The Shepherd Kings (61 page)

“May I take that for a promise?”

He nodded.

“Then I will do my part. That one will leave here as soon as
I can contrive a message—and his father will know what I did and why. Whatever
consequences there may be for that, I take on myself.”

“But—I don’t ask you to—”

“But you did,” she said with composure. “It’s no matter.
You, I need. He’s better disposed of where his father can keep watch over him.”

“He won’t be killed?”

“Not yet,” she said, “nor by my asking.”

Kemni sighed a little. “It might be best if he were. But . . .
not for my asking, either, or by my doing. I never wanted this.”

“The gods shape us,” said Ariana, “and Earth Mother brings
us forth. What we do thereafter, we do of our own will. He will pay whatever
price the gods—or the god his father—will set. Not you. Not I.”

Kemni bowed to that. There was little else he could do.

~~~

It was a long night, endless as he might have thought,
measured in Iphikleia’s slow breaths. Ariana had gone away at Kemni’s urging,
to rest; and she had promised that she would see to the matter of Gebu before
she came back. He kept watch alone.

Now and then a servant came, to bring food or drink, or to
see that Iphikleia was tended. None of them stayed. In the hours between, the
silence sank deep.

Somewhere in the deep night, Kemni stretched out on the bed,
close by her but not touching, save for his hand that he twined with her thin
cold one. He did not sleep, he was sure of that. Nor did he dream. He had
dreamed enough for one lifetime.

As the hours darkened toward dawn, and the cold crept in,
the cold of the Red Land that overcame the Black Land then and most strongly,
something changed. Kemni lay unmoving, as if any motion, any sound, might
disturb whatever had roused him.

It was silent. Utterly silent. The only sound was the
beating of blood in his ears.

No breath. She was not breathing. She had stopped.

A great cry welled up in him, welled and crested and held
just short of bursting free.

She gasped. Convulsed.

He caught at her. She was breathing hard, but breathing
deep, and her eyes were open. They were not quite empty of self. He watched
them fill with his face.

“Beautiful man,” she said with the whisper of a breath.

“Don’t die,” he said. He was not pleading with her. It was a
command.

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Don’t talk, either.”

But that, she would not obey. “Tell me what—” She shifted,
and gasped. “I hurt!”

“You are alive,” he sighed.

She lay very still. “I remember—he had a knife. I didn’t
want you to know—”

“Idiot.”

“Yes. But it would have distracted you. Is he—”

“Ariana has him. He’ll be dealt with.”

“Killed?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked.”

She nodded. Her eyes closed; she sighed, carefully. She was
still awake. “And . . . the rest?”

“It’s ended.”

“Tell me—”

“Later. When you’ve rested.”

“I’ve been doing nothing but rest.”

Kemni did not answer that, nor argue with it. He moved a
little closer, till his body rested lightly against hers. She sighed and let
him take her in his arms, with great care, because even that little movement
caused her pain. “Only tell me,” she said, “how bad is it? Will I live?”

“I pray so.”

“Of course you do.” Her lips brushed his shoulder.
“Beautiful man. I love you immoderately.”

“You’re babbling.”

“While I babble, I’m alive.”

She was frightened. Bright, strong, indomitable Iphikleia,
who had never been afraid of anything, was afraid of this; of the dark that
took every living creature, if not sooner, then later.

“You won’t die,” he said to her, putting into it every scrap
of power or conviction that he could muster. “If any prayer of mine has ever
mattered, or any word I’ve spoken, or any rite or duty or service to the gods,
they will not let you die. On all my souls I swear it.”

“Why,” she said. “You do love me.”

“You doubted it?”

“No,” she said. She let her head rest on his shoulder, and
yawned as a child will, wide and unabashed. “I’m sleepy. Will you watch over
me?”

“Always.”

“Then I can sleep,” she said. “Promise you’ll be here when I
wake.”

“I promise.”

She nodded against his shoulder, sighed and yawned again,
and slipped into sleep.

It was sleep, not death. Deep and healing sleep, within the
circle of his arms.

Gebu left on the second morning after Iphikleia was cut
down. A messenger had come to him, purporting to be from his father, and
commanding his presence at once in the court of Thebes. Kemni’s fear, that Gebu
would suspect at last that he was unmasked, seemed unfounded. The prince
prepared to depart with suitable though not excessive speed.

In the evening before he left, he sent a man to Kemni,
inviting him to share a farewell feast. Kemni declined, politely. “The lady
whom I serve,” he told the servant, “is still very ill. I’ve promised not to
leave her side.”

The servant bowed to that, which was manifestly true.

Kemni was not surprised, some time later, to find Gebu
himself at the door like a supplicant. Iphikleia was asleep, as she had been
much of the time—healing sleep, Imhotep said, and forbade anyone to disturb it.

Kemni hated to leave her. But Gebu was not going to go away.
Nor could Kemni escape him. To do that would be to betray everything.

He could keep a bold face for an hour. Surely he could do
that.

He went to the door therefore, set finger to lips and tilted
his head toward Iphikleia, and let Gebu follow him back into the outer room.
Gebu’s expression mimed sympathy exceeding well; and it allowed Kemni to
forswear a smile, or any warmth of greeting.

“Is she well?” Gebu asked as they sat in the light of the
lamp-cluster, and a maid brought wine.

“Not well,” Kemni answered, “but she lives. Imhotep thinks
she may recover.”

“So sudden a fever,” Gebu said with a sigh, turning his cup
in his hands, gazing down into the swirl of wine. Kemni tensed, but Gebu did
not tax Kemni with the lie. “I pray it leaves her quickly.”

“So do we all,” Kemni said.

He let the conversation stop there, leaving it for Gebu to
resume if he pleased. Exhaustion was his excuse, and fear for his lady.

Gebu obliged willingly enough. “I leave in the morning. My
father has matters for me to settle, matters of the war and the kingdom. I’d
ask you to come with me, but they tell me you’re needed here. And,” he said, “I
know you’ll not leave her.”

“No,” said Kemni. “I won’t. I can’t.”

“My poor brother,” Gebu said with more warmth than pity.
“I’ll pray for her in Amon’s temple, when I come there.”

“I thank you,” Kemni said.

“It’s the least I can do,” said Gebu. “Have you any messages
for me to carry? Any word you’d like to send to anyone? My father, even?”

Kemni tensed. Here if anywhere would be betrayal—would be
suspicion. “Just tell them,” he said, “and him, that I do my best for the war
and the kingdom.”

“I’ll do that,” Gebu said.

Kemni bowed his head; let it droop, in fact, with weariness
that was not at all feigned. “May I—”

“Yes,” Gebu said. “Go back to her. Fare you well, brother.”

“Farewell,” Kemni said. He could say that much, in a fading
whisper of a voice.

“Rest,” Gebu said. “Be at ease. She will live.”

Kemni bit his lip before he cried out against this liar,
this traitor, this speaker of false words. His flight looked, he hoped, like a
weary plod back to his lady’s side.

He did not embrace the man who had been his brother. When
the door shut, it shut with Gebu on the other side of it. And if the gods were
kind, he would not again force Kemni to wear the face of amity when all beneath
was hate.

~~~

Gebu was gone. Iphikleia recovered slowly. Much sooner
than Kemni would have wished, she pressed him to return to all of his duties,
not simply those he could not pass off to whoever was convenient. The closer
the war came, the more of those there were, and the more completely he must
devote himself to them.

Every morning he woke in dread that she would take a turn
for the worse. Every night, as he fell into bed beside her after a long day’s
labor, he prayed that he would wake to find her yet alive. She had had a fever,
as if to prove the truth of the story that people were to believe, and it had
weakened her terribly; but she had rallied. She was, Imhotep insisted,
improving. But slowly, so slowly. Breath by breath and day by day, till she was
a pale shadow with great dark hollow eyes.

“Wounds in the belly are the worst,” Imhotep said wearily,
one morning when Kemni should have been doing a dozen things at once, but
lingered instead to fret over Iphikleia. “They fester most often, and too
often, when you think the patient has recovered or near to it, he dies all
unlooked for. But,” he said before Kemni could cry out against the words, “if
she were going to do any of that, she would have done it a good while since.”

“Then why is she still so weak?” Kemni demanded. “Why isn’t
she getting better?”

“She is getting better,” Imhotep said. “The wound and then
the fever weakened her greatly. It will take time for her to be strong again.”

“How much time? The rest of her life?”

“I do hope not,” Imhotep said. “Now go, before you wake her.
Don’t you have chariots to drive? Wild horses to tame? Recruits to beat into
submission?”

Kemni sucked in a breath of pure rage.

“Go,” said the man who was, people said, the living image of
the healer-god Imhotep—who had also, once, been a mortal man. “Train your
charioteers. Trust me to keep your beloved alive.”

There was nothing Kemni could say to that, that Imhotep
would listen to. He turned on his heel and stalked out.

Anger carried Kemni through much of that morning. He knew
that people were walking shy of him, but he did not care. While he did what he
was required to do, that was enough.

Unfortunately, anger could not carry him through with the
horses. They took it from him and returned it tenfold, in rearing and fighting
and bitter resistance. For them he had to put anger aside; to be calm, to speak
softly. In spite of himself, he left the anger behind somewhere, lost on the
trampled field amid the turning of the chariot-wheels.

In that state of hard-won calm, he saw a messenger coming at
the run, one of the lightfoot boys who ran errands about the Bull of Re. This
one’s eyes were so wide the whites showed all around them, and he was
desperately out of breath, as if he had run without stopping all the way from
the river.

It was a while before he could speak. When he could, Kemni
understood that that was indeed the case: he had come up from the river with
profoundly startling message. “The queen,” he said, “the Great Royal
Wife—Nefertari—she—”

Queen Nefertari had come down from Thebes, in secret, on no
less a ship than
Dancer
. Her
appearance and attendance were those of a woman of good birth, but certainly
not royal—as if she had taken passage to visit kin downriver, and the Cretan
ship had been convenient, and its captain perhaps a little smitten with her, so
that he offered her the best of his hospitality.

So much secrecy. So many ruses. Kemni knew that he was
bitter, but he was in no mood to care. He had difficulty even being glad to see
Naukrates, whom he was fond of. The captain was sailing back toward the sea,
intending to catch the Cretan fleet.

For the war was beginning. It was sooner than Kemni had
expected, still some time from the harvest, but the king was determined,
Nefertari said.

She spoke to them after the feast of welcome, sitting in
Ariana’s garden in the fading daylight: Ariana and Naukrates, Kemni and, by no
one’s summons but with everyone’s acquiescence, Seti. In this guise of a lady
of high birth but mortal breeding, Nefertari seemed a warmer, more human
creature; but Kemni still could see the hard bright light of divinity behind
those eyes.

“When you sent back his son with word of his betrayal,” she
said, “my lord undertook to search out the roots of it, and discover its
branches. He did nothing, as you so wisely suggested, choosing rather to let
them flourish in ignorance for a yet a while. But it made him think. They might
have failed in this one thing, but there must be others that had succeeded, or
were in train. He determined then to move more quickly than anyone expected. To
press for the war now, while there is still some chance of surprise.”

“But are we ready, lady?” Kemni asked, since no one else
seemed inclined to. “Can we fight the war so soon?”

“Can you?” she asked him, question for question.

He began to say that he could not, but some vestige of
prudence made him pause. So many preparations, so many things still to do, and
the recruits—the horses—the chariots—

“I think . . .” he said. “I think, if I must,
I can. But it will be difficult.”

“But not impossible.”

“No,” he said. “Not quite.”

“Then you will do it,” she said. “In a month, at the full
moon, the army will come past the Bull of Re. You will be ready for it.”

So soon. Sooner even than he had expected. He breathed deep,
to steady himself, and prayed the gods that it could all be done in time. The
king would expect it. Kemni must, somehow, grant him what he wished.

“Will you stay with us?” he asked the queen.

She nodded. “The war’s heart will be here, hidden for the
moment, but beating strong. When my lord comes, it will go with him into the Lower
Kingdom. Then all will be as the gods decree.”

“Do you think,” Kemni asked after a pause, “that this can
remain a secret even so long?”

“I rather doubt it,” she said. “But the later the discovery,
the better for us.”