Things had gone remarkably well, but Seti was still unnerved and tense. He had the overarching feeling he'd not so much avoided trouble, but had rather simply postponed it. 

Once the news had been shouted around in both Egyptian and Babylonian that there would be negotiations, the two sides immediately withdrew from each other, leaving off the staring contests and the showy, martial caressing of dagger handles to get back to their respective jobs. 

Mehu hadn't questioned him in the slightest, but had clapped him on the shoulder in congratulations and escorted him back to their ship to get him out of the unusual clothing. 

The Egyptian soldiers and crew decided amongst themselves to set up a base camp much further down the beach. Seti had been surprised when they'd weighed anchor and drifted until the busy Babylonian settlement of palm-thatch huts and dark tents became vague dots in the distance before dropping anchor again.   

He'd not been able to gain any real idea of the size of the mission he was a part of. But now, seeing them all massed on the beach as the pink and orange rays of the setting sun painted the sky in a vibrant wash, he counted at least forty armed, grim-faced soldiers in addition to the sailing crew. 

The man who'd threatened him wasn't among them. Perhaps he really had been mistaken and his mind had been playing tricks on him, creating a threat out of thin air. A point for Seshat, although he would hardly ever tell her about it. 

Seti peeled back the skin of a fish that the soldiers were roasting over pit fires in the sand of their new settlement and picked out the hot flesh of his dinner.  Mehu sat next to him, eating his own dinner in silence.  

"Pretty sunset," Seti ventured, thinking he didn't have much to lose and perhaps talking might calm his tautly-strung nerves. "Different than the ones at home." 

"What? Oh," Mehu said, startled out of his concentration. "Yes, I suppose it is."

"Not worried about the negotiations, are you? Because if you're worried, then I'm terrified." Seti attempted a laugh as he put another sliver of fish into his mouth.

"No. .  ." Mehu started, but then clearly thought better of it. "No, not worried. And you should be quite proud of yourself! First diplomatic hurdle successfully accomplished!" he said in a tone of robust joviality that sounded far more like a tired mother pushing herself to praise a child who had done no more than clap its hands together without missing. 

Why wasn't Mehu questioning him about what the Babylonian leader had said? Could he guess? Or did it not matter? Once again, the realisation the Sky Goddess had granted Seti about his own expendability entered his mind and gifted him not only with insight, but also with apprehension.

If the first plan had failed to materialise, what was the plan now? Wait for a second opportunity for him to put his foot in it and get a knife in the stomach, or was that no longer relevant? If he was still to be the sacrificial ox, had he made the original plan far more complicated to execute?  Were they planning to take the Babylonian leader hostage as ransom for the stars, for example? And now?

If only the Sky Goddess had shown him more!     

"I'll be much happier when this is all behind us and we're on our way home."  

"So will I."

"How long do we let them think? I mean, what's normal?"

Mehu didn't say anything for a few moments, his jaw slowly moving as he chewed his food. "As much time as they need." 

"Days?"

"If need be." 

"We could be here for a while then, theoretically." 

"Yes, we could .  .  . theoretically."

There was a undertone to the way Mehu spoke the last word that made the hair on Seti's arms stand up and set off every internal alarm Seshat had ever teased him about and his colleagues shaken their heads over. 

As clearly as if it had been written on a clay dispatch, Seti knew that Mehu wasn't the leader of the mission, but he knew the plan in its entirety and in all of its variations. Including the ones in which Seti went home alive, and the ones in which he was left behind to rot on this island. 

A bolt of terror ripped through him, causing his breathing to flatten and it took him a few minutes to get a reign on himself again. 

He wasn't religious, but the idea of rotting, of not leaving behind a mummy as a fixed point for his ghost to return to in this dimension, was horrific. Without one, his ghost would roam aimlessly through time and space, a howling, menacing spirit unable to reattach its ties to ancestors or descendants and locked out of the Hall of Osiris with its chance at the afterlife. 

Seti was on the verge of grabbing Mehu's arm and making him promise to at least take his corpse back to Egypt for burial. But he knew he couldn't do that without revealing how much he actually knew about the plan and possibly making everything worse for himself, so he kept silent and forced himself to concentrate on finishing his supper.    

One thing was clear even if everything else going on around him was muddled: Mehu knew what plan was now in effect. And that plan was not about to allow for delays. 

Seti began to dread the coming morning.

Unfortunately, he didn't have to wait that long. 

It was the light that woke him, or that's what he thought it had been. 

An eerie blue light that snaked in under the closed door of his cabin, only to vanish in the darkness of the corners. Seti propped himself up on one elbow in the dark and stared until it appeared again. A bright, flickering blue light like he'd never seen before.

For a moment, Seti wondered if the spirits of the island had found them and had come to investigate the strange foreign ships, but then a creaking and a muffled cough told him otherwise. A person was standing outside of his cabin with whatever the source of the blue light was. And a person was making the light come and go. 

A lantern? 

Seti moved as carefully as he could to the door, sliding back the wooden bolt and opening it just enough to peer out. 

At first all he saw was inky blackness, but as his eyes adjusted he could make out the murky grey beach and the white crusts of the lapping waves beyond the prow of the ship. Then, from the tree-line of the island's dense jungle, a bright blue light appeared and swung from side-to-side and then in a circle. From only a few paces away from his cabin, another blue light suddenly appeared and was moved in an answering pattern.

Why were they signalling from the tree-line? And why did they --

Seti halted mid-thought. 

He didn't want to know what the soldiers were up to.  He had no desire to get involved. If ever he'd wished for a higher rank to be privy to more secret information, he unwished it now. His place was on his sleeping mat, nowhere else. 

He closed the door again and felt for the bolt, but somehow managed to get a finger caught, pinching it between the bronze loop and the wood.

"Ow!" he whispered. 

He hadn't been very loud, but loud enough. Footsteps quickly approached and the cabin door, which still wasn't bolted shut, was gently but firmly pushed open, inching him back. 

"Awake in there, Seti? You might as well come out instead of spying," said Mehu's voice. The politeness was still there, but an iron undertone made his words more of an order than a suggestion. 

"Umm, right away." Seti tied on his linen kilt and carefully stepped out of his cabin, not knowing what to expect.

The deck was empty. There were no lumps of sleeping sailors where there normally were, in fact, the deck was so open it took Seti a minute or two to realise that a good amount of the equipment was missing, as well. 

"Are we alone?" Seti asked.  

"Luckily for you."  

"I wasn't spying. The light woke me and--"

From the tree-line, the blue light appeared again, and Mehu held up his own lantern in answer cutting Seti off. 

"What is that?" Seti pointed at the device in Mehu's hand, but then realised his mistake. "Sorry. I won't ask." 

"A plasma lantern. Military grade technology. Developed in the temple of Hathor at Dendera. Like so many other things," Mehu answered, shaking the lantern slightly. Inside a thick-bellied glass casing, a blue flame danced and wiggled. Fingers of bright blue light reached out from the centre to caress the glass in long strokes that touched and bounced away from the edges like nervous jellyfish. Seti was fascinated. 

"Is it alive?" he whispered. Dendera was the place where the information about the falling stars had come from. And this lantern had been developed there, like so many other things? What other things? Was that were the stars were supposed to end up? 

"No, it's not alive. It isn't even hot." Mehu smiled, his normally pleasant features made ghostly in the unsteady, shifting light. Another signal came, and Mehu waved the lantern in a complicated pattern. 

"Before you ask," continued Mehu, "I can't tell you, but you'll see what all this is about soon enough. You are not under my jurisdiction anymore, Seti. I can't say what will happen to you after tonight. It's not for me to decide, unfortunately." 

Seti's stomach began to knot up and he thought he might need to run for the side of the ship, unsure of which end to bend over the water first. 

"Who will decide what happens?"

"My brief only encompasses what concerns the foreigners, not the stars. My command of this mission is being terminated as we speak. Neb-ka will take the reins from here." 

The name meant nothing to Seti. He didn't believe he'd ever transcribed it, nor had he heard it mentioned in civil servant gossip. And he had a head for names. 

Mehu set the lantern down on the deck of the ship and shook out his arm.

Seti decided to take one last gamble, curiosity winning over common sense. 

"Who do you work for, Mehu? Who is really funding this mission?"

"They said you weren't stupid, but that you had a tendency to get caught up in insignificant details. We all work for the same person, Seti, you included. You should know that. We are all Pharaoh's slaves." 

Every Egyptian was a slave of Pharaoh's, that was like saying crocodiles ate fish. A common proverb that held a truth so universal it was pointless even mentioning it, and it wasn't a straight answer.

"Pharaoh didn't want me on this mission. He sent a bruiser to intimidate me with the information that I was the victim of a clerical error."

Mehu chuckled. "Neb-ka will appreciate that you called him a bruiser." 

That was Neb-ka?  Seti felt his stomach knot tighter and he did what he always did when he felt threatened: he dug in his heels. 

"Pharaoh didn't want me on this mission, Mehu. It was a clerical error that I was even invited to the Temple of the Sky. Who decided I should go? Who are you really working for?"

Mehu picked up the lantern again and shook his head. "No clerical error, Seti. That was a ruse. One of Neb-ka's little jokes. You were the one chosen from the beginning. Let's just say, though, that you gained some, how shall I put this? . . . interesting clout along the way that made certain people rethink their positions."

Interesting clout? Rethink positions? Seti was about to open his mouth again when another signal came from the tree-line. 

Mehu lifted his lantern and signalled back-- two slow swings to the left-- and then sighed heavily.

"Well, that's over and done with. Time to get some sleep. If I'm guessing right, you'll need every minute you can get, too. Good night." 

And with that, Mehu went into his cabin, closing and bolting the door behind him. Seti looked around the empty deck and at the dark tree-line. All he could hear was the soft lapping of the waves against the side of the boat. 

Then, far off to his left, he saw flickering light. Squinting into the night, it took him a little while to realise was it was. 

The Babylonian camp was on fire.