Sphinx's Queen (33 page)

I could hardly breathe, listening to the madness pouring from Thutmose’s mouth. “Amenophis isn’t a traitor; he loves you! He doesn’t want the crown.”

“More lies! He envies me. He’s always envied me. He’s always wanted everything I have. Why else did he work so hard to turn
you
against me? We should have been married by now, Nefertiti. We would have been man and wife, if not for his disloyalty, and Father would have made me his coruler. Amenophis couldn’t let
that
happen. He’s a sly one. He doesn’t love you any more than he loves me. He saw that you’re a stupid girl who likes to rescue broken creatures, so he played on your weak-minded ways and shaped your soft heart to suit his plans. He only won your devotion to keep it away from me.”

He leered as if challenging me to argue the point. What would be the use of that? It would be like trying to empty the sacred river with a cracked cup.

“What will it take to convince you that Amenophis cares about you, Thutmose?” I asked. “What does he have to do for you to treat him like a brother, not an enemy?”

“You want to give me back Ta-Miu,” Thutmose replied. “Tell
him
to give me back
you
.”

“He can’t—”

“Ha!”

“Can’t
, not
won’t,”
I said fiercely. “Do you think I’m a gift or a reward or the prize that Amenophis has to drop into your hands if he wants to buy your heart? No one has that power over me.”

“Not even you, O beautiful one?” Thutmose smirked. “Just think of all the good that you could do if you stopped your stupid games and accepted the fate that was always meant for you. Come with me tomorrow to my father’s council. Declare before Pharaoh and his most trusted men that we are husband and wife. From that moment on, I swear by the crown of the Two Lands, I will love, cherish, honor, and respect my brother Amenophis above all other men. I will raise him up as high as he cares to go among the powerful of my realm. There will be everlasting peace between us, and I will make his life so sweet that the most gifted poets and singers of the Black Land will be left mute when they try to describe it.”

“All you would need to do is call him
brother,”
I said.

“Fine. I don’t mind getting off cheaply.” He laughed at me. “Does this mean you agree to my terms? I must warn you, though: Once I wear the crown, you won’t be my queen. You’ve been a public spectacle and an embarrassment to me far too often. How would it look if Pharaoh Thutmose rewarded such unwomanly behavior? But don’t worry, you’ll live a very comfortable life as one of my junior wives. I’m sure your family will be pleased. Come, let’s seal the bargain.” He tried to take me into his arms.

I thrust the oil lamp between us at eye level and he recoiled, calling me a stream of revolting names. I waited until he had to catch his breath, then spoke:

“Let me go, Thutmose,” I said. “Let me return to Akhmin. I can never be your wife, but if you consent to heal the break between you and your brother, I promise that I will never be his.”

“Fresh trickery.” His lip curled. “You both want me dead; you both want to wear the crowns of the Two Lands! He’d never let you push him aside, and you’d never give up the chance to be Great Royal Wife to a man you could lead around like a tame baboon.”

I made such a loud noise of sheer frustration that it was a miracle Uni didn’t risk his master’s displeasure and come running to see what had happened. “Which
is
it?” I exclaimed. “With one breath you say Amenophis is a mountain of strength who won’t
let
me leave him; with the next, you insist he’s mine to control. What will it take to reach you, Thutmose? Say the word and Amenophis and I will stand in the house of Amun, Isis, any god you care to name, and publicly swear that we mean you no harm, that we’ve never betrayed you, that we’ve never coveted the throne of the Two Lands, and that your brother loves you faithfully, truly, and much more than you deserve!”

“An oath.” Thutmose’s snicker made my skin itch. “An oath before the gods. We both know what that’s worth, don’t we, Nefertiti? Empty air. Why go to the temple when you’d accomplish the same thing by shouting your words into a jar? The houses of the gods house
nothing.”

“You don’t believe in them?”

“You do?” he countered. “If they exist, they don’t dwell in the piles of stone we build for them. If they can hear us at all, their voices are too weak to answer us. Perhaps they used to touch the lives of men, once upon a time, but now they’ve grown old and weak, too weak to raise their voices or their hands when the priests claim they can buy and sell divine favor or displeasure. Fools and children may still believe in them; I am neither.”

“Then I must be a fool, Thutmose,” I said. “I believe that something greater than myself exists in this world.” And in my thoughts, I added,
I just don’t know if that power belongs to the gods I’ve known since childhood, or to Nava’s faceless One, or to something—someone
—
else entirely. But I feel that presence as surely as I feel the sacred river’s flow, the winds from the south, the life-bringing rays of sun. It’s there; my heart tells me it’s there
.

“Oh, what fine, solemn words! ‘Something greater than myself’ indeed.” He mocked me in singsong. “Of
course
you can believe in something greater than yourself. Look at you! You’re a mere girl. Nearly everything I can name is greater than you.”

“Then I suppose I’m right to believe,” I said.

My calm reply annoyed him. “Why so much faith? Because Ma’at spoke to you? Don’t you know her so-called voice is a fake? A priest speaks for the goddess! A priest
I
paid”—he scowled—“though obviously not enough. The loathsome insect took his bribe and hasn’t been seen since.”

He doesn’t know who replaced that priest as the voice of Ma’at
, I thought.
Good. Amenophis did it to save me, but Thutmose would just see it as more evidence that his brother is against him
.

“Why don’t you worship
me
, Nefertiti?” he went on. “When I’m pharaoh, I’ll be the god-on-earth, and I’ll have more real power than the so-called gods. When someone offends me, I will strike them down. But the gods? If Ma’at was more than an empty image, surely she would have punished me by now for having invaded her sanctuary with a dagger! Yet the only penalty I’ve suffered has come from my father’s hands. Even that is slowly being withdrawn. Why should I believe in something I don’t need to fear?”

“All right, Thutmose, I tried,” I said. “You won’t accept a sacred oath as proof that your brother’s not your rival. You won’t accept my offer to give him up and leave the court so you can reconcile. Will you even accept Ta-Miu, or will you choose loneliness and isolation because you’re determined to spite me? It’s late and I’m leaving. Just tell me whether I should take her with me when I go.”

“Leaving?” he echoed, anger rising in his voice. “It’s more like you’re running away. That’s all you can do, run.”

I snorted. “You’d have liked it better if I hadn’t run from your dagger in Ma’at’s house, or if I’d stayed in my prison and waited for someone to send in another viper. But if you were honest, Thutmose, you’d admit that you’re not half as annoyed by all the times I’ve run from you as you are by the fact that you’ve never been fast enough to catch me. And you never will.” I started from the room, taking the oil lamp with me and leaving it up to Ta-Miu to decide whether she stayed with Thutmose or came with me.

“Nefertiti, wait!”

14
T
HE
H
OUND AND THE
G
AZELLE

Thutmose called out for me to wait, and so I waited to hear what he had to say, at least for Amenophis’s sake.

Some time later, I was waiting again. I stood under the stars and looked for the moon, but the night had grown old and Hathor’s horns had sunk behind the walls of Thutmose’s private garden. One of his many maidservants was by my side, ready to fetch me anything I might want to eat or drink. She was a thin, shy girl who would look me in the eyes for only the briefest instant before turning away as if she’d been caught committing a crime. I wanted to ask her what it was like working for Thutmose, but I doubted she’d tell me. Most people don’t like being made to talk about unpleasant things. Besides, she was probably terrified that anything she’d say against Thutmose would get back to him and earn her a severe punishment.

“Do you think he’ll be much longer?” I asked. We had stood there in silence for a noticeable while, and my unexpected question made her jump. I tried to calm her by lightening the mood. “He did tell me to wait, but I didn’t think he meant forever.”

“Yes, Lady Nefertiti,” she replied much too quickly. And then: “I mean, no, Lady Nefertiti. My lord Prince Thutmose will be with you soon. He told us all that he wants to look his best for the contest.”

The contest …

“The race, Nefertiti, will be twice around my garden.”

“A race between us—I still can’t believe you’re serious about this, Thutmose.”

“Then call it a joke, if you like, something to amuse me. But you’ve heard the stakes I’ve set on it, and I promise you, I was
not
joking about them. I’ll have the slaves hold torches to light our course. My servants will be our witnesses, so you can’t cheat.”

“You won’t have to worry about that.”

“Won’t I? You claimed that when you ran, I could never catch you, but I know I would have been able to do it easily if not for all your tricks. Remember how you forced me to drink poppy juice that night? And in Ma’at’s temple, how you … Well, I don’t remember precisely what you did to outdistance me, but you won’t have any such chance now. It will amuse me to have us run an honest race, speed against speed, no tricks, no cheating. Agreed?”

“Yes, if you’ll let me send for my own witnesses, people who don’t have to read their futures in your smile or frown.”

“Tsk. You think the only way for me to win this is to coerce my servants into lying? I should feel insulted. You claim to believe in the gods, yet you doubt the word of your future god-on-earth!”

“But—”

“No. I set the terms of this race, and you are free to take it or
leave it. If you win, I go to my brother and ask his forgiveness for everything you claim I did to him in the past. I free him from all suspicion and offer him friendship. If I win—”

“If you win, I’ll kneel at Aunt Tiye’s feet and tell her that I’m ready to be your wife.”

“What a lucky girl you are, Nefertiti. You win this race either way.”

I remembered how animated Thutmose had become when he spoke about this strange and terrible contest he’d devised. It transformed him from the listless man sprawled in a darkened room into a whirlwind of energy, issuing commands, sending slaves and servants running to obey. He seemed to have cast aside his life-haunting belief that traitors surrounded him and was actually
enjoying
himself. I would have rejoiced to see such a healthy rebirth if not for the feeling that he’d only transferred all of his mistrustful nature to me.

What is he planning? How will he twist this “honest” race into a snare?

I sighed loudly and fidgeted, then decided to put my nervousness to good use. Back home in Akhmin, in the days when my greatest worry had been mastering an intricate dance so I wouldn’t look foolish or clumsy, I’d always prepared myself by stretching my arms and legs, to limber them. I began to do so now. Ta-Miu watched me from her place on the rim of the long ornamental lotus pool that took up the center of the garden. She yawned.

The maidservant attending me took more interest. “Lady Nefertiti, are you all right? Do you need anything? Are you in pain? When one of us has a backache or stiffness in the shoulders, one of the other girls is very good at kneading away knotted muscles. I could fetch her for you.”