Suzanne Robinson (5 page)

Seth let his eyes rest for a moment on her lips. To watch them move made him want to lick them. He appraised the fullness of her breasts and the length of her legs. To his chagrin, he felt a wave of desire pulse through his veins and settle demandingly in his groin.

Curse the girl. She had stirred him past control. Well, he was never one to neglect an opportunity. What else could be expected of a barbarian half-breed?

Seth moved with the swiftness of an attacking lion,
pulling the girl to him. She fit perfectly against his body. Her soft flesh made him want to thrust his hips against her, right in the middle of the street. He cursed as she squirmed against him in a futile effort to escape and further tortured his barely leashed senses.

“Release me!”

Seth uttered a light, mocking laugh. “Compose yourself, my sweet. Surely you won’t mind repaying me for my inconvenience?”

Anqet opened her mouth to reply, but the count suddenly bent over her and took her lips in a hot kiss. She tried to pull away, but he kept her immobile by placing a hand at the back of her head.

In her short protected life, Anqet had experienced the loving embraces of her parents, the shy attentions of young or inadequate suitors, and the frightening lust of her uncle. None of these encounters matched the ravenous sensuality of this kiss. The count’s mouth explored hers, inviting and exciting her senses before she understood what was happening. For a brief time, she responded, her desires awakened, driving her unprepared body. Then, unbidden, came the image of Hauron. Seth’s hands became Hauron’s, the count’s mouth and body her uncle’s.

Fear gave her the strength and the wits to ball up her fist and jab it under the bronze corselet and into the count’s hard stomach. The blow did little damage but caused enough pain to make him loosen his hold on her. She backed away, kicked his leg, and fled, hearing the yelp that escaped the count’s lips. Uneven footsteps pounded close behind her. She was sure that this green-eyed fury would catch her.

He almost did. Seth’s long legs closed the distance between them, despite the ache in his shin, but as he reached for the girl, Dega called to him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Dega scrambling out of the path of a rearing horse and struggling to hold the other.

“Son of a crocodile!”

Seth bounded to the young man’s side in time to avert another catastrophe. By the time the horses were calm, his lovely quarry had disappeared.

“Did you see which way she fled?”

“No, my lord.” Dega ran a hand through his closely cropped hair. “I was busy avoiding a crushed skull.”

“Bareka!” Seth cursed. He could still feel the effects of the passion she had stirred.

“My lord? Seth?” Dega’s voice firmed and rose. “Seth.”

“Hmmm.” Seth strained his eyes down the length of the street.

“We are late,” Dega said.

“I don’t care.”

Dega grinned at the young commander of the King’s Chariots. “But lord, you are expected at the palace tonight, and there waits one whose goodwill you do care about.”

Seth’s hard expression softened. He allowed a rare, gentle smile to transform his features.

Anqet had found her way to Lady Gasantra’s house and sat in the kitchen sipping beer while Tamit clucked and fussed over the tale of her misfortunes. Anqet closed her eyes in an effort to quell the images of Hauron and the beautiful Count Seth. Tamit waved plump fluttery hands.

“Terrible, terrible. That serpent! To drive you from your own home. You should petition one of the vizier’s judges. Lady Gasantra is a relative of the vizier. She could speak for you.”

“No! Hauron will destroy Nefer in revenge. I must hide until I can think of a way to regain my freedom and my home. Please, Tamit.”

Her friend nodded and went on clucking and fluttering. She was a good woman, softhearted and bewildered by the presence of this fugitive. Her good-natured passivity and talent for hairdressing made her Lady Gasantra’s favorite maid.

Anqet smiled her thanks when the cook set roast duck, leeks, figs, and sweetbread before her. She sank her
teeth into the duck as Tamit excused herself. The woman returned as Anqet finished the bread.

“If you are determined to live as a servant, Lady Anqet, what skills have you to recommend you to my lady?” Tamit asked.

Anqet rested her chin on her hand and pondered this new difficulty. She could clean and cook, but Gasantra had many servants to do that. She could hardly rival Tamit as a hairdresser. What skills would a court lady value?

“I can sing and play the harp.”

Tamit raised her brows. “My lady has musicians, but …” Her voice faded away at the sound of Anqet’s voice. High and clear, it rose above the clamor of scullery maids and the scraping of clay pots.

Tamit grinned at her. “Lady Anqet, my mistress will be ecstatic. She entertains constantly, and her—” Tamit lowered her voice, “her lover, the man she seeks to marry, adores music. Lady Gasantra is always looking for ways to entice him with her gifts as wife and hostess. Come, my lady is alone now.”

They walked across the grounds to the main house and through a back door. Lady Gasantra’s abode was the largest home Anqet had ever been in. She passed suite after suite of rooms filled with cedar and ebony furniture, fine mosaics and statuary of the mistress’s family, and a small shrine dedicated to the goddess Hathor. Tamit motioned to Anqet for silence.

They walked into a room lined with clothing chests and across a bedroom to an adjacent chamber. Golden rays from the fading solar orb bathed the chamber. To her left, Anqet could see a veranda and garden beyond. Lady Gasantra stood on the porch with her back to the room, her attention riveted on something out of Anqet’s range of
vision. She turned to the side, and Anqet was able to see her more clearly.

Gasantra was a tall woman, slim, with the long, almond-shaped eyes so prized by the people of the Two Lands. She obviously knew that they were her finest feature, for she had applied much brilliant green paint to her lids and outlined them in bold strokes that ended in a long gash of color at her temples. Her small lips were painted red, and henna stained her nails. Gasantra was dressed in the height of court fashion in a see-through pleated sheath that left one breast bare. Draped in gold and carnelian, she wore six pieces of jewelry for every one that Anqet would have worn.

Tamit made as if to enter the chamber but stopped at the sound of a masculine voice from the garden. The maid pattered back behind the door and whispered to Anqet, “I thought he’d gone.”

Anqet peered over Tamit’s shoulder. Lady Gasantra was speaking, softly at first, then in a voice edged with temper. As she spoke, a shadow loomed across the veranda. There was a low, malicious chuckle that tugged at Anqet’s memory.

The lady’s visitor glided into view. Anqet forgot to breathe. There was no mistaking that tall brown body, auburn hair, and those brilliant green eyes.

He moved past Gasantra with the grace of a hunting cat. Pausing beside the woman, he made a servant’s bow with hands upraised, picked up a whip with an ebony-and-ivory handle from a table, and headed for the door.

“This is the third time this week you’ve left: me early,” Gasantra said.

Seth barely looked at her. “I must go.”

Gasantra swept across the chamber and caught his arm. Anqet could see she was struggling to conceal a nasty temper.

“I know. You go to Pharaoh. The Living Horus commands your presence. Pharaoh must be taught strategy. Pharaoh must learn the art of the bow. Pharaoh wishes to consult you about the northern raiders. Always Pharaoh.
Does the king’s majesty have no other companions? He should be bedding his wife and concubines, providing his empire with heirs.”

Seth roared at the woman. “Silence!” Elegant hands twisted the lash of the whip. They strained against the leather, and Gasantra backed away from the count.

“Your jealousy becomes intolerable when it touches the king’s majesty,” Seth said “Be warned, Gasantra. My affection for Pharaoh surpasses any you may have evoked in me.”

Gasantra clasped her hands together until the knuckles turned white. “Seth, forgive me. It’s just that I know he presses you to take a wife. And there are several girls in the palace, daughters of princes.”

“I told you. I want no wife” Seth’s wide mouth curled into a smile. “We depraved barbarians don’t believe in marriage, my little goose. My mother used to tell me her people mated where they chose and held all children in common. There were rites of fertility, men and women together, all in an open glen in the forest. She said only the adolescent boys had enough strength to satisfy the women.”

“Seth!”

The count’s sardonic expression deepened. He swooped down at Gasantra and enveloped her in a rough, vengeful kiss. When he stepped back, Anqet noted that he wasn’t even breathing hard. He nodded regally to the shaken woman before him and left.

Anqet couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly at the discomfort he’d created in Gasantra. She and Tamit waited for a discreet period before going to the lady. After all, it wouldn’t do for Gasantra to suspect they’d witnessed the quarrel with her lover.

Not long after his visit to Gasantra, Seth, count of Annu-Rest and governor of the Falcon nome, lounged in an office in Pharaoh’s palace. He had just finished a report on conditions at his majesty’s fortress of Sile on the northern frontier. The king’s great uncle, the vizier Ay,
and Horemheb, general of the army, sat opposite him conferring over his news while a scribe sat on the floor and took notes. Seth hardly listened to his commander or the vizier. The two were old compatriots, and they solved problems—anything from land disputes to foreign alliances—by bickering with each other.

Seth’s attention wandered back to the Street of the Scarab where a lithe, curved body writhed in his arms and ink-black eyes bore into his soul. His breathing quickened. He wet his lips.

“My lord Seth,” Vizier Ay said.

Seth started and straightened in his chair. Was the girl a demon, to have bewitched him after so brief an encounter?

“Count Seth, are you ill?” Ay asked.

Seth cleared his throat. “No, Divine Father. Perhaps I’m not fully rested after the journey from Sile.” A demon, that’s what she had to be, to send him into fits of passion at the mere thought of her. What was he? A young stripling in his first kilt and belt? He would forget the girl. She was nothing. She was gone.

“One matter we would discuss with you,” Horemheb said. “Then you must attend Pharaoh. He is anxious for the news from Sile.”

Ay interrupted. A gentleman of falconlike dignity with silver hair and a prominent nose, he had been Pharaoh’s regent and was also his foster father.

“Horemheb, I’m not convinced the lad is right for the task,” Ay said.

Horemheb snorted at the vizier. “Who else shows so fine a disregard for convention and a desire to outrage priest and court alike? The boy already has half the noble families in Thebes convinced that he’s corrupting the Living Horus and shouldn’t be allowed near the king.”

Ay cast an irritated glance at Seth before making a reply. “Tutankhamun says Count Seth is one of the few real friends he’s allowed. He will listen to no one where your protégé is concerned.”

“Not even to you, Divine Father?” Seth queried. He
knew full well that the serious statesman Ay didn’t approve of him. That knowledge gave him much pleasure.

“No, not even to me, you insolent tavern-hopper!”

Seth’s delighted laughter filled the room. The scribe winced and directed his gaze to the papyrus stretched across his lap. Horemheb glared at Seth. Ay glared at Seth.

“If you two are finished?” Horemheb asked. “We must act on this information from Babylon.”

The door crashed open under the huge black arm of a Nubian bodyguard. A youth entered, and everyone fell to his knees.

“General,” the boy said to Horemheb. He nodded to his foster father. His eyes found Seth, and an ingenuous smile replaced the formal and remote facade that was second nature to him.

No longer a child, Tutankhamun was a slender lad of fifteen. He had the athletic build of his father, Amenhotep III, and the regal beauty of his mother. Dressed simply in a kilt falling to the middle of his thighs, he wore a short wig and the uraeus crown, a gold diadem mounted with the uraeus serpent, the sacred cobra. Pharaoh surveyed the room’s occupants and murmured a polite phrase to the older men before turning to the commander of chariots.

“Seth.” Tutankhamun held out a hand. “Come. Get up. That tedious old high priest of Thoth fell asleep during the audience, so I sent him home.” As Seth fell in step beside him, the king barraged him with questions. “Tell me all the news from the Delta and from Sile. Do the tribes of the western desert stir? I’ve always feared another invasion of nomads.”

Ay and Horemheb watched the two young men walk side by side out of the room and into an audience chamber lined with guards. Count Seth spoke with easy respect as the king listened intently.

Ay stared after them, then motioned for the scribe to leave.

“I prefer Seth’s half brother Sennefer,” the vizier
said. “Lord Sennefer is thoroughly Egyptian and a devout follower of the great god Amun-Ra.”

“Sennefer never got over being the son of their father’s concubine and not inheriting the family title. He’s a stuffy young prig, proud and vicious, and doesn’t know a bow from a bottle of ale.”

Ay gave the sneer of a dedicated civil servant. “You mean he doesn’t sweep across the desert with a band of half-tamed aristocratic killers.”

Horemheb’s laughter boomed at Ay. He was a dark giant of a man, young for his rank, and protective of his most talented warrior. “Peace, my friend. Seth may be the offspring of a captive savage, but he’s the most brilliant strategist and diplomat we have, and you know it.” Horemheb held up a hand. “Yes, I know. We must find someone to help us solve our mystery, someone we can trust.”

“Someone of loyalty, honor, and respect,” Ay said.