The Shepherd Kings (71 page)

He was suddenly and completely awake. All through the hunt
and the beginning of war, he had kept memory at bay, had let himself forget
that he had left Iry without a word. But it seemed she had forgiven him. Her
hands stroked down his breast and belly to grasp his wakening rod, tightening
softly round it, stroking and teasing, knowing just where to—

Iry would not know that. Only one pair of hands would tease
him precisely so.

He tensed to turn, but she held him fast. “Barukha,” he said.
“I thought you were with your father.”

“My father has gone to fight with Khamudi in the south,” she
said. “He gave me leave to go back to your mother. Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you
delighted to have me back again?”

“You should not be here.”

“Silly man,” she said indulgently. “Of course I shouldn’t.
But aren’t you glad?”

His manly organ was in bliss. The rest of him, insofar as it
had wits to think, could only see one face. And that was not Barukha’s.

Somehow, he never quite knew how, he worked himself free. He
stood swaying. Barukha lay in his bed, naked and beautiful. She stretched, and
wriggled a little, arching her back till her breasts jutted boldly at him.

“Go,” he said to her. “Let me be.”

Her smile did not fade. She raised a knee and let it fall
lazily to the side, opening herself to him, black curly hair, moist pink lips
like the petals of a flower.

He tore his eyes from that secret place. “I said, go.”

“My dear sweet man,” she said, “what’s come over you? Did
some outraged papa catch you, one night on the hunt? Did he whip you? Let me
see—let me kiss the memory away.”

“Barukha,” he said, his voice so low it was a rumble in his
chest. “I want you to go.”

At last it seemed to dawn on her that he was not toying with
her. Maybe she had not seen his face at all, only his body. And that had
obliged him by going cold. She was beautiful; she was alluring. He did not want
her.

Then she looked up past it. He did not know what she saw in
his face, but her own went still. “You really—want me—”

He nodded.

She shook her head slightly, once. “You can’t do that.”

“I am doing it.”

“I said, you can’t.” She rose to her knees amid the
coverlets. “Tell me who she is.”

Khayan set his lips together. He should deny any knowledge
of another woman. He knew that. But he could not lie. He never had been able
to. Therefore he resorted to silence.

“Tell me,” Barukha pressed him.
“Tell me!”

He would not.

She sank back on her heels. “That shouldn’t matter. Should
it? All women have to share. Men take as many as they like. I’ll share you. I
won’t like it, but it’s the way the world is. Isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to be shared,” he said.

His heart was as cold as his voice. It was true. He did not.
He had not expected that.

Barukha was beautiful. She was a marvelous lover. And gods
knew, he was far from the first that she had ever taken, nor did he expect that
he would be the last.

He did not want her. Perhaps he never truly had. What he
wanted was a slip of an Egyptian girl with neither art nor skill, but sweetness
beyond any other he had known.

He could not say that to Barukha. “Go,” he said. “If you
won’t be commanded, I beg you. Surely there’s another man who can give you what
you look for. He might even be prettier.”

She did not smile at that. She wore no expression at all.
“You’re casting me out.”

“I’m asking you to go. For your safety even more than my
own. If your father hears—”

“My father.” She laughed. It was a strange sound, light yet
brittle. “Do you know what I did, Khayan? Do you know what happened to me? When
I was shut up in his house, wrapped in veils till I was like to suffocate, and
no servants near me but women and eunuchs, I knew that I could never live like
that. I couldn’t be some old man’s harem ornament. I need a young man, a strong
man, a man who will let me have the free air. Then I knew. It came to me like
the voice of a god. I wanted you. No other man. You. When my father comes back
from the war, you must ask him for me. You’re rising high in the kingdom; the
king loves you. My father will find you worthy. You’ll see.”

“Barukha,” Khayan said in a kind of despair.

“It will be a very suitable match,” she said. “Even my
father has to see that.”

“Barukha,” Khayan said. “I can’t—”

“The bride price is high, of course. But you can pay it.
You’re a royal favorite. You can ask the king for whatever my father demands.”

“Barukha!” Khayan said sharply—with a small start as it
struck him. A name spoken thrice: so Egyptians gained power over one another.

Barukha was not one to be ruled by any man, except by force.
But she stopped her babbling. She stared at him.

“I will not marry you,” Khayan said. “I will not bed you.
Come, where are your clothes? I’ll take you back to your rooms. You sleep in my
mother’s chambers, yes?”

“Yes,” she said rather faintly.

“Good,” said Khayan. “Good. Here.” Her gown was close by,
gods be thanked: crumpled in a heap beside the bed.

He lifted it and shook it out. She made no move to take it.
With a sigh he laid it about her shoulders, lifted her unresisting arms to slip
them into the sleeves, reached to draw the front of it closed. She stirred at
his touch, turned a fraction, till her breast filled his hand. He drew back
quickly.

The robe gaped open. She made no effort to cover herself.
Quite the opposite. Her hand rose to cup her breast, stroking its nipple to
tauten it. “I’m beautiful, aren’t I?” she said.

“Very beautiful,” he said, but stiffly. With greater care
then, he drew the robe across her breast and belly, lapping it over, fastening
it as was proper and modest. “Come; I’ll take you back where you belong.”

“Yes,” she said in a voice that was half a sigh. “Do that.”

He knew better than to think that she had surrendered. But
she had yielded, he thought, to the inevitable.

Somewhat belatedly he remembered to put on a garment of his
own. The first thing that came to hand was a nightrobe like hers, light and
open. He fastened it with a cord, and reckoned that it would do. He was not
about to parade either of them through the public ways of the palace.

They went the way she must have come, through a small inner
door to a passage that led, in time, to his mother’s rooms. It was a servants’
corridor, narrow and ill-lit, but there was enough light from a lamp or two in
a niche to find his way.

Barukha clung to him, stumbling a little. It might be a
ruse, but truly, it was dark. He let her find her balance against his body.

It was not far at all, but more than far enough, in Khayan’s
estimation, before she said, “Here. My room is here.”

The door opened on a surprisingly large chamber, with an
ample bed in it, and a golden lamp. Barukha stumbled on the threshold and nigh
went down. Khayan caught at her. Her arms locked about him.

He struggled free. She flailed at him, clawing, spitting,
diving for his eyes. He flung up a hand to defend himself. It struck flesh—her face,
as if she had cast herself in its way. He drew back appalled, but she pursued
him, hammering at him, till he seized her and pulled her to him to make her
stop.

She melted against him—briefly, before he gathered himself
to pull away. Then she erupted anew. Struggling. Shrieking. Shrilling like a
mad thing. “Let me go!
Let me go
!”

He was trying desperately to do just that, but every move
she made clutched him the tighter. He clapped a hand over her mouth. “Idiot! Do
you want to—”

She bit him. He cursed. She screamed all the louder.

The outer door burst open. Faces—eyes—staring, gaping,
weapons gleaming as guards poured into the room.

Then at last, and mercifully, she ceased her shrieking. She
slumped in his arms, hands fisted in his robe. As she sank down, she took it
with her, leaving him bare to all the staring eyes.

She lay at his feet. Her own robe had given way, baring a
long lovely leg, a round white breast. It was scratched and torn. She must have
done that, somehow, in her struggles.

He looked up into the crowding faces. The shock in them
mirrored his own. He found his voice somewhere, enough of it to speak. “Someone
fetch a physician. She’s taken a fit, I think.”

His words fell dead in the silence. They were all staring,
not at her, but at him. And no wonder, with his robe at his feet, and the poor
mad creature sprawled on it. He bent to retrieve it.

Like hounds on the lion, the guards fell on him. They bore
him back and away from her, and flung him down with force enough to knock the
wind out of him. He tried to protest, to struggle, but there were too many.
They were too strong.

It only came to him once he was down and pinned, with a
guard’s sword pointed at his throat and another at his manly parts, what they
must think they had seen. A man in the women’s quarters at night, locked in
struggle with a woman, and he naked and she nearly so. If he had seen it, he
would have thought exactly the same.

He stopped fighting. They hauled him up, not gently, and
bound his hands behind his back—wrenching at his shoulders till he gasped.

“Serves you right,” one muttered. “Son of a dog.”

He clenched his jaw against a spate of words. Barukha was
still lying where he had left her, in a flock of chattering women. Those kept
glancing at him—glaring murderously, though some let their eyes linger.

He would have to try to understand. Somehow. If there was time;
if he was let live for violating a lord’s daughter in her own chamber.

Or was it? He did not recognize these women. They were all
strangers. Unless his mother had cast off all her maids and servants, these
were not his mother’s women.

The guards dragged him out before he could ask the women who
they were. He set himself to go limp, to offer no resistance. They grunted as
they took the brunt of his weight, but it was better for him than fighting.

They did not cast him in prison, perhaps because it was a
very long way down from these heights to the stronghold’s foundations. They
thrust him into a room and left him there.

There was no light in the room. It was black as the pit of
Set’s heart. Khayan lay for a while on his face where he had been flung. But
his shoulders were crying in pain. He rolled and struggled and scrambled, and
somehow got to his knees; then, with a grunt of effort, to his feet. He almost
fell again, but somehow managed to stay erect.

He stood for a moment and simply breathed. Then he moved.
Carefully, foot sliding in front of foot, groping his way around that space. It
was larger than he had expected. He barked his shin painfully against what must
have been a chair, or perhaps a chest.

There was an inner door. It yielded to the thrust of his
shoulder.

Light. It was dim, the reflection through a window of a
torch below, but it was enough to see that he was in a set of chambers much
like those in which he had been living.

He sat on the bed, because it was closest. He could not lie
down. There was nothing in the room to cut his bonds, no weapon, nothing edged
or sharp.

He sat, therefore, and let his head hang, till his shoulders
objected again. If he could have beaten them into silence, he would have.

Somewhere amid the struggle with Barukha, amid her shrieking
and carrying on, she had said something. He had not remembered it then. It came
back to him now, vivid to the point of pain. “If I can’t have you, no one
will.”

He had never thought that she was mad. He knew she was
reckless, and cared little for consequences. If her temper was roused, if she
was wild with jealousy . . .

Could jealousy compel a woman to destroy a man?

Foolish question. The more fool he, for walking into the
trap. If he had simply sent her away, she could not have done this thing; not
without explaining why she was in his chamber.

He was not dead yet. Nor had they gelded him. He was intact,
all but his honor.

~~~

They came for him much sooner than he had expected. Again
he was dragged, this time a greater distance, but up into the higher reaches of
the palace rather than down into the prisons. He knew these corridors: they led
to the king’s residence.

Of course the king would judge him. There was no higher
authority, and Khayan had been his man. Was still, if anyone knew it.

For this hour, which must be well short of dawn, the
passages were remarkably full of people. All of them stared as he stumbled
past, and whispered to one another. Next to the war, this would be the greatest
scandal they had seen in an age. A lord of high rank and great favor caught
assaulting the maiden daughter of a fellow lord—delicious. Appalling.

The king was waiting for him. Apophis looked as if he had
not slept; and perhaps he had not. His robe was a nightrobe, as if he had been
abed or about to go there.

Khayan hoped that he would never have to look into such eyes
again. Eyes that had seen all there was to see, and gained from it nothing but
sorrow.

The guards kicked Khayan’s feet from under him. He fell
hard, on bruises from the falls before. He did not try to rise. It was not that
he lacked heart to do it. He simply could not see the use in it.

“Unbind him,” the king said above him.

The guards were not happy with that. The man whose knife cut
the bonds was not careful; the blade nicked Khayan’s arm. He felt it dimly,
though his arms had gone numb. They fell lifeless to his sides.

“Lift him,” said the king.

Hard hands dragged him up. They had to hold him: his knees
had turned to water. But he could lift his head. He could do that.

The king looked him up and down. He supposed he was a
shocking sight. The guards had made certain that he struck every stair on the
ascent. The heedless swing of a fist had split his lip. One eye was swelling
shut. He did not even remember what had caused that.