The Shepherd Kings (53 page)

She could only do a thing that she had learned to do when
the old lord seized the Sun Ascendant after her father died. She divided her
souls. That part of her which hated, she laid aside. The rest could be cool if
not dispassionate, could listen to him and converse with him and be as civil,
even as amiable, as she had been to the nameless man in the menagerie.

That nameless man was the one she spoke to. Names were
power; everyone in Egypt knew that. Without a name, a man could not live
forever, could not be immortal.

And so, to her, the king of the foreign kings was simply a
man. He had no name, and therefore no strength to stand against her if she
chose to do battle with him.

“Did you see the lion-cubs?” she asked him.

“No,” he said rather regretfully. “The mother was not ready
to bring them out of her den into the world. But when she does, would you like
to go and see them with me?”

“I would like that,” Iry said. And she would. This man
without a name was very good company, and wise in the ways of beasts. Except
horses. Those, he had confessed, he did not know well.

She did not think that she would teach him. Indeed, as if he
had read her thoughts in her eyes, he said, “So you are the Mare’s servant. Do
you know how surprising you are?”

“I would think the proper word would be ‘appalling.’”

He laughed, rich and deep. Iry wondered if he and Khayan
were kin. It was possible. Why not? “Yes, there are those who have called you
appalling. I might have thought so when I first heard of you. But you are not
as any of us might have expected.”

“What did you expect?” she asked him.

“Fear,” he answered. “Defiance. Mockery of us all.”

“How do you know I don’t feel every bit of that?”

“Maybe you do,” he said. “But you have mastered it. Have you
not? You are what you are. You do what you must do. The Mare chose you for
that.”

“I’m glad you see so clearly,” she said. “Not many of your
people do.”

“Kings are taught to see clearly,” he said.

“Even through clouds of flattery and the sleights of
courtiers?”

“Especially through those. The king who fails in that is
weak, and his kingdom may suffer for it.”

Oh, Iry could hate him now—for being wise; for speaking the
words of a good king. He must not be a good king. He was a conqueror, an
invader. He must be cast out of Egypt.

And yet he sat in that garden on the roof of his palace,
under a sky that his people had never been born to—but he had; he was born in
this country as Iry herself had been—and he smiled at her, and said almost
gently, “You wish I could be weak. Don’t you?”

“Does it matter what I wish?”

“The Mare’s servant is a great power in this kingdom. Surely
you know that. What you wish matters very much.”

“Why?”

He must be accustomed to difficult questions. He was barely
taken aback. “A goddess chose you for her own. She speaks through you. What you
do, what you think, signifies more than if you were a simple mortal woman.”

“So they tell me—those who’ve taken it on themselves to
teach me. Are you all afraid of me?”

“Some are in awe of you,” he said. “Some think you quite
dangerous. A person of your nation, given such power as the Mare gives you . . .
you could destroy us.”

“And you would say such a thing?”

“I’m sure you’ve thought it,” he said.

“Do you think I would do that?”

“I think you might.” He seemed unperturbed by it.

“You won’t try to stop me?”

“I never said that.”

There was a pause. Iry had been warned. His expression was
as calm as ever. He even smiled a little. He liked her, she could see. But he
was a king. Kings could destroy even what they loved, in the name of their
kingship.

When she spoke, she spoke carefully, but taking no great
pains to be circumspect. “I can promise nothing. Except this. Whatever I do, it
will not harm the Mare. Whatever comes of all of this, it will be as she wills.
Not as you will, lord king. Not for the good of your kingdom. But for
her—whatever she ordains, I will do.”

“She is ours,” he said.

“She chose to accompany you for a while. She comes from
another tribe than yours, and another world.”

That silenced him. Iry might have condemned herself, but she
thought not. She had seen how he looked at her. He was remembering what she
was. Not a slave, not an Egyptian, but the Mare’s servant. The goddess’ chosen.

She still had not fully understood what that was; what it
meant. Sometimes she thought she never would. And yet she could use it. She
used it now, to face the conquerors’ king.

And what, she wondered, if he had no fear because he knew
what she could not face? What if, for the Mare’s sake, Iry turned on her own
people? That must be what he hoped for, even expected. As of course he would.
Never
, she thought.
By the gods. Never.

But doubt niggled at her. Maybe it had troubled Kemni
too—and hence he had vanished without telling her when or where he was going.

Enough. She was still in front of the king, and he had eyes
that could see both far and deep. For him she must be strong, and not waver. He
must never see her doubts or her fears, or know that she had them.

She smiled at him, not too brightly, and not too shakily,
either. “Tell me more about the animals,” she said. “The spotted ones whose
necks go up and up, till they tower like trees—tell me about them.”

He might have been inclined to press her on the subject of
the Mare, but it seemed that he too saw the wisdom in turning aside from it. He
answered with no apparent reluctance, in fact almost eagerly.

The rest of the audience was pleasant, and perhaps
prolonged; until a chamberlain came and hovered, and reminded him that he had
duties in the greater palace. Then Iry was let go. She was not sorry to go, but
neither was she in excessive haste.

She did like him. What he was, she hated, to the heart of
her. But the man without a name, the pleasant companion who knew so much of so
many animals, she could think of, in a way, as a friend.

Khayan in Avaris remembered anew why he had been so glad
to be sent away to the steppe, far from the courts of kings. In his own domain
he was happy enough; he was born and bred to rule, and he did it well. But he
was not born to be a king.

“You were born to serve kings,” his sister Maryam said. She
had taken on herself the management of the suite of rooms they were all crowded
into. Of them all, she seemed the most content.

“I can serve kings outside of the court,” Khayan said. He
had not exactly come looking for her; he had been seeking refuge from the
importunings of people who seemed to think that he had influence with the king.
But she had been overseeing the servants on their washing-day. Amid the scents
of fresh-washed linen and damp wool, he paused to whimper at his sister. It was
no more than that, he knew it, but he had been doing much the same since he was
young enough still to seek his nurse’s breast.

Maryam had always indulged him but never spoiled him. She
went on about her smoothing and folding, with a very pretty maid to help her.
The maid slanted glances at Khayan that he could well read. If he should happen
to remember her later, she would be delighted to oblige him.

He might, at that. Barukha was a jealous woman, but in
Avaris she had had perforce to return to her kin. Protestations that she was a
priestess in training, that she could not be spared, had been set at naught by
Sarai’s gracious granting of leave. Sarai was perhaps glad to be rid of her.
Khayan was somewhat surprised by the extent of his own gladness. Barukha heated
his blood wonderfully, but she was neither a restful nor at all a safe
companion.

He was free now to cast his eye elsewhere. That was quite to
his liking. He allowed himself to meet one of the girl’s glances, and to bestow
on her the hint of a smile. She took it as he had meant. Her eyes sparkled as she
bent diligently to her work.

Maryam’s voice pierced through the distraction. “You’ll be
leaving here soon enough. Surely you can bear to be a king’s man for the little
while between.”

Khayan sighed gustily. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“Yes,” she said. “You will.”

She had dismissed him, so smoothly and with such tact that
he was well away from her before it struck him what she had done. He paused
then and laughed ruefully. Maryam kept his house wherever he was, but she did
not serve him or any man—no matter what she might want him to think.

He should be in one of the courts, gathering with others of
the lords who were in the city, to speak of things that they had spoken of
endlessly before. Matters of the kingdom, the latest embassies, and of course,
always, the question of war. Some of the young hotheads, Iannek’s agemates,
were yelling to be allowed to conquer the south of Egypt. They and their
forebears had been yelling for it for a hundred years, and no doubt would be
doing the same in another hundred. It was not practicable, that was all. Khayan
knew it. The older lords knew it. But the boys and children would not hear it.
They wanted what they wanted. They did not care what it cost, or how difficult
it might be.

Khayan had been as young as that once. He was not so old
now. But he had been riding the steppe when he might have been ramping and
snorting with the other boys. The women of his mother’s tribe had kept him in
hand, slapped him down when he got above himself, and taught him to master his
temper.

It was a pity, rather. He might have liked to be an idiot
for once. Idiots were happy creatures, as far as he could see. When they were
thwarted, they professed to misery, but even that had an air of good cheer
about it.

In that frame of mind, he made his way through the crowded
and bustling rooms. People kept stopping him with this trouble or that. Most he
could send to Maryam, a few to his mother—though they blanched at that. The
rest he put off till evening. It would make for an interrupted dinner, but that
in turn would spare him the need to attend one of the court banquets.

For the moment he was as free as he could be in the heart of
this prison. He considered hiding in the room that he had, bless the gods, to
himself. But he happened on his way up to it to collide with Iry on a stair.
She was hurtling down it just as he began to go up.

He was a middling large man and she was a small woman, but
her speed came near to knocking him flat. Only good fortune and
battle-quickness kept him on his feet, albeit winded and counting his bruises.
She clung to him lest she tumble past him down the stair.

Somehow and another it seemed most sensible to swing her up
into his arms, light weight that she was, and carry her up the way he had been
going. The passage it led to was long and very dim, with his own door at the
end of it. Hers, he knew, was somewhat nearer. But he passed it, and she did
not try to stop him.

He began to wonder if she had injured herself somehow. She
was so very still. Her eyes were shut. He quickened his step, kicked open the
door at the end of the passage, and nearly dropped her as she came to life and
wriggled bonelessly out of his grasp.

She seemed quite unharmed, after all. She looked about at
the room, which was smaller than he had grown accustomed to but still rather
larger than a tent among the tribes. The bed was discreetly hidden behind a
drapery, but she could not but know where it was. The rest at least was
harmless enough: a gilded couch in the Egyptian fashion, a table and a pair of
chairs, a chest for such of his clothing as the servants saw fit to keep close
by him, and a quite incongruous graven image of an Egyptian king.

“King Dedumose,” Iry said, tracing the characters of his
name with her finger, then enclosing it within the carved cord of the
cartouche. “He must have been king before you people came. There was a city
here, you know. You found it and built it high, but it was ours before it was
yours.”

“That’s the way of conquest,” Khayan said.

She shot a glance at him. “Do you expect me to love you for
it?”

“No,” he said. She stalked round the room, frowning at the
walls, which were hung with fine weavings. There were painted revels
underneath, he knew, but she did not look to see them.

After a little while she halted by the window, leaned deep
into the embrasure and peered out. Her voice sounded strange, coming from
within: muffled, yet with an echo in it. “The king has a window, too, but on
the other side, and much higher.”

His brows rose. “You’re high in favor, then.”

“Or the Mare is.” She slipped backwards out of the
embrasure, with little care for the way her robe slipped up, baring her leg to
the thigh.

Khayan had carefully refrained from thinking of anything
while he had her in his arms but that she might be hurt. But under such excessive
provocation, his manly parts leaped to attention. And never mind that he had
seen every part of her that there was to see.

She did not even notice the altered quality of his silence.
She said, “You’ve been there, too.”

He needed a moment to recall what she meant. That flash of
thigh had driven everything else out of his mind. But it came back, if
reluctantly. “I’ve been in the king’s favor, yes. Only those he trusts
implicitly are allowed into those chambers.”

“He shouldn’t trust me,” she said in a low voice.

He bit his tongue before he asked why she would say that. He
thought he knew. For all the lessons she had been given, the words she had
learned, the rites and prayers, the arts of war and peace, she was still
Egyptian. She could not even wear her robe as a woman of the people might.
Either it was rucked up or slipped down at an immodest angle, or she was
carrying it as if it had been a burden.