Sitefnut wandered the tomb, following meandering paths that wound through the trees. Outside, it was twilight, though in here it was always as bright as noon. Usi had gone to hunt for himself, as was his habit; Sitefnut had given him an invisibility spell and wished him luck.
She found a place in the wall where a niche was carved out, inviting rest. The mage sat, rubbing her wrists, which still hurt even after they had been healed by Mayet. Her granddaughter had assured her that the soreness would persist only for a day or two.
Sitefnut did not often think about how her life might have been different, if different choices had been made. But now, by herself, in the wake of her realization that her entire family other than Mayet was likely dead, she thought about what had brought her here, an old woman wandering the world, learning everything she could get her hands on.
She had been eleven years old when her father told her that she would marry in a month. She had been barely twelve when she had been married to Soren, who was twice her age. She hadn't wanted to marry; her passion had always been for magic, and she wanted to go away either to the temple of Isis or one of the mage schools in Thebes. There had been screaming fights, but she finally bowed her head and did her duty.
She had been a small thing, smaller than Mayet, her breasts just recently budded out. Soren, she knew, had not meant to hurt her, but hurt her he did. He mother had tried to tell her how it went between husbands and wives, and offered her some preparations to make the first several times easier, but Sitefnut had heeded none of her advice.
So Sitefnut's new life had begun in blood and pain. A few months later, she caught pregnant for the first time, and from then until she was twenty-one years old she was either pregnant or nursing, sometimes both at once. She had resented her body for being so aggressively fertile--why couldn't she have been barren, just a little bit?--but she had, despite herself, fallen in love with each of her children.
When her first daughter, Senit, was laid in her arms after nearly a day and a night of labor, she'd held the red-faced child and swore to her silently that this one, and all the ones that followed, would have more choices than she had.
When she was twenty, she had a child, a boy, born three months early. He had not survived a week. At twenty-one, her next child had been born dead. She was done with childbearing, and using combinations of herbs (some for preventing pregnancy, others for ending it when those failed) she made sure she was never pregnant for very long after that.
Soren and she had times of peace, but they were never easy together, and she knew he sought comfort in the arms of other women. She didn't really care; if he was sleeping with someone else, then he was not pestering her. She never indulged herself in that manner. Truth be told, there were few enough men who took her fancy. She liked to look at the pretty ones, of course, but never seriously entertained the idea of taking any of them to her bed--besides, she was too busy for that nonsense. The times that were not peaceful were raging fights, Soren dismayed at Sitefnut's independence, Sitefnut resenting Soren for trying to control her.
The day that Soren went out in his boat to fish and never came home, she had at first thought that he had simply left her. Then, when bits of his boat had washed up, his long black hair caught in the boards, she did grieve, a little. If she had not been so young when she married, if she had not spent so much time fighting with him, she might have loved him. Soren had not been a bad man, nor a cruel one; he had done his best with what his life had given him. He had loved their children deeply, and (she surmised) had felt some affection, if not outright love, for his difficult wife.
She had been twenty-seven when he died. Much too old to remarry, thankfully. She had turned all her thoughts to making sure her family survived.
And now, life had brought her here. To the knowledge that someone hated whatever she was enough to kill her whole family. Nobody from her family had left the village, as far as she knew, since her grandfather's time, and possibly for generations before. If her father had known what their family was and never told her, counting on marriage and children to keep her in one place, that would have explained his insistence on having her married as soon as possible.
Then there was this: according to Usi's story of the original deception, the hyenas had always been neutral in every mortal conflict. If she was one of them...then she and Usi had chosen sides. If the overall Pack worked like she thought it did, that meant that the entire race of hyenas had chosen sides, as well.
The question was, why? What would possibly entice them into this fight? Is there a chance to return to where we came from, if we win? Or are we simply fighting to not destroy this place before we have a chance to find our power and go back? she mused.
She went over what she knew of Usi, and his place in the being that they seemed to call Pack, the sense in which all hyenas considered themselves as part of one hyena. If Huni had intended to capture me and Usi, or us and Mayet...He wouldn't have had to capture Usi, if he had me. Usi feels what I feel, and while I was captured whatever Usi's real job is would go undone.
She swallowed, suddenly feeling a bit small. She was Usi's weakness, the person who he could be hurt the most through. As Mayet was hers. Another reason to gain as much power as I can. I won't be his weakness for long.
She felt a pressure in her mind and raised her head. Usi padded around the corner, lifting his head. He came to her and accepted her scratches. "Good hunt, then?"
Nothing large, but there's a good amount of small game in this wadi. He sounded satisfied with himself. I didn't have to go far. Are you all right?
The question, coming out of the blue, startled Sitefnut. "As well as I can be, considering the circumstances. Tell me, will you answer some questions?"
He settled down next to her, but she saw that his eyes were wary. Perhaps. It depends on the questions.
"What are the hyenas doing, and why does someone want to stop them?"
The answer, when it came, was reluctant. It was not we who struck the first blow, but him.
Sitefnut rubbed one of her wrists. "Him? Menes, who all roads seem to lead to?"
Yes, the dark one. He wasn't looking at her now, instead staring off into the vegetation.
"What possible interest could he have in trying to hamstring the hyenas? As far as everything you've told me, we don't fight in their wars. Dead people are confusing."
There is power in our souls. He wants it, and does not want it to be used against him.
She considered this, closing her eyes and thinking. "So, tell me. If you, as far as I can tell the only hyena who's a member of the larger Pack and not an individual pack, after taken out of the equation, can he use the power of the rest?"
Usi turned his head and began nibbling at the pads of one of his hind feet. He will take that power, but he searches for us. We have the ability to make him great.
"Even if we don't want to? He's not the sort of person I'd ever willingly work for."
Usi finally looked at her with that unnervingly direct hyena gaze. He would take our souls and use them. Bottle them for later use.
Sitefnut shuddered. "I have a plan. Let's not let him get his hands on us."
She heard a dry chuckle in Usi's voice. Good plan, familiar.
"Let's not let him get his hands on Mayet, either. Realistically, she's as much my weakness as I am yours."
Not for long. The hyena went back to nibbling on his feet. The pup is growing up. Soon she'll be able to care for herself. She's gaining in power, and quickly.
"She's a good girl. Starting to show signs of a spine, as well as some power. Traveling's been good for her. Sorry about those things she was saying about you, by the way. She'll come around."
There was that chuckle again. Sitefnut started to relax. Usi had been in a strange mood earlier; something about the questions she had asked had touched a nerve, it seemed. Or was it something else, a lingering memory of the mutilated man, something he had found outside and wasn't telling her about? No matter.
Probably, and maybe not. Not all like to be told they are part of the one.
Sitefnut shrugged. "She's young. She'll get used to it. I can't say as I like it yet, but it makes a very strange sort of sense. It's very odd to find out that you're not what you thought you were all your life. Mayet will come round. If I could adjust to my marriage, she'll be able to adjust to this."
Let us hope Menes gives her the time to do so.
She chuckled. "Or we start moving so fast that he'll have a hard time keeping track of us."
Usi thumped his tail on the packed dirt he was lying on. Time for the pack to move on. Hunting here is getting scarce, and the lions begin to circle.
"Past time. We'll stay here for a few days and let Xeres give birth. Then we're off to try and intercept the gnome's master." She paused and looked in the direction that the others were. "I wonder if the others would be confused to realize we think of them as a pack? It's a strange one, but it certainly functions that way."
Tailless call them families, after all. Some born, some chosen.
They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. Sitefnut murmured, "And here I thought I'd get a hundred miles down the Nile, drop Mayet off at a Hathor temple when she tired of traveling, and continue on by myself until I died. Then the boat exploded, and where are we now? Hunted by the living and the dead."
Usi's tail thumped again. Fun, the hunt and the chase. Now comes the best part, the kill.
This time, Sitefnut laughed aloud. "I just hope that when the time comes, we're a match for the prey! Menes is bigger than a gazelle."
You do not hunt the crocodile on its home ground for a reason.
She shrugged. "You have to tempt it out of its element, after all."
Usi snorted. But only after you have destroyed its pack.
"One by one, the weakest first." Sitefnut was starting to feel a little bit strange. Images of wide grasslands were trickling into her head, of hunts that could last for a day, of loping forever, running prey down, waiting for it to get tired. The sweet-salt of blood, when it fell.
Then the kill. The hyena flicked his ears. But the real excitement here is that we are going after the lion. It chases us now, and it's a game of time. Who kills who first?
"Depends on how long it takes before it realizes we're a threat. And what it does when it realizes we are."
Usi looked at her. It knows.
She answered, quietly, "We will just have to keep ahead of it. Tire it out with running. Lead it onto unfamiliar ground."
And bring it down. There was a long moment when mage and hyena locked eyes with each other, and Sitefnut was conscious once more of how entangled the two of them were, and how in some respects they thought and acted as one being. Usi finally broke the gaze. You craved adventure, familiar. You have it.
"And I'm enjoying myself immensely." As she spoke the words, she realized how very true they were. For the first time in a very long time, she felt truly alive, as if this was what she had been waiting for all these years. "Well, except the part where my wrists were broken by a revenant."
Usi shook his head. Painful, that was. My ankles still hurt.
"My wrists are still sore. I think I'd like to avoid a repetition of that one. Casting spells hurt, even after I healed them up a little." She winced at the memory and rubbed them again. "So I take it that you feel what I feel, and vice versa?"
Yes. Want some fleas?
Sitefnut snorted and kicked at the air in his direction. "No, thank you. That's what baths are for." She was idly following a line of thought, and suddenly realized that if Usi decided to go off and find a girl hyena, there might be some potential awkwardness.
His voice interrupted her thoughts. I am more human than hyena. Even if my form is bound to this one.
That would be a no, then. Well enough. "There's a thought. Usi, can you actually change your form? I was under the impression, from what the identify said about the collar, that your magic was bound in it and if you wanted to use magic, you'd have to take over my body."
She'd expected him to be evasive, but instead he replied, Not entirely true. It will force me to my hyena body if I spend too long as a human. I get four hours a day as a human, no more. I just choose not to. He was again not looking at her, putting his head down on his front paws.
Sitefnut raised an eyebrow. "Just a personal preference of yours?"
He gave the hyena equivalent of a shrug. Too hard to change back and forth, the mindset and feelings are different. Easier to stay as one person, not two.
She thought about this and nodded. "I can see that. Switching could be very uncomfortable, in that case. Well, I wasn't planning on telling the others that you have a human form, anyway."
Usi lifted his head. Besides, it would be inconvenient for you.
"Inconvenient, how?"
If I am the human, you are the hyena.
She gave him a good long look. "Ah. Yes, that would be a bit inconvenient. Interesting, but inconvenient."
He was laughing at her. See? Fleas. And the world abruptly changed.
Sitefnut was suddenly standing on the ground...standing on all fours. She looked around and saw that the color had mostly been washed out of the world, but that the outline of each tiny object was clearer than she had ever seen it. And the smells...oh, the smells! She had thought her nose very sharp before, but this was another order of magnitude above that.
She craned her neck, looking at herself. She was a hyena! She took a tentative step, and then another, and then began to frisk around, bouncing like a pup. Something moved in the undergrowth and she very nearly went after it, her mind catching up to her instincts just in time. I can see what you mean about the mindset and feelings. Yeesh. She practiced moving some more, and then gave a yip of delight. I have a tail! Neat!
She could feel Usi's amusement at her delight. She heard his voice say, quietly, "No offense, but a grey hyena is very strange looking."
I'm gray? I'm gray! It's not my fault that I didn't get to learn magic until I was old! She stopped and looked up at him. She couldn't quite tell from down here, but it seemed he was a human of middling height, compactly built with a lean musculature that spoke of a life spent on the road. She realized with a shock that he was reasonably handsome, perhaps in his early thirties with shoulder-length black hair and warm eyes, and amusement curved the corners of his mouth upward in a way that made his whole face look open and approachable. She thought, And I didn't call a familiar before, why? He's pretty nice to look at. If she had been a human, she would have blushed then, as she remembered that he could hear her thoughts.
He laughed, "Back when you were thirty, you could have had an affair with your dog."
She snorted and snapped at the air towards him. He laughed again and the world changed as she found herself standing on two legs, back on her own body. Usi said, Easier this way, I think.
Sitefnut rubbed her temples. "Probably. Still, that was pretty interesting. Prey drives are a bitch, aren't they?"
You get used to it. Usi's voice was satisfied, as if that had been a test and she had somehow passed.
Sitefnut sat back down on the ledge, thinking. "You can live and die as a member of the one in human form without ever knowing it. Suddenly, that seems a little lonely."
Usi padded over to her, leaning against her legs. It's worse for those born in hyena form. They live a dozen years, thinking all the time that they feel like something more than they are.
Her voice dropped to a low murmur. "The gods did us no favors at all by bringing us here. And poor Mayet worships one of the ones who betrayed us."
It gives her power.
"I still don't think I'll tell her that story quite yet. I don't think she'd understand it. Nor might she ever."
Usi heaved a sigh. Probably not.
They sat together in silence, each of them thinking their own thoughts about the future and what it might hold.
