Tentamun glared, his eyes flickering a cool blue. They glowed with the power of his awakened soul, and Heshtat narrowed his own in return.

  He’d felt the directed aura of the man earlier—that strange itching sensation- as divine power was channelled through the man’s awakened soul—but was the Ba the only aspect the man had awakened? He would assume the man had not advanced to the acolyte tier yet, for Senusret would not tolerate somebody at his own level of power in his organisation, but it was possible this Tentamun was an awakened of two aspects. He would assume not, because if the man was, Heshtat would have no chance, and if he assumed he would lose, there would be no point in pursuing this fight.

  Not that he had much of a choice in the matter given the way Senusret was eyeing him—smirk cool and gaze assessing. “Nervous, Heshtat?” he asked. “Worried that you’ve lost your touch, perhaps?”

  The goading was annoying, but Heshtat had put aside his annoyance a thousand times before. He was more concerned with what it implied about his boss’ feelings for him—that he would be happy to see Heshtat put in place. It meant he was starting to see him as a threat, a potential rival. Not good, in other words. He would much rather the crime lord consider him nothing but an extension of his slimy will and react with anger when anyone threatened Heshtat. Alas.

  Even with only a single aspect awakened, Tentamun’s body would have been empowered by his soul, bathed in divine power and strengthened in general, regardless of what aspect he had awakened. That put them at different levels of power immediately. Tentamun seemed to know it too, eyes flashing dangerously as he began to pace from side to side.

  “No backing out now,” the tall man said, spitting to one side. “The boss might have indulged you for the last few years, given you a long leash, but I think it’s gone to your head. Don’t forget,” he growled, leaning forwards with an intense glare that reddened Heshtat’s skin, “you’re still just a dog.”

  Heshtat flinched, the words worming their way under skin, just like that strange aura. He had thought himself above the taunting of petty criminals. Indeed, had he been his old self, this strutting peacock would have been so far beneath notice as to be almost invisible. He could have dismantled the entire criminal network in a single day of bloody work.

  But he was not that man any longer, and the words reminded him of others said so long ago, ones that still echoed within his heart.

  “Fucking cur of a dog!”, she had shouted at him once. It had been earned, and time had healed the pain of it somewhat, age bringing a wisdom that let him know it was said out of frustration as a way to hurt him rather than a measure of what she truly felt… but the shame hadn’t left yet.

  It coiled inside him still, lurking in wait for a moment of weakness upon which to latch. If things had been different, perhaps he could have shrugged off that barb—the wound it pricked was a decade old now, after all. But things weren’t different, and he found himself unable to prevent the surge of reflexive anger that swelled in his breast.

  He was exhausted; so tired of all the bullshit and the egos and the peacocking that dominated the underground criminal empire of his city. Senusret had become far too comfortable playing games with him, and as the crime-lord sat there watching the exchange with a smirk as oily as his skin, Heshtat snapped.

  He held Tentamun’s gaze for a moment, feeling the scalding heat of his attention before feinting a jab. It was an empty threat—a punch from his unenhanced fist, without proper windup or follow through, would do little to the man’s enhanced body. But it took Tentamun by surprise, and he flinched.

  And that was what Heshtat had been looking for. Not out of some egoic desire to show the room that his opponent was scared, but because it gave him valuable information. The sloppy flinch told Heshtat that he wasn’t facing a trained fighter. The man would still be dangerous—he was a cultivator, after all, not a simple mortal; a man with a channel to the divine nestled within his very soul—but he was dangerous in the way of a wild animal rather than a skilled warrior.

  And Heshtat was dangerous, too.

  He slipped forward, front foot rising off the floor in a feinting kick to the body, and as Tentamun lowered his hands to ward his torso, Heshtat lurched forwards with a jab again. It connected this time, flush with the man’s thin nose, and then his right fist crashed into his chin with a hefty smack! that echoed around the room.

  Tentamun staggered slightly, and Heshtat wasted no time, following up with a vicious kick to the body to crumple the enforcer and then ended him by sending a knee crashing into his face. The tall man went down, blood bubbling from his nose and spattering to the floor from between his fingers. He groaned in pain, and Heshtat turned away, shaking out his fist with a wince. The man’s chin was like granite from the cultivation of his soul, however meagre that growth was.

  He looked over at Senusret, who only smirked wider.

  “Bastard,” Heshtat muttered, to which the serpentine man let out a hoarse laugh in response. “Are we done here?”

  Senusret nodded, and Heshtat moved to leave the room, but Tentamun lurched to his feet, charging towards him with a roar of outrage. Heshtat slipped aside from the clumsy tackle, but now the door was blocked.

  “You fucker! I’ll make you bleed for that,” he growled.

  Senusret stood at last, uncoiling from his chair like a viper, smooth and eerie. “That’s enough!” he declared.

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  But Tentamun had eyes only for Heshtat, and the strange auratic skill had ramped up in intensity. The man spat blood aside and went for his khopesh even as his very gaze seared the skin of Heshtat’s face.

  Heshtat sprang. He rushed forwards, slamming his shoulder into the bigger man’s chest and pushing both hands down on his wrist as Tentamun tried to draw the weapon. The cultivator was braced and ready for him this time though, so the shoulder-slam barely made him take a step back given his enhanced body.

  Still, it was enough.

  Tentamun’s back hit the wall next to the red door, and Heshtat pressed his shoulder lower, digging it up into the man’s stomach to force the air from his lungs even as they wrestled over the blade. They warred there for a few moments, but Heshtat knew he couldn’t win a battle of strength against one whose body had been reinforced with a god’s power.

  He put up as much resistance as he could, enough to frustrate the man, but once it was inevitable that Tentamun would succeed in drawing the curved sword, Heshtat let him. The big man grunted with strain and heaved, and Heshtat turned his push into a pull. The khopesh practically flew from the belt ring it was sheathed within, the sound of bronze being drawn echoing around the small room, but it was soon overshadowed by a choked gurgle.

  Heshtat had reversed his grip as soon as the sword was drawn, and guided its curved outer edge up into the taller man’s neck. It slashed through the soft skin of the man’s throat, and then Heshtat twisted, throwing the gurgling man over his hip to slam into the stone below. Blood pooled across the floor, spreading to the large carpet of woven reeds that covered most of the room. He straightened, trying his best not to pant from the exertion and adrenaline.

  Three pairs of eyes regarded him. Derision from the man on the right, though Heshtat didn’t know why, and a faint hint of admiration from the woman on the left. No doubt Tentamun was not easy to work with, and she more than likely appreciated the removal of the brash warrior. It was Senusret’s reaction that mattered the most though.

  The oily, hairless man watched him with that ever-present smirk, startling green eyes gleaming in the gloom, and Heshtat winced.

  “He drew a blade in your presence and threatened my life,” he said, hoping to set the narrative of the confrontation early.

  Senusret only chuckled. “Nevertheless,” he said in his broken whisper, “you killed a man in my house, splashed blood across my floor. Who will pay for the cleaning, I wonder? Who will bear the cost of recruiting another crew leader? And an awakened, no less. They are not cheap, you know.”

  Heshtat sighed once more. He was doing that more of late, he noticed. The years were catching up with him now. There was only so long you could operate without hope for a brighter tomorrow. Only so long duty could prop you up once you had hollowed it out with past failures.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he simply replied, turning to leave. “Keep his men in line, and I’ll pay the debt. You know I’m good for it.”

  He opened the door, not caring that he left a smear of blood on the handle, and caught the second man’s outraged hiss as he stepped through. “You take his disrespect too lightly–”

  He closed the door. A few glanced his way, some doing a double-take when they saw the blood coating his shirt, but it wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar sight in a place like this. The bloody bodies didn’t normally leave Senusret’s office on their own two feet, though.

  He waved off an advance from a pair he was on friendly terms with and slipped out the door, giving a nod to the guard as he did so. Streets passed in a blur as he walked his way home, the lingering taste of honey and orange-peal dull on his tongue, overshadowed by the coppery smell of blood.

  He began to realise that something was wrong when he drew within a few streets of his home. Little Ahho and Khufu should have been out playing—they’d got it into their heads they’d grow up to be mighty warriors one day, and so were always about wrestling or playing tug-of-war—but he saw only the braided rope and two scuffed lines when he passed their house. Narmer likewise should have been out watering her lilies and tending to her neat little flowerbed the next house over.

  But the street was empty. The same was true of the next one, and while the inn on the corner was open, he saw no revellers sat outside, no grumpy old men discussing the ceaseless beating down of the merciless sun on poor Idib’s wheat fields. The fact that even bitter Sobe wasn’t present, heckling any youth that passed close enough for a lecture, was the most worrying sign. That old drunkard hadn’t missed a day at the inn for six years straight, as far as Heshtat knew.

  He approached his home with caution, hand flexing on the pommel of his own khopesh, finding a bizarre moment of mirth in the fact that the only killing he’d done in near enough a year had been with someone else’s weapon. The leather-wrapped handle felt familiar enough to his hand, though.

  He crept up the stairs to the side of Cousin Aphrodisia’s house in as close to silence as he could manage—she wasn’t technically a blood relation, but the Helexian woman had taken a shine to him many years ago, and he had rented from her ever since. Nobody on the roof, and the same was true for all the houses behind him within view, as well. The door of Aphrodisia’s kitchen—so often open and filled with inviting smells—was now bolted shut.

  He sucked his teeth, drawing a foot of bronze, the curved sword grating quietly against the iron ring that bound it to his waist. He turned side on, slipping across the tiled roof to the door of the 1st story annex that he had lived the last eight years of his life in. Light played across his face as he put one eye to the open door, trying to see into his home through the crack.

  The lock had not been broken, simply unlocked, and so he made sure to prepare himself for the scene that might greet him. Had Senusret finally decided that he had become more of a liability than an asset and sent an assassin ahead of him to silence him for good? Was this a move from a rival of his, and Heshtat was simply caught in the crossfire?

  Either way, he knew he could be about to witness not just his own death, but that of those who had made no mistake except to care for him, too. It was hard not to feel that that was the ultimate sin in the eyes of the gods sometimes when he considered his history. He took one last breath, letting his eyes close for a moment and his mind empty of doubt. He reached down to run a hand along the ground, feeling the dirt against the damp skin of his palms, brushed his hands together a moment, and then flexed his fingers against the worn grip of his weapon one last time.

  Then he moved, kicking open the door and diving into the room, coming up from his roll with his blade already cutting through the air to rest against the throat of a shocked warrior. He turned, keeping the man’s body between him and the other three in the room, and what he saw made his breath catch in his chest.

  Not the malicious grin of a rival crime-lord as he had half-expected, nor the corpse of his landlord and friend as he had dreaded. Someone more surprising, more personal, and far more terrifying sat in the only chair in his apartment, watching him with an uncompromising expression.

  Heshtat felt his eyes widen and heard his weapon clatter to the ground, his knees following suit soon after.