Enki cranes his head skyward, toward the dome, and the motion catches my eye. I’m afraid I’ll see Oz moving around on the second floor. But he’s not.

Who knows why a god lifts his head? Or why he lowers it? Enki’s gaze swings from the second floor back down to Set. Enki thunders, “Is the
human
offering the Set
animal
a challenge?”

Legba chimes in. “If he is, I want to start the betting at two cities razed. Including this one.”

Loki’s responding laugh makes the floor tremble under my feet. They are off again, all talking, Set and Enki stalking closer to one another. Dad shaking his head again.

This is it. The best chance I’ll get.

I wait until Bronson is talking to Rose again, both of them paying more attention to each other than the chaos in front of them. And I grab the staff.

Whirling, I dart across the space, hefting the surprisingly heavy metal scepter. I make it to the double doors, and pray they aren’t as weighty as they look. I don’t dare risk going back up to the way we came in.

I need to get
out
of the building before Oz can raise the alarm. But when I hit the doors where they join, nothing happens. Nothing. Happens. They don’t even begin to budge. The sound of the impact is swallowed by the bubble around me. I try again, but the doors are as unmoving as stone, like I’m pushing against a fortress wall. To show myself is certain failure. Maybe even certain death. If not mine, then Dad’s.

Think
.

But I have. I thought my way right to this moment, and I have no good way to get out.

That’s when they notice the Solstice Was is gone.

“WHERE IS IT?
” booms Enki. He levels an accusatory glare that would cow a lesser being at Set.

Set, whose head tilts at an odd angle, and who whines. It’s the angry whine of a hurt dog that’s had enough and is about to fight back and take a bite out of someone.

Bronson stalks out from behind the podium, bashes the table with an open palm. “It was right here. You all saw it. No one has come or gone.”

Rose steps out from behind her lectern. “We have to lock down the building.” She strides across the floor toward me, no-nonsense in her business suit, as if the gods are nothing more than furniture. I step aside before she collides with me.

She knocks three times,
rap rap rap
,
on the heavy wood. The doors lever open. They admit one operative, two. As she gives the order to seal the exits and post guards, Bronson tries to calm the arguing tricksters. But the shout is loud enough to stop everyone. “Shut the doors!”

It’s Oz.

He’s poised on a low wall within an arch on the other side of the staircase. He hurls himself into the air and lands on the main floor in a ridiculously graceful crouch, flanked by suspicious gods.

“Shut the doors!” he calls again.

Bronson starts toward him, and I hope he gets there in time to keep Oz from being the target of divine fury. But I can’t stay and find out. I slip out before Oz can shout again at the gaping operatives to close the doors. Before he can tell them anything. Here’s hoping he’s too late to catch me or to get me caught by others.

The oracle’s advice comes back to me, and it seems better this time. I bolt through the hallways, my only thought to keep on running. I hit the Great Hall at top speed. Navigating through the guards rushing toward the meeting, I can tell they don’t know what’s going on yet. The sound of angry gods spills out of the Reading Room behind me, urging me on.

I have to beat Rose’s orders. Make it out of here before I’m locked inside. Even invisible, it would only be a matter of time before they find me. I’m not foolish enough to believe any different, not with a nearly endless supply of relics at their disposal. Speaking of which, the staff in my hand feels
wrong
, and I wish I didn’t have to carry it. I’d love nothing more than to throw it into the ocean or leave it behind in a dark closet. But I can’t let go.

Behind me, it’s not just the riot of gods anymore. I hear Oz again. “You can’t see her!” he shouts. “Bar the doors! She could still be here!”

“Crap
,” I mutter, desperate to speed up, but not able to without the risk of slamming into an operative hard enough to knock the Was from my grasp.

There are too many people here. Far too many. The only hope I have is to get to the main doors. An entrance is always left open when tricksters are visiting the Jefferson.

But as I approach, I hear the unmistakable sound of it being shut. I despair. I consider falling to my knees. I search my memory for hiding places in the Jefferson that might last long enough, but if I’m stuck here it’s a lost cause.

“We have to find her!” Oz shouts. “She’s using Vidarr’s relic.”

But Oz’s shouts are followed by the most blissful sound possible. “Sorry about this!” Bree calls, and I turn to see her fling herself at Oz. She puts enough effort into it to almost take him down. She throws her arms around him, hanging on, as he struggles to get loose without injuring her. “Let. Me. Go,” he orders her.

“No way,” Bree says. “Where is Kyra? What’s she doing?”

“I wish I knew,” Oz says.

Tam rushes up to them. Bree’s mom isn’t far behind him, a cameraman trailing her. Tam stands uncertainly beside Oz and Bree. When Nalini reaches them, she says, “Bree, he’s cute, but I don’t understand…”

“Tam, I could use some help here,” Bree says, and to her mother, “He’s trying to do something to Kyra.”

“I am not,” Oz says. “I’m trying to keep her from getting herself in any deeper.”

Bree smiles at him. It’s a brittle smile. “No one’s ever been able to do that.”

Tam decides to jump in after all, grabbing Oz’s arm where he’s pushing against Bree. The three of them grapple, and other operatives move in to separate them.

But my friends have bought me one last shot. “Thank you, Bree Norville, goddess among humans,” I say and dash around the group of them – still unseen, still gripping the effing Was scepter – and trip down one more flight of stairs to the lower level.

The old tourist exit down here is not used much. But the doors are still right where they always were. The red Emergency Exit sign above them is like a beacon. I slam into the first door I reach, and the alarm blares to life, but that doesn’t matter because it flies open and I’m outside. I suck in a breath of air, and take off.

This time, I stop for nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I barely make it to the commuter hub before the final coach of the day leaves the city. Designed to hold ten people, it’s pulled by four strong workhorses. Now that I’m here, I realize getting on board may be tricky. But I breathe easier when I spot one last paying passenger hurrying our way.

When the coachman unlatches the door, I’m right behind her. Once I’m in, I hang onto a roof strap, and only when the coach springs into motion, do I wonder – and worry – about what Bree and Tam were doing at the Jefferson.

Please
let them stay out of this from here on out. Maybe I can find a pay phone and make a call to Bree later, tell her to keep her head down, that I’ll be back before long. It’s not as if I can embark on establishing an alternate identity with a backpack full of clothes and a hundred bucks. It’s not as if I intend to, anyway.

The other passengers are academics and lawyers, not people tapped into Society intrigue. I feel almost safe. Though I still can’t believe I managed to get the Was scepter. Even with my other hand wrapped around that wrong-feeling metal, the buzz I lost in the heat of the action comes roaring back.

I heisted a relic from the middle of a Tricksters’ Council meeting.
Me
. I wish someone was here to give me a high-five.

Well, Bree will later. And she deserves one of her own.

I wonder if the people around me knew what I was doing, whether they’d turn me in. That’s how Bronson will trick Oz into believing I am not on the side of the angels. It’s easy to make people doubt their own judgment, especially when they’ve already been burned. Ducking my head, I look out the window and scan the twilight sky, half-expecting Anzu to be up there. Circling.

He isn’t.

I really might get away. But when I rotate the Was so that the jackal head faces me, snarling, it’s hard for me to believe the worst is over.

At Alexandria, I barely make it off before the coachman slams the door shut on the cabin. He’s already unhooking the line of tired horses, and the other occupants of the coach scatter, off toward Old Town and safer neighborhoods.

I have some time to kill before I can get another coach to take me further, and I want to change clothes and remove the shoe. While the invisibility is nice, I don’t think I can hack a long distance journey that way. Not when my eyes are increasingly heavy, and every muscle aches. My lack of sleep nips at my heels.