Day of the False King (18 page)

“Sire?”

“For the Marduk statue — what will Ramses
give me?”

Semerket, surprised, guessed that Menef had
told Kutir of Pharaoh’s request, just as he had informed High Priest
Adad. Once again, he grew alarmed at the ambassador’s intentions; any
sensible emissary would have kept secret the fact of Pharaoh’s ill
health. If other nations knew that Ramses was sick or dying, diplomatic
communities throughout Asia would defer making any long-term treaties
with Egypt, preferring instead to deal with his successor.

Semerket breathed deeply, and began to list
carefully the concessions Ramses had indicated he was to make. “Pharaoh
is prepared to acknowledge you the true king of Babylon.”

“And?”

“And to offer assistance in subduing the
various native factions.”

Kutir snorted. “Hmmph. That’s at least a
change in policy from his father’s.”

“Sire?”

“The Isin heir was raised in Egypt — from
where he was set loose last year to pester and bedevil us. But of
course you knew that.”

Semerket knew nothing of the sort. Though it
was customary to invite foreign princes to be educated in Egypt, and
thereby civilized, Semerket had never heard any mention of the Isin
heir from either the present pharaoh or his father. But Kutir was not
interested in pursuing the subject.

“And?” he prodded. “What else?”

Semerket cast about for more. “And gold.”

“And?”

“Weapons. Grain. Armor. Supplies.”

“And?”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve not been authorized to
offer more.”

Kutir sighed in exaggerated disappointment.
“And yet it’s not enough.”

Kutir rose from the marble bench then, and
stared over the edge of the gardens into the city below. Babylon
stretched before them in purple shadow. Cooking fires began to flare in
the darkened urban expanse. Kutir turned again to face Semerket.

“Ramses is Pharaoh today because of you. If
you hadn’t discovered the plot hatched in his father’s own harem, a
traitor would sit on the Falcon Throne today. Everyone knows it.”

Semerket began to voice his protests.
“Majesty, I stumbled on the plot without knowing I did —”

“Modesty, too, they told me, was a hallmark
of your character.”

Semerket’s voice rose in agitation.
“Pharaoh’s father
died
because of me. If I hadn’t been so
blind, so stupid…” He stopped, not wishing to remember those times.
“Anyway, I’m not what you think I am. And what does it have to do with
your demands, Sire?”

Kutir took a breath. “I have only one
demand. And that is for you to join my service. I want
you
to
find my sister — or find what happened to her.”

The king began to explain himself quickly, a
thread of nervousness running through his voice. “Of all his children,
Pinikir was Father’s favorite. If I cannot recover her — even if it’s
just her body — my father will take some steps of his own.” The thread
pulled, his fear unraveled, and the king’s voice collapsed in a
strangulated gasp.

Semerket tried to offer him some comfort.
“If that’s so, perhaps he’ll send you the troops you need to quell the
rebels —”

Kutir turned haunted eyes upon him. “No, you
don’t understand. He’ll take steps against
me
. I’m no more
than a vassal king to him, now — one not performing his duties too well
at the moment.”

Semerket stared at Kutir. He knew of Kutir’s
father, King Shutruk, the ruler of Elam. Like the rest of the world he
had heard, fascinated, as conquest by conquest, Shutruk transformed
Elam into a world power. Babylonia was merely the first of his son’s
western victories, and beyond that were the new and tempting nations of
the Levant — Assyria, Israel, Canaan. Even Egypt, Semerket supposed,
would someday lie within the ambitions of so voracious a dynast.

“But you are his eldest son,” Semerket
reminded him. “What is there to fear?”

Kutir looked at him with a strange glint in
his eye. “We have a saying in Elam about an unlucky man. ‘If he were to
pick up gold, it would turn to dirt.’ Well, Babylon has turned to dirt
in
my
hands, Semerket. My sister’s disappearance was the
start of it all — the bad luck, the turn in the war, the ongoing defeat
of my armies — and now you must help me to find her, to bring her back.
Perhaps then my luck will change, when my touch will once more be
golden.”

“Majesty —” Semerket began patiently.

But Kutir cut short his objections before he
had a chance to voice them. “If you will not do this, Semerket, then
the idol will remain here, forever. Never will it visit Egypt. Never
will it restore your pharaoh’s health.” Kutir’s voice became
supplicating. “But where is the risk, eh? If you can find your wife in
this godforsaken city, I know you’ll be able to find my sister.”

Again, Aneku’s lie rose up before him.
Everyone in Babylon, it seemed, believed that he had already rescued
Naia.

“Are not our objectives well-matched, after
all?” the king continued in a pleading voice: “My sister for the idol.”

“Why do you think I can succeed when your
own secret police have failed?”

Kutir blinked. “Because you’re Semerket.”

Semerket was appalled at the king’s
misplaced trust. Still, by accepting the task — and one, after all,
that he was already pursuing — he would be free to continue his search
for Naia and Rami unimpeded, with all the resources of Babylon’s king
at his disposal. At the end of it, too, the idol would be allowed to
visit Egypt.

Semerket made his decision quickly. “Will
you allow me to come and go freely in the city and countryside?”

“Have I not already?”

“Will you call off your spies?”

“Are they not gone?”

“I’ll need a pass against the curfew.”

“You’ll have it.”

“I’ve been told the victim’s bodies are
entombed here beneath the palace,” Semerket said.

“Everyone except my sister, yes.”

“I will need to examine their bodies.”

Kutir started, a furtive look of disgust
crossing his face, quickly banished. “That’s impossible.”

“Majesty, it’s extremely important for me to
examine their wounds, to see how they were killed. Just as every nation
has its own way of living, its way of murder is unique as well. Seeing
the bodies might help me to determine who killed them.”

“But we know the Isins did it!”

“No, Majesty, we don’t.” He was thinking of
the arrow he had found that afternoon, and how the Isins themselves had
vehemently denied the crime.

“Semerket, you’re an Egyptian and don’t know
our ways. Once the dead are placed in the crypt, we believe they’re in
the underworld. The doors to the crypt are literally the portals to our
next life. No one may open them until another burial, and then only
after the priests have driven away the demons who guard the entrance.
You can’t just go in there — it simply isn’t done. Nor should it be
done.”

When Semerket began to protest, Kutir turned
away with a grimace, holding up his hand. “I’ve said no. It’s
impossible.”

With little grace, Semerket inclined his
head. “I will need one of your men to help me, then — someone who knows
the city.”

“Name him.”

“Colonel Shepak.”

Kutir hesitated. “Shepak? Certainly another
man more capable —?”

“He is a good man, and loyal to your
majesty.”

Kutir nodded, though doubtfully. “I’ll
relieve him of his current duties immediately, if that’s what you truly
want.”

Semerket exhaled. Though he had not yet
saved Shepak entirely, at least he had extended his life past the Day
of the False King. Now that they had reached an understanding, Kutir’s
face no longer seemed so pinched and frightened. But at a sudden sharp
shriek from the peacock above them, Kutir leapt to his feet.

“I’ll have that bird’s neck wrung,” the king
grumbled, breathing hard. He gazed up resentfully into the branches.

There was only one thing more Semerket
needed to say. “Sire, you must know I am doing this only for Pharaoh.
At the end of it, if I’m successful, I expect not only your own consent
for the idol to leave Babylon, but the priests’ as well.”

Kutir nodded confidently. “They will give
it.”

“But willingly? I cannot chance the use of
black magic against Egypt.”

Kutir remained confident. “I guarantee it.
For if they don’t agree, another priceless relic of Babylon’s past will
never be returned to the city.”

“What relic?”

“King Hammurabi’s stone, inscribed with all
the laws of Babylonia. Five hundred years old, and almost as venerated
as Bel-Marduk’s idol. It’s in Susa now — a gift to my father after I
took the city. I will offer the priests an exchange — let the idol
visit Egypt for a year and the stone will be returned to Babylon.”

Semerket thought that he would have liked to
see such a stone, to understand how laws were composed. In Egypt, laws
were traditions handed down over many generations and had no need to be
written.

“And the magi will agree?” he asked.

“As it says on the stone, Semerket, ‘An eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ ”

“And a statue for a stone…?”

“Precisely.”

AS SEMERKET LEFT
the palace, intending to tell Shepak of his reversal of fortune, a
waiting woman intercepted him. “My lord…?” she asked, laying a hand
upon his arm. The woman was clad in the same high-necked raiment that
Queen Narunte wore, livid with fringes and garish embroidery. “The
queen desires a word with you, my lord.”

Semerket regarded her without enthusiasm.
After the hostile reception the queen had shown him in the gardens
above, he could see no purpose for such a conference. But he could
hardly decline, and said that he would be pleased to meet with the lady.

The woman led him outside through a series
of courtyards. They entered a low building, which Semerket ascertained
was Kutir’s harem, for he saw that eunuchs guarded every door. But
there were no women about, and Semerket ruefully surmised that they
were locked away into their rooms, fearful that his lustful male gaze
might somehow befoul them.

In a far hall of thin alabaster columns,
Narunte reclined on a divan, the inevitable cup of beer clutched in her
hand. Semerket was surprised to see that Ambassador Menef sat at her
side, and that the Asp, his bodyguard, leaned against a pillar at the
chamber’s rear. Menef instantly stood when he approached, and offered
his chair to Semerket.

“Well,” said the queen in a voice that was
as harsh as two millstones scraping together. “Did my husband ask you
to find his sister?” She raised the cup to her lips, drinking the beer
straight and unfiltered, not bothering to sip it through a reed.
Semerket realized she was drunk.

“I promised his majesty that I would, yes.”

The queen let out a whoop of shrill
laughter, and nodded her head to Menef. “Didn’t I tell you?” After a
moment, her silver demon’s eyes found Semerket’s again.

“Ever since my husband heard you were
coming, it’s been ‘Semerket will find her, Semerket will save us.’ I
had to see for myself if you were an actual man of flesh and blood, and
not some god.” She looked on him as if assessing the flesh of a slave.
“Now that I see you close to, you don’t look either to me.”

Semerket heard Menef’s bodyguard making
choking sounds in the back of the room, and Semerket looked over to see
that his shoulders were shaking. An amused smile also played on the
ambassador’s lips.

When Semerket continued silent, Narunte made
a peremptory gesture to her waiting handmaidens to bring some silver
ewers forward. “Beer,” she said, “wine?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You don’t drink either, I suppose.”

“On the contrary, I drink too much. Wine has
become a poison to me.”

The queen screwed up her sharp features, as
if trying to retrieve some fading piece of information in her blurred
memory. “Yes…yes…I remember. You drank because your wife divorced you.
Yet you rescued her, all the same; loyal to the end. It’s almost like a
folk song, isn’t it?”

The image of the woman Aneku entered the
room to hover between them, and still Semerket did not correct the
queen. “Your majesty is well informed,” he said obliquely.

Lost to the fumes of her potent brew,
Narunte turned her silver eyes to the distant shadows. “How Pinikir
hated me,” Narunte said, “with her narrow head and her pale, delicate
skin. I was never good enough for her brother, she said — because I was
crude, and couldn’t read, and preferred beer to her fine vintages.”

The queen’s lip curled and Semerket saw her
sharp white teeth beneath her twisted smile. “How she hated me. Pinikir
did all she could to push me aside — throwing her maids into my
husband’s path, trying to tempt him from my bed.”

The harshness of her wild laughter scarred
the room, reminding Semerket of the shrieks of the peacocks in the
rooftop gardens.

“But he spurned his other wives, those
highborn ones who looked just like her, because I told him the truth
about his family — about her. And she hated
me
because he
listened.” Her face contorted itself into a mask of utter loathing. “I
know the real reason his father sent them here from Susa — don’t think
I don’t! — her and that weak husband of hers!”

“Your Majesty!” Menef sharply interrupted
her.

Narunte, startled, looked up fuzzily into
his face. The ambassador had successfully torn her from her reveries,
damming her spate of ugly words. It took her a moment to recognize him,
and when she did, she smiled — a stiff, automatic smile taught her by
some expert in court protocol.

Gently, the ambassador took her by the arm.
“Come, ma’am. You’ll make yourself ill with such memories. I’m sure
that after the tragedy at the plantation, everyone desires only the
safe return of Princess Pinikir. Our Lord Semerket here will do his
best to bring her back — you’ll see.”