Lynda Robinson - Slayer of Gods

“No, I don’t. Not with this knot on my head.” Kysen winced.

“He yelled at his men. He said ‘you idiot, that’s him.’ It seemed to me that he recognized you. In fact, it seemed to me that he expected to find you here. Hoped to find you. The porter and the guards who are usually on duty at the gates over there vanished once Dilalu began to speak to you.”

“You think he planned to abduct me? Why?”

“I don’t know, lord. Perhaps Dilalu is in league with the killer sought by Lord Meren. But I may be wrong. Perhaps he was telling the truth and simply wished help in leaving because you’ve made him wary. But with all the misfortunes that have beset your father lately, I don’t wish to stand here speculating.”

“Damnation.” Kysen threw up his hands. “Even that cursed cat got away.”

Reia pointed at Kysen’s scratched arm. “Cats are usually good luck, but that one must be possessed by a fiend.”

“Curse it, Reia, I’ve bungled everything. Now we’ll have to root Dilalu out of his house before he flees the city. Come on.”

Kysen took several steps and swayed as the world tilted. Reia and another charioteer caught him.

“Dilalu can wait. I’m taking you back to Golden House so that Nebamun can tend to you.”

“Just give me a moment, and I’ll be fine,” Kysen said.

Reia and another charioteer grasped his arms, and Kysen found himself being steered out of the garden court.

“We’re going home, lord. I can’t be sure you’re the hunter any longer. You may be the prey. Besides, if I allowed you to continue in your condition, Lord Meren would see me flayed and fed to the king’s lions.”

“I’m not leaving before I talk to Ese!”

“Lord Meren charged me with protecting you before he left. I would greatly dislike being forced to throw you over my shoulder in the manner of your attacker.”

“Damn you, Reia, I’ll remember this.”

“Of that I’m certain, Lord Kysen.”

Meren stood on the deck of Wings of Horus. The cloak of early morning wrapped him in a chilly embrace, and he listened to the water lap against the sides of this, his fastest ship. Long, sleek, black, it had covered the distance between Memphis and Horizon of the Aten more quickly than he would have wished. Three days after embarking he was waiting for the sun-Ra, not the Aten-to burst upon the eastern horizon and reveal Akhenaten’s capital.

He hadn’t wanted to return again to this skeleton of a city, the site of his torment. For most of the seventeen long years of his rule, Akhenaten and his government had lodged here. Akhenaten had chosen a pristine site for his new capital, a place where the eastern desert cliffs retreated from the Nile valley and formed a backdrop of crescent-shaped cream-colored rock. Perched on this barren plain, the city had baked in the relentless rays of the Aten and the fanatic gaze of the god’s son, Akhenaten. Without the shade provided by trees and vegetation, life had been miserable at first. Everyone except Akhenaten had welcomed the arrival of an army of gardeners with seedlings and trees from the old capital. Later, when Akhenaten’s sun temples were completed, worship in sunlight rather than the coolness of a sacred shrine added to the city’s discomfort.

Pharaoh had been oblivious to everyone’s suffering, but the heat had been the least part of Meren’s difficulties. He’d been so young, eighteen, when his father defied Akhenaten and died for his crime. Sending his beloved wife and daughters away from Horizon of the Aten had been a precaution, one of which Meren had been glad the day the king’s soldiers had come for him. He’d been eating his morning meal at home when he heard a crash, and the porter came running to tell him-what? The poor man couldn’t speak. Meren could see him now, his mouth working noiselessly, his eyes bulging with fear. And behind him five massive Nubian soldiers.

Meren had promised himself not to succumb to miserable recollections. He hugged himself and began to pace down the length of the ship. It was Horizon of the Aten, this near-deserted, decaying carcass of a city that had once been so terrifyingly beautiful. Horizon of the Aten did this to him.

Ra, lord of the heavens, rose over the city. Meren went to the railing and looked out, past the docks that had so recently brimmed with the spoils of the empire, over the rooftops of the storehouses, and glimpsed the top of the ceremonial center called the Great Palace. There, in a throne room made brilliant with painted tiles and vast quantities of gold and electrum, Akhenaten had received his ministers and given audience to foreign ambassadors-when he wasn’t at the Great Aten Temple.

The monumental buildings of stone and brick remained; only their valuable metal and wood fittings had been taken away. But their creator, the man whose presence filled them with the light of fanaticism and the bustle of royal business, was gone, and no one else wanted to live here. Oh, a few priests stayed to keep up the pretense of tending the royal tombs and make offerings to the kas of the dead king and his family. Across the river small farms thrived as they had before Akhenaten ever thought of living here. A few people traded on the docks. But the tens of thousands of royal officials, servants, the master craftsmen, the laborers and their families, the great freighters full of grain, wood, flax, and the spoils of the empire had vanished, never to return.

Meren dragged his gaze away and wondered where Anath was. Her smaller yacht had followed Wings of Horus up the river, but she spent each day with him and regaled him with tales of her exploits among the Asiatics. Anath could make the fiercest outlaw chief seem ridiculous with her biting and perceptive observations. This talent for detailed scrutiny made her an extremely valuable royal agent. She had also learned to use magic to further her aims, and Meren feared she employed it too freely in manipulating people. It was all done, according to Anath, for the good of pharaoh and Egypt.

What surprised him, though, was how she made him laugh, even at himself. She was an amazing woman to have retained her humor after being exiled among the Asiatics for so long. Meren would have suffered terribly without being able to see the Nile every day. However, Anath had one weakness-her animals. Luckily she hadn’t brought all of them with her. The one she had was more than enough.

“You’re glowering like an underworld fiend.”

Meren started and whirled around to find Anath standing a few paces away, her head cocked to the side, hands on her hips.

“Damnation, Anath, where did you come from?”

“I came aboard moments ago,” she said as she joined him. “You would have noticed if you hadn’t been transfixed by the sunrise. Where were your thoughts, Meren?”

Meren moved away from her, avoiding her speculative gaze. “I was thinking about your recommendation that we begin searching at the Riverside Palace.”

He went to the awning attached to the deckhouse where his cook was laying out a meal. A small kitchen boat followed Wings of Horus with supplies and the cook and his assistants. He sat on a woven mat and drank water while the cook filled a bowl with roasted goose. Anath strolled over, sat down, and took another bowl.

Meren lifted a drumstick and was about to bite into it when he thought of something. “Cook, this isn’t that evil goose of old Satet’s, is it?”

“No, lord. Beauty still lives. It would be bad luck to kill that old pestilence. Lady Bener gave orders that Beauty was to be kept as a pet just as Satet intended.”

Anath was looking out at the city. “I remember how green this place used to be.”