The Shepherd Kings (60 page)

Kemni inclined his head. The man bowed low as was proper for
a man of low birth before a lord. His eyes, Kemni noticed, were bright and
alert. This was not a dull-witted man.

“Amonmose knows what we need of him,” said Seti. “He’s
willing to do it.”

“Are you?” Kemni asked the man directly.

He nodded. “It’s for the queen,” he said, “and for the Great
House.”

“And for gold?”

“And for gold,” Amonmose said. “My wife is dead of the
coughing sickness. My sons died of it. I’ll be dead soon enough—but not before
I do something of worth in the world. When they weigh my soul against the
feather of Ma’at, when I come to the judgment, I would like one thing to give
it substance.”

“This thing will weigh you down with blessings for all of
the life after life,” Kemni said.

“I do hope so,” said Amonmose.

“Are you ready, then?” Kemni asked him.

“As ready as I can be,” he answered.

“So,” said Kemni. “Let it begin.”

Seti was already gone. While they waited, Amonmose was
silent except for an outburst of coughing. Kemni lent what aid he could, which
was terribly little. As Amonmose got his breath back, a step sounded without.
Kemni steeled himself not to stiffen; composed his face into a smile of
greeting for Gebu.

The prince brought with him a breath of the outer air, dust and
sun and the last of the day’s heat. He was still in his charioteer’s garb, as
if he had come direct from the field. “Brother!” he said. “The lady. Is she—”

“She lives,” Kemni said, though it caught in his throat.
“She’s very ill; she may not recover. But for now, she lives.”

“Ah,” said Gebu with every appearance of honest relief.
“That’s well. May the gods grant she recovers completely.”

Kemni bowed his head to that. But he lifted it almost at
once. “Brother,” he said, and he did not choke on the word. “This man is a
messenger, he says, from Thebes. He’s asked leave to speak with you.”

“That’s well,” Gebu said. No flicker of guilt marred his
face, nor did he seem perturbed that Kemni knew of the messenger’s existence.

Why should he? Messengers came from Thebes often enough, and
some claimed to bear messages that the prince must hear in solitude. Kemni left
him to this one as he had a time or two before, with every possible appearance
of goodwill, and a promise to join him in a little while for the daymeal.

Once he was out of the room, he slipped into the one behind
it, which happened—and not by coincidence—to be well within earshot of what
passed in the workroom. Such rooms, Kemni knew, were common in palaces: places
from which the ladies might listen to the affairs of their lords, either for
their own advantage or so that they might offer advice without the intrusion of
their presence on matters of state. “Or,” as Iphikleia had said once,
“betraying to fools of men how much of the world is ruled by women.”

It served Kemni well now. If he shrank from it, he
remembered Iphikleia, and the knife that had struck her down. He sat very still
in that airless box of a room, ear pressed to the wall.

The voices came clearly, perhaps more clearly than if he had
sat in the room with them: Amonmose’s somewhat thin and interrupted with
coughing, Gebu’s deeper, stronger, and somewhat peremptory. He was not affable
to this man as he was to those he reckoned his equals. “Tell me,” he said, “why
you came so publicly, when you had been given orders to come to me in secret.”

“My lord,” Amonmose said with a degree of trembling, but
firm enough for all that, “I did try, but there was no way in but through the
gate, and the guards are watchful. I thought it best to be public then, and so
avoid suspicion.”

Gebu grunted. “The gods protect fools. And there’s no harm
done. I’ll see you housed for the night, and set on your way in the morning,
with the things you were to carry with you.”

“As my lord wills,” Amonmose said. “But it might be best if
I did what I came to do, and left in the night. There’s a place nearby where I
can wait till morning; then go on with no one to notice.”

Kemni held his breath. If Gebu ordered Amonmose to stay, he
would have no choice but to obey. That would harm nothing, but it would prolong
the game, and sharpen the risk of discovery.

But Gebu said, “Very well. Some would call you a madman for
daring the things that walk the dark, but worse things might walk the daylight,
after all.”

“You think anyone here suspects?” Amonmose asked—the fool,
the reckless fool.

Gebu answered him calmly enough. “I think not. What is there
to suspect? I’m the good prince, the loyal son and servant, the novice
charioteer.”

“Good,” said Amonmose, and Kemni remembered to breathe
again. “I was asked to be sure of that. For safety’s sake, you understand.”

“I understand,” Gebu said. “Very well, then. I’ll fetch
what’s needed. Stay here and wait. If anyone comes, tell him you’re waiting on
my pleasure. I’ll have food and drink fetched, to make it more plausible.”

“My lord is generous,” Amonmose said.

Kemni heard Gebu go: the footsteps receding, and Amonmose’s
long, audible sigh. Kemni thought of speaking to him, but thought better of it.
There might be a spy, or Gebu might return unexpectedly. Conspiracies bred
suspicion.

Safest then to keep silent, and to wait as Amonmose waited,
though the time seemed endless. A servant came with food and drink—fortunate
for Amonmose; Kemni’s stomach growled like a dog, demanding its own dinner. But
that he could not give it until this thing was done.

More than once Kemni knew that Gebu had guessed that all was
not what it seemed; that the true messenger had been found, or had escaped;
that—worst of all—Iphikleia had died while he sat there in useless stillness,
waiting for the game to be ended.

He was perilously close to leaping up and bolting when
Gebu’s steps returned. They were brisk, no slowness of reluctance, and he was
alone as before. No guards to destroy the impostor.

“My lord,” Amonmose said, with a rustle as if he rose from
where he had been sitting.

“Sit, sit,” Gebu said. “Here, I’ve brought what you’re to
carry. Be sure you keep it safe.”

“As always, my lord,” Amonmose said.

“Well then,” said Gebu. “The gods protect you, and favor
your journey.” It was a dismissal—and such a one as to knot Kemni’s belly.

As if any god could favor such treason. As if any god would.

Amonmose left the room as he had been instructed, and let
Gebu think that he had found his way out through one of the gardens with Gebu’s
guidance. But once Gebu was well deceived, Amonmose found Kemni where they had
agreed to meet, in a stable outside the wall, new-built and occupied by only a
handful of horses.

Seti had gone to drift for a while in Gebu’s shadow, to be
certain that no suspicion tainted him. There was no one in the stable at this
hour of the night. The one man who should have been on guard had been lured
away on an errand that would keep him occupied for a little time.

Kemni was alone, then, and Amonmose found him among the
horses, resting for these few moments in their peaceful presence. The man’s
eyes rolled white at the sight of them; he stopped short, as if his feet had
failed him.

Kemni had forgotten what fear the rest of his people had for
these great gentle creatures. He left them regretfully, but Amonmose was too
stark with terror to be coaxed closer. He breathed a long sigh when Kemni came
to stand in front of him. “My lord, it’s done,” he said. “I have the letters.”

And so he did, wrapped in the pack with the golden collar.
“Did the prince say anything,” Kemni asked, “about the number of tokens?”

Amonmose shook his head, a shift of shadow in the light of
Kemni’s one small lamp. “No. He gave me the packet, that was all.”

Kemni breathed his own relief. “He never looked. Thank the
gods. Here, I’ll take these, with thanks to you for winning them. You’ll go as
we bade you, yes? Rest as you can where you told the prince you would, and go
some distance in the morning. Seti will come to you on the road and set you on
your new way. You are still determined to go as far as Nubia?”

“I always wanted to see it,” Amonmose said. “If the gods
grant I live that long, then I’m content. If not, I’ve earned a reward with
this thing. I’ll ask that my spirit complete the journey.”

Kemni regarded him half in amusement and half in respect.
“Well, and why not? I’m sure they’ll grant what you ask. But go now, and may
the gods protect you—the gods of good faith and loyal service.”

“And the gods of gold,” Amonmose said with a flicker of wry
laughter. “Don’t let your man forget that part of it.”

“By my name, he will not,” Kemni said.

Amonmose was content. He and Kemni between them restored the
weight of his pack with stones that Kemni had brought for the purpose and bound
it anew. He shouldered it then, grunting a little for it was heavy, and slipped
out into the night.

When he was gone, and no sound to be heard above the night
noises, or beneath them either, Kemni allowed himself a moment’s boneless
collapse. But he could not linger. Though he craved sleep, he must not succumb
to it. Not till he knew what he must know.

~~~

She lived still. Lamps were lit about her, many more than
were strictly needed, but the light was blessed. Imhotep had gone—to rest,
Ariana said, though her own eyes were hollow, her voice thin with exhaustion.

“You let him go?”

Kemni must have sounded grimmer than he knew. Ariana bridled
a little, though she was too tired for anger. “There’s nothing he can do that I
can’t do as well. It’s all in the gods’ hands.”

“I pray that’s so,” Kemni said. He sank down beside the bed,
in the chair that, he remembered vaguely, Imhotep had claimed for himself while
he was there. “It’s done. The messenger has gone. In the morning Seti will
complete the plan. And then . . .”

“And then,” she said, “we go on.”

“I don’t know if I can,” said Kemni. It came to him as
something he had been thinking of for a long while, though he had not even
shaped the thought before. “I know we agreed. We’ll let him think all’s well,
and betray nothing of what we know, until the time comes when we can destroy
him.”

“After the war has begun,” Ariana said, “when there’s no
danger of its being stopped. Unless there’s more to the plot than we know.”

Kemni shook his head. “I can’t do it, my lady. I can’t
pretend to be his brother, to love him, trust him. Not knowing what he is, and
what he’s done.”

“You’ve known it for rather a while,” she said, “and he’s
not suspected.”

“But now I
know
,”
Kemni said. “Lady, please. I can’t do it.”

“That is difficult,” she said. “I can’t let you run away
again—I need you here. And I can’t send him away without a plausible excuse.”

“Might not the king summon him to Thebes? He is a prince.
Surely there’s something that he’s required for, away in the city.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t you rather he was here, where
we can keep him in sight, than there, where he can plot the gods know what?”

“But there,” said Kemni, “the king can watch him, once it’s
known that there’s something to watch for. And he won’t learn any of our
secrets here.”

“He and his fellows were plotting under the king’s very
nose. Do you think it would be any better in Thebes?”

“I wonder if the king knew, but for some reason chose to let
it continue. Maybe he expected us to stop the messenger?”

“He is a god,” Ariana conceded. “But—”

“Suppose,” said Kemni, “that you contrive a summons from the
king—and while you do that, send a messenger to Thebes with word of all that’s
happened here. Then when the prince comes there, the king will know what there
is to know, and be prepared for him.”

“What if the king won’t do as we ask him?”

“I think he will,” Kemni said—which was a great presumption,
but he could not help it. He had trusted Gebu with his life, and Gebu had
become a traitor. What if the king had no more honor than that?

The king was the king, the living Horus. Kemni must trust
him, or trust nothing in the world.

Ariana pondered what he had said. While the silence
stretched, he bent toward Iphikleia who lay unmoving as she had done since he
came there, and laid his palm softly against her cheek. Her skin was cold,
though not quite as cold as death. She breathed, but faintly, almost
imperceptibly.

Imhotep had warned him that she would lie so; that the
potions he had given her would bank the fire of life in her, and cause it to
burn low—the better, he had said, to preserve her body’s strength. She was pale
and shrunken, her face too still, its beauty leached away. And yet he loved her
more than he ever had, loved her with force that shook him to the soul.

She would have died for him, for his dream that she had
believed in even more strongly than he had. She might still die. Death’s claws
were sunk in her heart. Imhotep’s art and his magic might not be enough to win
her free of it.

Kemni had only love to offer her. Love, and anger. If the gods
had any care for that, then maybe they would let her live. And if not, not.

It was a cold world. Cold and dark, if she was not to be in
it. His brother a traitor, his kin dead or conquered—what did he have,
anywhere, but this one woman?

Ariana spoke beyond her, startling him out of his
maundering. “If I do as you ask, promise me something.”

“If I can,” Kemni said.

Her lips twitched. “Or if you will? Very well. Promise me,
if you can or will, that you will stay in this world. No matter what happens.”

“Even if there is nothing left for me?”

“I would hope that I am something: I and our king.”

Kemni lowered his eyes. Her tone had not been aggrieved, nor
was she rebuking him. And yet he felt most thoroughly chastised.