The linen split as Neith drew it across the dead man’s chest.
She had woven it herself. No blade had touched it. Yet a narrow cut opened over his heart, and the two edges curled away from each other as though the cloth were burning.
The man watched from beside the loom. In death he still wore an archer’s wrist guard, polished dark where the bowstring had struck it. He pressed his empty hand against his ribs.
“Another piece,” he said.
Neith laid the torn strip across her knee. Through its opening she could see the floor of her weaving room in Sais, the feet of the loom, the bowl of water beside her stool. Then the floor vanished. Something moved far below it.
“Who came with you?” she asked.
“No one.”
She passed a finger through the cut. Cold closed around it. When she withdrew her hand, a thread no thicker than a hair stretched from her fingertip to the wound in the dead man’s body.
The archer stepped back.
Neith took hold of the thread.
“Do not pull that,” he said.
The Arrow
She pulled gently. A reed shaft emerged from the wound, although the flesh around it did not move. The archer’s mouth opened. Somewhere beyond the room, another mouth cried out.
Neith stopped.
Outside, water slapped against the landing steps. Inside, the threads hanging from the loom leaned toward the slit in the linen.
“That arrow killed me,” the man said.
“It entered from the wrong side.”
He looked at the doors.
Neith set the shaft between the loom’s uprights. Her bow stood within reach, its curve familiar against the whitewashed wall. She had strung it before the first body arrived that night. Now she needed both hands for work more delicate than shooting.
She drew out another finger’s length of reed.
A boy fell onto the floor beside the stool.
He landed on his knees, clutching the other end of the arrow. Its head was buried below his collarbone. His free hand held a knotted cord. He looked at Neith, then at the archer, and scrambled backward until his shoulders struck the wall.
The arrow lengthened between them.
“Keep him away,” the boy said.
The archer caught the shaft. “He followed me.”
“You brought him.” Neith held out her hand for the cord, but the boy closed his fist around it.
“My brother was on the other bank. I was pulling the boat across.”
“You were signaling.”
“It was a rope.”
“I called to you.”
“I couldn’t hear.”
The boy tried to rise. His knees buckled. As he fell, the arrow tugged in the dead man’s chest, and the archer seized it with both hands.
Neith braced her foot against the loom and caught the boy beneath his arms. The floor remained solid under her heel. Under his bare feet it darkened, sank, and began to open.
He kicked once. Something below caught the end of his cord.
“Let go,” Neith told him.
“He’ll need the boat.”
She could feel the pull traveling through his small clenched hand. She put her own hand over his and opened his fingers one by one. The cord slipped out of sight.
The boy made no sound as it went.
Behind her, the archer said, “I prayed to you before that battle.”
Neith eased the boy onto the stool.
“I know.”
“You kept me alive.”
“For a time.”
“Then keep him from me.”
She looked at the reed between them. The fletching bore the little crossed marks the archer had cut into it before leaving home. He had asked her to guide it. Here it was, arrived at last, with everything it had struck still attached.
Neith reached for the shears.
The man lunged across the room and took her bow.
The Broken String
He moved quickly. His left foot found its old position; the wrist guard turned inward. For an instant he stood as he must have stood on the riverbank.
There was no arrow on the string.
Then the reed began sliding out of the boy’s chest toward his hand.
Neith stepped between them. The boy gripped the back of her dress.
“Put it down.”
“He won’t stop looking at me.”
The archer pulled. The bow bent. Under Neith’s feet the opening widened, taking the legs of the stool and half the fallen cloth. The boy slipped with them. She caught his wrist before his fingers tore loose from her dress.
Now she had one hand to hold him, and one hand free.
The man stared at the dark below her. His bow arm trembled.
“Help me,” he said.
Neith could reach the bow. She could twist it out of his hands and drive its horn tip through him. The motion was already in her shoulder, quick and certain.
The boy’s wrist grew thinner inside her grip.
She reached past the man’s knuckles and closed her free hand around the drawn string.
“Open your fingers.”
He held on.
The string cut into her palm. The reed advanced another inch, drawing the boy toward the weapon. Neith felt the small bones of his wrist begin to separate beneath her thumb.
She bent her head and bit through the string.
The bow straightened with a crack. The man stumbled against the wall. Neith fell backward, hauling the boy across her knees, while the severed string whipped through her fingers.
She did not release it.
The opening spread beneath the loom. Its front beam tipped toward her. Loose lengths of linen slid past her ankles and disappeared without a sound.
She hooked the broken string around the nearest upright, drew it across the open space, and caught it on the other side. The loom stopped falling.
For a moment she could only hold it there. The pull drove the string deeper into her palm. Her bow lay useless beyond her foot, and the shears had gone into the dark.
The archer crawled toward the body on the mat.
“Stay,” she said.
He kept crawling.
“The next thing that falls is you.”
He stopped at the edge. Beneath him, his own face looked up from the mat, peaceful and wholly unable to help him.
“Take the cloth,” Neith said. “Pass it under the string.”
He stared at her bleeding hand.
“Now.”
He gathered the nearest strip and pushed it through. Neith caught it, folded it back, and tightened it against the bowstring. A narrow white band held across the opening.
“Again.”
This time his hands were steadier.
Two Wrappings
They worked with the boy seated between Neith’s knees. Each pass of linen covered another finger’s breadth of darkness. Each time the archer reached across, the boy shrank against her, and she made the man wait until he could breathe again.
At last there remained an opening scarcely wider than the reed shaft.
Neith could not draw the final strip tight. The arrow held the weave apart. One end still belonged to the boy’s wound; the other lay in the archer’s closed hand.
“Give it to me.”
“If I let go, he’ll come through.”
“He goes first. You wait.”
The boy shook his head. “He can follow.”
“Not with this.”
Neith held her hand out beneath the arrow. The cut across her palm had filled with linen fibers. She had no weapon left within reach to enforce her promise.
The archer looked from her hand to the boy. His thumb moved along the marks in the shaft. Then he laid the reed across her palm.
It came free of the boy so quietly that he did not notice until he tried to lift his arm.
Neith broke the shaft against the loom. She wrapped the pieces separately and set them behind her. Then she tightened the last strip.
The floor rose beneath them. The stool settled onto its four legs. Water sounded again at the landing steps.
She wrapped the boy first. He stood while she worked, turning when she asked, testing his shoulder beneath the linen. At the door he stopped and looked back.
The archer sat with his hands flat on his knees.
Neith waited until the boy had passed beyond the threshold before she returned to the mat.
This time the cloth lay whole across the dead man’s chest.
“Will he forgive me?” the archer asked.
Neith lifted his hand and covered the dark wrist guard.
“That is not mine to give.”
When he left, he paused where the boy had paused. His fingers opened against the doorpost. Then he went on.
Morning reached the room in a thin bar beneath the shutters. Neith washed her palm. She took a length of thread from the finished loom, doubled it, twisted it, and doubled it again.
The bow lay where it had fallen. She braced one end against her foot and bent it carefully to receive the new string.
