Year of the Hyenas (34 page)

The prince
entered the
lagoon alone, paddling the skiff himself. Semerket was dimly surprised
to see that the glowering Assai was not with him. “Everything is just
as you want it, Mother,” the prince called out. “They’re coming now.”

“Wonderful,”
she
exclaimed. Tiya moved to cling to one of the gilded lotus columns that
bore the boat’s canopy. She called out across the lagoon, “Nakht,
steward of all the king’s palaces! Welcome!”

A distant
voice barked
out to her. “Hail, Tiya! Queen of kings!” Semerket, raising his head,
saw Nakht entering the lagoon. Semerket snorted at the sight of him,
immaculate in his starched, white hunting habit, the picture-perfect
nobleman. Semerket thanked the gods for the excellent wine he had
consumed; even the presence of Naia’s idiot husband could not disturb
him.

“Hail, Paser,
vizier
of Egypt! Welcome!”

Semerket
blinked,
overtaken in befuddled surprise to see the fat mayor of the Eastern
City, Paser, enter the thicket of reeds. What was he doing so far from
his bailiwick? He noticed how the mayor’s skiff listed to one side
under his weight, and Semerket chuckled immoderately.

“Iroy, high
priest of
Egypt!” Another boat entered the lagoon. Semerket had seen the man
before, and he tried to remember where. In the warmth of the marsh his
thoughts oozed about in his mind like thick clay. He closed his eyes to
concentrate. The answer came to him slowly—the man was Nenry’s
father-in-law, or uncle… something… And he was the high priest of
Sekhmet, not—what had Tiya called him? “High priest of Egypt.”

Semerket sat
up,
removing the garland of flowers from his brow. The maids tried to pull
him back to lie upon the deck again, but he brushed away their hands,
trying to make his mind work. A grain of fear crept into his soul. The
titles the queen called out to the men were not correct; it was as
though they had been secretly promoted during the night… as though all
their superiors were suddenly dead and out of their way…

“Hail, Tiya,
queen of
kings!” Another boat had entered the lagoon. Semerket recognized the
whining voice of Neferhotep even before he saw him. The fear, which had
been a trickle, now surged through Semerket’s veins.

But why, he
asked
himself, why
should
he be so filled with
terror? He knew the explanation was tantalizingly near, just within
reach, and he closed his eyes to concentrate—but with the wine pounding
in his skull, the white, harsh sunlight searing his eyes…

“Is it coming
together
for you, Semerket?”

His eyes
flashed open.
Tiya stood over him, the dazzling sun flaring behind her head like the
coronet of a goddess. He blinked, and in a trick of sunlight Semerket
saw the red fangs in her dimpled smile. In that moment of absolute
clarity he realized that his nightmares had become reality—that the
lioness had at last caught him in her grip.

Tiya bent down
to him
and he winced, closing his eyes, expecting her to slash his throat with
her fangs just as she had tried to do a hundred times in his dreams.
But her face was kindly and her voice was as beautiful as ever.

“Why?” he
whispered up
to her.

“You found us
out,
Semerket,” she murmured.

I didn’t find
you out!
he wanted to shout at her. The killer of Hetephras still is free! But
he knew now that they were far from concerned with whoever had killed
the old priestess. It was something else. What had he stumbled across
to make the most powerful personages in Egypt converge in a marsh, with
him the cynosure of their attentions?

Concentrate,
he told
himself fiercely.

There could be
only
one answer: the stolen treasure in the tomb. What else could it be? Yet
this too made no sense. What need had these persons in the lagoon for
more riches? With the exception of Neferhotep, they were among the
wealthiest people in the nation. So that was the wrong question. He
must ask himself, instead, what was worth more to them than gold?

He exhaled,
suddenly
knowing the answer. There could be only one: power.

Semerket
stared across
the lagoon, and saw his suspicions confirmed in their faces. Nakht,
Paser, Iroy, Pentwere, even the queen herself— they were using the
stolen treasure to finance their own schemes. Only days before,
Semerket had told his brother that he sensed conspiracy afoot.

What kind of
conspiracy did they plan, how far was its thrust, and against whom? The
wine in his blood was no longer a hindrance to perception; instead it
allowed his mind to freely assemble disparate facts and odd pieces of
information into a suddenly coherent whole.

Semerket heard
the
distant prattling voice of the librarian Maadje in his mind, gossiping
away to him in the House of Life. “When Pharaoh married her, it was
with the promise that
her
sons would inherit…” But Pharaoh had
reneged on his
agreement, instead choosing his pale-skinned son of the foreign-born
Queen Ese as his heir. Then he heard that same crown prince speaking:
“The tainted blood of Twos-re and Amen-meses is still alive in Egypt,
Semerket, make no mistake…”

Rising
unbidden in his
mind, he saw again the tiny portrait of Pharaoh Amen-meses in the tomb
beneath the tomb. Semerket stared across the lagoon and saw in Prince
Pentwere’s face, and in the softer lines of his mother’s, the same
fiercely handsome features he had seen in the portrait… and Semerket
visibly flinched.

Tiya was the
most
royal woman in Egypt; Semerket had heard that description of her all
his life. He had never stopped to question it, nor wonder how she
earned such a distinction. But what other reason had Ramses for
marrying her in the first place? It was a time-honored tradition for
pharaohs not born in the Golden House to marry the daughters and
granddaughters of the previous line, to bolster their own claims. The
criminal Twos-re was alive in Tiya—Semerket saw that clearly now—the
ferocious woman who had slain her husband in the pursuit of power.

And there it
was, the
thing he had so unwittingly uncovered, from a clue found in the
deliberately obscured past—the thing they were so afraid of his
knowing. The accusation rose to his lips:

“You’re going
to kill
Pharaoh!”

Tiya gasped
slightly,
backing away from him. For a moment her eyes were full of panic. She
spoke angrily to the men in the lagoon. “Didn’t I tell you he should be
feared? But he was only a drunken sot, you insisted, incapable of
finding his own backside, much less—”

“Don’t say
anything
more, Mother!” Pentwere pleaded suddenly from his boat.

From across
the small
lagoon he heard Nakht speak reassuringly to the prince. “Oh, this
Semerket would never tell, Your Majesty,” he said in his clipped,
aristocratic tones. “Our plan is safe.”

“Don’t be so
sure,
Nakht!” Semerket yelled.

Nakht replied
as if he
spoke to a trained baboon. “But if you told, Semerket, Naia would be
put to death along with us. It’s the law. You let her know yourself,
didn’t you?” A cordial smile broke out on his blandly handsome face.
“And thank you—if you hadn’t warned her when you did, we’d never have
guessed how much you knew.”

The priest
Iroy could
not contain himself any further, and spoke up impatiently from his
boat. “Can’t we end this now? We all know the real reason he won’t
tell—he’ll be dead. It’s why we’re all here, isn’t it, to see him die?”

“Iroy!”
chastised
Tiya. “Don’t be crude.”

The scribe
Neferhotep’s thin, supplicating voice penetrated the glade. “Might I
remind the august queen that we have very little time? Tonight the
treasure must be moved north with the beggars, to the generals of the
armies. I agree with the reverend high priest—kill him now.” His tone
went from wheedling to bitter. “I’ve waited six months to see it
happen.”

At Tiya’s
signal, her
maids lunged forward to hold Semerket fast in their grip. The queen’s
eyes were blank and pitiless. “Turn him over,” she said curtly.

The women
roughly
tossed Semerket prone onto the deck, so that his head hung over the
side of the boat. Though he struggled, they held him fast. He could see
his own face perfectly in the smooth, green water below—black eyes
wide, mouth open in fear. He raised his head to see if any of the men
in the lagoon could be reasoned with. But the conspirators were leaning
forward in their skiffs, staring avidly.

“Goodbye,
Semerket,”
smirked Nakht. “I’ll be sure to tell Naia how you begged for your life
at the end.”

Scornful
laughs broke
out among the men. Tiya silenced them with a gesture. She knelt beside
Semerket, speaking in grieved tones. “I shall inform Pharaoh of your
terrible accident,” she said. “How you became so drunk you fell
overboard. We did our best to save you, but what could we do? My maids
and I are only feeble women.”

Then her voice
was in
his ear, words meant only for him. “You’ve resisted my magic until now,
Semerket, but today you won’t escape its power.” Her lovely voice took
on a mystical quality. “Look into the waters, Semerket. Stare deeply.
See how at my command I make them roil and churn.”

Semerket
stared. As
she spoke the waters indeed began to heave below his face. His
reflection shattered into pieces. A black mass took shape beneath the
waters, coalescing, rising from the river bed, lunging upward—

“Now—” Tiya
said,
triumphant, “see how you
die!”

The thing
crashed
through the surface of the water. Semerket felt it seize him, dragging
him headfirst into the lagoon. The surprising coldness shocked the
remaining wine fumes from him. He fought blindly, eyes closed,
scratching and kicking at whatever pulled him down.

In the
suddenly silent
world, all he heard were his own terrified grunts and the explosions of
bubbles around him. His back hit the spongy mud of the river bottom,
and he forced his eyes open to see what held him in its grip. But the
mud rose in dirty clouds around him, blocking his view. Semerket
exhaled his last breath into the Nile. For a brief moment the water
cleared—and he saw at last the thing that had pulled him in.

It was Assai.

All sleek
black
muscle, the prince’s favorite was smiling even under the water, his
hatred for Semerket radiating as brightly as the golden dagger in his
hand. Assai slashed out at him. With both hands Semerket seized Assai’s
wrist, just stopping the knife’s descent into his throat.

Abruptly Assai
twisted
free, lunging at Semerket as he did. The water was filled with sudden
red. Semerket’s forehead was slashed open, and the cold water stung the
wound like hot coals. Assai slashed at him again; Semerket avoided the
blow by kicking away, plunging downward into the slimy river mud. At
the last moment, through the black clouds of silt, he saw the gold
dagger streaking at him.

With a
powerful kick,
Semerket made for the open waters of a far lagoon, weaving through the
clumps of reeds with Assai in pursuit. He broke the surface and gasped
for breath. Glancing behind, he saw a line of bubbles heading straight
for him. Gulping a lungful of air, he sank down and peered through the
water. Beneath the surface, Assai was swiftly swimming toward him.

It was clear
that
Semerket could not outswim the stronger Assai. He cast about in his
mind for a way to escape, desperation making his heart beat like a
temple drum. As Assai bore down, Semerket exhaled so that he could sink
rapidly to the bottom of the lagoon. Raking his fingers across the
slimy river bottom, he churned up the silt. Flailing his arms about he
distributed the mud into a screen that, he hoped, would hide him from
the black warrior. Though now he could not see Assai himself, he shot
off obliquely to the side of the lagoon, toward another thicket of
reeds.

He permitted
himself a
moment to glance back, and saw Assai break through the cloud of black
mud, heading in the direction where he had last seen Semerket. Assai
stopped, hesitating, then swam to the surface of the lagoon.

Unable to stay
down,
hungry for air, Semerket rose swiftly upward to once again feel the sun
upon his face. He noisily gasped the air into his lungs. As Semerket
knew he would, Assai instantly spied his location. Assai lunged
powerfully in his direction, his long arms pulling him swiftly forward
in rapid strokes. Semerket sank into the water again, swimming
frantically for a reed copse in front of him. He dug his fingers again
into the river bottom and the ancient silt rose in thick clouds. Again
Semerket veered, hidden by the wavering screen. He broke through the
swirling mud into clear water, and saw a thick mass of rushes in front
of him, not more than a few cubits away. Caught in their leaves, not
far from the water’s surface, was a sunken yacht of great age, a
rotting and splintered hulk. It would perhaps hide him from Assai, he
thought. Though once again his lungs were aching for oxygen, he swam
underwater toward the ghostly wreck.

His lungs were
giving
out. Desperately he skimmed the surface for air, then sank back down.
Twisting his body, he saw the flash of Assai’s linen-clad form only a
few cubits away, bearing fast upon him.

Panic seized
him, and
he kicked swiftly for the reeds. He felt his foot strike something
solid, and realized that it was one of Assai’s arms. Assai seized his
ankle in a strong grip, but he kicked out, freeing himself, and swam
swiftly away.

A hole gaped
in the
side of the yacht’s hull. Semerket dove through it, hoping that he
could hide within the black gloom of its interior and then escape
through its rear hatch into the thick reeds beyond. Almost through the
hole now, he felt Assai’s hands grasp his leg again. This time they
held him firmly. No matter how he struggled and kicked, Assai’s grip
remained merciless.