CHAPTER 8
Kittycat
Lion cubs look awfully cute from a distance. Up close? That’s a different story.
I ran around the corner, but the passage dead-ended at two shut doors.
“Hey, kittycat!” The cub careened toward me, his mischievous tuft of fur bobbing. “I sneaked out again when the Keeper of the Zoo was cleaning my cage. Let’s play!”
“Er…let’s not.” Whatever the cub had in mind was going to be worse than dress-up. I sidestepped him—or tried to. But he thought that was part of the game.
“Tag!” he screeched. He head-butted me in the side, knocking me flat. That’s the problem with cubs. They don’t know their own strength.
Once I got my breath back, I let out a low warning cry, one step short of a snarl. Among us cats, big and small, that means “Don’t touch me.”
I guess the cub didn’t know the code.
“You’re funny, kittycat. Let’s play family. You be the naughty cub, and I’ll be the daddy lion.” With a giggle, he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck.
Oh, the indignity! Pharaoh’s Cat, being carted around like a kitten!
“Put…me…DOWN!” I gasped.
Instead, he shook me hard.
“Stop that!” I wailed. Forget my pride—now I was worried about my survival.
Just as I thought my teeth were going to be jangled out of my head, a door at the end of the passage opened. A young woman with a sweet face and drab clothes stared down at us.
“What—oh!” She knelt by the lion cub. “You silly baby. That’s not a toy. That’s a cat. And a very fine cat, too. Let him go.”
She pulled the cub close. I guess that surprised him, because he dropped me right away.
“Poor cat.” The young woman checked my neck with her free hand and said to the cub, “Well, at least you didn’t leave a mark. Now let’s get you back to the zoo.”
I didn’t wait to see them go. As soon as Khepri jumped back on, I scooted down the passageway.
Eventually, I found my bearings. When I reached the great hall, the Steward was bowing low to Lady Satiah. She was seated on her gilded chair, and her brother, General Wegaf, was standing alongside her.
With a nervous look at them both, the Steward bobbed up. “There’s no sign of the boy anywhere, my lady. But the night watchmen have something to tell you.”
Stepping forward in their workaday tunics, Hormin and Qen bent low. Hormin’s sniffling echoed loudly in the tiled hall, while Qen’s nose was redder than ever.
“Yes?” Lady Satiah prompted them. “Did you see the boy sneaking out last night?”
“My lady, we saw no one.” Hormin tried to stifle his sniffles. “Er…no one, that is, except for Yaba. She was sleepwalking near the gates just before dawn…”
“Yaba?” I whispered to Khepri. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Khepri said in my ear.
General Wegaf frowned. “Yaba—is that the Pharaoh’s newest wife?”
“The minor princess from that dinky province in Assyria, yes,” Lady Satiah confirmed. “Her father married her to Pharaoh to seal a trade deal.”
Oh, right. I’d heard about that. Pharaoh hadn’t been happy when his ambassadors had told him the terms of the deal, and the Great Wife had hit the roof. But a deal was a deal, and it would have caused a lot of political tension to undo it. So Pharaoh had gone through with the wedding ceremony and then sent his new wife to live a long distance away.
“She’s been trying to escape at least once a week since she got here,” Lady Satiah went on. “It’s so annoying. Not that she gets very far. The watchmen see to that.” She turned to them again. “And you were on duty all night? You didn’t doze off or stop for a snack, the way you did last week?”
“Of course not, my lady,” Hormin said, sniffling again. “And we didn’t stop for a snack last week. We heard a rustling in the kitchen, remember?”
“That’s right,” Qen put in, sounding a trifle offended. “We know our job.”
Lady Satiah frowned. “Then why did you not see the boy?”
“We have our rounds,” Qen reminded her. “We do a circuit of the whole palace.”
“But then who guards the gates?” Lady Satiah wanted to know.
The Steward coughed. “Er…the crocodiles do. At least, that’s what you said when I asked for more money to replace the guards we lost last year.”
“Oh, yes.” Lady Satiah touched her hand to the thick braids of her wig. “I’d forgotten. Well, it’s true. Who’s going to rob us with the crocodiles around?”
“You may be right, my lady,” the Steward said. “But all the same, we need more watchmen. Last night is proof.”
Pursing her lips, Lady Satiah waved a hand at the watchmen still bowed low before her. “So you saw Yaba. Anyone else?”
“No, my lady,” Hormin said.
“But it looks like someone got past us,” Qen added. “Maybe while we were escorting Yaba back to her room. Or maybe a little before that, when we had to check on General Wegaf.”
Disconcerted, Lady Satiah turned to her brother. “On you, brother? Why?”
The General turned red as a rooster’s wattle. “Spot of bother. Not worth discussing.”
Lady Satiah glared at him. “Out with it. Now.”