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  As Kysen observed his guest with Bener he realized the man was older than he’d first seemed. His hair was sprinkled with silver. Delicate lines spread like solar rays from the corners of his eyes. He sprinkled his conversation with humor in a manner that made him seem younger. He certainly had no trouble entertaining Bener. She had drawn her chair closer to her guest, and her gaze seldom left him as Zulaya related some tale of a pirate raid on one of his ships.

  “We shot flaming arrows onto the deck as they tried to come alongside. That usually fends them off, unless they risk firing them first.”

  Bener was wide-eyed. “Do they?”

  “Sometimes.” Zulaya leaned toward her, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “It isn’t wise to set fire to the ship that carries the very thing you wish to steal, but some pirates have the wits of oxen.” He popped a grape in his mouth. “Whichever ship survives the fire is the ship I take into port.”

  “Amazing,” Bener said with a rapid flutter of her dark lashes.

  Kysen eyed her as Zulaya bowed to her from his chair. After a quiet moment he suddenly asked, “And the pirates?”

  Zulaya waved his wine cup. “Most of them are killed.”

  “No prisoners?”

  “Oh, a few,” Zulaya said lightly. “When I began to have trouble with them I devised a method for dealing with them. Those who attacked and lived I divided into three groups. The first I flayed alive while the others watched; the second I hung from the bow of my ship by their feet as an example to all who saw them; and the others I released to spread stories of the fate of their companions.”

  Bener swallowed hard and turned to pick among the dessert cakes on a tray.

  Kysen merely nodded. “Effective.”

  “Not as effective as my other method.” Zulaya grinned at him. “I found a pirate named Othrys and paid him to keep the others away. Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”

  Meeting Zulaya’s gaze with an open and blank look, Kysen shook his head. “No, but there are so many lawless men at sea.”

  “True.”

  The night was growing cooler, and from the roof flickering points of lamplight sprinkled the city. Near the river, torches sent rippling sprays of gold across the water.

  Zulaya gazed out at the city and sighed. “I regret I must take my leave. I have promised to attend the high priest of Ptah early tomorrow.”

  The merchant thanked Bener for her hospitality, and Kysen walked downstairs with him.

  “I regret not having the honor of being presented to Lord Meren,” Zulaya said as they walked across the reception hall. He stopped and turned to Kysen as they neared the master’s dais with its costly chair of cedar, ebony, ivory, and gold. “I confess to a great admiration of your father, Lord Kysen.”

  Kysen was taken aback. “Oh?”

  “Indeed. Lord Meren’s skills are celebrated throughout the empire and in every land, of course, but I particularly appreciate your father’s fine grasp of the intricacies of the power struggles among great men. We humble merchants are greatly affected by quarrels and strife among the mighty, you know.”

  “I had no idea that foreign merchants took such an interest in Lord Meren.”

  Zulaya inclined his head. “Among my people it is rare to come upon a nobleman whose loyalty to his prince isn’t motivated by greed—for riches or power. Your father’s character is well known, Lord Kysen. Of him it is said that he cares for the pharaoh of Egypt out of reverence, never seeking the Gold of Honor or other rewards. Everyone knows that Lord Meren honors justice and order, and allows neither high place nor sentiment to sway him from his principles.”

  “Yes,” Kysen said. He led the merchant to the front door. “My father is a man of great honor, but I’m surprised that his reputation has spread as far as you say.”

  “When so rare a man is found, word of his existence travels far.”

  With a low bow, Zulaya was gone. As the porter shut the door Kysen shook his head. He didn’t think Zulaya was the kind of man to try to squirm into his favor with flattery. The man had meant what he said, which was surprising, given Zulaya’s ruthlessness and proven ability to amass a fortune by less than honest means. His association with pirates like Othrys wasn’t simply one of convenience. Zulaya bought looted goods from them and passed them off as legitimate. Perhaps the merchant’s admiration was that of a powerful man who respected the strength of another.

  Kysen headed for the roof again, deep in thought. Zulaya was formidable. He’d just spent hours in Golden House without revealing anything of importance, despite Kysen’s probing questions. Without flattering himself, Kysen could claim great skill at eliciting information from suspects, yet the most to which Zulaya would admit was consorting with pirates. Such verbal fencing was worthy of a royal emissary, of Meren himself. Indeed, Zulaya and his father had much in common—skill at intrigue, charm, ruthlessness.

  Kysen reached the roof intent on taking Bener to task for her interference with Zulaya, only to find the eating tables deserted except for the serving maids. He searched for her, but she’d gone to her chamber. Before he could hunt her down, his son appeared with his nurse. Kysen spent the rest of the evening with the boy. By this time it was too late to fight with his sister, so he went to bed feeling cheated of his opportunity to tell Bener what he thought of her.

  His sore head kept him awake so that he slept late the next day. It was mid-morning by the time he had break-fasted, and there was still not word on Dilalu. He wanted to talk to Bener, but she had gone out. He spent the rest of the morning conducting the business of the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh, all the while fuming at the delay in taking his sister to task. He wanted to see her before he set out to find the pirate Othrys. When she finally came home with several servants trailing behind her carrying goods from the market, Kysen met her in the reception hall.

  “Where have you been?” he snapped.

  Bener raised her eyebrows, and Kysen bit off his next comment. She dismissed her servants and poured herself a cup of water from a jar draped with a lotus garland.

  Kysen waited for the servants to leave before speaking again. “Where have you been?”

  “To the market, obviously.” Bener took a long sip of water and sighed as she sat down on the edge of the master’s dais.

  “I want to talk to you about last night.”

  “Aren’t you interested in where else I’ve been?”

  “No,” Kysen said.

  “You should be.”

  Kysen narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been visiting Lady Wenher.”

  “Pendua’s wife! Curse you, Bener. You can’t do that.”

  “Nonsense,” Bener replied as she wiped perspiration from her brow and chin. “I can, and I did. Wenher has a great store of herbs and is well versed in their use in cooking and medicines. Everybody knows that. Did you ever think of that when you considered whether Lord Pendua might have—”

  “Shh!” Kysen glanced around the hall, then motioned for Bener to follow him. He led the way to Meren’s office, past the charioteer on guard there, and shut the door. “Now, what were you saying about Lady Wenher?”

  Bener shrugged. “Just that she knows a lot about herbs, including the tekau plant you said was used to poison…” Bener lowered her voice. “… to poison the queen.”

  Kysen rolled his eyes, speechless.

  “You asked her about the tekau plant?” he said with a groan.

  “No, you fool. I asked her for a remedy for your aching head. I told her you were injured practicing close combat with the charioteers, and she had lots of advice.” Bener’s eyes lit. “You mix frankincense, cumin, fresh bread, goose fat, honey, and sweet beer, strain it and drink it for four days.”

  “Bener.”

  “You can also make an unguent of cumin with moringa oil, myrrh, lotus flowers, juniper berries, and—”

  “Bener!”

  She grinned at him. “There was tekau hanging in the room Wenher uses to dry her herbs.�
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  Uttering a wordless sound of frustration, Kysen made no objection when his sister sauntered out of the room. Just then a document case full of royal dispatches arrived, but he was still fuming an hour later when he heard noise coming from the roof. It sounded like Bener, so he climbed the stairs to investigate.

  When he got to the roof he followed the sound of her raised voice and found her hanging over the roof ledge waving and laughing. Kysen slowed as he drew near, for Bener was wearing her best robes and jewelry. She’d painted her eyes, reddened her cheeks and lips, and wore her most elaborate wig. As he gawked at her Bener gave a rippling laugh and threw a lotus flower to someone below. Kysen looked down, and watched a young man in a chariot catch the lotus and bow to his sister.

  On this side of the house the distance to a wide avenue wasn’t great. Young noblemen used this street to parade in their chariots harnessed with their finest thoroughbred teams. Well-born young ladies strolled by admiring the men, flirting and giggling to each other. The fortunate girls who lived on the avenue could view the scene from their roofs, and be seen to great advantage. This parading and flirting had gone on for centuries, and was one of the ways in which young Egyptians searched for potential mates. But Bener had always scoffed at the girls who simpered and giggled as they strutted on the avenue. Her most scathing remarks had targeted the girls on the roofs who hung over the ledges and flaunted themselves, and now she was making a spectacle of herself.

  Bener called out a goodbye to the young man in the chariot and waved as he saluted her and drove down the avenue.

  “What are you doing? Are you mad?” Kysen said as he joined her side. “First you entertain Zulaya like an old friend, then you visit Pendua’s wife, and now you flirt with a stranger.”

  Bener hardly glanced at him. Turning on her heel, she walked away as she said, “That, dear brother, wasn’t a stranger.” She turned and smiled at him. “That was Lord Rudu, the eldest son of Prince Usermontu.”

  In a flash of gold, carnelian, and turquoise, Bener tossed Kysen a lotus flower and left him alone on the roof with the scent of frankincense and honey lingering in his nostrils.

  Chapter 9

  Meren woke late the morning after Anath surprised him in his bed. His late rising delayed the hour of departure, but by midday Wings of Horus set sail. This time Meren commanded a fast rowing pace, and the black ship cut through the north-flowing current, scattering lesser vessels before her. The journey took him down the length of Egypt, past dozens of towns and villages, until he came to Abydos, the city of Osiris. He stopped only briefly at his country estate. Then he headed south again and passed mighty Thebes, home of Amun, king of the gods. Equaled only by pharaoh’s great ships, Wings of Horus pressed on, relentlessly breasting the force of the river, using the north breeze to push ever closer to Syene, the capital city of the first nome of Egypt.

  Even though he pushed the sailors as hard as he dared, Meren didn’t reach the first nome for almost two weeks. After the first night she came to his bed, he gave up trying to preserve a facade of decorum with Anath. The woman had no shyness in her, it seemed. He even grew accustomed to the amused glances of his charioteers. Once he overheard several of them.

  “It should have happened long ago. Golden House needs a mistress.”

  “He couldn’t forget his wife.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. He had to be careful. Too many place-seekers threw their pretty daughters at him in order to make an advantageous alliance. It’s the same with Lord Kysen and his daughters.”

  Meren had reddened upon hearing his private life discussed, even by men to whom he entrusted his life. It was a hazard of rank, this lack of privacy, and one of the reasons he refrained from too much indulgence. Circumspection and moderation protected him from scandal and left him invulnerable to coercion by anyone seeking to control the Eyes and Ears of Pharaoh. Anath ignored his remoteness as well as his dignity and severity. She simply came to him when she wanted to, regardless of what he or anyone else might think. And Meren allowed her visits.

  To his surprise Anath even had the magical power to banish for a time his anxiety over the king. He spent long, tranquil days under the deckhouse awning. The jewel-blue water surrounded him; the cool wind brought air suffused with sweetness uncontaminated by the city smells of animal dung and refuse. He could lie on a couch with Anath sitting on pillows on the deck beside him while the Black Land sped by.

  He watched farmers as they scurried over the fields, damming water, making ready for planting. He followed the progress of peasants on donkeys. The riders’ legs hung down over the sides of their mounts, almost touching the ground. The animals plodded on the narrow paths between fields and he wondered idly where the travelers were going. He listened to the rushing sound of the water until he dozed, then woke to the sight of one of the Nile’s many small islands lush with vegetation and thick with birds—crested herons, bitterns, egrets, cormorants. Anath had pointed out a black-beaked Horus falcon. Meren couldn’t remember the last time he’d paid attention to birds, watched tall reeds on the shore or on the islands waving in the wind as he sailed by, or turned his face to the breeze and breathed deeply, allowing the tranquillity of the Nile to seep into his bones.

  The idyll ended when the lush black fields grew scarce, the deep green of tree and water plant vanished, and the desert crept close to the shore. Eventually barren rock shoved itself right into the river, and Meren knew that Syene was near. When rounded, red granite boulders thrust themselves out of the earth, out of the Nile itself, he knew they’d arrived. At that moment he felt apprehension descend again, and he fought off images of pharaoh’s features grown more haggard with each day that passed. He and Anath watched from the deck as barges carrying obelisks and colossal statues floated past them on their way south. Dark-skinned, graceful Nubians plied the waters in their smaller sailing craft and traded from their perpendicular mud houses. They had reached the gateway to the frontier of Nubia, land of gold and rebellious tribes.

  From Syene, at the first Nile cataract, southward into Nubia stretched the great border fortresses, Miam, Buhen, Semna, Shaat, Tombos, all the way to Napata at the fourth cataract. From these massive bastions Egypt controlled the routes to the desert gold and copper mines, the quarries from which came precious red granite and amethyst, and managed a trade rich in exotic goods—ivory, animal skins, spices, ostrich feathers, and minerals. From nomadic traders came cattle and goats. Just as important, no one could enter Egypt without passing the garrisons that perched on rocky promontories overlooking the narrow river valley or the troops that ceaselessly patrolled the deserts.

  “There it is,” Meren said, and he pointed to the island rising out of the lapis lazuli waters. “Elephantine Island.”

  “It doesn’t look like an elephant,” Anath said as she stood beside him.

  “It’s named for the ivory trade, foolish one.”

  Feeling his treasured serenity ebb from him, Meren contained his impatience while Wings of Horus floated slowly up to a mooring place. Elephantine was a great trading center as well as the home of a garrison in the fortress on the south end of the island high above the city. Also at the southern end of the island exquisite Egyptian temples nestled among the palm trees, one of them built by Tutankhamun’s father. And not far from the fortress lay the house of the man Meren had come all this way to see—Taharqa.

  Taharqa was a chief’s son and the highest official in the administration of pharaoh’s viceroy of Nubia, who governed the lands south of Egypt and controlled the royal gold mines. Born in far southern Nubia, which was known as Kush, he had been sent to court to be raised as an Egyptian. It was from this palace childhood that Meren knew him.

  Pharaohs had long ago found that turning the children of warlike Nubian chiefs into Egyptian aristocrats assured royal control of this valuable border land. Gradually over the centuries Egyptian civilization had spread south, and now Nubian towns, temples, and fortresses looked very much like Egyptian ones. When M
eren and Anath disembarked and finally reached the home of Taharqua, they saw a replica of a wealthy Egyptian nobleman’s town house.

  Taharqa himself came out to greet them, his blue-black skin gleaming with oil, his proper Egyptian wig spangled with gold beads. “Many blessed greetings, Meren old friend.” He bowed when Meren presented Anath. “My house is honored with your presence, Mistress Anath. Come, Meren, out of this cursed heat. I hate the heat, may Ra forgive me.”

  As elongated as a shadow in the dying sun, Taharqa had a languid grace and regal bearing. As he walked his numerous bracelets chimed and his overrobe swung about his legs. He ushered Meren and Anath into a reception hall the roof of which was supported by four wooden columns with lotus capitals. The ceiling had been painted like the sky with gold stars on a blue background, and the colors were so bright it was as if the sun illuminated them.

  Having settled his guests in chairs, Taharqa sank onto a couch covered in cushions and draped with leopard skins. Above the couch a roof vent allowed the north breeze to flow directly onto Taharqa. When he felt the breeze he sighed as if making the trip outside had drained his strength. As soon as he lay down, servants surrounded him, plying fans, dabbing his face with a moist cloth, offering a cup of wine. Anath gave Meren a quizzical look.

  “Not all Nubians are like those in the royal guard,” he whispered to her.

  “My head aches from the heat,” Taharqa said. “Where is the herbalist with that tincture?” He fluttered his fingers at one of the servants. “Find her before I perish from the pain.” Taharqa took another sip of wine and waved at the food that had been set before his guests. “Eat, drink, and refresh yourselves.”

  Knowing Taharqa had something he wanted to say and was approaching the subject in his usual sideways manner, Meren tore a piece of bread from a loaf and drank some of the wine that had been poured into his goblet. Anath toyed with a date, but didn’t touch her cup.