The Shepherd Kings (68 page)

Iry was aware of the heat of his body, and the scent of it,
salt and musk and sweat, and the lovely pungency of horses. He was so much
larger than she—and yet, so were horses. She had no fear of them, not any
longer. She had learned not to hate them.

She could never learn not to hate the Retenu. And yet, this
man was not entirely of them. His mother’s people had never conquered the Lower
Kingdom.

He was a lord of the Retenu. He had fought and killed to
take that rank. To rule in Egypt; to set his foot on the necks of a conquered
people.

She did not care. Not so close to him, body just apart from
body, and no move from him unless she asked it first. Impossible for a man to
show such restraint; and yet he did. It was a torment: she saw how he quivered,
and how he breathed short and fast. But he was master of himself as of his
horses.

If he had broken, if he had seized her, she could have
fought him. This stillness, at such cost, broke down all her defenses.

She only had to ask. But if she asked—what then? What would
he expect of her? Or she of him?

If she could be like a man, if she could take as a man did,
for the moment, and let the rest look after itself—would she take this man?

In an instant.

She closed the space between them. Body to body then, flesh
to flesh.

He gasped as if in pain. She could feel the hard hot thing
between them, swollen as if it would burst. It was a wonder it had not done
that already.

“Do it,” she said. “Finish it.”

He shook his head. His beard brushed her forehead. Something
swelled deep inside her, rose up and grew and bloomed like a flower. But he
said, “I can’t.”

“You
can
.”

He was not going to. Maddening, contrary man.

She knew what a man did, and what a woman did. She had seen
it often enough, but never done it. Never wanted it. Never known a man from
whom she wanted to take it.

Till this one. This enemy, this lord of a hated people.

“I am asking you,” she said. “You have to accept. Yes?”

“No.” But it was not an answer; it was more a groan of pain.

She struck him with her clenched fists, hard, on the breast.
He grunted but did not fall back. “What is it?” she cried out at him. “You
don’t want me? Is that it? I’m ugly? I’m little? I’m not one—of—your—own—kind?”

Each word was a blow; and these did drive him back, step by
step, till he caught the edge of the pool and fell ignominiously onto the rim.
She swooped over him, still pummeling him. “I hate you!”

He gasped and flung up his hands, but not to thrust her
away. He pulled her close, too close to strike. So close that there was nothing
in the world but that big warm body, and the hot and urgent thing between.

There was somewhat that one did—that the body did. One
opened. One shifted. One took—with a gasp, and a long moment of
impossibility—so large, so very large, she so small. And there was pain, but
the urgency was greater. She must do this. She must.

The pain mounted till she could not bear it, till she must
retreat.

Not retreat. Surrender. Open, ease, allow. There was still
pain, but not so much. It was almost—it was—pleasure.

~~~

They lay in a tangle on the pool’s edge. He was inside
her, filling her to bursting. His eyes were wide. Appalled?

No. Astonished. Maybe afraid. But not appalled.

“Show me,” she gasped. “Show me—what—”

To that he was obedient. Even joyful.

And gentle. That, she had not expected, even knowing how he
was with his horses. He was so big and so strong, like a stallion. But he moved
gentle and slow, careful of the pain, waking the beginnings of pleasure. He
stroked her, and traced her face and shoulders with kisses. He roused all her
body, not only the part that held him within itself, till the simple brush of
lips across her lips made her gasp.

Then he began the dance that she had seen but never known,
slow at first, but quickening as she learned the way of it. It was like riding
the Mare from walk to trot to canter to gallop, the same lift and surge, and
the same pure delight in the body’s motion.

But there was more than that. Some dim part of her
remembered—there was something that happened. Something . . .

This. Like the swell of a wave. Like the hawk arrowing up
into the vault of heaven, poising at the zenith, and plummeting like a stone.
Down and down and down, headlong, blinding fast, full upon the prey. And the
strike, hard and swift, the explosion of feathers, the sudden, enormous,
breathless stillness.

Her body throbbed from the center to its outermost
extremities. She lay limp along the length of him. He was still inside her,
though softening, shrinking. She tried to hold him, but he slipped free.

He was all slack, as she was. She raised her head with great
effort and looked into his face. She had half expected that he would be asleep,
but his eyes were open. When she met them, they warmed so suddenly and so
completely that she nearly wept.

Tears always made her angry. “I suppose you smile like that
at all your women,” she said nastily.

“Only those who make my heart sing.”

“All of them,” she muttered.

He shook his head. He was still smiling. Laughing at her.

If she pummeled him again, the rest of it would happen
again; and she hurt too much for that. She kissed him instead.

His lips were twitching. He gusted laughter through the
kiss.

She was stiff with fury—and yet she caught that laughter,
caught it and could not let go of it. It flung her to the cool tiles, rolling
and kicking, roaring for no reason at all, except that the world was one grand
and glorious jest, and she was the butt of it.

Khayan was bewitched. Ensorceled. Taken altogether by
surprise, and altogether by storm.

What Iry thought . . .

His mother and his brother Iannek were merely grateful that,
whatever he had done, Iry had come out of her retreat. He doubted that they
could imagine how he had done it, or that they would be at all pleased to know.

The Mare’s servant was not enjoined to any laws but those
that bound the women of the tribe, and those set her as free as a man to love
when, and how, she pleased. Nevertheless this was not as other Mares’ servants
had been.

Sarai had told him already: “I will keep her as straitly as
any father his daughter, and protect her against any who might prey on her. She
is an innocent. I will not have her corrupted.”

And Iannek, of course, was Iannek—as headlong a young idiot
as ever sprang from a noble house. He would try to hunt down Khayan and kill
him, or something equally ridiculous.

Iry, corrupted, dishonored, and robbed of her maidenhood,
after succumbing to fits of laughter, sat up hiccoughing and fighting off gusts
of giggles, and seemed to realize just then that she had fetched up beside him.
She stared at him, all of him, and then down at herself. Her eyes widened a
little. “I—I’m—”

She touched the blood that stained her thigh. For an instant
he thought she would cry, or scream. But she only stared.

With all the gentleness that was in him, he brought water
from the pool, and a soft cloth, and washed the blood away. She let him do
that, unresisting, till he began to draw back. Then her hand fell over his,
stopping it on her thigh. His breath caught. She did not want him to think what
he was thinking—surely she did not.

“You may want,” he said carefully, “for a day or two, to do
what you would do in your courses. Because sometimes—”

“Sometimes it goes on.” She nodded. “I know. I had that
lesson. Since, your sister said, I likely wouldn’t have learned it from my own
mother.”

“My sister? Maryam?”

“Sadana.” Iry took his hand in both of hers and lifted it to
rest between her breasts. Her heart was beating a little quickly, her breath
coming a little shallow, but she was remarkably composed. “I’m not going to
command you to come back. But if you should wish to . . . you
may.”

“Will you welcome me?”

Her breath shuddered as she drew it in. “I—if you want me—”

“How could I not want you?”

“But I’m not—”

“Stop that,” he said. It was not perhaps a wise or a
respectful thing to do, but he gathered her in his arms, drew her in like a
child, curled in his lap with her head on his shoulder.

She did not resist, not at all. She sighed in fact, and
nestled against him.

“What do we do now?” she asked. Her voice was lighter than
usual, as childlike as her comfort in his lap, but he knew better than to think
that her mind was a child’s.

“What do we do?” he echoed. “Why, whatever you like.”

“No,” she said with a hint of impatience. “Tell me what I
should do. Should I walk away? Should I pretend that this never happened? What
is proper? Is anything proper?”

“In the east,” he said slowly, “you would have several
choices. You could send me away as unsatisfactory. You could express yourself
pleased, and invite me back into your bed. You could even, if you were truly
delighted, order me to move myself and my belongings into your tent.”

“And you? Would you have any say in it at all?”

“I could refuse to come back, though I might not insist on
coming if you forbade me.”

“What if I ordered you to move into my—not tent; my rooms,
then. What would you do?”

“It would be a scandal,” he said.

“Would you refuse?”

“No,” he said. He did not know what he would say until he
said it, but that was the answer that came to him. It was not the reasonable
answer, or the sensible one. It was the one that his heart spoke, as he met
that clear and level stare.

“What if I ordered you to go away and never speak to me
again?”

In spite of himself, his belly clenched. “I . . .
would obey.”

“Willingly?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

“Do I know that?” She frowned slightly. Her head tilted.
“You don’t lie, do you? Many in this court, they live in a fabric of lies.
Everything they do is false, sometimes a little, sometimes entirely. They dance
a long dance of words that are not true, and faces that are masks, and smiles
that never reach the eyes.”

“That isn’t so in an Egyptian court?”

“I’ve heard it’s so wherever there are kings,” she said.
“But you tell the truth. You must be well hated.”

“Am I?”

“I haven’t noticed,” she said.

Of course she had not. She was above the petty maneuverings
of the court.

Khayan was, he realized, utterly besotted with her. It
struck him with the force of a revelation, though it had been clear enough for
a while that he found her more than merely interesting. As he looked at her
now, his heart melted, and another part of him would have been delighted to
continue what they had begun not so long before.

She did not notice that any more than she had noticed
whether Khayan was loved or hated in the court of Avaris. Women were like that.
They could think of a dozen things at once, and ignore the one that, to a man,
was most important.

He sighed faintly.

She heard that. “You must have somewhere to be,” she said.

He shrugged. “Nowhere more important, or that I’d rather
be.”

“That’s charming,” she said, “but I’m sure you’re wanted in
many more places than this one. If I promise to behave myself, and go to my
lessons with your mother, will you go where you were going before you rescued
me?”

“Was it a rescue?” he asked.

“From myself,” she said. She paused as if to gather courage.
Then she said, “Tonight we both should rest. Tomorrow night . . .
come to me. If you will. And only if.”

“I will come,” he said. “My word on it.”

The light in her face almost felled him. It was all he could
do to dress—with her help, which flustered him far more than he ever wanted her
to see—and make order of himself, and gather his wits to face the greater world.

She all but pushed him out the door, with a promise to
follow after a judicious while, properly and modestly attired. That, from her,
was no small promise.

It was almost pain to walk away from her, to become a lord
of the people again, to think as a man and a warrior, and not as a lover. He
had to pause once, in a corridor mercifully deserted, and lean against the cool
stone of the wall, and simply breathe.

Women did not do such things to him. He had loved, so he
thought, and more than once: a priestess of the tribe, a chieftain’s daughter,
and yes, the lovely and wanton Barukha, whom—thank the gods—he was not likely
to find in his bed tonight; her father was keeping her close. He had had great
pleasure of them, and great joy. But when he was not with them, he seldom
thought of them, except when his manly organ grew weary of waiting for him to
notice their absence.

This woman he thought of often. He always had, even in the
beginning, when she was a baffling and excessively forward child, a slave among
his slaves. And of course once the Mare chose her, he had to think of her. He
was one of her teachers. But what he was thinking of teaching her now had
little to do with chariotry, or with the mastery of horses—unless that were of
mares in season.

He had to stop this. He had to clear his mind. It was late,
but not so late that he could let himself slip out of the thing that he had
been set to do when his mother sent for him and bade him rouse the Mare’s
servant from her decline. He sincerely doubted that she had intended him to do
it as he had, but she would surely be pleased with Iry’s new diligence.

If Iry told his mother what he had done . . .
why then, he could only die once.

With a short bark of laughter, he thrust himself upright,
shook his robes into place, and strode onward with new and firmer purpose.

~~~

The gods, it seemed, had been kind. The king’s guards
greeted him as amiably as always. One, who had shared a jar or three of wine
and a game or six of the bones with Khayan, grinned at him and said, “You’re in
luck, my lord. He was out later than he expected; he’s just come in. There’s
men with him, but he said to send you in when you came.”