The Shepherd Kings (33 page)

He kissed the marred skin there. Her fingers curved along
his cheek. She had gone quiet, nestled body to body, just as—just as—

“That’s why,” he said suddenly. “You dreamed. You dreamed,
too.”

She tilted her head to stare into his face. “You—” She shook
her head. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” Kemni said, half in terror, half in exultation.

“You dared?”

“No more or less than you,” he said with a flare of temper.

It caught her by surprise. She almost shrank before it.
Almost. “You never said a word,” she said.

“Nor did you.”

“How could I? You would have despised me.”

“I don’t despise you now.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t know
what I meant. This should never have happened!”

“If you command me,” he said carefully, “I will forget. It
will be as if this had never been.”

“No,” she said. “No. I don’t want to—” She pulled away from him,
lifting herself to her knees, bending over him. Her hair brushed his belly. His
skin quivered; his rod roused itself once more, valiant to the last.

She took no notice. Her eyes were on his face. She took it
in her hands. Her fingers were cold and a little unsteady. Almost they made him
forget all his resolve, and his determination to do nothing that she did not
ask.

“I don’t want to forget,” she said. “But if there is no
other way you can endure this—”

“I want to remember,” he said.

“Swear it.”

“I swear,” he said.

She sighed faintly. She did not look comforted. She looked wild.
This must have been what she was when she was younger: this fierce eagerness,
this almost frightening delight.

“You hide it,” he said slowly, “because it’s too much; it’s
too strong. It scares people.”

She did not seem to hear, or if she did, to know what he
meant. She stooped and kissed him till he thought he would die for want of air,
then let him go so suddenly that he gasped. “Beautiful man,” she said.
“Beautiful, beautiful man. Tell me you want me.
Me
, not some royal vision.”

“I don’t dream of loving your cousin,” he said. “You . . .
if you are absent from my sleep for even a night, I find myself yearning after
you.”

“Why?”

How very like her that was. He almost laughed; but she would
not have welcomed that. “Gods know. I’d have thought I had more hope of
becoming her lover than of becoming yours. You were always so cold.”

“No,” she said. “Never cold. Never for an instant.”

“But—”

She silenced him with a finger to his lips. “When I first
saw you, bundled on
Dancer
’s deck
like a part of the cargo, I thought you the most distressingly beautiful man I
had ever seen. I was incredulous that no Egyptian had seen and recognized you.
You turned every man on the ship to a shadow. Surely anyone with eyes could see
what you were.”

“Most people,” Kemni said, his voice somewhat strangled,
“don’t have . . . your kind of eyes.”

“They don’t, do they?” She stroked his cheek, and the curve
of his brow. “You don’t know. You don’t believe it. And maybe that’s best. A
man who knows his own beauty can be insufferable.”

“But I am not—”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, doubt me. It’s charming.”

“Better charming than insulting,” Kemni said. She had
claimed back her hand. He felt oddly bereft. “I . . . you tried
so hard to shut me away. I could have hated you.”

“I wanted you to,” she said. “I swore an oath, you know.
When I was young. I would never belong to a man. That’s why—” She
blushed—Iphikleia, blushing; impossible, and yet there was no mistaking it.
“That’s why I never took one to my bed. It’s expected, you know. It’s even
encouraged. Unless you are the Ariana; then you send your servants to men you
fancy, and preserve yourself until you can wed a king.

“But I would become no man’s possession. I swore that when I
was nine summers old, before my breasts had even budded.”

“I rather doubt,” Kemni said, “that I can hope to possess
you. You are not a possession.”

“All men want to own their women,” said Iphikleia. “They
can’t help it. Bulls, stallions—they do the same. The lion owns his harem of
ladies. But I will not be owned.”

“It would be presumptuous of me to dream of it,” Kemni said.
“You are royal, and a goddess’ beloved. I’m as mortal as man can be.”

“Beloved Egyptian,” she said, half scornful, half tender.
“Your land is full of gods. Your kings are gods. I’m a very ordinary thing
here, yes? And you wonder why I find you so astonishing.”

“You are never ordinary,” Kemni said. “Whereas I—”

“Perfectly extraordinary,” she said. “I won’t marry you, do
you understand? I won’t parade this in front of the world. But I’m not going to
let you go—awake or asleep. Can you endure that?”

“Do you give me a choice?”

“You may walk away,” she said, with a flash of her old, cold
self. “I won’t stop you. But I won’t call you back. Not now, and not after.”

Such a choice. She was still in most respects a stranger.
But somehow, by the gods’ will, they had shared their dreams. The Iphikleia he
knew on the other side of sleep, the Iphikleia who lay in his arms and managed
still to glare at him, was as dear to him as life. That other one, the cold and
haughty priestess, was a mask.

He spoke to the Iphikleia of the spirit, the bright, fierce
presence that was, he was certain now, the truth of her. “I won’t walk away.
For your honor and for your name’s sake, I’ll not strut this union through the
streets. The rest of it will be as the gods will.”

“And the goddess,” she said. “Always the goddess.”

He bent his head in respect, as to a queen. Iphikleia caught
it in her hands again, pulled it down, and rolled him up against the wall.
There, and headlong, she took him anew, so fierce and yet so sweet that it was
almost beyond mortal bearing. Then when he thought that now, surely, he must
die, for there was nothing more to do in this world, she let him go. She kissed
him and stroked him and left him, and went to be, once more, the Iphikleia that
the world knew.

Kemni reeled through the rest of that day as if he had
been struck a blow to the head. That night he did not dream; his sleep was as
dark as deep water.

Until he woke, at some hour between midnight and dawn, to
wicked fingers teasing him, coaxing his manly parts to rise and greet this incalculable
creature who had made him her own. He was deep in her before his eyes had even
opened, savoring the scent and touch and taste of her, and her presence here,
waking, in his bed.

They said that a new-plucked maidenhead was more pain than
pleasure; and that a woman had to learn the first steps of the dance before she
knew what joy it could be. Iphikleia had known it in the spirit long before she
knew it in the flesh. She took an honest delight in it. She even laughed, soft
and rich, as she tried a twist and stroke that made him cry out. “
Ai
! Woman, you’ll kill me.”

“Maybe someday,” she said. “But now I want you alive.”

She wanted him more than alive. She wanted him inexhaustible
and insatiable. But he was not a woman, to be so blessed of the gods. He gave
her what he could, and she professed herself satisfied with it.

When there was nothing left of him but a limp rag, she held
him in her arms and kissed him softly, and said, “Ariana is sending you to
steal a chariotmaker from the Retenu.”

He had known that. Of course he had. But—“You tell me that
now
?”

“When should I tell you?”

He opened his mouth, but he was not a perfect fool. Instead
of the rush of protest, he asked simply, “When?”

“As soon as you may.”

She was cool, calm. Another woman would have wept, or tried
at least to seem sad. But this was Iphikleia.

“I suppose she’ll want to see me in the morning,” Kemni said
after a while. Then: “Does she know?”

“There’s little my cousin does not know.” Iphikleia played
with his hair. “Are you ashamed of me?”

He looked up startled. “I should be asking you that.”

“No,” she said. “I’m a foreign woman. My rank and where I
come from matters little here. And you are the king’s trusted servant.”

“I’m not—”

“Stop that,” she said. “It’s not fitting for a man to
imagine himself less than he is. You were born to a lesser lordship. You’ve
grown to more. Do you think the king will let you slink and hide, now he’s
discovered how useful you can be?”

“Probably not,” Kemni said a little ruefully. “I am
convenient. And I do take orders well.”

“And fulfill them well.”

He shrugged. “You,” he said, “should flaunt yourself at the
king’s son. He’s pleasant, charming, and completely to be trusted. And he’s of
rank to match yours.”

“I like him,” she said, not at all disconcerted by this new
shift of his. “He is pleasant. He has no gift for any language but his own, and
he’ll never understand horses.”

“He wants to understand them,” Kemni said.

“But he has no gift for it. They cry out to him with every
flick of the ear, and he’s as deaf as the earth underfoot.”

“He’ll learn.”

“One can hope so,” she said.

“So,” he said. “While I’m gone, risking death to bring the
king a chariot-maker, will you be warming his bed as you warm mine?”

“I don’t have to answer that,” she said.

“No,” he said.

She kissed him. Her lips were fire-warm. They woke him
rather thoroughly. He drew her down. She was ready for him, and more than
ready.

~~~

Ariana gave Kemni three days to gather his wits and his
companions. He could not take an army, but neither could he go alone. A party
small enough to escape notice, but large enough to capture and hold a prisoner
or, better yet, prisoners—fishers on the river, with a small fast boat and a
clutter of nets and cargo. No one noticed fishermen or farmers. They were
everywhere, naked sunburned men who knew better than to draw a lord’s eye.

Kemni chose from among his own hundred, men who knew how to
wield net and line, and who were wise enough to be circumspect. One of them was
Seti. He was wild and he was insolent, but he was a fine sailor, and Kemni
thought he might be more sensible than he wanted to seem.

The others were quieter men, wiry-thin even for Egyptians,
the better to seem poor fishermen and not king’s soldiers. They stripped naked
or wrapped their loins in a bit of rag, took care to go unshaven and unwashed,
and embarked on the boat in a fine state of redolence.

There was someone waiting for them. Kemni sucked in his
breath. “Don’t begin,” Iphikleia said. “You need someone who knows a good
chariot from a bad one.”

“This isn’t a ship from Crete,” Kemni said. “You can’t hide
as I hid.”

“I’ll do well enough,” she said. “Now may we go?”

Kemni turned to Ariana, who had come down to the river with
them. She spread her hands. “I don’t command her,” she said. “If she wants to
go, she goes.”

Nor could Gebu help him. Gebu was on the boat past
Iphikleia, somewhat less filthy and unshaven than the rest, but a creditable
fisherman nonetheless. He grinned as Kemni glared at him. “I can’t take you
both! What if you’re captured or killed? Two kings will be after my hide.”

“Then you’d best protect us, hadn’t you?” said Gebu. “Come,
brother. Time’s wasting.”

Kemni’s careful plan was crumbling around him. He had had
every intention of sailing in, doing what he must, and escaping unrecognized.
With a Cretan woman all too obviously perched in the bow of a fishing boat, and
a royal prince less than perfectly hidden among the crew, Kemni would be as
difficult to notice as an ibis in a flock of geese.

He was bound to go. He had given Ariana his word. And she
would not order these interlopers off the boat.

With a deep sigh, he bade farewell to his Cretan queen and
lent his shoulder to the rest of those that slid the boat from the bank into
the water. He was the last to clamber aboard, drawn up by eager hands, just
ahead of a crocodile’s sudden snap.

That was omen enough to begin with. Kemni chose to regard it
as hopeful, in that he had escaped unharmed. The crocodile, cheated of its
prey, lashed its tail in temper and vanished beneath the water.

The boat rocked in the wave of the crocodile’s passing, but
steadied as the men aboard it dug in the oars. They rowed out into the middle
of the river, raised the sail to catch the bit of wind, and let the current
carry them downstream.

Kemni had taken the steering-oar. It was easy work, needing
no thought. The wind was almost cool, the sun fierce, but he was born to that.
Iphikleia, he saw, had sunk down in the curve of the prow and drawn a mantle
over herself. She looked, even from so close, like a bundle of nets.

As much as he disliked to admit it, it was possible they
would escape undetected. Neither Iphikleia nor Gebu was a fool. And yet . . .

He shut the thought away. It was some while before they
would need to creep and hide. They were still in the Upper Kingdom here. For
the game’s sake he had determined that they should be fishermen indeed, and
wield net and line as they went. What they caught they would eat, or if there
was enough, they could trade in the villages for bread and beer and other, more
varied provisions.

It was not like sailing on the
Dancer
of Crete. This was a smaller boat, cramped, with few
amenities. Every finger’s breadth of space was put to use.

At night they drew up on the bank, set up camp and a watch
and slept as they could. The weapons they concealed in bits of baggage and
folds of net were not the weapons of simple fishermen—Kemni had yielded to
sense in that much; they carried the swords of warriors, short spears and
hunting lances, and bows with arrows set ready to hand.

But, except for those, they lived and camped as what they
seemed. There were no elaborate pavilions, no flocks of servants. Even Gebu had
to fend for himself. People were willing to wait on him, but their numbers were
too few and their duties too many.