I Shall Rewrite the Stars

Chapter 10

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A shriek whooshes past my left ear, followed by a hard thwack that is lost beneath the sound of Juba and I slamming into the dock. My head is cushioned by his chest, my body shielded by his as he rolls us to the side with arms wrapped tightly around my middle.

“Are you alright?” I ask, noting the long tear in his right sleeve. The sight of bandages, old and stained, wrapped from shoulder to the golden manacle around his wrist sends a pang of sadness through me. I’d almost forgotten this terrible part of his past.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Juba says, pulling me up with him. “For now, keep your head low and stay with me. That arrow was shot from ground-level. Our enemies are close by.”

I nod, half-turned with him when Helios shouts. Just inches from the boat he brandishes Father’s sword against a tall, masked figure in a white tunic.

At his left, Mrunal holds off an identical masked assailant. And to his left, yet another is fended off by Raja who, with a hard kick to the stomach, is the first to send her opponent fumbling backwards.

She follows fast, knocking the foe’s sword to the right with a dagger, then slams her empty fist against his head.

The enemy staggers, falling to his bottom and drawing the eyes of Mrunal’s opponent.

In a blink, Mrunal kicks out the assailant’s legs with a sweeping arc of his own, and the man falls to his back, his sword skittering out of reach.

Setting his sword at the enemy’s throat, Mrunal gasps in a deep breath and asks without looking away, “Are you alright, Highness?”

“Furious as the sun is hot!” Raja snaps, then asks of her opponent, “Who are you to dare raise a blade against honored guests of Jambudvīpa? By the name of His Esteemed Majesty, I command you to answer me!”

“Don’t you dare!” the assailant fighting Helios snaps in a deep, rasping voice, before forcing my brother’s blade down an inch. “Do your jobs, rats! Don’t forget that the price of failure is death!”

“Who are you to bark orders?” Helios roars, digging his heels in to push the man’s sword back. “If you’re their leader, then…then I’ve got questions—and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you answer them!”

The man tsks. “A leftover cub of two fallen pharaohs is no threat to me. You’re nothing but a little boy playing principe!”

“He’s baiting you,” Juba tries, his eyes slowly scanning the surroundings when I look back. “Don’t listen to him, Helios. Keep your focus!”

“Shut up!” Helios shouts, and his blade slices across the man’s. Sparks fly between them, fluttering from my brother’s sword as he hefts it over his head.

But the assailant is faster.

He crouches with sword aimed for the killing blow—

Raja’s dagger flies into the man’s back and he crumples, falling face down at Helios’ feet.

“Helios,” I breathe, my heart racing.

Slowly he lowers his blade, then curses as a towering wave slams into the dock from behind. It crashes over us, soaking us to the bone and drawing gasps and cries from our onlookers.

When the water recedes all three assailants are gone, their shouts quickly fading beneath the lapping crash of much smaller waves.

A moment passes in tense silence, during which Juba loosens his grip just a little, and Helios looks with wide eyes from one hand to the other.

“Did I just…” he mutters, flinching when Juba drags me toward him.

“We’ve got to go,” Juba says, sparing a quick glance around before releasing all but my right hand. With his own right hand, he pulls the sickle from his hip. “They weren’t the only ones after us. We’ve got to find shelter—or at least some kind of cover.”

“Are you certain?” Mrunal asks, just as an arrow slams into the space between Raja and him, and yet another lands at my feet.

“Get your sister,” Raja commands, falling in step behind Mrunal whilst he hefts his blade like a shield. “We must run. Now!”

“Ptolemy!” Helios shouts, slamming Father’s sword into its sheath as he turns back toward the ship.

I barely glimpse Ptolemy as she’s hefted up by a crewman into Helios’ arms, before Juba jerks me into a run.

Onlookers scramble away as more arrows fall, their shrieks piercing the air like the hiss of serpents.

Juba blocks two with his sickle, slowing just long enough to shove us into a narrow alcove between two buildings.

“They’re firing from the left,” I say, gasping for breath. “The ground dips just up ahead. If we—”

“They’ll have the advantage if they catch up to us,” Juba objects.

“So we simply cannot allow them to.”

Helios flies past us then, Ptolemy hefted over his shoulder with her arms covering her head. We waste no time following.

Two arrows sail by, and I cringe when a third nicks the back of my left leg. As tingling pain slithers from my ankle to my knee, I search beyond Helios for Mrunal. Several feet ahead and to the right, he stands at the mouth of an alleyway and nods, waiting only a heartbeat until he strides out of view.

“Are you alright?” Juba asks, slowing again when I nearly fall face-first. Then he curses. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s just a nick—”

Juba scoops me into his arms, tossing his sickle into my lap. Pressed this close to his chest, I can hear his heart pounding; feel the warmth of his breath fanning my cheeks. It’s terrible of me to savor such closeness, especially at a time like this!

But…I’ve missed it. I’ve dreamed of it.

“Are your arms injured?” Juba asks, whipping into the alley.

“They’re not,” I say, and wrap them around his neck.

Of all the reactions, a small smile curves Juba’s lips. “Did we ever find ourselves in a situation like this in our first lives?”

“Octavia set the dogs after me once, because I dyed her gown red instead of purple. I’d sprained my ankle the day before, and would have died had you not snuck into the garden and saved me.”

“You must have meant a lot to me by that point, for me to have willingly risked getting caught by her beasts.”

“You told me as much shortly after, and lectured me for not telling you beforehand that I’d never dyed clothing before.”

Juba gasps a laugh, then shakes his head, his smile vanished. “You should have learned in that first life that I prefer to avoid trouble. If you get hurt again, tell me as soon as it happens. You’ll just hold us back otherwise.”

Hanging left, we stop short mere inches behind Ptolemy and Helios. Before them, Raja and Mrunal stand facing our direction.

“We need to flee this city,” Raja says, brushing her hair from her eyes.

“When we left that island, did you send anyone on ahead of us?” Juba asks.

“We didn’t,” Mrunal says. “Which means someone had to have spotted us and sent word that we’d be arriving when and where we did.”

“Were you followed out of Kemet?” Raja asks.

“If we were, they stayed well-hidden,” Juba says.

“It’s not that we were followed, but that our enemy arrived in this land before us,” I say, thinking back on the few times I was forced to serve Gustavian’s generals in my first life. “As they fled, Taurus would have had more than enough time to snatch a handful of messenger pigeons. It’d only have taken one to inform him that we’d escaped, before he sent out his own pigeon to mobilize Roma’s spies with orders to be on the lookout for us.”

Juba spits a filthy curse. “Didn’t your father order them specifically to go to Jambudvīpa? Taurus must have assumed you three would follow, and set as many eyes as possible on the ports to lie in wait.”

“You really think he would do all that?” Helios asks. “Taurus was a loyal friend to Father—he taught Cearion almost all he knows of how to wield a sword.”

“He wormed his way in, convinced Mother to lower her guard against Roma, and then stood back and smiled as our kingdom burned,” I spit. “Taurus is a monster—amongst the worst to crawl out of the Romasian empire.”

“At least he picked the right side,” Ptolemy mutters.

She meets my eyes for just a moment, as if daring me to disagree, then looks away. On my end, I can only shake my head at her.

To go from a carefree life to this is taking its toll in the worst possible way. She just needs time to process it all.

‘Selene.’

I whip my eyes to the left, following the whisper of my name to a figure fluttering up and down. She is incredibly small, roughly the size of my hand, if I had to guess, and near-translucent. With long, white hair drifting behind her, the womanly figure’s sleeveless, silver gown twists and twirls with her movements, and at her back a pair of ornate, silver wings buzz like a butterfly’s.

“A nymph?” I breathe.

‘Selene,’ she whispers again, her voice like the tinkle of a bell. ‘This way. Hurry!’

“Selene?” Juba asks.

“We need to go this way,” I say, pointing down a dirt path on our left.

“Into the poor district?” Mrunal gapes.

“Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but…I need you to trust me. Please.”

“Will you take responsibility for whatever comes next?” Raja asks.

‘We’re running out of time, Selene!’ the nymph cries, and so I nod.

“I will.”

Raja smiles and waves a hand forward. “Then by all means, lead the way.”

Juba turns and runs, following my directions whenever the nymph relays them. As for our tiny guide, she flutters swiftly on the breeze, giggling when she turns crumbling corners and darts to the end of dirt streets. Every time we seem close to catching up with her, she simply flies faster.

“We’re nearing the edge of the city,” Mrunal says, sometime later. “I can see the edges of the Bidiru Forest.”

“A forest?” Helios asks. “What’s that?”

“A thick, dense area of…of bamboo,” I say, fighting a strange numbness that’s begun to weigh my limbs. “Father told me about it, once. He said that the…the bamboo soars as high as some buildings, and is…made of long, hard poles of grass.”

“That sounds impossible.”

“Because the thought of it frightens you?” Raja snickers.

“No,” Helios huffs, as said grass comes into view. “Because it sounds too amazing to be true.”

Slowing as we near the forest, I search for the nymph. She flitters among the high, swaying poles of bamboo with her arms spread wide, spins round to meet my eyes, and—

With a sharp gasp, she vanishes.

“Stop,” I say, my vision blurring as I search for her. “I think we’re supposed to stop here.”

“And do what, exactly?” Ptolemy asks, wriggling until Helios sets her on her feet.

“If you tell me what direction it lies in, I can follow the stars toward the capital once night falls,” Juba offers.

“We’ve hours until then,” Mrunal says. “And we’re still too close to the city for comfort.”

“I doubt they’ll think royalty would dare scurry off into the wilderness,” Raja argues. “We’ll press onward for a ways and rest only when we’ve become hopelessly lost, then resume at nightfall.”

“Sounds good to—are you alright?” Helios asks, skirting Ptolemy to peer down at me. “Selene?”

I try to speak, but my body feels so heavy; my neck so stiff that it aches to part my lips.

“Is it your leg?” Juba asks. “I thought you said the arrow had only nicked you—”

“It what?” Raja cries, shoving Helios aside to take my leg in her hands. Twisting it slowly, she sucks in a sharp breath. “Speak to me, Selene. What are you feeling right now?”

I try to answer her, but a tremor rocks my body so suddenly, it steals the breath from my chest. All the world blurs into a mess of colors and indistinguishable shapes, and the voices that rise around me are too distorted to make any sense of.

‘Selene,’ that strange, masculine voice from the sea calls out to me, distant and almost too soft to discern.

‘Selene!’ Isis cries, her worried face forming in the darkness behind my closing eyes.

‘What’s happening to me?’ I wonder. ‘Was the arrow poisoned? And if it was, which poison did they use?’

‘Lycoctonum,’ Isis says, taking my hand in hers. ‘Tell them, Selene. The Romasian name for this poison is Lycoctonum.’

‘But it’s so hard. I can’t move—I can’t even feel my body.’

‘Please.’ She lowers her forehead to mine, tears lining her eyes. ‘Find the strength and tell them.’

A whisper of my name sends a wave through the darkness around us, lightening it. A second whisper, this time louder, draws me back into the waking world.

Kneeling on my right, Helios holds my hand and screams words I can’t fully understand, his cheeks flooded with tears. Cradling my head in her lap, Raja looks past my brother and repeats a strange word: Vatsanabha. Vatsanabha.

“Fight it, Selene,” Juba commands. “You’ve come too far to give up now, so fight it!”

“Ju-…ba,” I force out, my voice a breath. “Ly-…Lyco-…Ly—”

“Don’t force yourself to talk,” Helios begs, whilst Juba leans closer.

“What was that?” he asks.

“Ly-…Lycocto-…” I wheeze with the last of my strength, unable to get the full word out.

And as I sink back into the darkness, the last thing I see is Juba’s eyes go wide, before his hand jerks the scarab amulet from beneath his scarf.

***