“What in the gods’ name did you do to her?”
They had left that house at last, ridden out at dawn in their train of carts and chariots and people afoot, making their somewhat leisurely way toward Avaris. Iry had the luxury of private conversation with Kemni, since he was her charioteer.
He seemed much as always, but Sadana had been riding like one in a dream. She kept pausing—and almost smiling. And that was unheard of.
“What did you do?” Iry demanded. “Did you lay a spell on her?”
“She asked me that, too,” Kemni said. He was very busy with the horses, though they were quiet, offering no impudence.
“So did you?”
“I have no magic,” he said. “I told her that.”
“Did she believe you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing at all extraordinary,” he answered with a touch of impatience. “Except to her. She didn’t know a man could be gentle. Could give her pleasure.”
Iry heard what he had not quite said. Her breath hissed between her teeth. “So they’ll even do it to their own.”
“Have they done it to you?”
She smiled faintly at his leap to her defense. “No, of course not. Not, sometimes, for lack of trying. But I was in my own house. I knew the ways better than those invaders did. And Mother protected me, before—”
“Before the Mare came.”
She let that suffice. She had meant to say, before Khayan came; but they were the same. More or less. Maybe.
“I’m glad you were safe,” he said. “These men, they’re brutal.”
“Not all of them.”
“Enough,” he said.
He was angry. He hid it well, but his shoulders were tight, and his lips. Strange for a man to care what other men did to women. He must have had teaching of a sort that few men ever had. And from where?
“You went to Crete,” she said.
He glanced at her. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Would you understand if I told you?”
“Probably not.”
He probably would, but she was not inclined to go to war with him over anything so small. “That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it? The Retenu say Cretans are strange people, old people, who’ve been there for long and long.”
“They’re kin to the eastern horsemen,” Kemni said. “Long ago and far distant, but they worship the same goddess. Women rule them. They remember, dimly, when they were all one, before some went away and heard the call of the sea. Sea of water, sea of grass—it’s much the same in the end. Even ships and horses, they told me.”
“You went there for the king.” She found that pleasing, somehow. He was her cousin. He had risen in the world—higher, she thought, than he might seem, as he played charioteer in a foreign lord’s following.
“He needed someone quiet, who could do what needed to be done, and keep the secret from those who might betray it.” Kemni glanced about. Iry knew already that there was no one near. The leaders were well ahead, the bulk of the procession well behind. The Mare ran between, white tail streaming. She had been fending them all off, granting Iry this freedom to say whatever she pleased.
The Mare, as Iry had been thinking more often of late, had intentions that the Retenu would not like at all if they knew. In choosing an Egyptian, it seemed she had chosen Egypt. She had encouraged this, and not so that Iry might betray her own kin.
Maybe the gods of Egypt had made common cause with the goddess who lived in the Mare. The conquerors were not horsemen, after all. They were donkey caravaneers, whose chosen beasts of burden were long-eared asses. Horses were rare among them. But Egyptians—some of them at least—found in themselves a potent fascination with horses. Kemni had it, Iry had it. Pepi and the boys he had brought into the stables—they all had it.
What a thought, that Egypt could take horses from the conqueror, and conquer him with them. It made her smile.
“Listen,” she said to Kemni, “when you go . . . back there, tell him there’s one here who may find ways to help.”
“I’ll tell him that,” Kemni said. “If you would do something in return.”
“If I can,” she said.
“Sadana,” he said. “She needs gentleness, and a man she can trust. I can’t stay for her. Once I come to Avaris, I’ll be called to what I should have been doing long since. Can you help? Will you?”
Iry had had no expectations, but this— “You want me to procure a lover for Sadana?”
He flushed faintly under the bronzing of wind and sun. “You don’t have to be that blunt. Just . . . help her find someone to be gentle to her.”
“In Avaris?”
“Maybe the lord knows someone. Or your other guardsman.”
“Kemni,” Iry said with great and careful patience, “can you honestly imagine that I would ask men of the Retenu to find a lover for their own sister?”
“They might surprise you.”
“Khayan might,” Iry admitted. “But I think not. I can try to do this, somehow, if you insist. I can’t promise to succeed.”
“If you try, it will be enough.”
“Well then,” Iry said with a sigh. “I’ll try. Because you ask it, mind. And because she is easier to endure when she’s less tight-drawn upon herself.”
“Good,” Kemni said. “Good. The gods will love you for this.”
“I only hope they won’t hate me,” said Iry.
~~~
They came to Avaris in the morning, having camped for the night not far outside of it. The walls seemed low in the wet shimmer of the Delta’s heat, but as they drew closer, the city loomed larger, till it showed itself both lofty and forbidding.
It was a fortress, a strong holding within a conquered country. And it was vast. It was the greatest city in the world, the Retenu boasted. Larger than Thebes, larger than Byblos or Tyre, larger than Ur or Babylon. Larger than any of them, and vaunting in its strength.
It stood on the eastern edge of a tangled skein of river and land, on that branch of the great river of Egypt which flowed toward Pelusium in the east of the Lower Kingdom. It guarded the eastward gate of the kingdom, and stood athwart the best of the ways on both water and land, both to and from the sea. Its harbor was crowded with ships. Its walls were packed tight with houses, men living on top of one another, spreading out where they could, but clinging to their walls and defenses.
So dense were the throngs living within, Iry had been told, that the dead had no place of their own. Any who died in that city was buried in the court of his house. How his kin and descendants bore it, Iry did not know. At night, when the dead walked, the city must be even more crowded than in the light of day.
Khayan’s caravan of chariots and carts and servants on foot, with or without laden donkeys, was granted the privilege of the processional way, the wide street that directed itself toward the loom of Baal’s temple and the lesser and battlemented loom of the king’s palace. Lesser folk kept that way clear, so that high ones could come and go unhindered. Iry could see the common people down side ways and in sudden squares, a seething throng of them, like an anthill opened suddenly to the sun.
So many people. And so many Retenu. The few Egyptian faces that she saw belonged to ragged and sharp-boned creatures who must be slaves, or even beggars. Though why any child of the Lower Kingdom would wish to beg in Avaris, she could not imagine.
Kemni was motionless beside her, except for such movement as the chariot or the horses forced upon him. She felt the tension thrumming in him. As steaming hot as the air was, and reeking with it, his body’s warmth was not entirely welcome, but she was glad of his presence nonetheless. She needed an Egyptian face amid these alien walls. Already they were closing in upon her, and she had not even come to the great fortress and prison that was the palace.
She came terribly close to ripping the reins from Kemni’s hands, turning the chariot about, and bolting back the way she had come. But even apart from the fact that the bulk of the lord’s following filled the road behind, she was not enough of a coward—not prudent enough, or sensible enough. If she had been, she would have refused to leave the Sun Ascendant at all.
It was done. She was bound to enter those walls within walls. The gates rose before her, warded by what seemed an army of guards. They were all big men, huge men, bearded Retenu and coal-black Nubians, so tall that their eyes were level with hers as she stood in the chariot. Some were even taller.
Kemni held his head a fraction higher as he rode though that deep and echoing gate. So, for pride, did Iry. She wondered if he was as stark with fear as she, or if he saw those walls as cutting him off from all the world he knew. Now he was within them, he might never go out again. If anyone marked him, if anyone betrayed him . . .
She would protect him as she could, while she could. As for herself, she would be safe enough. Her rank protected her, and the office the Mare had laid on her.
So she told herself as the palace of the Retenu closed in upon her. They were to be given chambers within it, and servants to tend them, and a haughty chamberlain to conduct them to their lodgings. He was perhaps half an Egyptian: he was smaller and slighter, his features finer, his lips fuller than if he had been entirely Retenu. He wore a beard as every male among them must, but he clipped it almost indecently short, so that one could see the shape of his face. But the hair in its topknot, the golden collar and armlets, the elaborate and heavily embroidered robe, were all of outland fashion. High and courtly fashion, she could see. Her own simple shift, her hair indifferently plaited, and her utter lack of ornament, earned her a glance eloquent of scorn.
She had no fear of courtiers’ contempt. These courtiers above all, whom she would gladly sweep out of Egypt, she would greet with all the arrogance she could muster. They would only admire her for it. That much she had learned of courts, in what little time she had spent in or near them.
They settled in the chambers with some crowding and no little squabbling. Even as vast as the city was, it was full to bursting, and the palace likewise. People on top of people was the way of the world here.
She at least was granted a room of her own, a tiny and airless cell, but it was hers. It was no worse than the cell she had had as a slave in the Sun Ascendant—and it was close by a stair that led to the palace gardens.
The gardens of this palace were a wonder and a marvel. They stretched along the great outer wall and meandered inward among the courts. Those nearest the wall were gardens of trees, a forest indeed, green and richly scented, with little rivers trained to run among the trees, and fountains, and pools of bright fish. There was a menagerie—little enough, Kemni told her, to what the king had in Thebes, but to her a marvel. There were lions, of course, and jackals, and sly and slinking hyenas; oryx and gazelle, ibex, and strange beasts out of the lands beyond the Upper Kingdom: elephants, long-necked visions called giraffe, and creatures like horses, or like shorter-eared asses, but striped black and white in eye-blinding patterns. There was a pool of riverhorses, and even crocodiles; aviaries and pools of fish and cages full of baboons and monkeys and sad-eyed apes. And, past these, creatures from the northern outlands: wolves panting in the heat, a vast aurochs bull with horns spread as wide as a processional way, even a bear lying limp in a shallow pool.
She had wandered there to escape the crush in the guest-chambers, and perhaps more than a little because, for a brief while, she seemed to have been forgotten. The Mare was nowhere within reach. She had left the riding before it came to Avaris, wandered away unnoticed as Iry had done just now. Iry had made no effort to stop her. The Mare came and went as she pleased. That was her privilege.
Iry did not share it, but for this little while she was free. Or as free as she could be, with Iannek in her shadow. Kemni had handed her over to that annoyingly loyal young man, then arranged to vanish. He would be finding his allies, she supposed, and conveying to them all that he had learned.
Iannek managed at least to be quiet, a virtue he had not cultivated before; but he had not been her guardsman, either. Sometimes she caught him on the verge of his old relentless chatter, but he mastered himself, bit his tongue and was silent. She caught herself almost liking him, Retenu though he was. When he was not leaping about chattering like a monkey, he was quite bearable. In fact he was rather charming.
There were other people in the menagerie, walking about as she walked, Retenu all, some in robes, some in Egyptian kilts. It was odd to see those here—odd and somewhat dismaying. Those even addressed one another by Egyptian names, in their uncouth accents, as if it were a fashion they affected and were excessively pleased with.
Iannek growled at that. She raised a brow at him. He sucked in a breath, thought anew of silence, but yielded to the invitation. “So that’s back in fashion,” he said. “It goes in and out, you know, like floods on the Nile. And of course the king takes an Egyptian name, so that people will know he has a right to rule here. But these kilts—and did you see that man? He shaved his face!”
“Appalling,” Iry agreed blandly.
It was a moment before he caught the irony; then he glared. “Well, to you it’s not. But he’s not one of you!”
“No,” she said. “He’s not.”
She paused in front of a cageful of baboons. They were wise creatures, the old stories said, living images of the god Thoth as the Mare was of Horse Goddess. They were also dangerous, with their long sharp fangs and their uncertain tempers—as gods could be. Two of them now were mating, the female nursing her child while the male sired another with an expression of intense concentration. Perhaps he was pondering great mysteries as his body performed its duty to the race.
Someone else had come up to watch the baboons. It was a man, not young, though not yet old, robed in fine linen embroidered with gold, and escorted by a pair of discreet guards. By that, Iry knew he was a lord of consequence, though he affected no airs, nor did he come closer to the Egyptian fashion than the lightness of his robe.
He watched the baboons with calm interest and an air of one who came here often. “Do you see that one?” he said to Iry. “That’s the father of the tribe. He mates with all the females, and drives the young males away, or kills them if they’re importunate.”
“He’s much like a lord of men,” Iry observed.
The man laughed, a warm deep sound. It reminded her of Khayan—which made her cheeks grow hot. And why that should be, she did not want to know.
“Men are very like apes, when it comes to it,” the man said, seeming oblivious to her discomfort. “See, there the lord goes, off to court another lady. He has his favorites, and that yonder is a great one, a queen of the tribe. I watched her beat a younger lady once for importuning the lord. It was a terrible battle, as terrible as any in the queens’ house.”
“And was there bloodshed?”
The man nodded. “The young hussy lived, but she was never the same thereafter. In the end she went to a menagerie in Tanis, where she could live alone without fear or rivalry.”
“You must come here every day,” Iry said, “to know so much.”
“I come as often as I can,” the man said. “It takes me out of myself.”
Iry nodded. “I do much the same,” she said, “except with me, it’s horses.”
“Indeed?” the man said. “Horses need open spaces, and sky. They’re not themselves inside of walls. Those of us confined to palaces . . . we take other pleasures, such as we may.”
“I could never be confined to a palace,” said Iry. “It’s a pity you must.”
“Ah,” said the man. “Well. But that’s as the gods will. So I visit the menagerie, and I watch the animals. It’s rather more amusing than watching courtiers, and often more civilized.”
“You know all the animals, then,” Iry said. “Tell me about the striped ones, the ones who are almost horses. Are they from Nubia? Are they horses?”
“They come from south of Nubia, from great grasslands that stretch away to the edge of the world,” the man said. “They’re called zebras. They aren’t horses—they’re more like wild asses. It’s very difficult to train them, if anyone is minded to try. They don’t have the minds that horses have, or our tamed asses, either.”
“Pity,” said Iry. “A team of these zebras would be a fine novelty for a prince.”
“A prince or two has thought so,” the man said, “and failed miserably in the trying.”
“Maybe the gods want them to stay wild,” Iry said.
They walked down the path, past the baboons’ great cage and a cage with a lion sleeping in it. The guards had fallen back, Iry noticed out of the edges of her eyes. So too had Iannek. He looked odd, as if something he had eaten had suddenly disagreed with him. She thought of sending him away to rest, since she was safe enough here, but her new companion was regaling her with stories of the lion and the elephants, and the aurochs bull grazing peacefully on cut fodder. “They live in forests far to the north,” the man said, “crashing through the trees with their great horns gleaming. They are terrible to hunt, as strong as they are, and huge, and fast on their feet.”
“Like elephants,” Iry said.
“Rather like,” the man agreed. “Whole tribes will hunt them, with packs of huge dogs, and chariots, and vaunting bravery. The man who kills an aurochs is a great hero, and is given rich rewards: the best of the food and the women, and the aurochs’ hide and horns for his tent.”
“And they brought one here,” Iry said in wonder. “What army of heroes was it who dared that?”
“Ah,” said the man with a deprecatory smile. “No great army. He came as an infant, a calf no larger than a large donkey. Someone, we suppose, killed his mother and took him from her side, tamed him as much as an aurochs can be tamed, and sent him here as tribute to the king.”
Iry was a little disappointed, but also a little relieved. The thought of anything so vast rising up in rage was disconcerting to say the least. But it seemed the bull was a placid enough creature, and tamed. He came to the man’s call, and took a bit of sweet from a hand he seemed to know well. He was no more threatening than an ox, or any less interested in sweetness than Iry’s own imperious Mare.
He let her touch his broad wet nose, and lightly rub his jowl. He lowered his head so that she could do it, for he was far taller than she. He loomed above her like a mountain in the desert.
Such a beautiful great black beast with his ivory horns. He was almost as beautiful as the Mare; and that was as high praise as she knew to give.
She went away well content, with her companion bearing her company as far as the outer cages. He would linger yet a while, he said; but she had wandered apart long enough. There would be a hunt out for her soon, if there was not one already.
Still with Iannek in her shadow, she found her way back to the guest-chambers. Iannek was even more silent than before, a silence so profound that she came close to rounding on him and demanding to know what he was so patently not saying.
But even if she had been inclined to unbar those gates, the outriders of the hunt had found her, a pair of Sadana’s warrior women with faces even grimmer than usual. They were not taking Iry prisoner, they made that clear, but they were not inclined to let her out of their sight thereafter.
Iannek’s trouble, if trouble it was, was lost in Iry’s return to confinement. She was not to go out again, it was made clear, without Sadana and a guard of warrior women. Her young male guardsmen were not enough. She must be protected, and closely, in this of all places.
No less a personage than the lady Sarai told her this, receiving her in a chamber that had become her own with miraculous speed. It looked, in fact, precisely like the one in the Sun Ascendant in which she received guests and entertained scapegrace priestesses. Her expression was no more than wontedly severe, and she did not seem angry at all—quite unlike Sadana, whose expression was thunderous. But Iry was to know that she had overstepped her bounds.
“In this place,” Sarai said, “no one is safe. Not even the king. Every passage has its web of intrigue, and every gathering its hidden currents. A word spoken unwisely in the morning is shouted from the rooftops before the sun reaches its zenith. Men have died for a slip of the tongue. And you, child, are not best known for your discretion.”
Iry kept her head down and her lips together. She would not quarrel with this of all women, but neither would she swear oaths she did not intend to keep. She took her rebuke in silence, and when it was over, accepted her dismissal.
It seemed to satisfy Sarai. It set Iry free, somewhat; she could not go where she pleased, not any longer, but she was allowed to seek her own closet of a room, and rest there. There was no punishment laid on her, beyond the burden of Sarai’s disapproval.
It would do. Not well, but it would suffice.