Chapter 40: The Answer

Yuugi lacked even his shadow for support, but he stood with square shoulders in Ra's court all the same.

Ra watched him with a crooked smile. "I'm curious, child. What answer do you believe you've found?"

"I thought the puzzle didn't have any special power, not like the other items." Yuugi swallowed. "But that doesn't make sense. If the pharaoh made the items, why would he be bound to a powerless one?"

"A king should choose the greatest," Ra agreed, raising an eyebrow. "I would."

The greatest. And maybe it was, if Yuugi's suspicions were correct. At the very least, it was more suited to him than he'd ever imagined, and for the first time in his life, he thought Grandpa was right—maybe the puzzle did choose him.

Because what Yuugi wanted more than anything in the world was to protect the people he loved.

"You couldn't take Yori's life," he said, "because I wouldn't let you."

"How bold." Ra still wore that crooked smile. "You're claiming you are the thing to limit a god."

When Yuugi had interrupted Yori's shadow game, when he'd taken the god card's attack, he'd been a spirit, so he'd assumed it was the bracelet's power that had allowed him to interfere.

But it was the puzzle.

Just like it was the puzzle that allowed him to stop Haga from hurting Grandpa.

Just like it was the puzzle that allowed Yami to help Seto.

It allowed him to create boundaries that nothing could cross and to cross boundaries that nothing else could. It allowed him to protect what he loved. And if it was a king's artifact, Yuugi understood why: Because the king stood at the head of the court, and the puzzle stood at the head of the seven items. It had the power to be the link between them all.

"Unity," he said. "That's the puzzle's power. You can't get to Yori without going through me. You can't get to any of my friends without going through me."

He smiled, and his knees didn't tremble; his hands didn't shake.

Now he knew what he was truly capable of.

"And you're not getting through me," he said. "Not even over my dead body."

Ra stood like the rising sun, brightening the room until it was close to unbearable. He tilted his head, and his eyes were strangely warm, though it might have been a trick of the light.

"There's the mind," he said, "that solved the Millennium Puzzle."

Yuugi heard the unspoken. "What do you want now?"

"I want you to put that mind to use. There's a war on, if you haven't heard, and I'd very much like to win."

"You and the other side, I'm sure. That's how wars work."

"Allow me to rephrase: I'd very much like you on my side."

Yuugi couldn't answer—because his eyes had caught on Ra's empty throne.

And his mind was echoing with Shadi's voice:

The throne that goes to war shall be emptied, and the child shall take it.

"Actually," Yuugi rasped, swallowing. "I don't think you want me anywhere near you."

His heart thundered in his ears. He was just Yuugi Mutou, apprentice at a little game shop, C-average student and only that much because Anzu twisted his ear. Yuugi Mutou, abandoner of book reports. Yuugi Mutou, yet to hit a growth spurt or accomplish anything at all in life.

And that was the throne of a god.

Ra followed his gaze, quirked an eyebrow.

"What do you know?" the god asked.

Yuugi shook his head. "I don't think you should go to war at all. I think you should stay far, far away from war. We all should, really. People die in wars."

"People may die, but gods do not." Ra waved a hand. "I have been since the beginning, and I will be until the end."

"Oh. That's . . . good."

But Yuugi couldn't pull his eyes from the gleaming seat. The throne that goes to war—

"Wasn't Osiris killed once?" he asked.

"You know, humans are generally more intimidated by me. I'd thought the statement that I wanted you on my side might induce some groveling, perhaps an outpouring of gratitude or a confession of unworthiness."

Ra gestured at himself, standing there in all his godly glory, decked in gold and literally radiating the light of the sun.

And it was a fair point.

But Yuugi frowned. "If you want a fanboy, don't start by killing him."

"A fanboy," Ra's eyes widened, and the light flared with such intensity, Yuugi flinched away, because this time it wasn't just bright; it was hot. "Mind your tongue, child."

"Sorry," Yuugi mumbled, rubbing his hand where the skin had reddened.

"Whatever you might think"—Ra stepped closer, bringing the heat with him, and Yuugi retreated—"it was not an invitation. Should my opponent win this conflict, all creation would descend into chaos, my world as well as yours. I will do anything necessary to avoid such an outcome."

Yuugi's voice ran without his permission: "I don't think good ever comes of saying we'll do anything. Without any moral lines you won't cross, you're chaos as much as the thing you're trying to avoid."

Why was he still talking? Ra could incinerate him with a thought, and as much as Yuugi hated being weird-dead, it was worlds better than being wiped from existence. He swallowed and took another step back, but there was nowhere else to go; he'd reached the edge of the room.

And Ra still advanced.

"You presume to tell me the definition of order?" His gold eyes burned with an inner fire. "I created it. I separated light from the darkness when no one else would dare, when other gods trembled in fear of what swam in the dark. I created the council of the Ennead, I established the path of justice, and it is by my light that your whole world turns."

Yuugi told himself to just nod. He reminded himself of how many detentions he'd served for speaking up when teachers wanted silent obedience.

And yet he still opened his mouth.

And he said, "That's incredible, and it must have been unbelievably hard. It doesn't mean you're right about everything, though."

Here lies Yuugi Mutou, who never learned from a single detention, who died alone at a sad five-feet tall because he couldn't even wait to hit his growth spurt before mouthing off to a god.

"I don't mean any disrespect," he added, like that helped anything, like that would save him from instant cremation by the sun.

Ra came to a stop, and there was silence for a long time. Yuugi kept his eyes on the floor, trying not to aggravate the god further, but enough time finally passed that he dared a glance up, and then his jaw fell.

Everything in the room was gold and white, even Ra—gold eyes, gold hair, white robe.

So it made the black collar around his neck all the more jarring.

"The end of my leash," Ra said at last. A trail of black chain links led from the collar to his throne, anchored at the base of the gold-trimmed seat. When he stepped back, the collar and chain flickered and disappeared.

Yuugi had the feeling he was looking at another puzzle, but he wasn't sure he wanted the pieces.

Still, his mouth never learned.

"What could chain the greatest god?" he asked.

"What, indeed," Ra said, helpful as ever.

Yuugi swallowed. "What do you actually want from me?"

And the god gave that empty, friendly smile.

"I'm sure a mind like yours," he said, "can figure it out."

With another flash of light, Yuugi found himself standing on a deserted Duel Tower littered with red sand.

Yori half-expected Shada's story to play out in images like her fears had in a shadow game, but it was only his gentle voice in the warm desert air. And it was somewhat soothing—to only be in the moment. She'd spent too many recent minutes reliving the past in full color.

"I was fourteen," he told her, "when my heka was discovered. Before that, I'd intended to be a palace scribe, to follow in my father's footsteps."

He paused, eyes on her expectantly.

"What?" she finally said.

"Aren't you going to ask me what heka is?"

"I was just going to let you tell your story uninterrupted. I thought people preferred that." Not to mention the tingling was sending thin fingers into her every nerve, so if a revelation was forthcoming, better to let it come as soon as possible.

"You're a terrible audience. You're meant to hang on my every word and to ask all the right questions at all the right moments."

Yori almost said, Dude, I'm dying.

What she did say was, "Get on with it."

"Fine." He shook his head. "'What is heka' you ask? An excellent question—"

"Didn't ask. Don't care."

"—Heka is the natural magic of the mortal world. It is the power by which a spark becomes a flame or sand becomes glass. And sometimes, individuals are born with a sensitivity to heka that allows them to influence and use it. With the discovery of my own heka abilities came the change of career objectives that put me in line to become a priest."

He paused again.

Yori growled deep in her throat. "I get it. Priests need heka. Whatever. I know you've been dead a long time, but I would like to still be alive when you get to some kind of point for this story."

"So you can draw the necessary conclusions." His lips twitched. "Very well, then."

Bracing his hands on his knees, he leaned forward, and his expression grew serious.

"Seven millennium items," he said. "The pendant, later shattered into a puzzle, is the most powerful, which binds in one. Then comes the ring, which finds the unfindable, and the rod, which controls the uncontrollable. The scales balance what is unjust, and the necklace views what eyes cannot. The bracelet reveals the true spirits of men; the eye knows all their secrets."

So the bracelet was at the bottom of the list, the least powerful along with the eye. Yori certainly would have liked her item to do something more than let her see dead people, but it also wasn't a concern for the moment.

"I, too, was disappointed," Shada said, as if reading her thoughts, "when I was given the bracelet upon initiation into the pharaoh's court. Two fellow priests, Karim and Isis, were anointed along with me, and they received the scales and necklace, respectively. I felt I was the bottom of my class, despite the fact that the pharaoh's brother, Akhenaden, sported the eye, as he had done since the item's creation."

"Was Yami pharaoh?" Yori couldn't help asking. Did he have a brother?

"Not the right question at the right moment." Shada gave his breezy punk expression, but he said, "No. He was the young prince, barely eight years old. Akhenamkhanen was pharaoh."

Even dying, it took all of Yori's willpower not to say, Gesundheit.

"And what a pharaoh he was. A commanding figure of pure authority. I would tremble when sharing a room, particularly because he was a man of few words, and it was impossible to discern if he was pleased or not."

It didn't sound like Yami took after his dad, then. He was always easy to read.

Unless she always read wrong.

Yori swallowed.

"I was twenty-two when I became a priest, and I was newly married to the woman I'd loved all my life, who had always declared she could do better than me until, I suppose, one day I looked a little more grown-up and not so terrible after all."

Shada glanced down at the courtyard below. As if she'd sensed the conversation topic, the elegant woman at the fountain glanced up and blew him a kiss.

"You're a sap," Yori said, but she grinned. "And Shadi?"

The priest shook his head. "We struggled. It would be another four years before Shadi was born. But by then, you had entered the story."

It was jarring, like seeing herself in a mirror suddenly. Yori stiffened.

"Don't look so worried," he said, breezy once more. "I didn't even notice you at first. Not for many years."

She gave him a half-lidded glare that did nothing to ruffle him.

"Life as a priest was not easy. Training was rigorous, exhausting both mentally and physically. The items take years to master, and the more their power is mastered, the stronger the influence of darkness grows and the more mental fortitude is required to resist it. Though it was never spoken aloud, we all recognized the downward slope. The priests who retired and passed on their items did so with broken minds. Even Akhenamkhanen on his death bed was barely coherent, unable to recognize his own son."

Yori looked down at her bracelet. The Eye of Horus seemed unnerving once more, a hollow gaze in a staring contest with her soul as if waiting to see which would break first.

Still, without the bracelet, she would have been devoured already.

In the same thread, Shada said, "We did what we had to for our beloved country and its people. Sacrifice is always required to protect."

"You said Aknam . . ." Oh no. She'd already committed. "You said Aknam-cannon died."

He raised a condescending eyebrow. "Pharaoh Akhenamkhanen."

"I'll call him Aki just to bug you, I swear I will."

"I assume your unvoiced question is about the nameless pharaoh, since he concerns you most, past and present."

Yori's heart fell. "You don't remember his name?"

"It has been sealed." Shada gave a wan smile and lifted an arm to the friendly desert around them. "Just because you have left the mortal world does not mean you have escaped its boundaries. We are all pieces of one whole."

Nothing was ever easy.

"Thirteen," Shada said, bringing her eyes back to him. "That's the age that he became pharaoh."

At thirteen, Yori had taken to the streets.

Yami had taken a throne.

She swallowed. "Did I know him? Did I know you?"

"Now you're asking questions." Shada leaned back. He licked his lips, and after a moment of silence, he said, "There's no softening with honey. You were a slave in the palace."

He waited, as if expecting her to gasp.

"Okay," she said in the end, because she didn't see what else there was to say. It wasn't like she remembered, wasn't like she could change it. And she would have been more shocked to hear she was a princess or something.

"You take this very in stride."

Actually, she took it in tingles. "Well, better a slave than a horse. I don't know how reincarnation works."

He shook his head with some kind of longsuffering expression that raised her hackles. Then he looked down.

"I saw you frequently." He said it like an admission of guilt. "And even though your duties were to the priests, I saw you frequently with the new pharaoh."

Yori was certain her ears burned. Of course she would be the type to cause a court scandal. Shada glanced up, and then his lips twitched.

"Nothing indecorous," he said. "Well, not yet."

Now her ears definitely burned.

"I believe I was the only one to notice. I was less rigid than the other priests and often in places I shouldn't be myself. I was not one to put in unrequired worship hours like Isis, nor was I a recluse like Akhenaden. But as a high priest, my duty was to pharaoh as much as country, and I did consider my duties sacred. So after witnessing several private conversations and realizing this was an ongoing friendship, I confronted you directly. I believe you were fifteen or so at the time."

Fifteen-year-old-horse-Yori must have been mortified. The modern version certainly was.

"My mind was full of worst-case scenarios," Shada said. "I was absolutely certain a slave would never be bold enough to approach Ra-on-Earth by her own accord, which meant someone was using this slave to get to the pharaoh. Upcoming war, assassination, overthrow, it was all a possibility, and I had to find out which corrupting power commanded your loyalty."

Yori would have loved to take a shot at his overactive imagination, but the tingling was in her thighs and hips now. Would she be able to stand again?

"The interrogation was not a long one. When I ordered you to declare your loyalty to Egypt, I expected flowery gushing about the pharaoh and his court, the highest of praises you could muster, each spilling over the other to emerge. I thought you would prove your innocence with everything you had."

"Doesn't sound like me," Yori murmured, flexing a hand she couldn't feel. Her skin seemed paler somehow, like flu had drained the health.

"No, indeed." Shada gave his gentle smile. "After some obvious thought and deep frowning, you told me: 'I like the Nile.'"

"That . . . yep, that sounds like me." If not for the creeping darkness, she might have felt a different kind of tingle, the kind that confirmed how even across two lifetimes, her core was the same.

"Had I performed my full duty, I would have turned you over to the rod for a true interrogation in which you could not lie. But the rod had a new owner, Priest Seth, who was, in my humble opinion, an arrogant zealot."

Yori started. Like a tickle at the back of her mind, she saw a warm yellow light, a library with a desk, and . . .

"So I did not," Shada pressed on. "I released you, and I determined that if my pharaoh was not in danger, he was free to keep company with anyone he pleased. Even a slave. I turned a blind eye."

"Sounds like a happy ending." Yori felt the tingle in her shoulders. "I know this isn't a happy ending."

"No, it isn't, as many things in life are not. But I think we would do well to remember there was happiness along the way. And to remember that for each ending, there is a new beginning. You are proof." He reached out and took her hand, turned her fingers back and forth. "You are also fading fast."

Just behind her ear, she heard the snarl of a beast.

"I am a man who was once stung." He held her gaze evenly. "You are a slave who befriended a pharaoh, a prisoner of a country who could still appreciate its rivers. And when I had my pick of priests in training, some with heka much greater than mine, you are the woman I entrusted my item to."

He tilted her hand again, this time displaying the bracelet.

And all at once, Yori realized—

He was right. She'd never asked the right question at all.

Barely able to breathe, she asked: "Can you teach me to use the bracelet?"

That was what she'd been missing. Yori Yoshida was a fighter at heart, all the way down to that core that had been born 3,000 years ago in Egypt, but a fighter needed a weapon. It was when the ground was unsteady, when she was unarmed and uncertain—that was when the fears crept in. That was when she ran. She'd been trying to face fears that had already made her run, but she'd done so unarmed and uncertain.

She needed a weapon. Just as her first switchblade had changed the color of life on the streets just by gripping the handle, she would change the fears in the dark by wielding the dark itself.

There was approval in Shada's eyes as he answered: "It would be my pleasure."

Learn fast or die, Yori.

Note: Hey, guys. Sorry this is late. I have to reluctantly admit I'm not going to be able to keep a regular schedule, at least not for a while. I've been sick for weeks. It's not Covid, and it's not lethal, so there's no need for big concern. It's just going to keep slowing me down for a while. I can't promise when the next update will be, but I CAN promise that it will come. I'm not me if I'm not writing, even if I'm writing much slower than usual.

Thank you as always for all your support. I have the best readers. Happy Halloween, guys, and stay safe.