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Seconds

By Abigail L. Wilkes

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Someone like Tiye shouldn’t have even had a job, let alone such a prosperous one. She hadn’t had a break day for three weeks and five days, the longest streak since she’d started working at the cloth shop four years ago. She shut the wooden door against the sandstone frame with a thud. I shouldn’t curse the extra work. Others have died before even getting the chance for a single day.
She choked on the humid air. What a foolish thought.
Tiye turned from the door, leaving the shop—and the thought—behind. Her purse jingled against her hip as she made her way through the market. Three dozen stalls with white canopies and stone tables lined the fifteen-foot-high walls. The cobbled road north led to the bulk of the Lower Pyramid, where hundreds of sandstone houses were stacked on each other, including her own.
Tiye hesitated in front of the wine merchant’s stall. Tempting though a bottle was, it would cost the past week’s wages, and she had two unopened ones back home.
The merchant, dressed in a plain toga like Tiye’s, pulled the bottles off the counter.
“Unless you are going to buy top tier, I’m done for the day.” He waited, fingers tapping on the countertop.
Tiye turned away, not bothering to explain she couldn’t afford top tier. He could tell by her plain white toga and simple top knot. She was a standard Lower Pyramid dweller, not some embroidered, headdressed fool from the Higher Pyramid. The tunnel leading to the elites’ houses sat on the far side of the market. Steelmen guarded the entrance as usual. They wore teal half-togas and matching linen headdresses. Their bronzed chests were bare, and they clutched long spears as if wanting to use them.
Tiye shivered.
Steelmen.
They didn’t know her true identity, but that didn’t make passing them any easier. She turned away from the wine stall, the smooth linen of her toga whipping around her ankles. The road swarmed with people leaving the market for the day, chatting about their wares.
Overhead, the waterfall drummed. The city wasn’t a true pyramid, since one side was built into a mountain. The lake at the top fed the waterfall, which channeled through an aqueduct built a thousand years ago.
Things could have been different a thousand years ago. Perhaps someone like her hadn’t needed to hide. She shook the thought off and turned for the road home. The long days were wearing. Maybe the time had come to open one of the wine bottles she had in her house.
“Are you the cloth woman?” A small boy slipped in front of her. A ruined strip of linen served as his loincloth, streaked with the dust of the bustling city.
“The shop is closed for the day. You can get what you need tomorrow.” Tiye’s bare heels scuffed the road as she stepped past him.
“Here.” Clammy fingers pressed something cool into her palm. He scampered away without another word and slipped into the thinning crowd.
A rock sat in Tiye’s hand. Rough, uncut, with a symbol scratched hastily into the top. It wasn’t even a rune in the language of El-Pelusium, the city.
No. Her breath hitched.
He wouldn’t have been so foolish. She dropped her hand, neck burning. But even if someone saw, they couldn’t know what the rock meant. She shoved it into her purse, where it clinked against her day’s pay.
True, she hadn’t seen her father in months and she missed him, but it was for the best. The fewer chances they gave people to see them together and draw unwanted conclusions, the better.
Tiye steadied her breathing and set off down the road again. Her father must miss her worse than she thought, to have sent that message. She could visit him in a few days under the guise of fitting him for a new toga. Jabarre, her employer, often did personal fittings for other Council members.
The high wall of the Lower Pyramid blocked the setting sun as Tiye rounded the corner. The first of the sandstone houses lined the road. A thin haze of cooking smoke wafted into the light breeze, scenting and disrupting the humid air. Evening lamplighters went ahead of her, jugs of oil sloshing between them. In an hour the daylight would be gone, and only a few stragglers would still be out in the city.
Tiye slowed, grabbing her purse. Her father had used the rock before, but he’d always been discreet about leaving it at her door or in the cloth shop’s window. Things must be urgent for him to use the boy. She jerked around, her elbow catching in a woman’s side.
“Hey! Watch it!” the merchant spat, grabbing her basket of herbs closer to her chest. Tiye bowed in apology and hurried back into the market. Only a few merchants remained.
And the Steelmen.
They still guarded the tunnel, more for formality than anything else. Tiye threw her shoulders back and marched passed them. At least her pale skin and black hair kept her unremarkable.
The tunnel rose gradually for half a mile before it opened into a bridge. Another tunnel began on the other side. The houses of the Lower Pyramid sat under the bridge, with the aqueduct running beside it and over the city.
The sun gave one last ray of heat before setting into the distant ocean. No sign of anyone. A tingle burned up the nape of Tiye’s neck. Had someone followed her?
She had been foolish to come up here without a plan. The rock in her purse dug into her hip, as if digging its truth into her soul. That innocent rock could get both her and her father banished if anyone knew what it meant.
She stumbled to a halt and into a dark doorway. She could not afford to be caught, now that she’d involved her father. Or he’d involved her. Her breath hovered in her throat, hot and thin. The Steelmen could have gotten bored and followed her to question what she was doing in the Higher Pyramid.
A torch flickering on its last lick of oil lit the street as dusk settled in. She let the rhythmic crashing of the waterfall soothe her heartbeat. She had survived four years out here alone without being banished. She could go one more night.
Forcing back the urge to shudder, she stepped back into the street as if she belonged in the Higher Pyramid.
“H-help me!” A voice, low and desperate, cut through the noise of the rushing water.
Tiye bit her tongue, and the sharp taste of copper flooded her mouth. A man sat in the shadows on the side of the bridge, dirty and smeared with red paint.
No, not paint. Blood.
The red stains stood out against his pale skin, gleaming in the night. His eyes were wide, frantic. Before Tiye could step back, his blood-encrusted hand shot out and grabbed hers.
“Please.” The man’s voice cracked. “Help me.”
“Miki.” Another man’s voice, firm and deep. The bloody stranger dropped her arm, his eyes flashing to the newcomer.
Father. The name was on her lips, but she kept quiet. Tiye stepped away from the bloody man toward the torchlit mouth of the hall and her father. He wore a linen headdress edged with glass beads. A white toga, plain apart from a teal belt with gold embroidery, covered his torso. His feet were bare. The enclosed hall where he stood led into the heart of the Higher Pyramid and away from the stacked sandstone houses of the Lower.
“Please! Woman, if you don’t help me, they will banish me—” The stranger’s voice cut off in a choke.
Tiye paused halfway, looked at the man and then at her father, whose dark eyes flashed in warning. The injured man was too dangerous to be near. She sprinted the last ten yards to safety, and her father’s warm fingers wrapped around her wrist.
Something moved behind the bloody stranger.
Steelmen. There were at least a dozen of them, spear tips dancing as they marched up the road and onto the bridge. The stranger fell to the ground, his sob breaking the night. Tiye’s father went to the door in the hallway that was his front door and wrenched it open, the massive wooden planks creaking, and she stumbled into the house. The door slammed shut, a bang that resounded against the stark walls. Her father did not speak, and a tightness in her chest kept her from voicing her fears. One look into her father’s lined face proved he shared the same thoughts.
The man outside was a Second. He wouldn’t have spoken of banishment otherwise.
Her father smiled, but the smile did not reflect in his eyes. “You are fine. He didn’t know who you were. It was a coincidence.”
“Yes.” The word was inadequate.
“I know that look, Miki. Trust me, you’re fine. Come, let’s eat while you’re here.”
Her father retrieved a lanp from the low table by the door and moved further into the house. The walls were bare, apart from intricate pictographs carved into the houses of many of the elites of El-Pelusium. Tiye’s finger twitched at her side, as if wanting to trace the lines of those engravings as she had when she was small. But that had been Miki, her father’s child.
Her father lit the remaining torches lining the walls, their fire contained inside glass globes, something her own modest house did not have. The sparsely decorated room was unusual for someone of her father’s station, but for her it was home. A warm evening breeze drifted through the open balcony beside her, blowing the gossamer linen curtains inward. She couldn’t imagine how others envied such a large sky-wall when her heart raced just standing in front of it. It made her feel vulnerable, unprotected.
“Years have passed since you’ve had to fear who might look in through there, Miki. Come, relax and eat with me.” Wood scraped on stone as her father set a bowl of fruit on the bench between them. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come.” He frowned, the lines of worry crossing his forehead.
“Why did you?” Her breath didn’t catch up with her words, and they came out in a wheeze. She cleared her throat and tried again. “It was risky to use a boy. What’s going on?”
His frown deepened. “There were rumors of a hunt for a Second. I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“That was the man outside,” Tiye whispered. The irony of her father’s actions tonight, of all nights, wasn’t lost on her.
Her father paled but didn’t broach that topic. “It’s the new High One. I’d hoped she wouldn’t be the sort of ruler her father was, and I could sway her to our cause, but it’s proving harder than I first thought. The other Council members want her to redouble efforts to find Seconds—”
A scream cut through the evening, making Tiye jump. Her hand smacked into the bowl of fruit, sending red and orange berries rolling across the open floor as far as the bedroom entrance.
The man outside. Tiye edged closer to the sky-wall, where the street beyond lay visible. The man knelt, bent over in the street, a pool of red polluting the bricks under him.
“They won’t be able to banish him if he’s dead,” she muttered under her breath.
“Miki, come away.”
“What are they doing to him?”
“Miki,” her father’s voice more stern this time, “you don’t need to watch.”
“But how did they know he was a Second? It’s been five years since they found one.”
That day had been cold, the coldest the Pyramid’s mild winters had produced in her memory. A shiver raised the hairs on her arms at the thought of that man. Pale and scrawny from years of living in the sewers, enduring a life that hadn’t saved him. The Steelmen paraded him past the cloth shop on his way to the boat for banishment, just like the ones before him. Tiye hadn’t wanted to see, but Jabarre, the owner of the shop, had insisted, laughing too much to notice when she ran away and vomited in the storeroom.
“Stop watching.” Her father’s fingers dug into the crook of her elbow and yanked her back. “No good will come of it. All you have done is ruin my fruit.”
A splash of orange stood out against the thin palm-weave rug. She sighed. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“I know. Me too.” His icy fingertips brought goosebumps to her arm as they fell away. “Let’s finish in the other room so we do not have to see.” But his face drained of color. He was as frightened as she.
Thud.
Sharp pain in her palms as her nails dug into them.
Thud. Thud. A fist on the wooden door.
“Councilman Bast, we must speak with you!” A Steelman.
She exhaled a gust of nerves and tried to suck it back in. She shouldn’t have come, not after a year of staying away.
Her father tugged her across the room and into the bedroom. “You must go into the cellar.”
Wood creaked under Tiye’s feet. “No, not that. Father—”
“Miki, you must go down there. Being with me won’t protect you, not after what just happened. Go!”
He lifted the edge of the small bedside rug and the attached cellar door opened with a groan of forgotten hinges. Without another word he spun from the room, head held high like the Councilman he was.
The cellar gaped before her, a black mouth waiting to devour her. This was worse than the man outside, most likely a Second, being beaten and then being banished. Going into the cellar was something she’d hoped to never do again.
The door beyond opened. Her father’s deep tones filled the house. A man’s apologetic voice answered. Feet scuffed the floor as the Steelmen moved inward. She had to go now.
A gulp of fresh air. Closed eyes. Tiye threw herself into the cellar, fingers wrapping around the rough edge of the door above her and pulling it shut. The rug would fall back into place on its own, just as her father had designed it to do when he’d hidden her as a child.
Her fingers found the latch in the darkness and flipped it closed. Silence and darkness settled. Breath hovered in her lungs and blood pounded in her ears. Hours, days, years of her childhood spent down here, in the same darkness, the same nerve-grinding fear. The only difference was that now the cellar door brushed her head instead of being a few feet above her.
Tingles took her fingers, moving from her heart to the tips of her extremities. The poison of anxiety hadn’t touched her for so long. Closing her eyes, she sucked in another breath and wished it away.
“A Second?” Her father’s voice came through muffled, but it was calm, practiced. “You are sure? That is a serious accusation, gentlemen.” Nineteen years of her life and more before her had prepared him well for this.
“Yes, Councilman Bast. I am aware of the gravity of the charge. Councilman Montu suspected him. He commanded us to call the Council once we caught the Second ...” The husky voice moved away and grew too muffled to hear well.
Tiye stepped back, exhaling. So they were not there for her, not yet. Either way, her father would not want her out of the cellar until they left. She turned in the darkness and brushed the stone wall. Keeping her hands on it, she traced the familiar grooves in the stone further back to the main cellar. The scent of stale air from a long-forgotten room hit her face.
Her knuckles thunked against wood. The cabinet sat as it always had. She pulled the torch out and lit it with the tinder her father kept fresh, even if five years had passed since she’d used it. A box of crates sat in the corner, filled with a child’s pictograph tablets and blankets for the pallet of goose down in the opposite corner.
This was Miki’s place. Yet why did it feel so familiar?
“Because I am Miki,” she whispered. “I am Miki.” The words settled around her, the name resting on her shoulders like a cloak she’d refused to put on for far too long, only to realize the chill in the air without it.
She was Miki for the first time in fifteen years. Just for tonight, she was home.
“Home.” The word echoed for a second before vanishing into the dark at the back of the cellar ten feet away. Sinking onto the small bed, she dropped the torch into a ring on the wall with a clunk. There was nothing left to do but wait.
To the far side, the cellar’s secondary entrance stared at her. A half-sized door made for a child. She could take it, leave her father’s house and return to her own—Tiye’s—home. She almost raised her hand to the leather knob, but paused. Two long strokes of a hot iron had left the wood of the door charred black and indented. If it had not been formed by a small boy’s shaking hand, it would have been a recognizable character of the alphabet.
Kamu. The exceptional one. A name meant for a boy who would be the one to get away with being born Second. A name fulfilled, or at least, as far as Miki knew. With a sigh, she sank back against the bed pad.
“I miss you, Kamu.” Every time the cellar swallowed her, she whispered those words. Every time since she was four, when he’d vanished. A brother she did not really know given to a family halfway across the world, so he might have a chance at a fair life. Or so her parents had told her. She could inquire about him, but her father would never tell the answer. After all, he probably did not even know.
Miki shifted, lying with her hands folded across her stomach. Breath in her throat, she waited.
Another thud, louder this time.
She jumped up and took the stairs two at a time. The cellar door flung wide before she reached it. Her father stood above, face pale, the creases in his forehead twice as deep.
“I must go to the Council Chamber. You should return to your home if you do not want to stay the night in the cellar.”
“Will they banish him?”
Her father held her gaze. “I love you, Miki.”
“What is it?” The last stair creaked as she moved up into the house.
“I will find you after the verdict, but with news like this, I am sure the city will tell you before I get a chance.” He turned, straightening his headdress.
She followed him back to the main room. The sky was now dark, and the sky-wall was a hole of glowing pins as torches burned throughout the Pyramid below.
Father turned and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Hurry home to Tiye’s. I am sorry I asked you to visit. I will find you in the city next time. Better to not risk coming up here. Try not to worry, Miki. Your name—”
“It means Victory. I know. That is too much pressure to put on me.”
Her father turned for the door.
“You have earned it,” he said, and stepped into the night.
Miki closed her eyes, putting the moment in the cellar behind her. She could not afford to be Miki any longer. She was Tiye—Light—again, an easier name to live up to. She stepped into the night. The street was dark apart from a scattering of torches, casting little light on her father as he retreated up the dim tunnel to the Higher Pyramid. She turned right, heading to the Lower Pyramid.
The blood of the Second still glowed on the stones of the road, a sickly warning to all other Seconds who might dare to enter a world of Firstborns. Tiye’s stomach somersaulted. She hurried past even as the blood slithered between the cracks of the stones to follow her. The question which had plagued her nightly for her entire life burned again.
If that was what happened to a Second-born child, what would they do to a Fifth?

 

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