The Shepherd Kings (49 page)

“You should ask him,” Iry began to say. But she choked on
it. She was remembering quite another face than Kemni’s smooth clean-carved
one, and a soft deep voice.
You have to
ask,
it said.

No, she thought. Oh, no. She was not yearning after the Lord
Khayan as the Mare yearned after a stallion, or Sadana—angrily, reluctantly,
but beyond a doubt—after Kemni.

No wonder Sadana was angry. Kemni was an Egyptian, a
foreigner, and, as far as she knew, a slave. Iry was not angry, oh no. But she
would not think of Khayan in that way. Not that great hulking shaggy beast of a
man with his yellow eyes and his drumbeat of a voice.

The world was too untidy. Sadana should be wanting one of
her own kind—Iannek, maybe, or one of the other young lords who ran wild about
this kingdom. Iry should not be wanting anyone. Or if she did, she could want
Kemni. He was good to look at, he was pleasant company, he had been her friend
since she was a child.

He was her kin. She trusted him. But she looked at him, and
it was a pleasure, and she was glad to have such a thing; but she did not want
to stare and stare as she did when she was in sight of Khayan.

Sadana ended the lesson abruptly and stalked out in a wholly
baseless fit of temper. Iry meant to let her go, but her tongue had other
intentions.

“Come back,” it said. “You’re not done here.”

Sadana turned her on her heel in the doorway. Her expression
would have been frightening if Iry had been a more timid sort. “I am quite
done,” she said coldly.

“Aren’t you going to ask him?”

The high cheeks flushed scarlet. The thin nostrils pinched
and paled. “Ask whom? Ask what?”

“You know what I’m saying,” Iry said. “Ask. You do want to.
Why not get it over?”

“Because I do not wish to.”

“Are you afraid he’ll refuse?”

“He can’t refuse.”

“So ask,” Iry said.

She was being cruel. She knew it. Kemni could not only
refuse, he most likely would. And if he did that . . .

She was putting him in danger. It was like a madness in her.
As if she wanted to break the tension that held them all, the delicate and
improbable balance of deception and misperception that kept her cousin safe in
the midst of the enemy.

But Sadana, who had never yet refused a challenge, refused
this one. She spun away from Iry and the room that had Kemni in it, and
vanished into the depths of the house.

Kemni did not understand the quarrel between his cousin
and the warrior woman Sadana, nor did he particularly want to. He was glad when
Sadana was gone, though Iry paced and muttered and was difficult company for an
interminable while. She did not go to dinner as she was expected to, nor would
she go when she was summoned. A servant brought her something there, in the
room she had been given, which she picked at and insisted Kemni finish; and
after she had eaten what little she would, she retreated to her bed.

He supposed he should have asked her what was troubling her.
But the glances she shot at him were not encouraging, and he was in an odd mood
himself. It had struck him as he guarded her, that it had been a considerable
while since he saw Iphikleia, or even dreamed of her. It was as if, once he had
come into the Lower Kingdom, where he was born, where he was meant to be a lord
and a warrior, the gods chose to vex him by day and leave him in peace while he
slept.

But sitting in the corner that he had chosen for its clear
view of the room and its ease of access to the door, he saw Iphikleia’s face as
vividly as if she stood in front of him. He could almost have reached to touch
her, or bent to kiss those ripe red lips.

She was sitting in a room he had not seen before, chin in hand,
pensive, while Naukrates paced and gesticulated. There were others about them,
shadowy figures, Cretan shapes: broad shoulders, narrow hips, the curve of a
woman’s breast left bare in the fashion of that country. It was a dream, and
yet not. He was seeing what passed in this moment, in Avaris as he supposed;
and that must be the gathering of Cretan captains there.

Naukrates was lively but not urgent, Iphikleia pensive but
not troubled. That comforted Kemni, though his heart ached to be there, with
them, and not trapped here in this game that he had been a fool to play.

If he left now, this very night, found a boat and rode the
branch of the river, he would be in Avaris by morning.

But he stayed where he was, listening to Iry’s deep slow
breathing. She did not need him to protect her, he had no illusions as to that.
Yet she needed the comfort that his presence gave her. He was the only one of
her people who was allowed so close—and when he came to Avaris, he must leave
her. He had his king to serve, and his queen whom he had been away from too
long, and Iphikleia who was more to him than king or queen.

A face hovered over him, born as if out of his dream. But it
was never a Cretan face. Not this one, with its blade of a nose and its fierce
falcon-eyes.

“Get up,” Sadana said in terrible but understandable
Egyptian. “Come with me.”

“I can’t do that,” he said. “I’m on guard.”

“Come,” she said.

“No,” said Kemni.

She hissed in frustration, seized him and pulled him to his
feet. He quelled the instinct to resist. It was better that he stood, if there
was to be a fight.

“I must guard my lady,” he said carefully. “I cannot leave
her.”

She hissed again and stalked out as she had done earlier, as
seemed to be her way. Kemni sank down again in his corner. Belatedly it came to
him what she had been asking; and what she had been speaking of to Iry, that he
had taken too little notice of.

He had refused her. That had not been wise. Not at all.

Ah, he thought; so be it. He would be gone before she could
endanger him. Iry was safe, he could hope. The Mare would protect her.

~~~

He was almost asleep when Sadana came back. Fool that he
was, for thinking her defeated. She brought a blear-eyed and stumbling Iannek
with her, the import of which was all too clear. “Now come,” she said to Kemni.

He did not want to. But those eyes were wild, and perhaps a
little mad. He could at least go with her, and hope to appease her. That would
be safest for them all.

He sighed and rose. Iannek sighed more vastly and slumped
down in the place that Kemni had left. Kemni nudged him with a foot. “Don’t
fall asleep,” he said.

Iannek growled at him. He growled back. Sadana was growing
impatient.

He had perforce to leave the drunken fool there, and hope
that Iry could do as well with as without him.

Sadana was an odd one. In some ways she was like Iphikleia:
brusque, abrupt, and seeming cold. But Iphikleia was warm beneath, and strong.
Sadana was like a fire in dry grass.

She led him to a room not far from Iry’s. It seemed
deserted; it was clean, but there was a drift of dust across the floor. It had
lamps, which she lit from the one she carried, all of them, a whole bank of
them. Kemni stood where she had left him, just within the door. Perhaps she was
daring him to bolt. But he would not do that. He had, in coming with her, made
a promise of sorts.

This was a little like his nights in Crete, when importunate
and beautiful young women had come to him and bidden him do their will. But
they had done it in laughter, for their lady and for their own sake, because
they found him delightful. Sadana did not delight in anything, that Kemni could
see. She was a creature of oaths and duties. Pleasures were foreign to her.

They were all like that, these women from the eastern
horizon. Perhaps that was why she seemed so angry as she turned in the blaze of
all the lamps, and glared at him as if she blamed him for making her want him.

Women were incalculable creatures at best. A woman like this
could be dangerous.

Danger was a sweetness, like honey. She was beautiful in her
way, as a falcon is, or the new moon. Even as forbidding as she was, glowering
at him with terrible temper, he approached her steadily, one step, two, across
the cool tiles of the floor. She neither leaped on him nor spun and fled.

Her hair was not the blue-black of his own people, or of
most of hers. There was a ruddy sheen to it, as if it were not darkest blue but
darkest red. There were faint flecks of gold in a spray across her nose, like
kisses from the sun. They were charming, and surprising, because the rest of
her was so like a sword: keen and hard and brilliant.

Her skin was soft, smooth as new cream, and white as milk.
She shuddered as he touched her cheek. He drew back, a little alarmed.

She caught his hand. He went still. She stared at it as if
she had never seen its like before.

He began to wonder. Had she never—had she ever—?

Of course she must have. All these women were raised to love
men as men in Egypt loved women: early, often, and with pleasure.

And yet, if she had undergone such rites as Iphikleia had
told him of, when a girl became a woman, and some wise and skilled man of the
people saw to it that she did it in gladness and in as little pain as might be,
then perhaps she had not sought that pleasure often since. Her riding and
fighting, her duties and oaths, and her long hope and her great disappointment,
had preoccupied her till she had will for nothing else.

Maybe he read her all awry. But she was strangely shy, and
strangely stiff.

He set himself to gentle her as he had learned to gentle her
brother’s horses. He moved softly; he moved slowly. He let her ease to his
touch on her cheek before he ventured to free her hair from its plaits. It was
wound as tight as she was, and bound fast. Patiently he worked it free.

She suffered it with a kind of quivering resignation. He
stroked her hair with his fingers, smoothing it. The ripples of it, once freed,
flowed about her face, and gave her quite a different beauty: much softer, and
much gentler.

But her eyes were still wild. He ventured a boldness,
reaching for the fastening of her tunic and teasing it free. There was a long
row of such fastenings, bits of intricately carved bone slid through a loop of
leather. They could be maddening, or they could be a pleasant and prolonged
game, a slow unfolding of her hidden beauty.

Her heart was beating hard. Her breath came quick. He did
not hasten for that.

There was a tunic beneath the tunic, fine linen, damp with
the heat of her body. And no wonder, if she would trammel herself so in the
sowing time, when the heat was both heavy and potent. The undertunic was
fastened with laces, simple indeed to undo. He slipped it from her white
shoulders, baring the small pink-tipped breasts. So lovely, and so tender. They
rose high above the arch of her ribs, her flat belly.

The belt of her trousers tempted him, but not yet. Not while
she tensed anew, shivering with something other than cold. Her eyes had closed
as if she could not bear to look at him.

He bent to kiss the tip of her breast. She gasped. He
circled it with his tongue, lightly, oh so lightly. Her hands snapped into
fists.

He smiled, bent down where she could not see, even if she
opened her eyes. She was rousing wonderfully, but tight, so tight still.

He circled each breast with kisses. There was not a great
deal of either, but what there was, was sweet. Then when she had arched her
back and reached to clutch at him, he slipped free the clasp of her belt and
let it fall. A cord bound her trousers. It gave way. Her trousers slipped down
over hips nigh as narrow as a boy’s, but with the same sweet curve as her
breasts.

He freed her from them. She was all naked, and all lovely.
He told her so, in words spoken soft lest he frighten her, and slow so that she
would understand.

“Get to it,” she gritted in her own language. “Just get to
it.”

It was fortunate for his intent that he chose not to
understand any language but Egyptian. He stroked her lightly, long slow
strokes, following the scant curves of her. She could seize him if she liked,
fling him down, force him to do what she said she wanted. But she did not. He
did not think she would. She had given herself to him, though perhaps she was
not aware of it. Whatever he wished of her, she would do, or permit.

Men took such gifts for granted in this part of the world.
But Kemni who had been in Crete, who had been and still, by the gods’ will, was
Iphikleia’s lover, was not a man to presume any such power over a woman. He
moved with great care and great gentleness. She arched at his touch, and opened
like a flower of bronze.

And yet . . . not yet. He stroked her with
hands and tongue, breasts and belly and the ruddy black fleece of her sex. She
tensed and eased, tensed and eased. And when at last the dry land was moist, he
entered it. She cried out, but not in pain. He rode her as if she had been one
of her own horses, a strong slow gait that quickened only at her will.

The end of it was breathlessly swift. It startled a cry out
of him, a shout of astonishment. But what burst out of her was laughter.

Kemni sank down beside her, still breathing hard. She lay on
her back, lovely in her nakedness. The sweat-dampened hair clung to her cheeks
and breasts. He reached to stroke it away, but she closed against him. He drew
his hand back carefully, and lay silent.

After a while she rounded on him. “Why do you not fall
asleep?” she demanded in her ragged Egyptian.

“Do you wish me to?”

She glared at him. It was the same glare as before—as if she
could not forgive him for being desirable. “You can’t be like this,” she said.
“No man can.”

“Not even in the east?”

For an instant he thought she would strike him. But her
hands stayed by her sides, clenched into fists. “I was never there.”

Ah, he thought. That explained perhaps more than she knew.
And from what he knew of the Retenu, they were not gentle lovers—were not
lovers at all, Iphikleia would declare. “Some men rut like bulls,” she had said
to him once. “Three thrusts and a grunt and it’s over. I pity the women cursed
with such men. The only pleasure they ever know, they find in each other.”