Lynda Robinson - Drinker Of Blood

Akhenaten shouted, "Enough!"

She pressed her lips together, folded her arms across her chest, and met his wrath with her own growing irritation. Tiye would have scolded her, but Nefertiti was disgusted with her husband's callousness. After years of diplomatic maneuvering, her patience was at an end. Pharaoh was the shepherd of his people. It was his divine duty to care for them, not make their lives harder than they already were. Nefertiti's eyes narrowed, and she felt her cheeks redden. Without warning, Akhenaten threw back his head and laughed.

"By the Aten, little wife. You're the only one in all of Egypt who dares glare at me. Come, we mustn't quarrel." Akhenaten planted a kiss on her hot cheek.

She would have objected to this sudden end to their conversation, but the barge was docking at the royal quay. Allowing Akhenaten to guide her to the gangplank, she eyed him surreptitiously. His manner was excited, cheerful, and something else. She noted his rapid breathing. By the gods, her defiance had excited him.

As she stepped off the gangplank, Nefertiti was mobbed by her daughters. While she greeted each little girl with a kiss, her thoughts chased each other in a furious attempt to assess this new development. Perhaps Tiye had been wrong. If her defiance excited Akhenaten, might she be able to use it as well as her charm and tact to bring him to see reason?

Lifting the naked and chubby Ankhesenpaaten, Nefertiti followed her husband as he made his way toward the royal palace. She gave half her attention to the happy chattering of her two oldest daughters-Merytaten and Meketaten-and pondered this new discovery. Dared she use defiance as a tool? It had served the priests of Amun ill. But she was Akhenaten's queen, whom he called mistress of happiness, fair of face.

Suddenly she remembered the two colossal statues of himself that Akhenaten had recently shown her. Twice normal size, each was a nude, elongated monster with the feminine attributes Akhenaten insisted upon. A narrow, triangular skull supported the pharaonic headcloth and diadem. The eyes were mere slits, separated by a long, thin nose. The only fullness in the face came from the lips, which protruded with a roundness that was blatantly sensual.

Those statues represented confusion to her. Akhenaten had explained their symbolism, but Nefertiti remained unconvinced. As the son of the Aten, Akhenaten was the font of all regeneration; he was both male and female. Well, pharaoh could be anything he wished, she supposed. But to her, those composite stone creatures represented confusion more than anything else. Akhenaten was confusing, and his reactions to defiance unpredictable. Neither his father nor Tiye had made progress with him by argument. Could she?

Nefertiti felt a tug on her ear. Her youngest was playing with one of her heavy gold-and-carnelian earrings. Disentangling tiny fingers from the jewel, Nefertiti handed the child to her nurse and hurried to catch up with Akhenaten and her older daughters. A quick glance over her shoulder showed the glint of the sun off the electrum-tipped poles and gold-encrusted doors of the temple of Amun.

The dying sunlight caused the facade of the pylon gates to burst into flame and then grow dim. Turning away, Nefertiti shivered. Soon her husband would extinguish the brilliant flame of that place. And she was very much afraid that from pharaoh's sacrilege, misery would flow like the waters of Inundation.

Memphis, reign of Tutankhamun

The morning after Kysen looted Dilalu's refuse heap, Meren stood under the small loggia attached to his office on the top floor of his town house. The air was suffused with moisture, a sign of Inundation, for the Nile had swelled over its banks to flood the fields of Egypt and deposit its fertile gift of new soil. It was almost dawn, and he could see silver mist floating above the river. The vapor obscured the east bank except for the tallest palms, but its ephemeral cloud was no barrier to the croak of toads or the occasional bleating of goats.

Meren glanced at the bundle of papyri in his hand, but he was distracted by the sight of Bener striding into the granary court, her household records under her arm. She proceeded to direct his steward in the distribution of grain for the day's baking. A splash from the reflection pool deflected his thoughts. He could see Kysen's young son, Remi, toddling around the edge of the water. The child bent down and slapped the water again, causing a duck to squawk and flap its wings and Meren to smile. Isis scurried from the direction of the women's quarters and scooped the child into her arms with an ineffectual admonishment.

Meren's smile vanished. Isis was still avoiding him. Twice now he had lingered after an early-morning meal in the hope that she would remain behind with him rather than hurry away. He'd spoken kindly to her, had done so for days, without response. Isis, his most beautiful and willful daughter, had lost her pride and seemed filled with shame. Meren had never been blind to Isis's lack of humility, but this bent-necked, cringing remorse gave him pain.

The murmur of voices from his office reminded him of his duties. He hadn't yet had time to do more than receive the reports of the men he'd sent to various offices in search of records from Nefertiti's household. He went inside and collapsed on his chair on the master's dais, the focal point of the long room. Stacks of document cases and rolls of papyrus littered the elegant chamber. They obscured the delicate wall paintings and leaned against slender wooden columns.

All three of his scribes had been diverted from their search for old royal records to pursue two tasks he'd given them. Kaha, the best translator of the wedge-shaped characters used by the Asiatics, sat on the floor in the middle of several small piles of clay tablets, deciphering Dilalu's discarded correspondence. Dedi and Bekenamun, called Bek, strode about the office and dug through the piles of documents strewn over every surface. Most of the records had been borrowed from various government departments like the treasury, the chamberlain's office, and the army. Meren had instructed his scribes to trace the career of the military officer known as Yamen.

It seemed years ago, although it had only been weeks, since Kysen had brought word of the three men suspected of being the mastermind behind Nefertiti's murder-Dilalu, Yamen, and Zulaya. Kysen's account of the fear the names of these men inspired hadn't alarmed Meren until his son told him that even the Greek pirate Othrys gripped his sword and spoke of them in a whisper. Othrys was the kind of man who dined on his enemies' entrails and drank their blood.

"Lord."

Meren looked up to find Kaha standing before him with several clay tablets in his hands. "What have you found?"

"You said, lord, that this Dilalu is a dealer in weapons?"

"He also trades in exotic animals, horses."

Gripping a small rectangle of clay, Kaha pointed at a mound of tablets on the floor behind him. "Yes, lord. Those are bills of lading for such items. And the tablets next to them are records of stores of copper arrowheads, spear points, and so on." Kaha held up the rectangular tablet so that Meren could see the lines of angular script. "This, however, is not."

Meren noted the gleam in Kaha's eyes. The youngest son of a minor lord, he was known for his facility with languages.

"Out with it, boy."

"Lord, this is a letter from the chief of a town near Gaza, specifying the number of troops he requires for his payment to Dilalu. Not weapons. Troops. Nubian bowmen." Kaha thrust the tablet under his arm and proffered two more. "These had been damaged. Parts of them are missing, but from what I can decipher, each is to one of Dilalu's customers at the border between the empire and the Hittites. They give the cost for several services-providing weapons, providing infantry, providing chariotry."