The Shepherd Kings

by Judith Tarr

  Kemni had meant to stay on the other side of Iphikleia, face to face with Imhotep. Ariana’s will rolled over his and overwhelmed it with ease that recalled to him how she was, after all, both queen and goddess.

  She took with her only Kemni, and she went by ways that were frequented by servants, walking apart from the broader, brighter corridors and the open courts. Kemni had not realized how many such ways there were, or how secret they could be. Anyone not a servant might never know how easily the servants came and went, or how invisibly.

  Ariana clearly did. She moved quickly and with the air of one who knew those ways well. In very little time they had traversed the house and come near the walls, into one of the guard towers, no less. At the top of it they found Seti, and the messenger bound and set against a wall. He rolled eyes at the newcomers, but could not speak: Seti had gagged him.

  Ariana stood over him. “She lives,” she said to him, “through no fault of yours.”

  He stared up at her. Maybe he contemplated defiance. She bent down and ripped the gag free. He gasped and sucked in air, and coughed convulsively.

  Blood stained his lips. She wiped it free with the gag, not particularly gently. “Now talk,” she said. “What were you to fetch here?”

  He set his lips and would not answer.

  She drew a knife from her belt and laid it lightly, oh so lightly, not against his throat, but against the faint bulge within his loincloth. “In the country to which you were going,” she said, “both kings and queens enjoy the service of eunuchs. I shall send them another, if you wish it. It’s yours to choose.”

  It was not an empty threat. He must have known it. He held for a moment longer, but her blade edged closer by a fraction, and pressed just a little harder.

  “I was to fetch—I was to fetch letters. And tokens. To admit me to—to certain houses.”

  “Lordly houses?”

  He nodded a little painfully. Her knife had not lifted. If he moved his body, he well might do to himself what she had threatened.

  “Why letters and tokens? Wouldn’t the gold be enough?”

  “That’s for the king of kings. To keep safe till I came to him. The rest is for others.”

  “Who was to give these things to you?”

  “A—a messenger.” He yelped. Her blade had drawn blood. “A prince! There’s a prince here. He was supposed to—”

  “I see,” Ariana said.

  So did Kemni. “Letters that would betray him,” he said.

  “Possibly,” said Ariana.

  “Shall I go?” he asked.

  Her brows drew together. “Can you be circumspect? Are you strong enough?”

  “Maybe not,” he said, “but I can try.”

  He watched her consider denying him and sending Seti. If he had been Ariana, he would have done just that. Seti could be calmer, could think more clearly.

  But Kemni could more plausibly be seen in Gebu’s rooms, could seem to have gone in search of the prince, or to have conveyed a message to or from his battle-brother.

  She nodded. Like Iphikleia, she always knew what he was thinking. “Go,” she said.

  ~~~

  Gebu was not in his rooms. Kemni had bargained on that. He also gambled, and maybe without hope, that the letters and tokens would be there and not on Gebu’s person, or on that of one who served Gebu. The messenger had been clear: he was not to fetch them from a hiding place. He was to be given them from a living hand.

  Gebu could have no reason to know he was suspected. He might leave the things in plain sight, the better to conceal them. Just as he had done with himself, establishing his presence in that of all places, not so very far from the border of the Lower Kingdom.

  It was all a gamble, a pattern of guesses and hopes, and the memory of a dream. Gebu’s door was not guarded. There was no need for guards, if he was not there. Kemni walked into rooms that he had come to know rather well, where he had spent not a few evenings sharing a jar of wine or beer, tossing the bones, or talking of trifles. Once they might have shared a willing maid or two, but here, when Kemni had Iphikleia, that was not a thing he chose to do.

  For her sake he did this, for her life that could even now be ending. Kemni could blame the gods for that, or himself. Certainly he blamed the messenger. But the man who had sent this messenger, the leader of the conspiracy—if there was blame to bear, he bore the brunt of it.

  Anger kept Kemni on his feet, though he struggled to keep his mind clear of it. The worst of all sins was betrayal. He must remember that; must never forget it. A man who would betray his father and his king would hardly hesitate to betray a friend.

  If Kemni wanted to hide letters and tokens in plain sight, he would do it quite simply: in a scribe’s box, with the inks and brushes and the palette of the trade. Gebu had such a box. Not all of the princes had schooling, but Gebu had had a leaning toward it. He did a little reading still, and a little writing, for the pleasure of it.

  Indeed, there was his box, beside his bed as it had always been. It was plain, with little ornament, but beautifully made as was proper for a prince. Kemni hesitated to touch it. As if, somehow, there might still be some hope.

  He steeled himself and raised the lid. The inks were there, the brushes, the stone palette. And no more.

  Before he collapsed in relief or despair, it little mattered which, his fingers had found the palette’s edge and lifted it carefully.

  There. Papyrus in small rolls, folded tightly, and a packet wrapped in linen. The letters were not sealed, though Kemni suspected that they would have been when the messenger came for them. With beating heart he unrolled the first that came to hand. It was nothing exceptionable, at first glance: a prince’s letter to a lord with whom he would confirm alliance. But that lord’s name, though written in the Egyptian characters, was a foreign name, and he was bidden to win to the cause such of his fellows—both Egyptian and otherwise—as seemed to him trustworthy.

  Two more of the dozen letters said much the same. The packet amid them proved to contain a handful of scarab-seals, each of a different stone, but all carved with the same name: Gebu’s princely name, by which he would be known to the gods after he was dead. To it was added a second name, an epithet of the god Re. And that was circled with the cord of the cartouche, as if it had been the name of a king.

  Kemni stood with one such in his hand. It was carved of lapis, deep blue like the sky over the Red Land. It held the weight of a world, and the chill of folly.

  No man with his wits about him, no man who was not at heart a fool, would dare to write his name so, not unless he was the king. Had someone urged this on Gebu, perhaps? Perhaps someone who had in mind to destroy him and take what he laid claim to?

  Yet he had allowed it. Out of blindness or pride or simple failure to understand the consequences, he had let these stones be carved, and kept them here, till they could be sent to strangers who might also betray him.

  It must have been the spirit that wove about these things, that darkened Kemni’s heart and caused him to do what he did. He kept the lapis scarab, but wrapped the rest as they had been before. He laid them with the letters in the box, and set the palette over them, carefully, lest he disturb the arrangement of the inkpots and brushes atop it. He closed the lid on it all, and with the scarab still in his hand, burning his palm like a living coal, he left those rooms and returned the way he had come.

  ~~~

  Nothing had changed, that he could see. Iphikleia lay like the dead, with Imhotep seated beside her. Ariana sat across from him. The crowd of servants was gone, but they had not mattered before and did not matter now.

  Ariana raised her head at Kemni’s coming. He knelt in front of her, took her hand in his—great daring, but she did not resist him—and laid the scarab in it.

  She examined it, turning it in her palm, frowning at the carving on its underside. Her fingertip brushed the oval of the cartouche. “A king’s name?”

  “Gebu’s.”

  “Ah,”
she said. It seemed she understood. “Is this all you found?”

  “No,” Kemni said. “There were a dozen of them. And letters.”

  “And?”

  “I left them,” he said. She raised her brows. “I thought . . . we should conspire against the conspiracy. If they think that a messenger has come and taken the letters and gone, how soon will they understand that no man of theirs ever came to the Lower Kingdom? Whereas if we uncover it all now . . .”

  “Yes,” she said. Only that, but it was all the praise he required. “Will he know who was sent here? Or believe in a stranger?”

  “Surely we can find a man with the coughing sickness, who looks enough like the messenger to pass muster. If he learns his lesson well, says the words he’s bidden to say, then is last seen walking away northward, he well may persuade the traitors that their errand is done.”

  “What will you do with him when he’s finished?”

  “We could kill him,” Kemni said with a cold heart, “or we could reward him lavishly for his silence and send him somewhere suitably remote. It’s a risk, but so is all of it.”

  “What in life is not?” Ariana nodded abruptly. “Do it. Do it quickly.”

  Kemni swallowed a sigh. It had been too much to hope that he could linger here, counting Iphikleia’s breaths and praying that she would heal. Maybe Ariana thought it better for him to be up and doing, however weary he was, and however much he yearned to rest.

  It would be like her to care for such a thing. But it would also be like any queen or king, not even to notice how great was the burden that she laid on him.

  Nevertheless he carried it. Seti would know where to find such a man as they needed; and indeed, when Kemni told him what was afoot, he made no secret of his glee. “My lord! That is clever.”

  “And I’m not usually clever?” Kemni asked dryly.

  Seti was never one to blush at a misstep. “Well, my lord, as to that, lords are lords, and what with people wiping their noses for them all their lives, and wiping their arses, too, and doing most of their thinking for them . . . well, they can plot and they can scheme, but real cleverness isn’t usually their habit.”

  “I think I shall be flattered,” Kemni said. “I can’t be insulted, or I’d have to beat you senseless. And I need you.”

  “Of course you need me,” Seti said. “That’s clever of you, too, because you know it.”

  Kemni growled and made as if to strike him. He danced away grinning. “I’ll find a messenger for you, and never you worry. You’d best go now and be commander of the charioteers. They’ll have expected you to be distraught, what with the lady being so ill of a fever, but you’re best advised to drown your sorrows in work.”

  That was intensely annoying but inescapably true. He must play out the game, however long it lasted.

  ~~~

  Seti found a man who looked eerily like the one who was still a captive in some hidden part of the holding. In fact when Seti brought him into Kemni’s workroom, not long before sunset, Kemni could have sworn that it was the same man. But the other had been a little older and a little smaller, and his voice had been less deep. And this was a stronger man, less far gone in the coughing sickness.

  “This is Amonmose,” Seti said.

  Kemni inclined his head. The man bowed low as was proper for a man of low birth before a lord. His eyes, Kemni noticed, were bright and alert. This was not a dull-witted man.

  “Amonmose knows what we need of him,” said Seti. “He’s willing to do it.”

  “Are you?” Kemni asked the man directly.

  He nodded. “It’s for the queen,” he said, “and for the Great House.”

  “And for gold?”

  “And for gold,” Amonmose said. “My wife is dead of the coughing sickness. My sons died of it. I’ll be dead soon enough—but not before I do something of worth in the world. When they weigh my soul against the feather of Ma’at, when I come to the judgment, I would like one thing to give it substance.”

  “This thing will weigh you down with blessings for all of the life after life,” Kemni said.

  “I do hope so,” said Amonmose.

  “Are you ready, then?” Kemni asked him.

  “As ready as I can be,” he answered.

  “So,” said Kemni. “Let it begin.”

  Seti was already gone. While they waited, Amonmose was silent except for an outburst of coughing. Kemni lent what aid he could, which was terribly little. As Amonmose got his breath back, a step sounded without. Kemni steeled himself not to stiffen; composed his face into a smile of greeting for Gebu.

  The prince brought with him a breath of the outer air, dust and sun and the last of the day’s heat. He was still in his charioteer’s garb, as if he had come direct from the field. “Brother!” he said. “The lady. Is she—”

  “She lives,” Kemni said, though it caught in his throat. “She’s very ill; she may not recover. But for now, she lives.”

  “Ah,” said Gebu with every appearance of honest relief. “That’s well. May the gods grant she recovers completely.”

  Kemni bowed his head to that. But he lifted it almost at once. “Brother,” he said, and he did not choke on the word. “This man is a messenger, he says, from Thebes. He’s asked leave to speak with you.”

  “That’s well,” Gebu said. No flicker of guilt marred his face, nor did he seem perturbed that Kemni knew of the messenger’s existence.

  Why should he? Messengers came from Thebes often enough, and some claimed to bear messages that the prince must hear in solitude. Kemni left him to this one as he had a time or two before, with every possible appearance of goodwill, and a promise to join him in a little while for the daymeal.

  Once he was out of the room, he slipped into the one behind it, which happened—and not by coincidence—to be well within earshot of what passed in the workroom. Such rooms, Kemni knew, were common in palaces: places from which the ladies might listen to the affairs of their lords, either for their own advantage or so that they might offer advice without the intrusion of their presence on matters of state. “Or,” as Iphikleia had said once, “betraying to fools of men how much of the world is ruled by women.”

  It served Kemni well now. If he shrank from it, he remembered Iphikleia, and the knife that had struck her down. He sat very still in that airless box of a room, ear pressed to the wall.

  The voices came clearly, perhaps more clearly than if he had sat in the room with them: Amonmose’s somewhat thin and interrupted with coughing, Gebu’s deeper, stronger, and somewhat peremptory. He was not affable to this man as he was to those he reckoned his equals. “Tell me,” he said, “why you came so publicly, when you had been given orders to come to me in secret.”

  “My lord,” Amonmose said with a degree of trembling, but firm enough for all that, “I did try, but there was no way in but through the gate, and the guards are watchful. I thought it best to be public then, and so avoid suspicion.”

  Gebu grunted. “The gods protect fools. And there’s no harm done. I’ll see you housed for the night, and set on your way in the morning, with the things you were to carry with you.”

  “As my lord wills,” Amonmose said. “But it might be best if I did what I came to do, and left in the night. There’s a place nearby where I can wait till morning; then go on with no one to notice.”

  Kemni held his breath. If Gebu ordered Amonmose to stay, he would have no choice but to obey. That would harm nothing, but it would prolong the game, and sharpen the risk of discovery.

  But Gebu said, “Very well. Some would call you a madman for daring the things that walk the dark, but worse things might walk the daylight, after all.”

  “You think anyone here suspects?” Amonmose asked—the fool, the reckless fool.

  Gebu answered him calmly enough. “I think not. What is there to suspect? I’m the good prince, the loyal son and servant, the novice charioteer.”

  “Good,” said Amonmose, and Kemni remembered to breathe agai
n. “I was asked to be sure of that. For safety’s sake, you understand.”

  “I understand,” Gebu said. “Very well, then. I’ll fetch what’s needed. Stay here and wait. If anyone comes, tell him you’re waiting on my pleasure. I’ll have food and drink fetched, to make it more plausible.”

  “My lord is generous,” Amonmose said.

  Kemni heard Gebu go: the footsteps receding, and Amonmose’s long, audible sigh. Kemni thought of speaking to him, but thought better of it. There might be a spy, or Gebu might return unexpectedly. Conspiracies bred suspicion.

  Safest then to keep silent, and to wait as Amonmose waited, though the time seemed endless. A servant came with food and drink—fortunate for Amonmose; Kemni’s stomach growled like a dog, demanding its own dinner. But that he could not give it until this thing was done.

  More than once Kemni knew that Gebu had guessed that all was not what it seemed; that the true messenger had been found, or had escaped; that—worst of all—Iphikleia had died while he sat there in useless stillness, waiting for the game to be ended.

  He was perilously close to leaping up and bolting when Gebu’s steps returned. They were brisk, no slowness of reluctance, and he was alone as before. No guards to destroy the impostor.

  “My lord,” Amonmose said, with a rustle as if he rose from where he had been sitting.

  “Sit, sit,” Gebu said. “Here, I’ve brought what you’re to carry. Be sure you keep it safe.”

  “As always, my lord,” Amonmose said.

  “Well then,” said Gebu. “The gods protect you, and favor your journey.” It was a dismissal—and such a one as to knot Kemni’s belly.

  As if any god could favor such treason. As if any god would.

  V

  Amonmose left the room as he had been instructed, and let Gebu think that he had found his way out through one of the gardens with Gebu’s guidance. But once Gebu was well deceived, Amonmose found Kemni where they had agreed to meet, in a stable outside the wall, new-built and occupied by only a handful of horses.