The Shepherd Kings (5 page)

He hoped the stranger could see more of him than he could
of—her?

Yes, her. It was not anything he saw, but his skin knew, and
the marrow of his bones. She did not move like a woman, nor stand like one; she
had a man’s sure step and his arrogant carriage. But he could not, once he
knew, mistake her for anything but a woman.

She spoke in the Cretans’ language. Her voice was low, but
it was clear. “This is the one?”

The captain of the watch had come up behind her. “Yes,” he
said.

“He looks harmless enough,” she said. “Tell him he will dine
with me.”

“I will dine with you,” Kemni said. His tongue was not as
quick as his ears, yet, but he could say that much, and even be understood.
“But first, tell me who you are, and why I should do what you tell me.”

“Because I tell you,” she said.

Kemni’s brows rose. Egypt had its fair share of imperious
women, but he had never seen one quite as imperious as this.

No one else seemed startled or even amused. The sailors conducted
themselves as if this were only as it should be; and in Crete, who was to say
that it was not?

Kemni, who was a guest in this place, determined to conduct
himself as a guest should do. This woman, whoever she was, did not dine below
as the captain did. For her they raised a canopy on the deck, and lit it with
lamps, then closed it in with hangings of fine Egyptian linen, covered over
with plainer, duller stuff to deceive any eyes that might see. And when all was
ready, they let Kemni in.

He entered a space that though small, seemed as wide as a
palace. The linen hangings, the lamps hung or set with cunning intent, balanced
light and shadow in ways that were almost magical. There were two couches set
facing one another, spread with the faded splendor that Kemni had seen often in
the captain’s cabin, and a low table between.

She reclined on the couch farthest from the entrance. He did
not know why he had expected a woman of years perhaps equal to Naukrates’. She
had moved like a young woman in her heavy mantle, but the authority of her
voice and the arrogance of her carriage had bespoken, to him, both age and
power.

If she was as old as Kemni was himself, he would be
astonished. She must be kin to Naukrates: her face was much like his, if
softened somewhat by youth and by her sex. Naukrates was a handsome man, in his
Cretan fashion. She was a handsome woman, though not, he decided judiciously,
beautiful. Her face was too strong for that, her stare too direct, straight and
keen as a man’s.

Though that was no man reclining there, dressed in the
fashion of a lady of Crete: long, many-tiered and flounced skirt of richly
woven fabric, belted close and high about her narrow waist; and vest of like
weaving, trimmed with gold and pearl. It left her breasts not only bare but
beautifully and strikingly so, lifted high and arrogant, flaunting them before
the world.

Women in Crete were proud to be women—that, he could well
see.

She studied him with perhaps more intensity than he studied
her, though she must have seen all of him that there was to see, outside by the
cargo. As if she wanted to know him, or to understand what he was. He understood
nothing of her, nor even knew her name; but he was not about to let it trouble
him.

She might be an enemy. He could not tell. He rather doubted
that she would betray him to the foreign kings. Not out of any care for
embassies or alliances, but because such a course might bring harm to the
captain of this ship, and to its crew.

All this passed in a moment, though it seemed ages long.
Kemni sat on the couch opposite her, not waiting to be invited; waiting to see
what she would do.

She did nothing. As if his sitting had been a signal, the
cook’s boy brought food and drink, no better or worse than Kemni had dined on
with Naukrates. He was hungry. Though neither of them had yet spoken a word, he
took bread, broke it, offered her half. She accepted it without visible
hesitation.

They ate in silence as they had begun. It was an odd
silence, almost comfortable, as if they were friends and not utter strangers.

When they had both eaten all that they would, and the
winejar had been filled again, but neither moved to pour from it, at last, she
spoke. “My name is Iphikleia,” she said—in his own language, and not badly,
either.

“Iphikleia,” he said. Or tried to say. His tongue stumbled
from beginning to end—worse than Naukrates’ struggle with Kemni’s own and
simpler name. “Mine is Kemni.”

“Kemeni,” she said, as the captain had. She inclined her
head. “You’re not what I expected.”

His brows rose. “Oh? And what did you expect?”

“Someone older,” she said.

“Someone of more power and presence in the world?”

She shrugged. It did fascinating things to her breasts. “A
king chose you. He must have had a reason.”

“It seemed sufficient to him,” Kemni said. “For me . . .
I would rather be in Thebes, hating the foreigners and waiting for the next
battle against them.”

“This is battle,” she said. “Never doubt it.” She shifted
suddenly, speaking words that meant nothing, until his lagging mind put sense
to them: Cretan words, spoken somewhat slowly, as if she wished to be very
clear. “There is no place here for children or fools. I hope for your sake that
you are neither.”

“And are you the captain,” Kemni asked in the same language,
“to say who is permitted on this ship?”

Her eyes widened slightly. “You speak our language well.”

“Well enough, for an Egyptian.” Kemni met her level dark
stare. “Naukrates is your father, yes?”

“My uncle,” she said. “My mother’s brother.”

“And he lets you command on his ship?”

Kemni’s incredulity pricked her pride: he saw her lips
tighten. “He is the captain,” she said stiffly. “He sails the ship. I own it.”

“Do you now?” Kemni had heard of women owning boats before.
But a whole trading ship? And this of all that sailed the river of Egypt— “You
were in Memphis,” he said. “What were you doing in Memphis?”

“Is that any affair of yours?”

This was too subtle for his stumbling Cretan. He shifted
back to Egyptian—swiftly and rather pleasantly gratified to see in her the same
moment of confusion as she had caused him, when she shifted languages without
forewarning. “As long as I serve the king who rules in Thebes, any stranger who
has tarried in Memphis is a matter for suspicion. What were you doing in this
city? Were you, perhaps, forging alliances with the foreign kings?”

“You sit on my ship,” she said, low and level. “You accuse
me of treachery. If I were what you fancy I am, I would have had you seized and
taken long since.”

“Not if you hoped to learn my king’s secrets,” Kemni said.

Her lip curled. It was a beautifully molded lip, painted
with great artistry—and why he should even care for that, in this that was as
keen as any battle he had fought with spear or sword, he could not imagine. “I
doubt that you are privy to anything but the few words of a king’s message. A
dancing ape could do as well, or a singing bird.”

“And do apes dance the bulls, then, in the courts of the
Double Axe?”

She had moved before he knew what she had done. Her fingers
were strong about his throat, strong and strangely cool, like bands of bronze.
Her face filled all his world. Her voice was a whisper, like the hissing of
wind in reeds. “Do not ever,” she said. “Do not ever, even in anger, even to
vex the likes of me, speak so of that dance. Do you understand me?”

He understood. But she had stung his pride, and he had no
fear of dreams; even dreams that came from the gods. “Was it you I saw, then,
taunting the young men, till one died trying to match your leap?”

She went still. No, that had not been her face; he had known
it even as he said it. But close. Very close. As if that one had been her blood
kin. The lines were much the same, though hers were not as exquisitely drawn,
nor near as beautiful.

Her hand drew back, slowly, as if she hated to do it, but
some force compelled her. “So,” she said in a new tone, a cold tone, but empty
of anger. “So. That is who you are. I should have known.”

“Known what?”

Of course she did not answer. She returned to her couch, but
did not recline there in comfort. She sat as a woman might sit in Egypt,
carefully upright. “Be aware,” she said, “that the gods may speak through you,
but they add nothing to your wisdom. You will be judged as you are—not simply
as the gods’ instrument.”

“I should hope so,” Kemni said a little sharply.

She took no notice. “Presume nothing,” she said. “And know
this. We have as little need to love your king in the south as the king in the
north. And the king in the north stands athwart the gate to the sea. We do
whatever we must do, to keep that gate open.”

“Including betrayal of the king in the south?”

“If it should suit us,” she said. “At the moment it does not.”

“Then why were you in Memphis?”

He pressed too hard; he knew it. But he could not seem to
stop. She was driving him half mad: her odd, too-strong beauty, her impudent
breasts, her mind that was as keen as a blade and more relentless than any
man’s.

She did not leap again, nor did she threaten him. She said
in a voice that might have been thought mild, “We are a trading people. We
trade wherever trade is to be had.”

“In secret? Shrouded from the world?”

“Not all trade is conducted under the sun. Not even most of
it.”

Kemni felt his eyes widen. “Smuggling—what?”

“You, for one,” she said with a flash of wit that he had not
expected.

“I was not in Memphis.”

“Do you ever give up?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Then we’ll continue to mistrust one another,” she said. “Go
now. Sleep as you can. We sail with the first light of morning.”

Almost he challenged again her right to say what was and was
not done on this ship; but she was, after all, the owner of it. “You must be a
very great lady in Crete,” he said.

“And you are a lord of little enough note in Egypt,” said
Iphikleia.

He laughed. It did not take her aback as he had hoped, but
it did lessen a little the twist of scorn in her lips. “And that, princess, is
truth. But I do serve my king. That much you can believe.”

“I do believe it,” she said.

~~~

She let him go then. He would have liked to imagine that
he had left her, but when he walked out of that place of light into the dark
and odorous night, he did it because she allowed it. He stumbled below and fell
into the bunk that had been given him, and lay unmoving, but still wide awake.
Not even in front of the king in Thebes had he been pressed so to his limits,
or been wrung so dry.

This was not a king. This was something perhaps more than a
king. And a woman, and young, and gods, it had been a long and barren while
since he tumbled that pretty maid in Thebes.

The god Atum, some said, had begotten the world and all
creatures in it, one night when his wife denied him her body. Kemni could have
done no more or less than a god might, if he could have moved at all. His whole
body felt as if it drifted under deep water, his mind wound with confusion like
a riverbed with weed, and thoughts darting through it, too quick to catch.

He knew that he was dreaming. It was not prophecy, not this;
no god sent it, nor goddess either. And yet it was as vivid as the living
daylight—a paler light than was in Egypt, fully as clear and yet far softer.
Light in Egypt was white, so bright it blinded. This was mellow gold. It illumined
a great work of hands, a white palace that sprawled and stretched over a
strange green country girdled with the sea. Every tower and summit was
surmounted with the image and likeness of the bull, his horns that clove the
blue-blue sky.

Kemni flew above them, high as the falcon against the sun.
This was his dream-soul, his bird-soul, the
ba
that would endure past the body’s death; that could fly free when his body
slept, and seek out new places, strange places, places that he had never been
in waking life. He soared through the blue heaven, looking down on the horned
towers; and indeed, from so high, they seemed a great herd of snow-white
cattle, jostling and lowing amid the craggy summits of their island.

Then as one may in dreams, he had plummeted to earth, and
somewhere cast off his wings, and become that other face of his soul, the
ka
, immortal image of his mortal self.
He walked through the courts of that white palace. Cold courts, empty courts,
courts bereft of life or warmth. On every wall was painted a single image: the
double axe that, like the bull’s horns, was sign and seal of royal Crete.

Round and round he went through that maze of courts, deeper
and deeper. There seemed no end to them. Labyrinth, they called that palace:
House of the Double Axe. That was not an ill word for a maze, or for paths so
convoluted and turns so numerous that the mind, dizzied, lost all sense of
where it was or where it had been.

And yet he persisted, because this was his dream, and he had
a great yearning in his belly to see the end of it. That end, when it came, was
as he had somehow expected: a great and echoing hall, a forest of pillars, and
a march of images in bronze and silver and bright-gleaming gold: great-horned
bull, double axe, taking turn on turn down the length of the hall.

But Kemni was not to pause there. His dream drew him with
winged ease past the bulls and the twin-bladed axes, toward the great golden
throne, and then past it, through a door cunningly hidden behind the tall
chair.

And there was the heart, the center of the Labyrinth. It was
a room of some little size, though small after the hall without. The walls were
painted, not with bulls, not with axes, but with men and women, youths and
maidens, crowned with garlands, dancing in a long skein. The many lamps that
illumined them gave them the semblance of life, so that they seemed to move, to
toss their ringleted heads, to whirl in a shimmer of laughter.