Eater of souls lm-4 Read online

  "But she's dead!"

  "In her village, you said. It's not the concern of the city watch."

  "But there is a feather, and her chest-"

  "By the gods!" Sokar leaned toward the old one, and his belly shoved the table as he moved. "Aide!" he bellowed, causing the old one to jump and retreat. Sokar's assistant appeared. The chief of the city watch had turned the color of raw beef. "Throw this fool out, and see that he doesn't return."

  The aide grabbed the visitor by the arm and thrust him from the office. Sokar pulled his writing table back. Wiping his face with a scrap of linen he used to clean his pens, he grumbled to himself, "Bothering a great man like me with such vulture's dung. Must be more than a hundred taverns, countless tavern women, all making trouble, disturbing the order of the city, making me write reports."

  Commiserating with himself for his burdens, Sokar picked up a water jar and drank from it in big gulps. Water dribbled down his thick neck. Breathing hard, he set down the jar, wiped his face and neck. A drop spilled on the papyrus.

  Sokar carefully blotted the water, took up his pen again, and made an entry in the section for deaths. "A tavern woman, not of the city."

  Eater of Souls had fed, and now she slept. But the gods had bestowed upon her a link to the favored one, and this connection brought wisps of memory, like tendrils of smoke fed by damp wood.

  There is a mother. She is like a newborn bird, ravenous, demanding, never filled. The favored one tries to satisfy the hunger. The hunger doesn't ebb; it grows and grows. The bird clamors for more, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep. The noise careens around inside the favored one's head, growing louder, more shrill, more painful. Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep. Something inside the favored one breaks. He bashes in the mouth that will not close, stopping forever that ravening appetite and those maddening cheeps.

  Chapter 4

  Kysen was on the loggia that sheltered the entry to Golden House, waiting to escort his sisters to the family's private quay. Meren was holding a banquet on his pleasure yacht to become better acquainted with the newcomer, Lord Reshep. In the drive not far away, a groom held the reins of Kysen's restless thoroughbred team, which was harnessed to a chariot decorated with scenes of a desert hunt. In the deep golden light, the acacias and sycamores that surrounded the house cast long shadows on the horses and vehicle. Evening was almost here, and Bener and Isis were late.

  He was about to send a servant to fetch them when Reia, one of the company of charioteers that served Meren, hurried around the corner of the house, raced up the stairs, and saluted Kysen.

  "Lord, Abu has arrived from Thebes. He wanted to see you at once."

  "Yes. I'll come now."

  They made their way through the house and across the grounds, cutting through the garden, skirting the pleasure pool with its complement of small boats. Kysen led the way through a door in the long wall that separated the family's quarters from the barracks that housed the charioteers. Unlike the smaller residence in Thebes, Golden House possessed quarters for over thirty charioteers who assisted Meren as the Eyes of Pharaoh. Next to the low barracks that stretched almost the length of the guard wall lay a modest two-story house. This was the home of Abu, Meren's chief aide, who, until Kysen had sent for him, had been overseeing Meren's affairs in Thebes.

  A servant was holding the front door open. Kysen hurried inside while Reia dismissed the servant. Abu was waiting in the reception hall in a chair amid piles of leather document cases, several caskets, and a discarded scimitar. He rose when Kysen entered.

  "You sent for me, lord? I left Iry in charge at Thebes as you instructed."

  Nodding, Kysen didn't miss the emphasis. Abu had trained Meren in the arts of a warrior. He'd saved Meren's life in battle, and Meren had saved his. Perhaps no one knew Kysen's father so well, or held close to his heart so many secrets. Few had the rank to give orders to Abu at all, and up to now, when Kysen had occasion to do so, it usually had been on behalf of his father. Kysen glanced over his shoulder at Reia. The charioteer was standing in the middle of the room where he could see anyone who tried to enter from any of the side chambers that opened onto the hall.

  Drawing near Abu, Kysen spoke quietly. "Has my father spoken to you of this matter concerning the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti?" He waited impatiently while Abu hesitated. "I can see that he has, so don't bother lying."

  "I would never lie to the lord's son."

  "You would if my father ordered it. Oh, don't argue. There isn't time." Kysen went on to tell the charioteer what had happened in the past few days. "So I can't convince him to leave this evil undisturbed."

  Abu remained impassive. "When he has reached a decision, the lord is as unwavering as the path of Ra in the sky."

  "By the blood of Osiris, I think you know more about this than I do." Abu merely gazed at him. "You do! Damnation to you. I suppose it's useless to order you to tell it to me."

  "Yes, lord."

  "Then you understand even better than I that Lord Meren will be in danger from the moment he makes this journey to see the queen's former cook. And he insists on going alone. Great lords do not travel unaccompanied, especially not the Eyes of Pharaoh."

  "There is nothing that can be done to prevent the lord from steering this course," Abu said. His face still held no expression. "The lord will risk his life in this quest, even should the gods try to prevent it."

  Kysen studied Abu and at last caught a fleeting look of concern before the charioteer masked it. "You know why I called you here."

  "Yes, lord. To protect your father."

  "He won't allow me to go with him. He's ordered me to conduct my own inquiries. Among my special acquaintances."

  "Then your life is in danger as well."

  "Oh, no. You're not dispatching a squad of giant nursemaids after me. They'll send every thief and drunkard scurrying from sight. Just make sure someone follows Lord Meren at all times." Before he could go on, Reia signaled and nodded in the direction of the front entrance.

  "Why?" Bener was standing in the doorway in festive garb, her gleaming black wig falling over her shoulders. "Why is it necessary to have Father followed without his knowledge? What is happening?"

  Kysen uttered a sound that was half groan and half sigh while Abu and Reia bowed to his sister. "Bener, you shouldn't be in the barracks."

  "If Father is in danger, I want to know about it," she replied as she walked into the hall.

  Her filmy gown rained pleats down to the floor. The smooth sweeps of kohl that lined her eyes, the glistening green malachite on her lids, the gold, turquoise, and lapis broad collar draped from her shoulders, all combined to make her look older than her sixteen years. Bener wasn't as beautiful as her younger sister. Her almond-shaped eyes tended to bore into people's characters with the precision and facility of a bow drill. Her chin, though small, recalled the strength and outline of a stonemason's mallet, and her nose was endowed with a little of the strong thrust of her father's. Nevertheless, her observant humor attracted the friendship of aged servants and young princely warriors alike. At the moment it was Kysen's regret that Bener had also inherited her father's strong will.

  When he didn't answer, Bener walked over to Kysen and folded her arms over her chest. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing, by my ka."

  "Oh, of course," Bener said with a guileless smile and wide-open eyes. "Nothing is wrong. Father moves about the house like an abandoned soul in the desert. You alternately glare at him and plead with him for hours. Abu appears mysteriously without Father's knowledge or orders. And my powerful sire, the Eyes of Pharaoh, one of those few in all the world who have the honor to be called Friend of the King, my father has suddenly decided to leave court in the middle of a perilous diplomatic skirmish with the Hittite emissary. In order to visit his old nurse."

  "Yes," Kysen snapped. "Now find Isis and go to the chariot. I'll be there in a moment. And stop interfering. These affairs are not in a woman's domain."

  He should have exp
ected this of Bener. She had a clever heart and more than a little of Meren's circuitous reasoning power and abiding suspiciousness. Kysen wished she was still distracted by the steward and his excess watermelons.

  Bener narrowed her eyes, and he caught a glimpse of shining green-and-black paint that only enhanced the glint she directed at him. "That is what you told me before I discovered who killed Uncle Sennefer."

  "Women manage households and bear children," Kysen said. "They do not concern themselves with the tasks of men."

  "Kysen, you're a fool. Do you really think that the wives who bear sons to their husbands, the mothers who nurse all male children, be they kings or water carriers, do you think these women have no influence upon the actions of those husbands and sons?"

  Having never heard such an argument, Kysen only stared at his sister. She gave a little snort, turned sharply, and left them.

  Kysen muttered a curse while glaring at the door through which Bener had vanished. "I must go, Abu. Father will be waiting for us. We must play host to this country lord who seeks a place at court. Lord Meren leaves for the cook's house tomorrow morning. Be careful."

  "He won't know he has a second shadow."

  Feeling much relieved now that Abu was alerted, Kysen joined Bener in his chariot. He wasn't surprised that Isis was late and would follow separately; she possessed a fragile, slender-necked beauty similar to that of Queen Nefertiti, and the work she did to enhance it consumed many hours. He and Bener arrived at the family's quay as Meren was greeting the first guests.

  The pleasure yacht Joy of the Nile hadn't the sleek, spare menace of Meren's Wings of Horus. She was much wider and longer than that black-and-gold cruiser. Joy had a low, curved prow and high stern ending in a carved lotus flower, with a painted gold castle at either end and a long deckhouse set amidship.

  The sides of the ship were painted with bands of lotus designs in white and green. But what made the ship burst into reflected flames in the lowering sun were the sheet gold that encrusted the prow and stern and the alternating bands of gilt paint that separated the lotus patterns. A frieze of Nile-blue faience tiles repeated the lotus design on the deckhouse, set off by borders of more gilt paint.

  Guests were walking up the gangplank, which was draped with garlands of lotus, poppies, and cornflowers. Meren awaited them at the end of the walk in festival costume. Kysen imagined that moments ago his father's gaunt face had been tainted by a scowl. Unlike many courtiers, Meren preferred a simple kilt and sandals to the complex finery his position required him to wear. Now he stood on the deck of his opulent ship wearing a short kilt covered by a robe rich with thousands of pleats and cinched by a wide belt of gold and red jasper beads. More gold, jasper, and lapis lazuli glittered from his wrists, shoulders, and the band that encircled his heavy wig.

  Kysen remembered the first time he'd seen his father in full court dress. He'd fallen to his knees, certain that Meren had turned into a god. The only thing he'd seen as magnificent had been the statue of the god Amun on the feast of Opet. His reverie was cut short by an elbow jabbed into his side.

  "I'm not going to stand here all night while you gawk," Bener said. She hopped down from the chariot, straightened her necklace and wig, and glided away.

  Hastening after her, Kysen joined Bener and Meren in offering greetings to the guests. This was an ordeal for him; surrounded by so many clean, perfumed, and bedecked people, he felt conspicuous. He was the only one who had grown up with nothing but a loincloth to wear, whose hair hadn't been properly cut until he was eight, whose only bathing facility had been the Nile.

  "Cease," Meren whispered to him between arrivals.

  "What?"

  "Forget what you came from, Ky. It's what you are now that matters."

  "The dirt and the beatings are part of what I am."

  Meren suddenly changed. One moment he was Kysen's scolding father, the next he changed into a nobleman whose spectacular smile and personal dignity turned the most jaded court lady into an open-mouthed stutterer. Kysen scanned the approaching group and located the person who had provoked this display.

  Princess Tio came toward them, her gown swaying in response to her rhythmic, long-legged walk. Going against custom, she wore her hair loose and unencumbered by a wig. She had wrapped strands of tiny electrum beads around lengths of that black river of hair.

  Tio was the daughter of one of Akhenaten's Nubian concubines. Unlike pure Egyptian women, who were light-boned and often small, the princess possessed a body taut with long tendons and muscles and a height that enabled her to look down on quite a few men, including Kysen. She had warm brown skin touched with gold, a lithe frame, and eyes so large they nearly distracted attention from her lush, protruding lips. Luckily for Tio, she had inherited her mother's features. A girl-child cursed with those of Akhenaten might well have been mistaken for a flabby horse.

  Tio accepted Meren's welcome, her gaze passing over Kysen without pause. Kysen took this slight with equanimity. Tio was cup bearer to the Great Royal Wife, Ankhesenamun. The queen's close friend, she took her mistress's part in the ongoing quarrel between the queen and pharaoh. Ankhesenamun disagreed with Tutankhamun's return to orthodoxy. She blamed him for abandoning her heretic father's precepts, and for leaving his isolated new city, Horizon of Aten, for the ancient and fabled capital of Memphis. And now she blamed her husband for the stealthy attack on the tomb and bodies of her father and mother.

  However, both Ankhesenamun and Tio blamed Ay, General Horemheb, and Meren as much as the king. Older than her husband by five years, the queen knew the influence wielded by these three men-and she resented Meren's power the most. Kysen wasn't sure why she should save her greatest antipathy for his father, but Tio had been infected with the queen's prejudice. If the princess was attending one of Meren's gatherings, it was a signal of some sort-an opening move in a new game in which Ankhesenamun exercised lethal power.

  As Tio moved away from them, Meren whispered to Kysen again. "Be at ease. She's only curious about this new Lord Reshep, who has attracted the interest of one of the royal princesses. No doubt the queen sent her to inspect the man and give a report." A slave brought wine in fluted bronze goblets. Meren picked up two and handed one to Kysen.

  "Quickly," he said. "Before anyone else arrives. Tell me why you have sent for my aide without my knowledge."

  Kysen hesitated in mid-sip, swallowed hard, and gazed out across the flat rooftops of the city, past the electrum-encrusted temples to the jagged horizon of desert tombs and pyramids.

  "It appears I haven't sent for him without your knowledge."

  "Don't spar, explain."

  Only pharaoh could speak with more quiet mastery. When Meren's voice took on that relentless certainty, no one disobeyed. Kysen had been waiting for this demand, having considered the prospect that keeping a secret from Meren might be impossible.

  "You forgot to send for him, so I did. You always leave Abu in charge of the charioteers in Memphis."

  He met his father's raking gaze calmly. He'd learned from Meren how to dissemble and had to trust that his lessons had been well learned. Meren held his gaze for what seemed like centuries, then raised his eyes to look toward the quay.

  That elusive, charmed smile appeared again even as Meren spoke in a low voice. "I approve."

  Kysen let out a breath he hadn't been aware of holding.

  "So long as Abu remains in Memphis," Meren continued. "You do understand my meaning."

  "Of course, Father."

  "I thought you would, my clever young jackal. Now replace that frown with a smile and help me with the greetings. Ah, this superb creature with the fawning retinue must be Lord Reshep."

  Toward them came a stately procession. It was headed by a young man of kingly height wearing linen even finer than Meren's. He walked beneath a wig thick with curled and plaited tresses that hung in heavy sections over his back and shoulders. Kysen looked at the man who wore this gleaming black elegance, then exchanged quizzical glanc
es with Meren.

  Whispering as he smiled at Reshep, Meren said, "To me he has always resembled a starved frog, but then I don't look at him through a woman's eyes." Meren moved forward to salute his guest and raised his voice. "May Amun provide you with countless blessings, Lord Reshep. Welcome to Joy of the Nile."

  Kysen was left to battle a threatening smirk. Meren had noted Reshep's elongated arms and legs, his bony knees and elbows. Together with a low forehead, a wide, thin-lipped mouth, and prominent brown eyes, these features would indeed prompt his father's comparison. Kysen found it necessary to force away the image of Reshep squatting on a round lotus leaf floating in a reflection pool. Meren had been conversing steadily with Reshep. He turned and drew Kysen into the group that surrounded the newcomer.

  "You weren't at Djoser's banquet, Ky. I met Lord Reshep there. His mother was an intimate of the Great Royal Wife Tiye long ago, before the king was born, may he have life, health, and strength."

  Saying nothing, Reshep bowed low. When he straightened, Kysen met a gaze that arced out of Reshep's eyes to pierce through manners and decorum. It sliced past the formal friendliness Kysen offered and stabbed into the depths of his most secret ka. There it carved through and penetrated small but painful weaknesses, pettiness kept hidden from the world, and old grudges. Through this gaze Reshep seemed to expose all the little slights Kysen remembered from being a lowborn among the noble. Then this stranger seemed to delve into his pain-the pain he hoarded like a landowner accumulates rents, the pain he'd come to treat as a familiar and cherished friend.

  Heavy black lashes drifted down, then lifted, releasing Kysen and leaving him with an urge to look at himself to see if he was as bare and exposed as he felt. The encounter had happened in the space of a heartbeat. He was disconcerted to find that no one else had noticed it. Kysen had to force himself not to look away from this man, to present the facade of civility and tranquillity Meren had taught him to wear. Reshep spoke at last, although to Kysen the pause in conversation had lasted far too long.