Khayu squatted in the forest overlooking the agricultural town, intrigued by the technologies he’d already witnessed. These people didn’t seem to rely upon horses and slaves to plow, but instead had some great machine that tilled the earth and another that harvested it. Further, it seemed at least half the families he encountered owned a vehicle, and motorized transport wasn’t just exclusive to the military.

The Pharaoh needs to know this, he thought, watching the machines move in fascination. Their roads were less pristine and maintained than those of New Cairo, but it appeared that even no-name towns on this side of the Divide were connected by a network of highways that, when he bent to sample them, seemed like gravel held together by tar, not a collection of blocks of stone like the Pharaoh’s roads.

It was the massive metal beast that flew low overhead two days prior, however, that gave Khayu the greatest chills. Not even the Pharaoh, in all of her power, could fly. Yet these strange people seemed to have a structure many times bigger than a house flying through the air with ease, slow and low, hovering like a hummingbird.

They can cross the Divide, Khayu thought again, looking at his backtrail, thinking about his brother. In hours, if what he had seen was true. Hours, not weeks. The very idea was chilling, and he thought again of the flying ships that day their attackers to heel. They had more of them, not just the handful the Pharaoh had destroyed…

The Pharaoh must be told, he thought again, resolve tightening his hand on his staff. He didn’t look forward to the six thousand foot climb back down into the valley of the Divide, nor the boat trek across the water, nor the six thousand foot climb back up the ropes the Pharaoh’s people had lowered on the other side, but it needed to be done. He steeled himself.

He would discover as much as he could about this land, stick to the shadows, go unseen for as long as he could, then he would do whatever was necessary to complete the mission. He turned to return to the forest, planning to come back that night to examine the great machines under cover of darkness.

He almost ran into the small ebony-skinned child standing behind him in the forest. The pudgy boy had a strip of white hair on one temple where it should have been black, and his entire body was bedecked with blinking, glowing, hovering, or humming magical talismans. His bright blue eyed blinked at Khayu in surprise.

Then, like a toddler caught with his hand in the honey-pot, the chubby child touched something on his chest and immediately blinked out of existence.

He didn’t, however, disappear. Khayu could sense him there, in between the physical and ethereal, hiding. For a second, Khayu thought it was an after-image, something left behind after the boy simply vanished, but then it moved.

“I know you’re there, boy,” Khayu said. “I can feel your presence.” He held his staff between them warily. “I have the ability to drag you back out into the daylight, if I must.”

The child moved around him, like a wary cat, and Khayu followed the kid’s movements with his head. Realizing the child wasn’t going to re-form in the physical, Khayu narrowed his eyes and moved to grab him. He got a good grip on the metal-studded collar of his jacket and was starting to pull him back when, with a startled yelp, the child vanished completely.

#

Crash woke a couple hours later and looked at the clock. Midnight. She sat up and stretched, then went to throw on a new pair of clothes from the pile someone had neatly folded on her dresser. Trebuchet lifted his head as she moved around, the Newcanon Mastiff puppy looking curious, but not enthusiastic.

“Come,” Crash said, throwing on her shoes and grabbing the leash. “We’re gonna go interview a bad guy.”

Trebuchet yawned, the red nictating membrane almost reaching his iris as he squinted at her in a bleary I don’t think so look, and went back to sleep.

Crash narrowed her eyes, but tossed the leash back on the bed. “Fine. You stay there. I’ll go deal with him myself.”

The mastiff puppy didn’t respond.

Grunting, Crash grabbed her spray bottle and yanked open her door, startling the two guys stationed outside, playing cards. They quickly fumbled the card deck away and straightened to attention.

“Go tell Lieutenant Marks I’m ready for Round Two,” Crash said. “I came up with some stuff while I slept. I think he’s probably an orphan due to the lack of a structuring male influence in his formative speech pattern, and when I watched him interacting with the Pharaoh, there were words they used that didn’t make sense—I think he might be telling the truth and she’s immortal.”

The two guys standing outside glanced at each other. “You saw him talking with the Pharaoh?” one of them asked stupidly.

“Yeah. In my head.” She glanced at the two-way hallway, not remembering how to get back to the interrogation room. “Which way to the savage?”

“Uh, just a sec while we check something, Miss Crash,” the closest man—he had Lionne emblazoned on his nametag—said. He quickly got on the comm and said, “Sir, sorry, you told me to tell you when she’s awake.” He hesitated. “No, I’m pretty sure she slept, sir. She was snoring.” He listened a moment, then swallowed. To Crash, he said, “The Commandant says to go back to sleep.”

“No,” Crash said. She turned right and started walking, fully intending to open every door of the facility if she had to.

Behind her, the two men jogged to keep up. “No, she’s not going back. Yes sir, she’s headed to the interrogation room now, sir. Yes sir. I’ll try, sir.”

“Um, Commandant Belkin is requesting you return to your room for a few more hours. He’s gonna have someone deliver some margaritas.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Don’t need margaritas,” Crash said, frowning as she came to another T in the hall. “Need to know why that guy was using passive honorific phrasing to describe a volcano that he’s convinced will eat the world. The way he was talking about it, the volcano already died. But he was talking about throwing people in a pit of lava. Why would a dead volcano have a pit of lava, Sergeant Lionne?”

The soldier gave her a long look, then said, “I’ll wake up Lieutenant Marks.”

“This way to the interview rooms, Miss Crash,” the other soldier said, gently touched her shoulder and started steering her down the hallway.

Lieutenant Marks met them in the interrogation room a few minutes later, looking disheveled. He had massive bags under his eyes and he looked half dead. “Did you even sleep?” he asked, as he let himself inside.

“Marks, why are they worshipping a supposedly dead volcano by throwing people into a pit of lava?”

Marks blinked at her. “They’re…savages?”

“The tense he used indicated the Pharaoh slayed that volcano. Meaning dead. But it’s not dead if it’s alive, you get me? Why would a monarch intent on maintaining power claim she killed a volcano that clearly isn’t dead?”

Marks just nodded, face holding the slackness of someone who had no idea what she was talking about.

“Right,” Crash agreed. “Get him. I changed my mind. I don’t think the sixteen hundred years thing is just an honorific. I really do think she’s an immortal. I was watching them talking to each other, and if she is the one who is holding their language back, like their whole culture evolved around her as a linguistic anchor, that would explain why there was so little divergence from the Ancient Canadian.”

“Okay,” Marks said, clearing his throat and glancing down at his tablet. “So they’re an entire race of immortals?”

“Clearly some cross-breeds survived the war,” Crash said. But she frowned. “But I don’t think that explains the Pharaoh. When she was speaking, her root words were too pure. I think she is an actual human.”

Marks squinted at her. “You…never heard the Pharaoh speak.”

“In my mind, Marks,” Crash cried. “I heard her in my mind. She’s got a squeaky voice. Probably about five-eight. Black hair. Egyptian parents—straight from Ancient Egypt before the fall. Like, I think they were immigrants.”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat, staring at her a moment, then glanced at the door. “All right, Lionne got the prisoner. You ready?”

“Yep.” Crash organized her notes—which she’d woken up to find she’d scribbled in her sleep—and watched the six men lead the chained and hobbled savage back into the interrogation room with them and sat him down at the table across from her.

“All right,” Crash said, before he got fully situated, “tell me about this Pharaoh. She’s got some sort of powers, doesn’t she? Like magic?” In her dream, she had watched the Pharaoh run her fingers across a pool of water and turn it to ice, all while giving Crash a totally smug look. “And she’s really arrogant.”

The prisoner was watching her like a wary cat. “She is Pharaoh. She can shape the stars, the land, the people…”

“Uh huh. And you guys really do build with stone like Ancient Egypt, don’t you? That’s why your linguistic traditions are so embedded—you’re literally reading your religious texts straight from sixteen hundred year old rocks, which never change.”

The man gave her a squinting nod.

“Thought so.” Crash steepled her fingers. “And you’ve got, what, fourteen million people scattered across twenty major cities? Land mass of approximately ninety thousand square miles? Your agrarian labor base is mainly slave class—that guy with the red feather in his headdress was a former farmer before our guys blew him up with a grenade—and you begin formal schooling for priest class at approximately eight years old. Most priests-to-be get harvested from the ranks of slaves and low citizens at a young age. Either that, or she’s got some sort of breeding program going on. Judging by the way she looked at me, I’m guessing the breeding program, actually. But it’s mostly slaves that raise the kids until eight, then they’re harvested for the priesthood. How am I doing so far?”

“It’s a great honor to be claimed for the Pharaoh,” Sabbaht said.

“Uh huh. Did your mom ever get a visit by a mysterious hybrid alien dude who knocked her up? Maybe got dragged in to New Cairo—they are calling it New Cairo, aren’t they? That’s what she called it last night—to have sex with a stranger?”

“It is New Cairo,” the man said slowly. He looked confused. “You have been there?”

“Yeah, last night,” Crash said. “Okay, so because this Pharaoh is doing a breeding program and plucking the cream of the crop out of her slave class for her war priests, I’m guessing that she doesn’t have a lot of your kind. You’re her big guns, am I right? Not everyone over there can blow stuff up with his hands?”

“The Jackals are Pharaoh’s elite,” Sabbaht said. He was still squinting at her. “Did Pharaoh talk to you about me?”

“Oh did she,” Crash laughed. “I learned a lot. You’re an orphan, for one. And she’s a bitch.” She frowned, remembering the way the arrogant woman had set her hair on fire for squirting her with her water bottle. “Someone really needs to bring her down a notch. She had a man, but she pissed him off somehow and now he doesn’t speak to her unless he has to, and she’s grown bitter ever since.”

“Gregory Watershed,” Sabbaht said immediately. “He came from the sky to soften the Pharaoh’s heart. She was making many sacrifices to Burkan before he arrived. She was going to throw him into the pit too, when he talked his way into her bed, instead.” Sabbaht made a face, clearly finding the thought disdainful. “It was good she finally had us remove his ability to procreate.”

Lieutenant Marks, who was once again touching the comm in his ear, said, “Wait, Commandant says go back. Gregory Watershed was the second-in-command of the exploratory mission that disappeared thirty-three years ago. Is he still alive?”

Crash relayed the message to Sabbaht, who again looked like he tasted something foul. “She had not seen fit to kill the heretic yet.”

“He’s probably a vizier or governor,” Crash said. To Sabbaht, she said, “Does the Pharaoh now have access to those ships Gregory was on when he arrived to your country? How many others of that expedition survived?”

The man blinked at her as if she were asking if the sun was blue. “Pharaoh destroyed the ships. Put all to death to appease Burkan except Gregory Watershed. He refused to beg and snivel like the others, and it amused her. She kept him as an advisor.”

“Yeah, they’re all dead except Greg,” Crash said for Marks’ and Travis’ benefit. “Survivors fed to a volcano. Ships got destroyed.” She glanced at Sabbaht curiously. “The way you’re saying that, it almost sounds as if the Pharaoh herself destroyed the ships. Personally.”

The man nodded. “With the fires of heaven.”

Crash felt a little quirk of her lip. “Thought so.” To Marks, she said, “That Pharaoh literally blew those ships out of the sky on her own. She can do the same kinds of things as these guys, but it’s sounding lke on an order of magnitude greater. Think a glowy-eyed hellhound next to a chihuahua with a cold. Also, I’m thinking she saw the Fall, so she probably knows how to best take down spaceships. She’s very, very dangerous.” She frowned. “And she likes to set hair on fire.”

Marks dutifully took notes. Then, after a moment, he hesitated as he looked down at his stylus. Lifting his head with a small frown, he said, “Maybe I missed something, but I didn’t hear him say anything about setting hair on fire…?”

Crash sighed and glanced at the prisoner. “Does your Pharaoh like to set people’s hair on fire if they irritate her?”

Sabbaht’s eyes grew slightly dark before he nodded. “Those of us who were around her most lived in fear of such things. The High Minister of War is bald because of it.” He said it like a man haunted by the past. “The scarring was making him look like a mummy, so now he shaves.”

Crash turned to Marks, lifting a brow. “You get that?”

“Uhh…” Marks swallowed. “She sets hair on fire?”