The Shepherd Kings (51 page)

It was done. She was bound to enter those walls within
walls. The gates rose before her, warded by what seemed an army of guards. They
were all big men, huge men, bearded Retenu and coal-black Nubians, so tall that
their eyes were level with hers as she stood in the chariot. Some were even
taller.

Kemni held his head a fraction higher as he rode though that
deep and echoing gate. So, for pride, did Iry. She wondered if he was as stark
with fear as she, or if he saw those walls as cutting him off from all the
world he knew. Now he was within them, he might never go out again. If anyone
marked him, if anyone betrayed him . . .

She would protect him as she could, while she could. As for
herself, she would be safe enough. Her rank protected her, and the office the
Mare had laid on her.

So she told herself as the palace of the Retenu closed in
upon her. They were to be given chambers within it, and servants to tend them,
and a haughty chamberlain to conduct them to their lodgings. He was perhaps
half an Egyptian: he was smaller and slighter, his features finer, his lips
fuller than if he had been entirely Retenu. He wore a beard as every male among
them must, but he clipped it almost indecently short, so that one could see the
shape of his face. But the hair in its topknot, the golden collar and armlets,
the elaborate and heavily embroidered robe, were all of outland fashion. High
and courtly fashion, she could see. Her own simple shift, her hair
indifferently plaited, and her utter lack of ornament, earned her a glance
eloquent of scorn.

She had no fear of courtiers’ contempt. These courtiers
above all, whom she would gladly sweep out of Egypt, she would greet with all
the arrogance she could muster. They would only admire her for it. That much
she had learned of courts, in what little time she had spent in or near them.

They settled in the chambers with some crowding and no
little squabbling. Even as vast as the city was, it was full to bursting, and
the palace likewise. People on top of people was the way of the world here.

She at least was granted a room of her own, a tiny and
airless cell, but it was hers. It was no worse than the cell she had had as a
slave in the Sun Ascendant—and it was close by a stair that led to the palace
gardens.

The gardens of this palace were a wonder and a marvel. They
stretched along the great outer wall and meandered inward among the courts.
Those nearest the wall were gardens of trees, a forest indeed, green and richly
scented, with little rivers trained to run among the trees, and fountains, and
pools of bright fish. There was a menagerie—little enough, Kemni told her, to
what the king had in Thebes, but to her a marvel. There were lions, of course,
and jackals, and sly and slinking hyenas; oryx and gazelle, ibex, and strange
beasts out of the lands beyond the Upper Kingdom: elephants, long-necked
visions called giraffe, and creatures like horses, or like shorter-eared asses,
but striped black and white in eye-blinding patterns. There was a pool of
riverhorses, and even crocodiles; aviaries and pools of fish and cages full of
baboons and monkeys and sad-eyed apes. And, past these, creatures from the
northern outlands: wolves panting in the heat, a vast aurochs bull with horns
spread as wide as a processional way, even a bear lying limp in a shallow pool.

She had wandered there to escape the crush in the
guest-chambers, and perhaps more than a little because, for a brief while, she
seemed to have been forgotten. The Mare was nowhere within reach. She had left
the riding before it came to Avaris, wandered away unnoticed as Iry had done
just now. Iry had made no effort to stop her. The Mare came and went as she
pleased. That was her privilege.

Iry did not share it, but for this little while she was
free. Or as free as she could be, with Iannek in her shadow. Kemni had handed
her over to that annoyingly loyal young man, then arranged to vanish. He would
be finding his allies, she supposed, and conveying to them all that he had
learned.

Iannek managed at least to be quiet, a virtue he had not
cultivated before; but he had not been her guardsman, either. Sometimes she
caught him on the verge of his old relentless chatter, but he mastered himself,
bit his tongue and was silent. She caught herself almost liking him, Retenu
though he was. When he was not leaping about chattering like a monkey, he was
quite bearable. In fact he was rather charming.

There were other people in the menagerie, walking about as
she walked, Retenu all, some in robes, some in Egyptian kilts. It was odd to
see those here—odd and somewhat dismaying. Those even addressed one another by
Egyptian names, in their uncouth accents, as if it were a fashion they affected
and were excessively pleased with.

Iannek growled at that. She raised a brow at him. He sucked
in a breath, thought anew of silence, but yielded to the invitation. “So that’s
back in fashion,” he said. “It goes in and out, you know, like floods on the
Nile. And of course the king takes an Egyptian name, so that people will know
he has a right to rule here. But these kilts—and did you see that man? He
shaved his face!”

“Appalling,” Iry agreed blandly.

It was a moment before he caught the irony; then he glared.
“Well, to you it’s not. But he’s not one of you!”

“No,” she said. “He’s not.”

She paused in front of a cageful of baboons. They were wise
creatures, the old stories said, living images of the god Thoth as the Mare was
of Horse Goddess. They were also dangerous, with their long sharp fangs and
their uncertain tempers—as gods could be. Two of them now were mating, the
female nursing her child while the male sired another with an expression of
intense concentration. Perhaps he was pondering great mysteries as his body
performed its duty to the race.

Someone else had come up to watch the baboons. It was a man,
not young, though not yet old, robed in fine linen embroidered with gold, and
escorted by a pair of discreet guards. By that, Iry knew he was a lord of
consequence, though he affected no airs, nor did he come closer to the Egyptian
fashion than the lightness of his robe.

He watched the baboons with calm interest and an air of one
who came here often. “Do you see that one?” he said to Iry. “That’s the father
of the tribe. He mates with all the females, and drives the young males away,
or kills them if they’re importunate.”

“He’s much like a lord of men,” Iry observed.

The man laughed, a warm deep sound. It reminded her of
Khayan—which made her cheeks grow hot. And why that should be, she did not want
to know.

“Men are very like apes, when it comes to it,” the man said,
seeming oblivious to her discomfort. “See, there the lord goes, off to court
another lady. He has his favorites, and that yonder is a great one, a queen of
the tribe. I watched her beat a younger lady once for importuning the lord. It
was a terrible battle, as terrible as any in the queens’ house.”

“And was there bloodshed?”

The man nodded. “The young hussy lived, but she was never
the same thereafter. In the end she went to a menagerie in Tanis, where she
could live alone without fear or rivalry.”

“You must come here every day,” Iry said, “to know so much.”

“I come as often as I can,” the man said. “It takes me out
of myself.”

Iry nodded. “I do much the same,” she said, “except with me,
it’s horses.”

“Indeed?” the man said. “Horses need open spaces, and sky.
They’re not themselves inside of walls. Those of us confined to palaces . . .
we take other pleasures, such as we may.”

“I could never be confined to a palace,” said Iry. “It’s a
pity you must.”

“Ah,” said the man. “Well. But that’s as the gods will. So I
visit the menagerie, and I watch the animals. It’s rather more amusing than
watching courtiers, and often more civilized.”

“You know all the animals, then,” Iry said. “Tell me about
the striped ones, the ones who are almost horses. Are they from Nubia? Are they
horses?”

“They come from south of Nubia, from great grasslands that
stretch away to the edge of the world,” the man said. “They’re called zebras.
They aren’t horses—they’re more like wild asses. It’s very difficult to train
them, if anyone is minded to try. They don’t have the minds that horses have,
or our tamed asses, either.”

“Pity,” said Iry. “A team of these zebras would be a fine
novelty for a prince.”

“A prince or two has thought so,” the man said, “and failed
miserably in the trying.”

“Maybe the gods want them to stay wild,” Iry said.

They walked down the path, past the baboons’ great cage and
a cage with a lion sleeping in it. The guards had fallen back, Iry noticed out
of the edges of her eyes. So too had Iannek. He looked odd, as if something he
had eaten had suddenly disagreed with him. She thought of sending him away to
rest, since she was safe enough here, but her new companion was regaling her
with stories of the lion and the elephants, and the aurochs bull grazing peacefully
on cut fodder. “They live in forests far to the north,” the man said, “crashing
through the trees with their great horns gleaming. They are terrible to hunt,
as strong as they are, and huge, and fast on their feet.”

“Like elephants,” Iry said.

“Rather like,” the man agreed. “Whole tribes will hunt them,
with packs of huge dogs, and chariots, and vaunting bravery. The man who kills
an aurochs is a great hero, and is given rich rewards: the best of the food and
the women, and the aurochs’ hide and horns for his tent.”

“And they brought one here,” Iry said in wonder. “What army
of heroes was it who dared that?”

“Ah,” said the man with a deprecatory smile. “No great army.
He came as an infant, a calf no larger than a large donkey. Someone, we
suppose, killed his mother and took him from her side, tamed him as much as an
aurochs can be tamed, and sent him here as tribute to the king.”

Iry was a little disappointed, but also a little relieved.
The thought of anything so vast rising up in rage was disconcerting to say the
least. But it seemed the bull was a placid enough creature, and tamed. He came
to the man’s call, and took a bit of sweet from a hand he seemed to know well.
He was no more threatening than an ox, or any less interested in sweetness than
Iry’s own imperious Mare.

He let her touch his broad wet nose, and lightly rub his
jowl. He lowered his head so that she could do it, for he was far taller than
she. He loomed above her like a mountain in the desert.

Such a beautiful great black beast with his ivory horns. He
was almost as beautiful as the Mare; and that was as high praise as she knew to
give.

She went away well content, with her companion bearing her
company as far as the outer cages. He would linger yet a while, he said; but
she had wandered apart long enough. There would be a hunt out for her soon, if
there was not one already.

Still with Iannek in her shadow, she found her way back to
the guest-chambers. Iannek was even more silent than before, a silence so
profound that she came close to rounding on him and demanding to know what he
was so patently not saying.

But even if she had been inclined to unbar those gates, the
outriders of the hunt had found her, a pair of Sadana’s warrior women with
faces even grimmer than usual. They were not taking Iry prisoner, they made
that clear, but they were not inclined to let her out of their sight
thereafter.

Iannek’s trouble, if trouble it was, was lost in Iry’s
return to confinement. She was not to go out again, it was made clear, without
Sadana and a guard of warrior women. Her young male guardsmen were not enough.
She must be protected, and closely, in this of all places.

No less a personage than the lady Sarai told her this,
receiving her in a chamber that had become her own with miraculous speed. It looked,
in fact, precisely like the one in the Sun Ascendant in which she received
guests and entertained scapegrace priestesses. Her expression was no more than
wontedly severe, and she did not seem angry at all—quite unlike Sadana, whose
expression was thunderous. But Iry was to know that she had overstepped her
bounds.

“In this place,” Sarai said, “no one is safe. Not even the
king. Every passage has its web of intrigue, and every gathering its hidden
currents. A word spoken unwisely in the morning is shouted from the rooftops
before the sun reaches its zenith. Men have died for a slip of the tongue. And
you, child, are not best known for your discretion.”

Iry kept her head down and her lips together. She would not
quarrel with this of all women, but neither would she swear oaths she did not
intend to keep. She took her rebuke in silence, and when it was over, accepted
her dismissal.

It seemed to satisfy Sarai. It set Iry free, somewhat; she
could not go where she pleased, not any longer, but she was allowed to seek her
own closet of a room, and rest there. There was no punishment laid on her,
beyond the burden of Sarai’s disapproval.

It would do. Not well, but it would suffice.

Kemni slipped out of Avaris’ great fortress and stronghold
with almost disturbing ease. Even here, Egyptians were simply not seen. They
crept about in shadows, performed tasks that Retenu would not do, ran errands
and conveyed messages and, for all he knew, spied on the lords, all unnoticed.

Kemni was but one of the many. He passed once more beneath
that deep and echoing gate, into the teeming throngs of the city. Where he was
going, he was not entirely certain, but it seemed reasonable enough that he
should seek the river and the harbor. That Iphikleia might not have waited so
long—that all his king’s allies might have left—he refused to consider. They
must be waiting. Or they would have left messages, and safe paths for him to
follow, back to the Upper Kingdom and safety.