Two Horizons, Page 5

Chapter 5

  NAKED AS SUN

  On his hut’s rooftop at dawn, sweating under his arms and between his legs, Mehi dreamt of Ammit the Devourer attacking his sister in the desert. Head of crocodile, fore body of lioness and hind end of hippopotamus, Ammit ate the hearts of the wicked. To free his sister, Mehi rushed the beast. It turned on him and began devouring his heart.

  Someone nudged him awake. It was Sebek. “Mehi, I’m going.”

  From his feverish dream, Mehi strained to understand his brother. “What tomb is Father robbing now?”

  “Listen Mehi. I’m leaving. Father’ll make me work now that he can’t, and I won’t give them my earnings. Yesterday the sun crossed behind clouds and the clouds turned silver. I’ll be gone by the time they wake up.” Stepping away, Sebek stopped and turned back to Mehi. “Sorry ’bout the girl.” He dropped down the ladder and disappeared.

  By the time Mehi gave up trying to sleep again, he began to believe he’d only dreamt Sebek’s good-bye.

  When Mehi descended the rope ladder an hour after dawn, Khety was sitting in the doorway, feet in the courtyard, crafting a wooden talisman for the crowded walls while, inside, Horemheb smoldered, hunched in a corner. Standing outside with his mother, Mehi learned that she had wakened early with a “bad feeling” to discover Sebek’s clothes and bedmat were gone.

  Horemheb said to her, “Blaming me for Sebek leaving?”

  “It’s better my hands stay busy.”

  “Busy making one of those? Just to embarrass me?”

  “You embarrass yourself.”

  “I’m blamed for everything, is it? How about you always coddled him like a baby?”

  “After you beat him.”

  “Don’t you remember him running around wild? Crazy wild? Or weren’t you here?”

  “You beat him like a criminal.”

  Horemheb stiffened. “A criminal? You going to keep throwing that in the fire? Keep reminding me about my mistake?”

  “A mistake and now we don’t eat. You even refuse to work the fields.”

  “I’m a stonecutter.”

  “Not anymore. You saw to that.”

  Shaking, Horemheb rose, fists banging his thighs. His pupils sharpened into points. He stepped toward his wife, cocked his right fist. Mehi’s heart seemed to leap in his chest. But he could only shuffle his feet toward his parents. Only then did Horemheb notice his son. “Bah.” Horemheb stormed out the doorway past Khety and Mehi.

  Khety lowered her head into her hands. Her sobs clutched Mehi like great fishhooks. He touched her shoulder. Khety squeaked and jumped up. When in the back room, she continued weeping.

  Mehi should not have confronted his father about the tomb-robbery. Or he should have done it where the neighbors couldn’t hear. How would Mehi fix it? He felt empty like a desert. He pictured his brother working his way onto a barge, up the river and away—maybe out of the country. The water would take him. He’d be what he sought to be, a caravan leader.

  Mehi hadn’t told Sebek, or anyone, that he dreamt of leaving home too. The secret he’d kept from An-khi was that he’d started the mudbrick foundation for their home. But, now, without even Sebek to protect their mother from their angry father, Mehi couldn’t part from their home.

  Noon heat struck like a viper’s fangs; the package delivered the venom to Khufu. Prince Hordedef had brought it to his father’s suite. Khufu’s ears still buzzing with the citizens’ Petition Court grievances in the Throne Room throughout the morning, the God-king read the package’s inscription: “Best wishes to the good god” and the sign of two feet: “Determined.” Unwrapping it, his sweaty hands darkened the papyrus. He found inside a human tongue. Copper chips flecked the human tissue. The tongue must have belonged to the young man who swung the copper chisel during Khufu’s Heb-Sed and killed Khufu’s perfect son.

  The God-king threw the package to the turquoise tiles. He kicked it across the room. “There’s your two feet.” Nak priests. Killing for God Ptah. Universe created by thought? Absurd. Shadowed thought without body. The universe is solid, flesh and bone, as graspable as the pyramid. Only ejaculate as hot as sun could create it.

  Yet, the Ptah priests’ guilt had not been proved.

  Khufu told no one about the package’s contents. He would simply prove his divinity and Ra’s righteousness by his works: raising the Nile, feeding his people, fending off the desert until all citizens embraced him in their perfect love. But today also marked the midpoint of the inundation season. Daily, Khufu sought inside him to summon up more water from its mysterious source. But today, for the first time, an undertow seemed to slide beneath him.

  Khufu bowed and prayed, “Horus chased the Serpent from the earth.”

  Relief would come in his garden. Hustling through the Per-O corridors, head down and still hearing the Petition’s voices clamoring for escape from this year’s taxes due to low water and low farm yields, Khufu looked up when he reached a rear door. There, handling the door’s bolt, a woman heard his approach and spun about.

  Thee or me.

  Khufu inhaled her fragrance of figs and lotus flowers. He had not seen the maiden since first meeting her by the lake. On that occasion, too, Khufu’s mood had been dark, and she cheered him as much as the sun from an eclipse. He scanned her, not without some unease, to see whether she might be a spell-caster. He saw only clear eyes and the lithe body of a dancer. “You are Theormi, are you not?”

  “The King is kind to remember.”

  The word “Theormi” sang for Khufu like a familiar melody. He realized he had for weeks unknowingly rhymed her name in odd sentences. Thee or me. “It seems we share a notion to enjoy the garden.”

  “When even shade doesn’t cool, one might as well face the sun one to one, your Majesty. Noon brightens everything.”

  “God Ra will be pleased to brighten two more of His creations.” Theormi’s stance of shoulders square and feet apart reminded Khufu of a warrior. “Don’t delay.” He caught the door for her as Theormi opened it for him. They grazed hands. Theormi blushed; he winked. Together the two crossed into the garden.

  They strolled between sycamores onto an avenue of basalt, shimmering in the sunshine. Through its broad leaves, sunlight dazzled as if suns hung like fruit from its limbs. Khufu felt as naked as the sun. “Heaven is this harmony.”

  “Only Gods could disturb it.”

  “No God would.”

  An owl hooted over their heads. That it appeared in daytime was Khufu’s first omen. The second omen: its eyes were orange and its face was the death mask Khufu had seen during the delta attack.

  His teeth scraped against each other.

  Theormi touched his shoulder. “Are you well, Majesty?”

  “The owl ...” about to mention the death mask to her, Khufu changed his mind, the hand on his shoulder so settling. “The owl is the protector of the dead, the Underworld guardian.” He told himself the owl watched over his Ka’ab. “I prefer the Benu bird.”

  “Yes, the Benu’s song was the universe’s first sound, was it not?”

  “Just after our Creator God Ra rose from the first blue lotus on the first land, the Benben, the Benu sang.”

  “The pyramid shape.”

  “When the Inundation recedes each year, it reminds us of that first perfect moment.”

  “I especially admire God Ra’s words: ‘I formed the female with my fingers and the male with my phallus. All manifestations followed me into being.’”

  “Ah, you’ve been reading, Theormi. Often, people from other cultures find our Creation indelicate.”

  “It’s as earthy as life, Majesty.”

  “And as pure. Impurity threatens ma’at itself.”

  Theormi stopped walking. “Perhaps I should stay behind.”

  “Why, maiden?”

  “I’m afraid the Queen will hear of a harem woman with you outside your suite.”

  “Tu, Queen Meritates is frightening, but my mother Hetefares controls the harem. Besides, siste
r,” Khufu said with a wink, “the sycamore does not chatter.”

  As they continued walking, the God-king said, “You move with the pride of a panther. It stands you taller now.”

  Theormi immediately stiffened. Khufu supposed he’d said the words more intensely than he’d intended.

  Near the pathway’s end, palms swayed above three ponds where white and blue lotus flowers floated. Behind them, down the knoll, sunlight glinted on Khufu’s lake below a gliding dhow. Its tapering sails swept along a prince or princess.

  “I’ll string a garland for you, Theormi, to complete your wardrobe.” Khufu jumped into a pond up to his knees.

  Theormi laughed. “Careful, Majesty.”

  Khufu laughed with her, louder than he could explain. “I’m the Hap Bull when excited.”

  “Yes, you just visited the Hap.”

  “You know about him? The Hap is the most peaceful creature on earth. He is the one possession of the Ptah priests’ that I covet.” Khufu leaned down and fingered the water’s surface. “As a boy, I knew peace in the garden, free of my brothers’ taunts for my one day becoming God-king. Today the garden frees me from my own taunts that I don’t do enough as God-king.”

  “Don’t do enough? You work at all hours, Sire. I understand that you’ve reorganized irrigation to broaden the Inundation.”

  Theormi’s words sent Khufu deep into thought. He spoke slowly. “Once we recognize art in sculpture or paint, the life it assumes amazes us. It’s the same amazement we feel when we realize our love for someone. Are we ever more alive? Bestowing that onto Egypt is my charge.”

  Khufu’s lips drew together. Theormi’s lips parted. The garland was forgotten.

  She ambled to her left. Khufu followed, jumping from the water. He couldn’t remember when he’d last visited this section of the garden. They came to five rose bushes. “Here, Theormi, I’ll play a game with you.” He flourished a hand. “I can detect, solely by scent, which rose flower grows on which bush.”

  “Impossible.” She checked herself and blushed. “Pardon me, Majesty.”

  “You don’t trust your God-king? That’s wise. Test me.”

  “Well then, shut your eyes and turn. Turn.” Khufu heard Theormi move softly as if on tiptoe, no doubt to conceal her selection. “Majesty, keep them closed.” A fragrance waved under his nose.

  Khufu sniffed twice. “The fourth. From the fourth bush.”

  “Um ...”

  “I’m correct. Say I am correct.”

  “Well, we’ll do this with more certainty.” Theormi gripped Khufu’s shoulders and herded him far from the roses. Her fingers touched him like a swallow of wine. “Let’s try this again.”

  Khufu succeeded the next three attempts.

  Theormi said, “It’s a trick.”

  “A trick? That the age, temperature and bush scent a rose individually? Your mind is not merely for the harem. How do you judge your king?”

  Theormi bent two fingers against her chin. “You give me much to mull, Sire.”

  The two had taken another step together when the Royal Gardener appeared.

  “Kani,” Khufu said.

  Kani saluted the God-king, blurted “Thank you” to Theormi, and dashed away.

  Khufu and Theormi continued walking. “Why did he say that to you?”

  “A few nights ago, he said his wife was staying with an ill cousin in the south, and his baby son couldn’t sleep without her. So I stayed with the boy.”

  “Simply stayed with him?”

  “Well,” Theormi said with a sway of her head, “I began singing curious songs, songs I didn’t remember until I started singing them.”

  She or me. “They must have been sung to you.”

  “I suppose. I don’t recall any family or my native land. Anyway, the boy fell asleep and now every instance that Kani sees me he thanks me.”

  Khufu imagined the melodies of Theormi’s songs. He took her hand, sliding his palm across her fingertips. “Perhaps you’ll sing to me sometime. A sweet ushering into dream.”

  Theormi shivered.

  “Are you cold, maiden?”

  “No, Sire.”

  “Do you recall anything more of your upbringing?”

  “Nearly nothing. My memories are of traveling.”

  “For all you know, you were a princess stolen as an infant from your regal father and mother. That’d make a story.”

  “It’s dear of you to believe that a possibility, Majesty.”

  Khufu searched Theormi’s eyes, eager to discover royal lineage there.

  The couple wended near the wooden-framed greenhouse, draped with linen and nightshade’s violet flowers. He veered toward it but Theormi proceeded past. “You’re heading on, maiden?”

  “Oh ... I planned to wander, your Majesty.”

  Khufu bowed, partly to hide his disappointment. “Enjoy.”

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  He continued only a few more steps to the greenhouse. Stopping, closing his eyes, Khufu listened to Theormi’s receding footfalls while imagining her stride.

  Once inside the greenhouse’s perfumes of purple rose, red poppy and blue lotus, Khufu’s legs weakened. He resisted the urge to grasp his knees. He stretched up to draw his fullest breath. Rather than steady him, the bouquet staggered him.

  Closing his eyes, Khufu saw on the back of his eyelids his death mask staring back at him from the delta. In the next instant, a second arrow, this one invisible, magical and cast by the Gods, speared him in every pore at once. Their collective strike ravished spine, legs, eyes, heart, phallus and name from him. Screaming was all he could do, but he had no tongue. He swooned into the healing hands of Isis.

  Moments passed before Khufu remembered himself in the greenhouse, no longer staring at his gray mask but hearing Isis’s heavenly lullabies and inhaling the bloom of figs in boiling cream.

  The Gods intend for me to remember that I am mortal as well as divine. I am not of them fully yet. Until death kills my mortal half, I am mortal still with mortal needs. I am Khufu. I need Theormi.

  How long had he been dead to his need for a queen? To wake and find himself in a desert as the only feeling grain of sand. His Isis cure was Theormi’s motion in his eyes, pelvis and heart.

  Yet, this new reality threatened Theormi. Should Queen Meritates suspect that her husband yearned with desperation for Theormi as he had once yearned for her, she would compel Theormi’s slaughter. No God-king’s decree or threat would deter the Queen and her minions. Nothing must bring notice to Theormi. Khufu began to plan.

  First, he said a prayer to Goddess Isis.

  Just past noon, thousands of workers cooled in the Nile or reclined across the pyramid site with meals of bread, onions, catfish and beer. Sitting with Kenna and their droopy-eyed friend Pabes in the shade of his team’s next stone, Mehi welcomed daydreaming about An-khi without having to keep up with the foreman’s “Pull, you pull” tempo.

  With red ocher, a scribe numbered the team’s stone with its position in the pyramid. Mehi leaned over to add on it, pulsing with heat, “The Virile Team.”

  Kenna flashed his white teeth. “Name it, Mehi. Make it a pet.”

  Mehi’s grin bulged his cheeks.

  Kenna chomped an onion, displaying his missing front tooth. Face still flushed from the team’s shift, he gazed up to the sky the blue of glazed faience. “I love onions. They’re fleshy and fragrant. They remind me of women.”

  Mehi laughed. “And you remind women of onions.”

  “You’re right—women do love me. I don’t do anything for it. Gods bless me.”

  “‘Gods give one blessing to every fool.’”

  “Your girl’s your blessing.”

  Pabes said, “She’s rich, right? I can tell by her name.”

  “Sure she is,” Kenna said, his mouth packed with onion. “Her father’s the nak governor. She’s got these cheeks you can use as handholds.”

  Pabes elbowed Kenna. “Upper or lower cheeks?”
<
br />   Kenna said, “Did you meet up with her today?”

  Mehi grinned. “We’ve quickly become quite … well, close.”

  “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Well ... we were strolling kind of slow. She’d come close; I’d sneak my arms around her. At first we’d touch quick, then we cinched up in each other’s arms as much as we left them. The thrill that she seemed so happy to be with me … Then I noticed,” Mehi said, “this pressure in my middle.”

  Kenna and Pabes hooted him. “Lower, Mehi.”

  “Listen,” said Mehi, trying to calm them though he too grinned. “We went on walking and hugging, and I couldn’t control this pressure, hot and itchy, in my middle.”

  “We’ve lost our baby, Pabes,” Kenna said.

  “Finally I walk a little distance away from An-khi. By this time, I’m dying. So I’m over there, trying to make water, but it’s not easy. In fact, it hurts.”

  “Deep hurt.” Kenna and Pabes were now bent over laughing. Team members smiled over at their commotion.

  “I finish but I’m still tender. I realized this must be something about An-khi.”

  “Wise, Mehi.”

  “Gods, my fluids were in an uproar all day.” Mehi reached for a ladle in a pot of water.

  Pabes clapped Kenna’s back. “In fact, it hurts.”

  Foremen called out the team names. The thousands including the Virile Team readied for the stone procession’s final hours of the day. Kenna chewed the last of his bread. He tapped Mehi’s shoulder. “Pabes, if Mehi can get a woman, there’s even hope for you.”

  “Aw, fall off,” Pabes said.

  “Mehi’s better off with anyone than that pig Wabt.”

  “Don’t say that. She’s not that bad.”

  “Who’s Wabt?”

  Kenna said, “A devil of nastiness, except to Mehi here.”

  Mehi said, “You’re friends with her too.”

  “I tell you, keep being nice to Wabt and you’ll never get rid of her. She expects you two’ll set up a house together.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  Kenna shrugged. “Believe what you want.” His eyes shifted onto something behind Mehi, then waving to someone there. “Heh, there’s another woman giving out her little heart for me.”

  Mehi and Pabes turned. Mehi knew her. He ran to her as fast as he could while balancing the ladle of water still in his hand. “An-khi, what are you doing here?”

  She eyed his broad, bared shoulders. “I remembered this was mealtime and expected I could find you.”

  “You should volunteer on the serving lines. You’d be sure to find me.”

  “Are those your friends?”

  “Yes. We’re about to get working again.”

  “Quickly then. I wanted to tell you that I wouldn’t be able to meet you in the morning. My witless sister ran away.”

  Sebek did too. “Why did she do that?”

  “She got angry with Father.”

  “Mother just makes talismans when she’s angry at Father.”

  “Snebtisi is afraid Father’s going to marry her—the eldest daughter— you know, to protect his property like royalty does.” She flicked an eyebrow. “Some officials in Annu are doing it.”

  He gawked at An-khi. Could nobles be this remote from his life? Was An-khi a part of this nonsense?

  “So, we’ve got to find her.” An-khi stretched up and kissed Mehi’s cheek. Their first kiss.

  Mehi fingered the oval her lips had drawn.

  “You should get back.” An-khi walked off, turning to smile at Mehi.

  Mehi received her gaze as if gathering wildflowers. His chest charged with new breath.

  In the late afternoon the next day, after locating her sister, An-khi nestled in warm sand of the cove she shared with Mehi, and which she believed concealed her. This cove, riverscape, contours, breezes and Mer’s particular slope of sunlight described home to her. An-khi would have pressed her influence with her father had he not at first agreed to place his estate near Mer rather than in Hituptah, the province’s capital.

  An-khi pictured Mehi at the pyramid, his shoulders broad and glistening.

  Mehi’s very voice re-planted her roots in Mer like the songs of its wharf men, gossip around the village wells, and buzz of honeybees at the village hives. All voices of her larger family.

  Breezes played along An-khi’s stomach and breasts. Gooseflesh erected.

  Running with Mehi on the shore, legs churning and feet stinging on hot pebbles before they jumped into the Nile, An-khi continually felt herself singing even when she wasn’t singing out loud.

  Tenderness in An-khi’s pelvis swelled. She massaged a similar stirring in her breast. It smarted at the touch. This sensation was never so sharp. Moisture rose between An-khi’s legs. Under the tunic, she fingered her breast’s weight. Had it ever been this heavy? The more she pinched the breast, the more it whetted. She hummed two low notes. An-khi nudged the nipple with her forefinger. How stiff.

  Moist heat forked from her middle. She circled a finger in it.

  People kept telling her about how Mehi prevented a boy’s death in the river. He was a hero. His force was as strong as her father’s.

  Mehi sweats with those beautiful men stripped to the waist, muscles straining against the ropes twisted around the stones.

  Heat steamed up An-khi’s stomach. It swept into her breasts and cheeks. Her mouth dropped open. Breaths sputtered. Right hand gripping and re-gripping her breast, her left thumb skimmed the gem of her hem-t. Fever bristled her temples.

  Also, her father did not love what she and Mehi loved: morning coos of doves, yellow mums among jacaranda, the slippery swallow of cucumber with sweet nutsedge, and, of course, tumbling in the Inundation.

  His hair shines and skin glistens. He brings his fingers closer, closer.

  An-khi’s hips pitched up, calves and shoulders pressed down. Her thighs, toes and top of her scalp quivered. Palms, breasts and lips moistened.

  An-khi flicked the gem. She rolled it between thumb and finger, stopping just before it hurt. Again. Harder. Hotter. Her breaths sped faster and sounded lower. She raked her nipples, clamped the breasts.

  His fingers enter her.

  She wriggled her fingertips into her furrow. In time, from her vaginal well, a quiver blazed up her spine. She gasped. Breaths stopped, teeth clenched, eyes shut, An-khi’s body shook and her groan was coarse and long. She gripped her hands into the sand—to hold on.

  Minutes after, An-khi lay as if dissolving into the sand. Catching her breath, she looked down and imagined Mehi at her breast. She held him there.

  Behind her, An-khi heard the swish of a foot slipping across sand. She twisted back. Someone ducked down behind the hollow. “Who’s there? Is someone there?”

  Underneath the crossed palms, the face of a female rose above the bank.

  An-khi sat up. “Why are you spying on me?”

  The woman, about An-khi’s age and wearing coarse linen, rose up but was looking down at her hands.

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t mean to spy on you,” the woman said. “I was following you, I mean, not to spy, but I was following you. Then, I saw you there and I ... I ... never seen it before.”

  “Oh, you mean, what I was doing?”

  The woman made the slightest nod.

  “You haven’t done it yourself?”

  She lifted her eyes long enough to blush. “No, no, no. Sure, men have done the other thing to me but you ... enjoyed it.”

  An-khi guessed that this woman must not have a father like An-khi’s who presented the model of a good man. “What’s your name?”

  “Wabt.”

  “Wabt? Mehi’s friend? He’s mentioned you.”

  “He has? Mehi has talked about me?”

  “Yes.” But he hadn’t mentioned Wabt was infatuated with him. “Why were you following me?”

  Wabt’s voice dropped low. “Because Mehi spends most all his time with you.”
>
  This poor girl. “Rather than follow after me, you should talk to him—about how you feel.”

  “No, no, no. I couldn’t.”

  “Then he may never know.”

  Wabt trembled from head to foot. She looked out to the river. “Mehi loves Nile water.”

  “Yes, he does.” An-khi considered a different approach. “Wabt, did you wish to ask me about how to enjoy it—what I was doing?”

  Wabt’s brows scrunched and jaw muscles rippled.

  “Let me offer, don’t allow a man to steal your enjoyment. And they can’t unless you let them.”

  Wabt shouted, “Who do you think you are? Some foreign-village woman coming here and ... forcing your disgusting pleasures?”

  An-khi flinched. “I meant only —”

  “I don’t care what you meant. Go back to your whoring, you tem foreign woman.” Wabt spun about and rushed off, disappearing below the hollow.

  An-khi frowned. These poor women with weak fathers.

  A week later as the setting sun cremated itself in its final horrible flames, new High-priest Siptah escorted a hooded figure into the corridors of Hituptah’s Ptah Temple. Siptah stepped through the hall quick and light, his guest followed slow and sure. In the first of Egypt’s temples to be composed entirely of stone, their footsteps echoed hollow off the dark columns carved with images of Ptah and his wife, lioness-headed Sekmet, goddess of war. They came to the sanctuary and its twenty-foot statue of Ptah, painted gold with dark blue skull cap, goatee and body-length scepter.

  Underneath the statue, Siptah turned to face his guest. “We are brothers,” Siptah said, presenting his arms. “We wish the best for Egypt, dear Vizier Shaf.”

  The guest pulled down his hood, his dark eye glinting. “We are brothers,” Shaf said, not smiling. “We each love our enemies for challenging us to new heights.”

  The High-priest indicated pillows on the floor beside a fire pot. The moment the two sat, Shaf poked his sharp face at the priest. Siptah flinched and withdrew, his small eyes darting away. “As the new High-Priest, you find yourself in a war to protect your power. Khufu might at any instant halt the tribute to your temples, the tribute that feeds you.”

  Siptah adjusted his white gown. “We are secure as long as Khufu is not a fool.”

  “In this war of influence, capturing the people’s faith is the most potent weapon, wouldn’t you agree? They rally about King Khufu.”

  “You travel in a different circle than I, dear vizier. Last year’s meager Inundation and this year’s apparent repeat of failure have caused doubt throughout the kingdom. He is conquerable.”

  “Conquerable, priest? You don’t talk of conquering the God-king literally, do you?”

  Siptah cleared his throat. “Of course, I mean ‘conquerable’ in a purely abstract context.”

  “Undoubtedly.” Shaf grinned at the High-priest. “For he is not conquerable by you, alone, even abstractly. However, don’t despair my dear Siptah. I have a plan.”

  “Bless this Temple. Whatever can your plan entail?”

  Shaf smirked. “Maintain your cold tone if you are able after I state this: My plan is for you to kill the Hap Bull.”

  “Kill? Kill the Hap Bull? You say such a thing.”

  “You face me now, and with a bit of blood in your cheeks.” Shaf bowed. “I say such a thing. Kill the Hap.”

  Siptah stared at the vizier. Over his shoulder, the Ptah statue seemed to stare down too at Shaf. The pot’s low flame exposed the priest’s and vizier’s facial pores as hard and sharp. “This jest is perhaps better told to one other than the High-priest of Hituptah, Guardian of the Hap.”

  Shaf said nothing. He smiled.

  Siptah’s voice pitched higher with each word. “It can’t be done. It can’t be done.”

  “It,” said Shaf, clapping his hands sharply once, “must.” The clap reverberated against the stone clouds and reeds. “Should you destroy the Bull, in the most unnatural manner, the people will believe that the God-king has arranged it to weaken your connection to the Divine. They will turn from their king.”

  Siptah peered at Shaf, seeming to consider a moment. “In all due respect to your exalted office, perhaps to a higher degree than you might possess, I wonder whether your intentions can be—shall I say—benevolent.”

  The vizier’s head tilted. “Someone will follow in the great line of Egyptian God-kings. Should the Gods will that it be sooner rather than later ... well ...”

  Siptah’s shoulders dropped. His eyes narrowed on the prince. “I understand, my brother friend. Your esteem for Egypt is manifest.”

  “Of course, my stratagem requires your producing the next Hap before Khufu does. By this you will prove to the citizens the divine right of your religion and the fault of the King.”

  “How might we acquire assurance to be first in locating a calf with the proper markings?”

  “That is my plan’s brilliance.” Shaf smiled. “Even now I possess such a calf.” The vizier folded his arms across his chest, grin spreading, seemingly awaiting Siptah’s praise. None came. “At the appointed time you will walk with the calf down Annu’s streets amid the crowds of citizens rejoicing in the new Hap. I will elevate you as a hero.”

  Eyes narrowing on the vizier, Siptah drew back his head a precise distance.

  Shaf pointed a finger at the High-priest. “Remember, it would not promote the Great Temple of Ptah for Khufu to be counseled by his vizier that the assassin at his Heb-Sed, who killed his eldest son, frequented these grounds on a regular basis. Yes, I the vizier know this truth.”

  The priest blinked. His tongue flicked between his lips.

  Shaf eased back. “Exquisitely good.”

  The friends rose.

  Shaf turned up the hood. “I counsel you—do the act bloodily. More blood is better, don’t you think?” With that, Vizier Shaf bowed, grinned, and sauntered from the dark stony room.

  When alone, Siptah said, “Greedy, short-sighted, untrustworthy and no follower of the Word of Ptah or even of Ra. Yet, he is serviceable.”