“Tell me what a horseman is,” Kemni said.
Iphikleia turned from taking her hair out of its many elaborate curls and plaits. She had left the hall when he did, and come to the room he had been given, nor did anyone remark on it or seem to find it objectionable. Women’s belongings had appeared among those that had been given to Kemni, and the bed was spread and scented with herbs, as if for a wedding.
She was much too casual for a bride, but quite as beautiful as a bride could be. She paused with her hair tumbling down over her shoulders, her paint softened with the hours’ passing, and all her skirts in a tousle, now she need not take care to keep them in order. Kemni had had a little to do with that. More than a little.
She answered his question in her own time, a little thoughtfully, as if she needed to consider, herself, what it was that had drawn Naukrates’ attention. “Among these people, a horseman is more than simply a man who has horses. Asses are sacred, and are the root of their power: strong legs, strong backs, greater speed than a man can muster. Horses are something more than sacred.
“These people of the Retenu are not, in themselves, horsemen. They were lurkers in barren places, savages with a gift for trade, fierce fighters who dreamed of ruling kingdoms. They tamed the wild ass and made him their servant. They learned to conquer, and then to rule. In time they built cities, and made them great. But they knew little of horses.
“There are, far to the east of their old cities, cities older yet, now sunk into dust; and people who ruled once in those cities, but left them long ago, and settled in tribes far away from other men. Women rule these tribes. They have little use for men, it’s said, except to use them as the mare uses the stallion: to breed her in her season, and thereafter to let her be. Their men and their sons live in remnants of the ancient cities, while the women wander with the herds.
“Sometimes—not often, but not seldom, either—men or women of these tribes wander westward. Your Retenu have always welcomed them, and been a little in awe of them, because they’ve mastered horses. They brought the chariot into the west of the world long ago, and taught the Retenu to drive their own beasts, and made them great conquerors.
“If this Khayan is a horseman,” she said, “or the son of a horseman—or a woman rather, since it’s his mother who comes from the tribes—then it’s most interesting that he was allowed to inherit his father’s lands. Horsemen are objects of awe and veneration, but they are not given rank or power. It’s said they refuse it. I think not. I think the Retenu keep it from them, in fear of them. They have great powers, it’s said; great magic. They command the winds, and the grass will grow for them. And of course, the horses are their servants—though it’s said that’s not so; it’s they who serve the horses.”
Kemni pondered all the sides of that, as much as he could between the wine and her beauty. “So,” he said, “if this horseman has been allowed to take his father’s place, he must have some power that no one’s speaking of. Or his power is so negligible that no one fears him, even knowing what he is.”
“He is young,” said Iphikleia. “But young needn’t be harmless. He did battle for his place—”
“He was challenged,” Kemni said. “He’d have had to fight or suffer loss of honor. Honor is a terribly important thing to his people.”
“But why was he challenged? What purpose would that serve? He was a younger son. He needn’t have been a threat at all.”
“I’m sure there was a reason,” Kemni said. “But that’s not what intrigues me. Why is your uncle so enthralled with this? It can’t have a great deal to do with the war. This Khayan is only one lord of many, and not among the highest. Most likely he’s weak—he’d have to be, as young as he is, and as recently come to his seat. Why does it matter to a lord of Crete, that the lord of a smallish holding comes from that particular tribe?”
Iphikleia frowned. “It’s an oddity. My uncle has always been interested in oddities. You never know, he’ll say, when a small thing will grow into force enough to topple a kingdom.”
“He doesn’t think this is a small thing,” Kemni said.
“What, have you spoken with him?” she asked with a twist of mockery. “Maybe it’s only because we’re kin to the horsemen, very long ago and far away—to the women who ruled the ancient cities before men came with horses and changed the world. Our ancestors grew restless, wandered westward, and in time found the sea. His ancestors lingered in the sea of grass. We take an interest, still, in our remotest cousins.”
Kemni shook his head. He could not find words for the niggle in his belly. Maybe it was only that this horseman had taken his own kin’s house and lands, and become, if he wished to see it so, his own overlord. It struck too close. It mattered too much.
Everything here mattered too much. When he sailed through the Lower Kingdom to Crete, the river had borne him up. He had kept at bay his yearning for the land, for the country that was his own. But once he set foot in it, when he had left the fishing boat to capture a maker of chariots, its spell had fallen on him. This was his own land. This was his mother, his beloved. He belonged in it, though if he were known, he could die.
He was not doing this for his king, though it might serve his king’s purpose. He was doing it because he had come home, and because he yearned, to the very heart and soul, to make this land his again, free of any foreign invader.
Iphikleia turned back to her toilet, taking her time about it, transforming the ornate beauty of the day into a simpler and, to his taste, even more potent nighttime splendor. She cleansed the paint from face and breasts, and combed out her long curling hair, and put aside her ornaments and her garments and came to him as she had in his dreams, naked and gleaming. Her skin was soft, scented with sweet oils. Her hair smelled of flowers.
They came together almost gently, without haste, and without great urgency. The whole of the night lay before them. She seemed preoccupied, somewhat, but not so much as to turn away from him. Her touch was gentle, a little abstracted. Her kisses wandered aimlessly. When she took him into herself, it was as if she could not help it, but neither was she desperate to end it. They rocked together, just enough to keep him aroused, but not so much as to bring it to its summit.
It was peaceful, in an odd way. Quiet. Comfortable—but not, gods be thanked, dull. There was fire beneath, banked but clear in memory.
She woke it suddenly, startling him, so that he laughed; then gasped. He had never meant to be taken so completely off guard.
They slept in each other’s arms, or feigned to. Kemni kept his eyes shut and his breathing slow. He was pondering, still, thoughts without words, scattered memories, fragments of dreams that he had all but forgotten. Dancing the bull. Driving a chariot. Standing under a wind-tossed sky in a sea of grey-golden grass, as a herd of horses grazed and mated and played about him. He had not seen such horses in the waking world: pale horses, grey or silver or white. They glowed like the moon in that dream-softened light.
He woke with a start. That was not a dream he had had before. It lingered, without fear but with a kind of intensity that made him—almost—groan aloud. The gods were toying with him again.
He would go. He lay beside the soundly sleeping Iphikleia in the cool of dawn, and knew that he did this for no king, though perhaps for a god—which god, he did not know. He would go toward Avaris, toward the foreign king’s city. And if he happened to pause in his own native country, to see what lord now ruled it—well, and that would serve his king well enough, when all was considered.