‘Impalement by a blade through the stomach,’ she intoned. ‘The same as for tomb robbery.’
‘It is a risk I am willing to take. One of my brothers is still suckling at the breast, you see,’ he embellished.
His stomach rolled with guilt as he watched a tear slide down her cheek.
‘I have not come here to rob Pharaoh of her sustenance in the afterlife,’ he explained. ‘I have only come to take a few pieces of gold—just enough to see my brothers to adulthood.’
He loathed himself as he watched her produce a cloth from beneath her linen belt and wipe her tears. She was shaking her head. ‘I feel foolish for having...acted the way I have towards you.’ She hung her head.
Gods, he had never felt so very lowly.
‘Where does your commander believe you to be now?’ she asked.
‘Ah...ill,’ he blurted out. ‘He believes I am plagued with the shivering sickness.’ A terrible side effect of the lying sickness.
‘How much treasure do you plan to steal from this house?’ she asked.
‘Only enough to sustain my family. I am not the kind of man you believe me to be.’
Nor was he the kind of man he was portraying himself to be, though it should not have bothered him as much as it did. He had lied many times before in the protection of General Setnakht’s campaign. It should have been no trouble to do it again now.
‘The way I see it, you can kill me and take up my chisel and hope to get out before you perish,’ he said. ‘Or we can take turns with the chisel and hope to get out before we both perish. But I am telling you now that, unless you attack me directly, I will not kill you. I have seen too many lives lost in my tenure at arms to take another.’
At last—the truth. It was a relief to feel the coolness of it on his tongue. He was weary of life-taking, just as he was weary of the world that contained that life. ‘Let us agree to work as allies,’ he urged, ‘and swear it before the gods, lest our sleep be haunted by demons.’
She stood for many moments searching his eyes. Her beauty was unnerving. It was as if the Lord of the Desert himself had lifted his magic sceptre and created a black-haired goddess with alabaster skin and eyes like secret water holes.
‘I am fortunate that you are here,’ she said at last. ‘I cannot condone your plan, nor can I condemn you for having made it. Let us make our apologies to Pharaoh and Osiris, and pray for your family’s health. We shall work together in this. It seems we must.’
* * *
That night—if night it was—Aya found herself inside a memory.
She was standing in Pharaoh Tausret’s birthing chamber, gazing out the window at the courtyard below. A remarkably large snake had slithered into view beside the pond. It was dusk and the low rays of the sun were turning the serpent’s scaly white skin a haunting crimson.
‘Tell me, Aya, what do you see?’ Tausret called from her birth chair. She had been labouring since daybreak and still the babe would not come.
‘A serpent, Your Majesty,’ said Aya. ‘A good omen.’
Tausret’s midwife rushed across the chamber. ‘What kind of snake?’ the old woman asked, arriving at Aya’s side.
Aya shook her head. The only snakes she knew were the magical kinds that appeared in the sacred stories, or the ones fashioned of gold and posed atop the royal headdress. ‘A cobra?’
Together they peered down at the unusually long, white-skinned beast. The midwife gasped. ‘Apep,’ she whispered. She bent to Aya’s ear. ‘We must kill it now, lest Tausret lose the child.’
‘What is the matter?’ called Tausret from across the chamber.
‘It is nothing to worry about, Your Majesty,’ replied the midwife. ‘Aya is going to capture the noble beast right now and return it to the wilds. Come, let us focus on your breathing.’
Aya found Tausret’s bow and several arrows and rushed to the courtyard. The snake was moving very slowly into the pond and Aya marvelled at its length. It did resemble Apep, the long, coiling monster that Ra slew each night to save the world from darkness. It was a bad omen indeed.
Aya stepped as close to the snake as she dared and launched her first two arrows. Neither reached its mark. Quickly she launched several more arrows, but it was as if the great snake was surrounded by an invisible shield.
Aya aimed her final arrow at the snake’s tail, releasing the projectile just as the beast disappeared into the murky depths. The arrow stuck in the dry ground like the marker of an empty grave.
When Aya returned to the chamber, Tausret lay slumped in her birth chair, the colour drained from her cheeks. The midwife shot Aya a look and Aya shook her head. I failed, she said wordlessly. Apep lives.
Tears glazed the old woman’s eyes. ‘Let us move her to the blocks.’
Tausret’s hair clung to her face and her eyes seemed far away as Aya and the others carried her to the birthing blocks and placed her feet in the holds.
‘I am going to tell you when to push, Your Majesty,’ explained the midwife. ‘Do you understand?’
But Pharaoh did not even lift her head. ‘Leave us,’ she muttered.
‘Your Majesty?’
‘Leave us for a moment, please,’ said Tausret. ‘I wish to be with Aya alone.’
The midwife shot Aya a look of panic, but seemed to understand. She motioned for the others to follow her as she quietly exited the chamber.
Pharaoh gazed out the window. The setting sun was painting the sky in pink and orange. ‘This is what I wish to remember, Aya,’ she said at last. ‘You and me here, watching the sky. The goodness of the people of Egypt. A man I once loved.’
‘Your Majesty, I do not understand,’ said Aya. ‘You must only—’
‘Aya, I am going to die.’
‘Your Majesty, just one more push and—’
‘Aya, listen to me, for you are—you are my most beloved advisor.’
‘I am here.’
‘I have a secret to tell you, but you must swear by the Book of Thoth that you will tell no one!’
‘I swear.’
Tausret closed her eyes. ‘The stories are true. There is an heir.’ A feathery grin traversed her lips. ‘Right here in Pi-Rameses—my only living child.’
Aya nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘Who is he, Your Majesty, that I may bring him to court?’
‘No, Aya. Court is no place for a child of mine...’ Aya nodded, for there was perhaps no one who understood better. ‘I only wish for someone to know the heir exists,’ she continued, ‘the great-grandchild of Rameses the Great Ancestor, with eyes like yours and the family tattoo—a triangle inside a circle—’ Tausret held her belly and cringed in pain. ‘Promise me you will tell no one, Aya!’
‘I promise.’ A pool of blood had formed on the floor. ‘Midwife!’ Aya cried.
Tausret closed her eyes. ‘There is one more thing I ask of you.’
‘Anything, Your Majesty.’
‘I wish for you to live your life, Aya.’ She opened her eyes suddenly. ‘Do you hear me? After I go—that is how you may honour me. Do not throw away your days laying offerings at my ka statue. Do not punish yourself for imagined crimes. Do not become some selfish man’s brood mare.’ She gazed down at her bulging stomach. ‘Live your life, Aya, in all the ways that I never could. See me off to the next world, but do not turn away from this one.’
Tausret’s head rocked backwards and she began to howl in pain.
‘Push, Pharaoh,’ Aya sobbed. ‘Strong Bull! Lady of the Two Lands! Beloved of Maat!’
The midwife and her assistants rushed back into the chamber, but by the time they arrived at her side, Pharaoh was already gone...
* * *
Aya awoke in tears. The darkness was so complete that she feared she had died herself. To test her own existence, she folded her trembling hands.
‘Aya?’ said a man’s
voice. She tried to respond, but no words came. ‘Aya? What is wrong?’
Intef.
‘Nothing,’ she blurted. She willed her tears away. He had seen too many facets of her weakness already.
‘You were crying. It sounds as if you are shivering.’
‘You are mistaken.’
She could hear his footfalls as he crossed to the other side of the chamber. She sat up and squeezed her knees to her chest.
She perceived the flare of the torch. He emerged from the shadows, carrying one of Pharaoh’s robes, which he gently placed over her body.
Her shivers subsided beneath the weight of the linen and relief flooded her heart. Becalmed, she inhaled the thick garment’s lavender scent. It was as if Pharaoh herself had come to comfort her.
‘Gratitude,’ Aya murmured, but he was already gone.
She closed her eyes. The twelfth hour of the night had surely passed. She prayed for an omen—something to assure her that Pharaoh had successfully made the journey through the Underworld and had been reborn as the god of light.
‘Where are you, divine soul?’ she whispered. She pictured Tausret in the form of the sun embracing the land of Egypt with her light.
When Aya opened her eyes, she saw Intef’s torch. It was coming towards her, a tiny ball of fire, as if he had plucked it from Tausret’s fiery head.
He planted himself before her and offered his hand. ‘Come. We must begin our work.’
‘Just a little more rest,’ said Aya. Now it would begin: the desecration of her mistress’s tomb, the consumption of the sacred food and drink. The chiselling and the pillaging. The breaking of her very heart.
‘Aya?’
‘I beg you, just a little more time.’
At last he departed and she was left to contemplate the agreement they had come to hours before. In exchange for Aya’s help chiselling, he had agreed to take from the tomb only what was necessary to save his family. Moreover, Aya would be able to choose which items he would take.
She could fill his sacks with gold ingots and silver deben and other replaceable bounty, minimising the damage to Pharaoh’s cache. His family would be saved and she could spend the rest of her life working to replace what had been taken.
It was a fair solution, which was why she did not trust it. There was something he was not telling her. Something hidden behind that distracting grin.
He crossed the room towards her once again, an amphora in one hand and a torch in the other, and she peered at him through half an eye. The torchlight flickered on the rippling muscles of his stomach, which flexed in rhythm with the bulging muscles of his thighs.
His physique was nearly perfect, despite his advanced age. His short soldier’s kilt concealed little. She could see every bump and seam of flesh. His military life had strengthened and hardened him in obvious ways.
But what was she not seeing? Experience had taught her to doubt all agreements—and the men who brokered them. Men who stood close to the throne always wanted to stand closer and, over the years, she had honed the ability to look into men’s eyes and discover the nature of their lies.
Intef, however, was an enigma. Instead of discovering the lie in his eyes, she had only discovered the way they seemed to change colour in the torchlight.
He was either utterly sincere, or extremely skilled in concealing his thoughts.
He stood above her now and made a show of peeling the wax off the amphora and tipping it to his lips. ‘Pah!’ he spat.
‘What is it?’
‘The beer,’ he said. ‘It is bubbly and tart, just as beer should be.’
‘Then why do you grimace?’
‘I was hoping for wine,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow is a new day.’
‘I forbid you to drink the sacred wine!’ she exclaimed, then lowered her voice. ‘It is the one thing that cannot be replaced.’
‘Did we not agree that we will eat and drink from the stores?’
‘Yes but not the wine, for it is made from grapes sown—’
‘—on the day Pharaoh assumed her reign,’ Intef finished Aya’s sentence. He started towards the storeroom. ‘It is said that the wine of Pharaoh imparts special strength. Thankfully I know right where to find it on the shelves.’
‘Do not even think of it!’
‘The longer the reign, the finer the vintage,’ he called back to her. ‘Remind me, how long was Tausret’s? She counted Pharaoh Siptah’s reign as her own, did she not? Seven years? Eight?’ She heard him pull an amphora from the shelf.
Chapter Nine
Aya jumped to her feet and ran across the chamber, forcing herself between Intef and the shelf full of holy amphorae. ‘I forbid you from even looking at them!’
He folded his arms and nodded his head, as if congratulating himself. ‘Aha! I see that you are able to move after all.’
The realisation hit her all at once: he had never meant to drink the sacred wine.
‘Brute!’ she shouted. He had outwitted her, though that was not what vexed her the most. It was that terrible, triumphant, god-forsakenly handsome grin he wore. ‘Is everything a jest to you?’ she asked.
‘Is everything so serious to you?’
‘My duty is to Pharaoh,’ she said, aware that there was very little space between them. She pressed her back against the shelf. ‘I must protect her.’
‘An honourable sentiment. Perhaps you should have been a soldier.’ She could not determine if he was mocking her or not. All she could tell was that he had too many teeth and they were far too white.
‘Perhaps you should have been a magician,’ she said, ‘for you seem to be full of tricks.’
‘I had to find some way to get you moving,’ he said. ‘You were like a half-dead hippo beneath that robe.’
‘Ha-ha,’ she said. ‘You see? I can recognise a jest.’
He shook his head, and stepped away from her. She exhaled, though she could not say why she had been holding her breath.
He gestured to a sheltered area behind a shelf. ‘The only thing missing is a good-humoured woman to warm my bed mat,’ he said.
‘But there is no bed mat.’
He slid her a look. ‘A jest,’ she said. She forced a smile, then stepped to the side, putting more space between them.
‘Such a mirthless grin,’ he said. He poured water into a cup and offered it to her.
She stretched her arm to accept the cup and returned to her position several paces away. ‘You think me a cold, ill-humoured woman,’ she said, staring into the cup.
‘On the contrary, I find you full of fire. It is unfortunate that you have no outlet for all that passion.’ He poured himself a cup and drank it down.
Was he mocking her again? ‘I am advisor to a pharaoh,’ she said.
‘Such a lofty title! I imagine you have men clamouring to warm your bed.’
She eyed him suspiciously.
‘No men?’ he asked.
‘Your rudeness is as ubiquitous as mud.’
‘You allude to the marshes?’
‘I allude to your lack of education.’
‘But you were thinking of the marshes.’
‘I will not dignify your crudeness with a response.’
‘You must have wandered them quite a bit in your tenure at court,’ he said, pouring himself another cup. ‘How many times? Dozens?’
The audacity of such a question! She considered leaving the room, forgetting the chamber was sealed. ‘I will assume that is a yes,’ he said.
‘It is not a yes!’ Aya cried out, though she had no idea why she had even lowered herself to respond to him.
‘So you have never wandered the marshes?’ he asked.
The man had provoked her last nerve. ‘Of course I have. I am a woman, am I not? I go to the festivals. I take part in the rites.’
&nbs
p; ‘I do not believe you.’
‘I do not care what you do or do not believe.’
‘Which festivals?’
She searched her mind. ‘The Festival of Drunkenness, for example.’
‘Any others?’ he asked. The moments passed like the footfalls of an elephant. ‘So the Festival of Drunkenness,’ he said at last. ‘How many times have you participated in those ecstatic rites?’
‘Many times.’
‘How many?’
He waited in silence for her response, having apparently suddenly acquired the virtue of patience. She busied herself sipping her cup until all the water was gone. ‘Certainly two. Possibly three. I cannot recall.’
‘If you cannot recall the pleasures of the flesh, then you certainly have never enjoyed them,’ he stated.
‘That makes very little sense.’
‘Do you at least have someone to love? A child? A pet?’
‘I love Tausret. I have served her all my life.’
‘And how long is that life so far, may I ask?’
‘An impertinent question if ever there was.’
His twinkling eyes slid up and down her body. ‘I would say that you have seen at least thirty floods.’
‘Four and twenty!’ she cried.
‘Four and twenty—that is still rather old. And only thrice have you enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh?’ He lifted the amphora of beer and held it out to her. ‘In that case you should not be drinking water.’
She frowned, once again unable to read his tone. But she allowed him to tip the container to her glass and when he was finished she took a long gulp. ‘Pah!’ she said, feigning disgust.
‘What is wrong?’
‘It is bubbly and tart, just as beer should be.’
‘Then what—? Aha!’ he exclaimed. This time his grin was genuine. ‘Well done, Advisor.’
She could not contain her grin. ‘Thank you, Thief.’
‘Soldier, if you please.’
His expression sobered and he tilted the amphora into his own cup. He was definitely concealing something. ‘And just how many years have you served in Pharaoh’s army, soldier?’ she asked.
Saved by Her Enemy Warrior Page 6
