The Shepherd Kings (42 page)

And all for a white Mare, an imperious, heedless, headstrong
creature who cared not in the slightest what her servant sacrificed in order to
belong to her. Iry was hers. That was all that mattered.

And Sadana was not—and that mattered altogether too much.

Iry the slave would have had her spies and her allies. Iry
the novice priestess had nothing but herself. She was cut off from her old
friends, her old fellows. Her mother, who lived in that house, she never saw.
She had always kept to herself; she would not have minded, so much, if she had
not needed her spies to tell her when Sadana was coming.

Because there were no spies, Iry could only wait and try to
be wary. That was wearing, but no more than anything else that was laid on her.

And after all of that, when Sadana came back, Iry had no
warning. As she had the first morning in Sarai’s house, she woke to a stranger
standing over her. This time it was not Maryam; it was Maryam’s wild sister,
looking even wilder than Iry remembered, as if she had come straight from her
riding, in a gust of wind and sand and horses.

She was staring down at Iry without expression, and without
a word. There was no weapon in her hand—that much consolation Iry could take.

Iry thought of sitting up. It would make her less
vulnerable. But it would be a confession that she thought she was in danger. She
stayed where she was, therefore, yawned and stretched and blinked sleepily at
her guest, and said, “Good morning. Did you come back just now?”

“Before dawn,” Sadana said tightly.

“Ah. Then you rode through the night.”

“It was cooler.”

Iry sat up then, not to defend herself, but to set her head
level with Sadana’s. She was the priestess, the Mare’s servant. Her rank must
be higher. And this was her country, which made her even stronger. She had no
need to slink and hide and be afraid.

She was not a warrior, either, or a master of bow and spear.
She did not know how to fight as men fight.

She said, “If you kill me, you’ll gain nothing.”

Sadana’s brows went up. She was very haughty, that one. “Why
should I want to kill you?”

“I would,” Iry said.

“They said,” said Sadana slowly, “that you were . . .
different.”

“I am Egyptian,” Iry said.

Sadana’s fists clenched. The anger flared then, swift and
fierce. “Who are you, that she should choose you?”

“If I knew that,” Iry said, “I would know how to refuse it.”

“You would refuse the Mare?”

Sadana was outraged. Iry knew better than to marvel at it.
These people were strange about their goddess. Why should Sadana be any
different?

“I was not raised to worship her,” Iry said. “I was raised
to hate her. I never wanted to belong to her.”

“No one refuses the Mare,” Sadana said.

“I don’t want to,” Iry said. “And as you say, I can’t. Are
you going to oppose me at every turn, or will you give your goddess her due?”

“What you have should have been mine.”

“Surely. But the Mare chose otherwise.”

“I do not understand it,” Sadana muttered. “You have
nothing. No beauty, no wit, no power. You are a child. You have not even a
child’s wisdom. What magic did you work? What plot is this?”

“No plot of mine,” Iry said. “If the gods are conspiring
against you, then that is their will. I have no part in it.”

“That is a lie.”

“I never tell lies,” Iry said.

Sadana snorted in disgust, very like a mare, and turned on
her heel. Iry made no effort to call her back.

It was war. That much she had known already. This was no
ally. Her life was in little enough danger, perhaps. But her souls?

Ah; and these people thought that a person had only one
soul. Iry had seven. But she could not spare even one of them, except to wander
in a dream, or to speak for her before the gods.

Maybe that was what she must do. Send her winged
ba
, or the
ka
that was her image and likeness, to speak to Horse Goddess in
her own distant country.

Maybe Horse Goddess would let her go, and give Sadana what
she yearned for.

Maybe Egypt would be reunited, too, and the Retenu driven
out. Who knew what might happen? For the gods, anything was possible. Anything
at all.

Khayan was a lord among lords of this conquered kingdom.
It should be of little moment to him what intrigues the women wrought, or how
they waged their shadowy wars within the house that he allowed them.

But before he was a lord of men, he was a child of the White
Mare’s people. Women’s wars were the great wars; the more so if they had to do
with the Mare herself.

The Mare went her own way. The Mare’s servant would have
liked to—that much Khayan could see. No doubt his mother could, too.

His mother missed nothing. She had no mercy either, nor
cared to find any. She had set Sadana to teaching the girl to shoot a
bow—futile, it might have seemed, except that the child had been taught long
ago to shoot at birds in the reeds; and she remembered. Perhaps even then the
gods were preparing her for what was to be.

Khayan wondered, daringly, at his mother’s setting Sadana
such a task. Had she no fear that an arrow might fly astray? Surely they all
reverenced the Mare, and were taught from youth to cherish the Mare’s servant.
But this was an Egyptian. She was impossible—outrageous.

“It is amazing,” Barukha said from the depths of his bed,
one breathless hot night. Khayan had not invited her there. He had come in from
the hall to find her so, naked as an Egyptian, with her long hair newly washed
and scented with musk, and a garland of flowers about her brows. The scent of
musk and flowers, in that heavy heat, was overpowering.

She seemed oblivious to her own potent allure. She was
musing on the Mare’s new servant. “So ordinary,” she said. “So unexceptional.
Cast her into a crowd of her own kind, she vanishes. There is nothing
remarkable about her at all.”

“You’ve been talking to Sadana.” Khayan had had dreams of
casting aside the swathings of his robes and falling asleep in such coolness as
was possible. But Barukha had other intentions. She had taken from him all that
she wanted, with great relish but little care that he be satisfied. Then, as
heedless as only Barukha could be, she turned to the thing that had been
occupying her mind as it had everyone else’s.

“Sadana finds her ordinary, too? She bites the throat of
anyone who talks to her, these days. Her riders walk well shy of her.”

“I can imagine,” Khayan said. He propped himself on his
elbow. The sweat of his exertions was drying, if slowly. It cooled him a
little.

Barukha stroked lazy fingers down his breast, raking nails
lightly through the curly hairs. Her touch made him quiver.

She smiled at his response, but did not choose, just then,
to take it further. “Sometimes I think,” she said, “that for the Mare, any
Egyptian girl would do. Surely that one has nothing to recommend her but her
tribe and nation.”

Khayan was not inclined to argue with her. In a little while
she had tired of her musings—and, it seemed, of him. She left him where he lay,
took up the dark robe that had covered her and slipped away into the shadows.

Khayan rolled onto his back. It stung: she had raked him
with her nails. He sighed. If he had been a man as other men, he would have
cast her out of his bed when he found her in it. But he was his mother’s son.
She had taken of him what she would, and he had allowed it.

He ached and his back stung, and he was not satisfied. He
sighed and finished it, without pleasure, then went to the bath that was one of
the great luxuries of this house. Servants could fill a great basin with hot
water, but for such times as this, the broad tiled pool with its floating pads
of lotus and its dance of bright fishes was a wonder and a marvel.

The water was cool on his fevered skin. It washed away the
sweat and the stains, and soothed the heat both without and within. When he was
as clean as he could be, he floated in a half-dream, in the light of the one
small lamp.

He was not dreaming of Barukha. Once she was gone, she was
gone. The face and body that lingered in his memory were quite different.

Khayan did not know when he had begun to find Iry
fascinating. In teaching her what she hungered to know, what she needed in
order to serve the Mare, he had learned that she was not ordinary at all. She
understood horses. She understood people, too, though she seemed unaware of it.

And while she was not beautiful, she was . . .
interesting. She was tall for an Egyptian. She had the leggy grace of a young
filly, and an ease in herself that he, child of robes and modesty, could envy.

When he had first seen her robed as a priestess, after so
often clad in nothing but a blue bead on a bit of string, he had had all he
could do to conceal from her how greatly she had aroused him. It was well for
him that she was an innocent, or she would have had cause to mock him.

Then, when they had come to the horses’ field, she had
stripped off the trappings his mother had imposed on her, and become again the
naked Egyptian slave. But to him she had changed utterly. The garb of his own
people had given him eyes to see her.

That was perhaps not a fortunate thing. As a slave she was
his to command. As the Mare’s servant, she could command him. She who had been
far below him was now far above.

He swam from end to end of the pool, not far but far enough,
then back again, over and over. It took him out of himself, out of mind and
will and worry.

When he could swim no more, he climbed out and lay on the
cool damp tiles, till his heart had stopped hammering and his breath came slow
and deep again. He felt clean, as he had not felt in a long while; clean and
cool. Blessed, blessed coolness.

Someone was kneeling next to him, taking shape out of
lamplight and shadow. He knew she was a dream. She would not be here, not at
such an hour, watching him gravely with those long Egyptian eyes. She was naked
as she best preferred to be, as modest in it, and as comfortable, as a lady of
his people in all her robes and veils. Her high small breasts, her
girlish-narrow hips, were charming rather than beautiful, pleasant rather than
alluring. And yet something about her made him want to do all the things to her
that he did not, in his heart, greatly desire to do to Barukha; but Barukha
insisted.

There was no concealing what he felt. He was as naked as
she, but for him, who had modesty, it was nakedness indeed. And when a man
wanted a woman, no one could ever mistake it.

She did not seem to notice or to care. Of course; to her it
was a common thing.

She was more intent on the rest of him. Her hand crept out
and brushed his breast, just where Barukha had stroked it not so long ago. He
shivered more deeply now than he had then. That was real touch, real warmth of
flesh. Real and living fingers taking in how different he was from men of her
own people, how much broader, taller, stronger; and marveling at his curly
pelt.

“Like an animal’s,” she said.

“I am a man,” he said a little stiffly.

“Surely,” she said.

He thrust himself up, scrambling away from her. “What are
you doing here? How did you get in? What do you want?”

She shrugged. “This was my house,” she said. “I know every
corner of it.”

“But what—why—”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I heard you in here. Do you
do this often?”

“No!”

“You should. Your people aren’t made for this heat. You
won’t dress for it, either.”

“Can you see me in a kilt?”

Her head tilted. Her eyes narrowed. “You would look . . .
not so bad. Your shoulders are smooth. And your back. Some of them, they look
like apes out of Nubia.”

He drew himself up, affronted. “They look like men of the
people.”

“Not my people,” she said.

“They are now.”

Her lips tightened. He thought she might deny it, but she
said, “I like you better this way. You’re quite—yes, you’re beautiful. I didn’t
expect that.”

“You think I’m ugly.”

His voice must have been flat: her lips quirked. “I think
it’s hard to tell. All those robes, you know. And so much . . .”
Her hand brushed his beard. He stiffened. No one did such a thing except a
lover. And a lover only did it by his leave.

But this strange child did not even know that liberties she
took. “I wish I could see your face,” she said.

“You see my face.”

“I see,” she said, “a pair of eyes like a falcon’s, and a
nose like the curve of the moon. And then, nothing. Is it ugly? Is that why you
hide it?”

“I am a man,” he said.

“So I noticed.” Her eyes had slanted in a direction that
made him blush like a girl—and be glad indeed of dim light and beard high up on
his cheeks. “I think you may not be ugly,” she said. “I think you may be too
beautiful for your own comfort. You are, aren’t you?”

“You’ve been talking to my sisters,” he said. His voice had
a growl in it.

“They do call you the beauty of the family,” she said.

“Can’t I be that without looking like a girl?”

“You do not look like a girl,” Iry said. “How strange you people
are, to worry so much about being a man, and to be so afraid of seeming like a
woman. I don’t think your mother or your sisters would be happy to hear you.”

Khayan’s teeth clicked together. No. Indeed they would not.
Among their people, a man could have beauty, and be much sought after for it,
too. But. . . “A man to them is a man. He doesn’t try to turn himself into a
beardless boy.”

“That’s to be cool,” she said, “and clean. The heat would
trouble you far less if you cultivated less fur.”

“I am what I am,” he said.

“Surely.” She smiled at him, which was always disconcerting.
“I try to hate you. But you’re very hard to hate.”