After Pharaoh had shamed him in front of the whole court, Meren had not expected Mugallu to remain in Egypt. The Hittite should have stormed home to the mountains of his Anatolian homeland and hissed accusations at his king. What was he doing coming aboard Joy of the Nile? As the ship eased through the water to gently nudge the dock, music, clapping, and laughter sent a barrage of sound across the water to greet the foreigner. Only a few guests noticed the Hittite party. Unfortunately, Reshep, Djoser, and the disgruntled Prince Rahotep were among them.
Sighing at the thought of introducing Mugallu to either Djoser or Rahotep, Meren stepped forward as the gangplank was lowered onto the quay. Kysen was behind him, along with Reshep, who seemed unconcerned that it might be presumptuous of a newcomer to insert himself into a welcome party for a Hittite prince.
Flanked by his illustrious escort of high-ranking military men and an assistant minister from Ay's office, Mugallu stepped on board. The rage that had turned his face carnelian in the throne room had ebbed, leaving his heavy features and bird-of-prey nose the hue of mud brick. Meren noticed one of the escort, General Labarnas, who nodded to him and grinned. Meren hated that grin. Hittites were notorious for going into battle grinning just like that, as if they found slashed bellies with entrails spilling out to be the most amusing of sights. The wisest thing to do was to avoid looking at Labarnas at all.
While he and the prince exchanged formal salutations, Meren summoned every skill he'd ever used to survive the crocodile trap that was the Egyptian court. Mugallu wasn't simply an emissary. Judging from his behavior so far, he was a trial, a challenge, a probing stick sent to jab at pharaoh's suspected weaknesses. And worse. Mugallu could be in Memphis to search for an ally, someone willing to betray Egypt, for a price.
At this thought Meren's lips curled in disgust, but he forced them into a smile of tranquil welcome. "Shall we sit and talk, highness? You must be weary after spending all day conferring with the Divine Father Ay."
"Indeed," Mugallu said as he surveyed the men behind Meren. His gaze settled on Reshep, who bore it with an aplomb worthy of pharaoh.
Reshep stepped forward, lifting his hands in greeting as he spoke. "I am Lord Reshep-"
"By the storm god, Meren, do all your nobles dress like women and oil themselves like catamites?" Mugallu asked. He left Reshep standing alone, his mouth hanging open, and walked toward the aft steering castle.
Meren heard a growl and thrust his arm out in time to stop Prince Rahotep from hurling himself on top of the Hittite.
"Get out of my way!" Rahotep snarled. "He insulted us all, not just Reshep."
Shoving his body against the straining prince, Meren hissed, "Cease at once. He wants you to take offense, you fool."
Reshep had recovered from the insult and grabbed one of Prince Rahotep's arms.
"Temper the heat in your belly, my friend. There are other ways to avenge oneself."
"Listen to him," Meren said as Rahotep refused to give up the struggle.
Djoser grabbed Rahotep's other arm while Kysen intervened to try to calm his friend. With Rahotep tethered, Meren left the group and quickly followed Mugallu aft. There, where the ship began to curve up out of the water, lay a gilded pavilion. A curved roof supported by slender columns with lotus capitals provided shelter. Openwork carving formed walls around three sides and showed Hapu, god of the Nile. Mugallu stood beneath the gold-painted roof and contemplated one of the two massive steering oars, now immobile and untended with the ship docked.
"Such a calm river," Mugallu said as Meren joined him in looking across the black water. "The Nile spoils you Egyptians. You're complacent, pampered by its abundance." Mugallu glanced at Meren. "Soft."
Meren leaned against one of the columns and held Mugallu's gaze. "Walk along the bank, highness, and you'll find that this tranquillity hides danger. One careless move, and you're meat for crocodiles."
"I've spoken to Ay; rather, Ay has tried for hours to placate me," Mugallu said. He resumed his contemplation of the Nile. "Ay is wise and possesses a honeyed tongue, but your child-king ruined all his work by refusing to see me again when Ay asked to be received."
Meren felt his skin prickle, and his hearing seemed to grow more acute. Mugallu's belligerent expression had vanished. His brows arched, and he was trying not to smirk.
"The divine one rarely sees emissaries twice. He consents to allow negotiations, but ordinary business is not for the living god."
The Hittite's smirk contorted. "I'm not ordinary business! By the storm god, I hate coming to this land, with its arrogance, its lazy preoccupation with itself. You"- Mugallu paused to run his gaze over Meren's immaculate figure, the jeweled belt, the transparent linen that revealed long legs-"you… nobles. You're pampered, oiled toys of pharaoh, and yet you're stuffed with pride. Every son of a jackal bitch is certain that Egypt is the chosen kingdom of the gods. I know what you call the rest of us. Barbarians, wretched Asiatics."
"And what do you call us?" Meren asked as he studied Mugallu beneath half-closed eyelids.
The Hittite didn't respond. His fingers curled until he'd made fists, and Meren watched him struggle with his temper. Finally the wrath distorting his features dwindled.
"Don't you think King Suppiluliumas knows about your dead heretic king and the misery he caused? Egypt is weak, ridden with old hatreds that have set brother against brother." Mugallu paused. "Cousin against cousin."
Meren stared straight into the Hittite's watchful eyes. "Are you trying to say something about me and my cousin Ebana, highness?"
"You?" Mugallu leaned on the pavilion railing and shook his head. "Why should I say anything about you, the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh? Even in Hatti we know the power and influence of the King's Friend, Lord Meren. Tell me, do you think, even with all your skill at spying and plotting, that you and General Horemheb and the rest can hold Egypt together long enough for your boy-king to grow up?"
"Do you question the might of Egypt, highness?" Meren asked softly. "I don't think your master is quite ready to challenge a pharaoh at the moment, even a young one."
Standing, Mugallu gave him a smile that recalled the yawn of a sated hippo. The Hittite gazed across the deck and nodded at the crowd surrounding one of the professional singers.
"At home we waste little time singing of the pleasures of life. It makes a warrior soft. Instead, we sing of battle and victory."
"We sing of such things as well," Meren said.
"And we tell tales of great battles."
"Like those of Thutmose the Conqueror, who spread the empire to the verge of the Hittite lands?" Meren was exaggerating, but Mugallu was beginning to irritate him.
The prince didn't answer. Turning his back on the revelers, he took a step closer to Meren and lowered his voice.
"I remember a tale, a favorite of the great king, concerning one of his royal ancestors. This king of the Hittites had an enemy, the prince of a rich and powerful city with a great army. This prince looted and destroyed several Hittite villages and refused to return the people he'd taken from them. Of course, the great king had to retaliate. Do you know what he did first, to weaken the prince?"
"You will tell me, won't you?"
Mugallu threw back his head and laughed so loudly that heads turned toward them.
"Yes, I'll tell you."
Mugallu leaned closer to Meren, who still had his back against a column and couldn't move away. The Hittite was so close Meren could smell the spice bread he'd eaten and the stale wine on his breath.
"To weaken the prince," Mugallu said, "the great king struck not at the enemy himself but at the friend of his heart, his most trusted adviser and confidant."
Meren breathed a comment. "Ah." And he surveyed Mugallu with tranquil composure.
"With his friend dead, the prince was beset with grief, distraught, unable to trust his own decisions without the approval of the beloved friend. He grew weak in battle."
Mugallu stepped back but kept his gaze fixed on Meren. "Naturally the great king defeated the prince, cut his head off, and stuck it on the end of a spear, which he mounted on the royal chariot when he returned home, triumphant."
"A good tale," Meren said in a bored tone.
"I thought you would value it."
Meren lifted himself up and perched on the pavilion railing. "Not one an Egyptian would tell, though."
"Oh?"
"No. You see, highness, Egypt is ruled by a living god, not a mere king. As the son of the great god Amun, pharaoh is wise beyond his years. We who serve him do his bidding. Never has a servant substituted his will for pharaoh's, and the living god relies on the guidance of Amun, king of the gods. So you see, your tale is entertaining, but hardly fitting for Egypt."
The Hittite scowled at Meren. "Perhaps I'll recall another before I return home, but I think this one fits, no matter the divine heritage of King Tutankhamun."
"Would you like more wine, highness?"
Mugallu lifted a hand in protest. "I've had enough, and I'm weary. Don't escort me off the ship, Lord Meren. I've had sufficient ceremony for one day."
"May your sleep be peaceful, highness."
"I always sleep peacefully," Mugallu said as he left. "I only hope I haven't given you black dreams with my tale of the death of the prince's friend."
On the second night after the feast on Joy of the Nile, Kysen walked down the Street of Foreigners, feeling more at ease in his heart than he had in weeks. Meren had embarked on his journey to find Queen Nefertiti's favorite cook, but Abu was following him. If anyone could protect his father, it was Abu. Still, a dagger of uneasiness pricked at him as he dodged two drunk Cypriot sailors.
After the family had gone home from the feast, Meren had been different. No longer distracted and anxious, his father had been furious. The Eyes of Pharaoh rarely showed anger, not unless by design. Mugallu had said something to Meren in the golden ship's pavilion, something that had so provoked his father's wrath that he'd been unable to conceal it in the seclusion of his home.
Bener had whispered to Kysen about the change in his mood when Meren had spoken sharply to a porter at the front door. Even Isis had noticed Meren's rage, between lyrics of praise for Lord Reshep. True, the reason she'd noticed was that Meren snapped at her to leave off bleating about a lord who thought he was prettier than she was. But she'd noticed.
"Some new intrigue of Mugallu's has irritated him."
Kysen muttered to himself. "May the gods curse all Hittites."
He abandoned his musings when he reached the intersection of the Street of Foreigners with the Avenue of the Ibis. He was still near the docks and could hear the calls of water birds and an occasional hippo's roar and feel the moisture of the Nile in the air. But the place he sought was at the edge of the dock district, near the area where Mycenaean Greek traders, ship captains, and sailors lived. If he kept walking and turned down any of the side streets toward the docks, he'd immediately step into a realm few ordinary citizens braved at night.
Everyone called it the Caverns, after the Caverns of Duat in the netherworld. There ferocious god-fiends guarded the afterlife, ready to destroy an unprepared soul. Their names-Breaker of Bones, Eater of Intestines, He-Whose-Two-Eyes-Are-on-Fire-described horrors every Egyptian feared. In the Caverns of Memphis, thieves, receivers of smuggled luxuries, and evildoers from Egypt's far-flung possessions and her own cities lived and pursued strange and distasteful occupations.
As a boy Kysen had been outraged when he discovered the existence of the Caverns. But Meren had shrugged and said that there had always been chaos in the midst of harmony, and that Egypt was fortunate that the god of disorder, Set, ruled over so small a kingdom within the imperial capital. Besides, where else could common men go for entertainment?
Kysen had grown up since asking that question, and now he frequented the Caverns for his own purposes. Nowhere could one hear fresher rumors of corruption, bribery, abuse, and murder. Gossip in the Caverns was more efficient and sometimes more accurate than a royal messenger. Kysen smiled as he approached the tavern and rest house called the Divine Lotus. Its owner, the woman Ese, was the font of all gossip, rumor, and scandal. If she was in a tolerant mood this evening, he might persuade her to make inquiries about the former intimate servants of Nefertiti.
Here in the shadowed world of thieves, dishonest government underlings, whores, and murderers, he went by another name, Nen. Nen was supposed to be the sixth son of the assistant to the steward of a minor noble. As one of eight children, he had little wealth but a taste for luxuries he'd seen at the household where his father worked, no matter how they were obtained. In the Caverns he was known as a clever and easygoing lover of idleness. Everyone knew Nen's time was spent designing clever schemes by which he would profit with as little labor as possible. Outlaws, cheaters, and the corrupt felt at ease with him.
As he set his foot on the step before the threshold of the Divine Lotus, a dirty, sweat-stained body hurtled into him. Kysen fell back against the wall beside the door, the wind knocked out of him. He gulped in air, and with it whiffs of a sickly sweet odor that spoke of months without bathing. Few men smelled like a wet oxhide that had been covered with tallow and baked under a hot sky; the whining shriek that assailed his ears confirmed the figure's identity.
"Tcha, get off me!"
The thief uttered a hyena's yelp, missed his footing on the steps, and fell on his ass in the street. Kysen would have left him there, but Tcha squeezed his eyes shut, covered his head with his arms, and burst out with a spell.
"I am the chosen one, I am the chosen one whose name is unknown! If a creature of the water open his mouth to strike, I speak my name. I speak my name, and the water boils. Evil is destroyed, evil is destroyed!"
"By my ka," Kysen said. "Are you cursing me, you sniveling teller of tales?"
Tcha lifted his head so that two slanted eyes like wet nabk berries peered over his arm. "Master! It is you." Tcha untied the knot he'd made of his body and scrambled to his feet. Glancing over his shoulder every few moments, he hurried over to Kysen, bowing and bobbing.
"You've stolen something valuable, haven't you?" Kysen said.
Tcha was Kysen's oldest, and one of his most useful, acquaintances in the Caverns, and the only one who knew who Kysen really was. Almost a year ago he'd fished the thief out of a work gang to which he'd been condemned and arranged for his crimes to be forgiven in exchange for guidance into life here. Now they saw each other infrequently, but Tcha knew that Kysen could find him. He also knew what would happen to him should he reveal what he knew of his benefactor to anyone.
"Tcha never steals, O great master. Everyone thinks I'm a miserable thief, just because I never had no fine house, no fertile fields, no good bread nor beer nor linen robes nor-"
"Tcha, close your mouth."
"Yes, O great master, giver of bounty, gracious of heart, divine of beauty-"
"I said no more!" Kysen again turned to enter the tavern, but Tcha started to follow him, bringing the thief close enough for him to get another noseful of his incomparable odor. "Gods deliver me from your foul smell, Tcha. It's worse than usual." Sniffing, Kysen lifted his brows. "Do I smell honey amidst your other disgusting humors?"
His eyes shifting to the side, Tcha mumbled something inaudible. He edged away from Kysen. As he moved, he clicked, and his movement brought him into the light of a taper in a sconce beside the door.
Kysen descended the steps and planted himself opposite the thief. "What in the name of Amun have you done to yourself?"
Tcha had never been presentable. He was as emaciated as a body fresh from the embalming table, short because of bowed legs, and scarred from beatings that were the rewards of unsuccessful thievery. Although no more than six years older than Kysen, he looked older than Meren. His skin had the cracked, baked appearance of a field at the end of the season of Drought, and three of his upper front teeth were missing. Their absence caused a lisp in his speech. Brittle, dried-reed hair formed greasy plates that issued from the crown of his head and snaked over his ears and forehead and down to the back of his dirty neck.
Indeed, Tcha had always been painful to the eye and to the nose, but he'd never emitted anything resembling a pleasant odor. And he'd never covered himself in more magical amulets than a pharaoh's corpse. Nor had he painted his grimy body with expensive honey. Yet here Tcha stood, his arms, legs, neck, waist, and head encircled with old string, twine, and narrow papyrus rope from which he'd strung countless amulets. And he was evidently reluctant to speak of his strange appearance.
"Tcha, I asked you what you'd done to yourself."
"Precautions, O great master," Tcha muttered. He stuck his arms behind his back as if this action would hide all the amulets.
"Precautions against what?" Kysen asked.
Tcha's eyes darted from shadow to shadow, corner to corner. "Against evil, lord. There be great evil abroad."
"Blessed Toth and Anubis," Kysen said with an increasing grin. "You've thought of a way to protect yourself against the city police. That spell you screeched at me was for use against crocodiles, you know, not men. And if you wear all those amulets while skulking around some artisan's house, you'll clatter like a sistrum."
"The master is wise," Tcha mumbled as he snaked a glance up and down the Street of Foreigners.
"In truth, Tcha, many of those amulets are only for funerary use. Look at this. You have Djed-columns, the girdle amulet, the four sons of Horus, the amulet of the headrest, heart scarabs. Are you planning a journey through the netherworld soon? Don't tell me you plan to rob Osiris and the other gods."
Tcha started, then laughed with a sound like a throw stick scraping polished granite. "Thy jest is most humorous, great master."
"You only need a few amulets to protect yourself from harm," Kysen said as he tried not to smile. He noted that most of the amulets were cheap faience, but a few were of more expensive but damaged stones. He saw a green jasper turtle, a double lion in carnelian, and an amethyst falcon. "I recommend wearing one Eye of Horus, one scarab, and perhaps the ankh, sign of life, so that you will continue in this existence. But why in the name of Amun have you coated yourself with honey?"
"Mistress Ese give it to me. She says that which is sweet to the living is foul to demons."
Shaking his head, Kysen went to the tavern door and opened it. "True, but if you insist on creeping about your business in that condition, you'll end up fodder for crocodiles no matter how many spells you chant. Keep your distance from me, Tcha. The next time I see you, you will have bathed in the Nile. At least five times. With soap paste."
He left Tcha and entered the Divine Lotus, still shaking his head. He forgot the thief with his first glimpse of the tavern interior. He'd heard that Ese had expanded the place and refurbished it. She was known for changing the tavern's appearance so that her patrons were continually surprised and delighted. But this time Ese had surpassed her own reputation for the exotic. She had turned the Divine Lotus into a Mycenaean Greek villa.
Kysen stepped into a megaron, a Greek great hall nearly the size of the one in his own home. The walls shone with brightly painted frescoes of women in Mycenaean dresses with tight bodices that bared the breasts, flounced skirts, and gold rosette earrings. Some of their hair was pulled up and knotted at the crown, while a ribbon bound a long coil of it that hung down the back. Designs of running spirals, zigzags, and stripes bordered the frescoes and the ceiling.
A circular central hearth provided heat, for even in Egypt the nights often brought a chill. Woven cushions and mats were strewn in groups around the hall to form private clusters lit by alabaster lamps. The place was crowded, as usual, but Kysen noticed that tonight most of the customers were foreign, Greeks from Crete and Cyprus, Libyans, several nomads. He saw traders from the great Mycenaean city-states-Argos, Corinth, Pylos, and the city of Mycenae itself. Others he knew to be nobles and merchants from the islands of Rhodes, Melos, and Samos. One group around a lord from Rhodes included captains of ships from Byblos and Tyre, and even a Hittite overland trader.
Those who preferred to conduct their pleasures less visibly sat against the walls or leaned on one of the four tall columns that surrounded the hearth and supported a clerestory that allowed light in during the day and provided an escape for smoke. In corners and places away from the hearth lurked the less grand denizens of the Divine Lotus. The door behind Kysen opened a crack. Tcha slipped inside and scuttled around the perimeter of the hall to join a hive of charlatans, villains, and corrupt minions of corrupt officials. It was as if a ring of corrosion surrounded a central core of bronze ridden with its own, less visible defilement.
Kysen threaded his way through the groups of customers. He paused to acknowledge a greeting from a trader who regularly bribed dock officials to let him ship in unrecorded luxuries that he sold to Egyptian clients. Returning the bow of a dealer in perfumes who had fled Corinth after sleeping with a nobleman's wife, Kysen took a stool beside the hearth and surveyed the megaron.
Strange that the place was so devoid of Egyptians this evening. He saw a few in the rooms beyond, even a particularly bloodthirsty Nubian prince playing a game of senet with one of the tavern women. The prince led royal expeditions deep into the southern wild lands in search of leopards, elephants, and rare spice trees. At least once during a regnal year his expeditions were attacked and robbed by savage tribes who seemed to know their exact route.
Kysen paused in his survey of the patrons. He leaned to one side in order to get a better view of a dark corner of the megaron. There, among the less accomplished villains, sat Prince Rahotep. Wearing a plain kilt and no jewels, he was slumped on a stool against a wall, alone, his hands fastened around a drinking cup big enough for three men. As Kysen watched, the prince hiccuped, bent over his cup, and sucked wine like a cow at a drinking trough. Then he came up for air and cradled the cup against his chest, all the while wearing an expression more suited to an embalming shed than a tavern.
Rahotep had always been given to bouts of sorrowful drinking. Kysen had noted that lately the episodes were growing more frequent. He and most of Rahotep's friends refused to go with the prince on these outings. Inevitably, when he'd had a cup or two of wine, Rahotep would grow quarrelsome. After his fourth or fifth cup, he stopped fighting, stopped talking altogether. He sank into a private world of anguish from which he wouldn't surface for the rest of the night. After hours of black silence, Rahotep vanished. Then in a day or two he'd reappear wearing his old brash manner, oblivious of the irritation of his friends. Kysen turned his back on Rahotep, who was deep in his misery and wouldn't notice him.
A serving boy brought Kysen beer in a double-handled chalice of the hard, eggshell-thin pottery for which the Greeks were famous. Ese had gone to much expense to acquire the finest of such vessels for the use of her guests. Kysen was admiring the tall stem of the chalice that flared out into a graceful bowl when he noticed that the people around him had stopped talking and were staring over his head.
He turned to face a curtain of blue, white, and green flounces. Lifting his gaze, he saw hips bound by a tight skirt. He continued his visual climb and found two small mountains of flesh surrounded by a tight bodice. Above these he encountered a rounded face framed by tight Greek curls of dark brown tinted with red.
Two dark eyes met his. They were eyes that could convey any emotion their owner wished. Most often, in the great hall, they held graciousness combined with a hint of the exotic and promises of the pleasures of Hathor. Kysen had seen them as they truly were-flat, with a serpent's lack of pity, glittering with cold resentment, alight with the amusement of a cat playing with a wounded field mouse.
She spoke in a low, rough voice that sent hot spears of reaction through her male guests and caused her tavern women to fall silent. "May Hathor bless you, Nen."
"She has blessed me beyond wishing by your presence, Mistress Ese."
"That Syrian wine you asked for has arrived," she said.
He'd ordered no wine, but Ese had already left, giving him no choice but to follow her. The din of conversation, gaming, and drinking rose around him once more as he stood and went after the woman. Ese walked out of the hall to an inner stairwell. Instead of ascending the stairs, she opened a door and vanished. Kysen hurried after her. As he pulled the door closed, he glimpsed a shadow sailing into the stairwell. By its shape and the odor of honey and decay, he knew it was Tcha.
Shutting the door, Kysen found himself in an open garden court with a central reflection pool. Ese was reclining on a couch beneath an awning at the opposite end of the pool. A Syrian slave waved a white ostrich feather fan over her mistress. When Kysen approached, Ese pointed to a cushion on the ground beside the couch. He lowered himself to it and accepted wine in a vessel of unusual design, a bronze drinking cup shaped like the head of a gazelle. The modeled nose was made to be set in a stand.
"You have become Mycenaean," Kysen said.
"For the moment."
"After this, what will you become?"
Ese lifted her face to the silver moonlight. "Babylonian, perhaps." She glanced down at him. "Perhaps a Hittite."
"Not a wise choice."
"I choose what provokes interest and what tantalizes."
Ese lay unmoving, her stillness the watchful ease of a lioness as she contemplates the hunt. Kysen had yet to become accustomed to the woman's outward calm and inner vigilance.
Kysen stared up at her, trying not to fall victim to perfection of skin, softly curling hair, and an indomitable will. "You'll choose to become a Hittite."
"I will?"
"It is the most daring of choices."
A flash of contempt showed in the woman's eyes. "I'll tell you something. Men are stupid to waste gold on places like my Divine Lotus."
"All of us?"
"Shall we compare? Are women's thoughts dominated by their genitals?"
"We farm and hunt and build great temples," Kysen protested.
Ese gave him an unimpressed glance. "Only after your urges have been assuaged. Without relief, none of you could build a straw hut." She burst out with abrupt violence, "You disgust me."
She wasn't looking at him; she was looking at the past. The violence of her speech had been provoked by whatever invisible scene floated before her eyes.
"I regret that misfortune has been your lot in your dealings with men."
Ese dragged her gaze back to him and nodded, as if he'd confirmed some judgment she had already formed. "I have heard a rumor about you."
"Oh." He was suddenly wary. There shouldn't be any rumors about Nen.
"One of my women said a vegetable seller at the docks told her you chased down a thief who tried to steal her best melon."
"Is that all?"
Leaning over a table set beside her couch, Ese dipped her fingers in an alabaster pot filled with perfumed salve and began rubbing it on her throat. Kysen followed the path of her fingers as they swept down and across a smooth curve. Then he pressed his lips together and jerked his gaze back to his wine. He was angry with himself for falling victim to Ese's manipulations. He knew she never did or said anything out of innocence. He looked up at her again and found her watching him with a faint smile of derision. He felt like a foolish, tumescent boy.
"You may not be as stupid as most," she said. "You're a selfish conniver, a trader in information to the one who can pay the most, yet you prevented an old woman from being robbed of a simple melon. Do you know how much one melon means to such as she?"
Kysen scowled at her. "The wretch pushed the aged one into the dirt. I hate men who use their fists on-"
"Yes?"
"I have more important things to do than prattle about old women. I want you to set your women and your band of-shall we say servants-to making inquiries."
"What kind of inquiries?"
Kysen slowly inspected the garden court for intruders. "Nothing urgent or perilous. I want to find anyone who served her majesty, Queen Nefertiti, the justified, during her last months."
"No."
"No? Why not?"
"I keep away from the affairs of pharaohs, living or dead, and I especially shun prying into the secrets of Great Royal Wives."
"I'm not interested in secrets. I'm interested in hiring servants who know court ways."
"You aren't. You couldn't afford to hire them. What are you really after, Nen?"
Kysen threw up his hands. "There's no hidden purpose this time. I've been paid well for my previous work, and now I've put aside enough to employ a few servants. Think, mistress. If a man intends to rise high enough to attract the notice of great ones, he must learn from others how to conduct himself in a manner pleasing to them."
He bore Ese's scrutiny in silence. Repeating his arguments or decorating them with particulars would increase the woman's disbelief. Setting down his wine, he sighed and shook his head.
"Of course, if you're unable to provide this simple information, I'll get it somewhere else. I only came to you because you're so reliable. And if I must part with a fee, I would rather it go to you."
"I had no idea you cared so much for me."
Kysen grinned at her. "You're a beautiful woman, and you're right. I was more concerned that I remain a valued customer, so that you would look upon me with favor, should I need your assistance in my rise among the great ones."
"Ah, now the plan is revealed. But I think not all of it. You don't actually need the servants of this queen."
"I am counting on the… the disgrace under which they fell to make them eager to take any position, even if it wouldn't provide the kind of maintenance usual for a royal servant."
"At last, dear Nen. Something believable comes from your pretty mouth."
Ese put her wine aside and sat up. She stared past him into the moonlit water of the reflection pool. A frog hopped off a lotus leaf into the water with a plop. A faint breeze brought the scent of fresh water and lotus flowers to Kysen, and he inhaled it, cherishing the renewal it brought to his body and ka.
Suddenly his hostess stood and walked past him to the edge of the pool. She turned and came back to him, the softness of her face hardened by calculation. Facing him, she raked him with a glance from hair to sandal.
"Very well. But finding such people will take months, if I can find them at all."
"I don't want to wait."
Ese tapped her forefinger against her chin. "Then I think we will have to go to Othrys."
He hadn't anticipated this. The last man he wanted to bring into this inquiry was Othrys. There was enough danger without involving a man with the scruples of a cobra.
"It seems a trivial matter for Othrys."
Again he was subjected to that ruthless appraisal that made him feel like a sacrificial bull.
"Sweet, conniving Nen," Ese breathed. She touched his cheek with her fingertips. "You're a lovely boy, but even the beauty of the gods won't persuade me to enter into this questionable arrangement without precautions." Her fingers left his skin, but she lowered her voice to a whisper. "If you want me to hunt down the servants of a dead heretic queen, you will accept my conditions. Say yes, exquisite one, or I shall be displeased."
He'd come too far to refuse, and he'd seen the results of Ese's displeasure. "How could I say anything else to you, whose beauty surpasses that of the moon?"
"Someday I'm going to cut out that facile tongue of yours," Ese said. "Come."
"Where are we going?"
"To Othrys."
"There's no need for haste."
"Why the reluctance?" Ese asked. "Do you have something to hide from Othrys?"
"Of course not."
"How fortunate for you," Ese said. She indicated a door in the wall surrounding the garden court.
Struggling to maintain his air of unconcern, Kysen bowed to Ese. Of all the results of this encounter, he'd least expected to be dragged to a meeting with a barbarian who slit throats as skillfully as butchers slaughtered pigs. He could still feel the pirate's cold razor blade cutting into the flesh above the hollow in his throat, feel his own blood trickle down his neck in hot, tingling little rivulets. Even as he withdrew from the memory, a voice from his ka sounded in his head.
You sent Abu to look after Father, and came here alone. A stupid conceit. And it's likely to get you killed.