Lynda Robinson - Slayer of Gods

“What did her majesty do?”

“I don’t know,” Tutankhamun said, his gaze growing clouded as he tried to recall. “I’m not sure, but-yes, I think she became ill before she did anything to him.” Tutankhamun’s head drooped, and he allowed the document to fall to the floor. “Then she died, and I was alone.”

“Usermontu,” Meren said. “I never did like him.”

Anath said, “You’re not alone.”

“You think he could have killed the queen to prevent her from exposing him?” Tutankhamun asked.

“It’s possible, majesty,” Anath replied. “He seems to have been the most corrupt of her servants.”

Meren tried to evaluate what the king had told him, but his heart was back in the sickroom with Kysen. Nothing mattered, not even Nefertiti’s death, as long as his son was in danger. The reason and clarity that usually governed his thoughts seemed to have vanished. In its place terror ruled, and now that old burning feeling in his chest had returned, the feeling he got when he’d missed something important. He nearly swore aloud as the agitation over this failure combined with the fear to make his state almost unbearable. He roused from this state of dazed misery when the king spoke to him.

“I must go,” the boy said. “You’re distracted and miserable, and nothing I can say will help.”

“Majesty, thy presence has been a great comfort.”

“I think not.” Tutankhamun drew near and searched Meren’s face. “Is this the torment a parent endures when his child suffers?”

“Yes, Golden One. There is no worse pain.”

“Ankhesenamun is with child.”

Anath smoothly stepped into the small silence. “We rejoice with thy majesty.”

“Indeed,” Meren said. “Amun be praised.”

Tutankhamun nodded gravely. “I will intercede with the god, my father, on Kysen’s behalf.”

At that moment Bener rushed in, barely able to contain herself long enough to kneel when she saw the king.

“He’s awake!”

Everyone rushed to Kysen’s room, including the king. Meren hurtled to the bed, and dropped to his knees.

“Ky?”

Kysen opened his eyes briefly, then closed them. “I feel so odd.”

He opened his eyes again and tried to get up. Meren grabbed his shoulders and pushed him down again.

“Nebamun says you mustn’t get up yet.”

“What happened?”

“Someone poisoned you.”

“Marduk! Ow, my head.”

Nebamun appeared with a cup of water. Meren held it while Kysen drank. After a few sips he sighed and lay back.

“There’s something I must tell…” Kysen’s eyes closed, and his voice faded.

Meren shook his son. “Kysen!”

“Fear not, lord,” Nebamun said as he steadied his patient against Meren’s frantic shaking. “This is a natural sleep, not one induced by poison.”

With relief Meren released Kysen, rose and turned to find that the king had slipped away.

“His majesty felt you needed rest now that Kysen is out of danger,” Anath said.

Meren walked to the end of the bed and stood gazing on his son. He didn’t know how long he spent measuring the depth of Kysen’s breathing, his coloring, his posture. Eventually he was able to believe the physician’s happy pronouncement. Anath waited patiently beside him, and at last he smiled at her. With Kysen out of danger it was as if his heart had been suddenly freed. His thoughts became clearer, and at the same time that grating sensation of having forgotten something rose to prominence.

“I wish pharaoh hadn’t left,” Meren said to Anath. “Something he said bothered me.”

“About Usermontu?”

“I’m not sure,” Meren said. He gazed at Kysen for a few moments, then realized he wasn’t doing any good here. “Come,” he said to Anath. With a last glance at Kysen, they left the bedchamber.

“What did pharaoh say that disturbed you?” Anath asked as they walked.

“I wish I knew. For weeks now I’ve felt I’ve missed something important. If I could only remember what it is, I might have the key to this whole mystery.”

“You’re tired,” Anath said as they walked into the reception hall. “Why not go to bed and think about it tomorrow when you’re refreshed?”

“No,” Meren said. He walked around the dais, his head bent, his thoughts released from their prison of fear. “No, I can almost see it. It will come to me, but not if I sleep.”

Anath folded her arms and watched him. “If you must push yourself to exhaustion, at least get some air. You’ve been cooped up in the house too long. No wonder your thoughts hide from you. Your heart is choking on stale humors.”

Rolling his shoulders to ease the ache in them, Meren sighed. “You’re right. Sitting around will do no good. We’ll take my chariot.”

“Good, then you can drive me to my house. I promised Bener some resins she wants to use for a healing incense for Kysen.”

It didn’t take long before they were driving out of the gates of Golden House. The chariot clattered over ruts in the street, and Wind Chaser and Star Chaser snorted and tossed their heads in the chill air of early morning. Meren welcomed the drive. Guiding the chariot, allowing his hands to feel the mood of the horses through the reins, these familiar activities allowed his heart the freedom to open to any drift of memory, any small eddy of thought that might spark the key recollection. Unfortunately the trip wasn’t long enough, and he was still preoccupied as they walked into the house.

Anath vanished in the direction of the kitchen, and Meren wandered through the house. He stepped around a couch made of ebony and decorated with bands of gold and passed several chairs of the finest cedar. Brilliantly colored hangings covered the walls, and in a side room he glimpsed serving vessels of silver. He wandered onto a loggia that afforded a view of a reflection pool the size of a small lake.

If he couldn’t resolve this matter of the queen’s killer soon, he might have to resort to the king’s methods and seal the city, apprehend all the suspected ones, and interrogate them until one of them broke. He desperately wished to avoid such a course, for the search would take days, during which his family would be at risk no matter how he protected them. Allowing his thoughts to roam freely was the best way to encourage the spark of recollection.

Something in that conversation with the king and Anath had provoked that burning feeling in his chest, that feeling of having almost glimpsed the solution. Not the part about Usermontu. Something else. There had been a discussion of the reasoning behind Bener’s abduction and Kysen’s poisoning. Meren leaned against a column and lifted his face to the north breeze as his thoughts drifted.

The king’s praise of Kysen had been small comfort while his son had been in danger, but now he could enjoy the fact that pharaoh had a good opinion of him. Tutankhamun admired strength, to a certain degree. He didn’t admire strength that pitted itself against him, and he was highly suspicious. That was why he remarked upon the fact that Meren’s troubles began the moment he returned from Horizon of the Aten. But Meren had learned over the years that just because two things happened around the same time didn’t always mean they were related.

It was unfortunate that Tutankhamun had been so young when the queen died, for his clever heart would have been of great help. He might have understood more about the quarrel between the queen and Usermontu. But the king had been a child. What had he said? He’d been five in the fifteenth year of Akhenaten. Pharaoh had been reading through those records-the old tallies of foreign tribute, the orders for rations for slaves belonging to the Aten temple, that transfer of deed for the land old Thanuro never lived to enjoy.