The Shepherd Kings (72 page)

“Set him in a chair,” the king said, “and go.”

That was not at all to the guards’ liking, but the king had
spoken. They had perforce to obey.

There were still people about. Servants. A guard or two. No
lords or princes. In that absence, they were as much alone as they could be.

“Tell me why,” said Apophis.

Khayan could not answer that, not in any way that would be
honorable. He sat in the chair that the guards had brought, aching in every
bone and struggling not to slip ignominiously to the floor, and said nothing.

“You were found,” the king said, “in the midst of the
chambers allotted to my queens, forcing the virtue of a lady of considerable
rank. The lady is prostrate. She will not tell us why she was there, some
distance from the rooms in which she should have been sleeping. It is all too
clear why you were there, and what you were doing.”

Khayan closed his eyes. If he defended himself, he
dishonored Barukha. Dishonor for a woman was worse than for a man. No man of
rank would take a woman who pursued and seduced a man. Whereas a woman who had
been forced—she might be forgiven, and absolved through swift marriage to a man
of impeccable honor.

Silence was his refuge. He had no other.

“Why?” Apophis asked him again. “Why, Khayan? You of all
men—this is the last crime I would ever have expected to find you guilty of.
Are you guilty? Or is there something that we haven’t been told?”

Khayan let his head fall forward. He could, if he let go
even a fraction more, have fallen headlong into the dark. But he was too
stubborn for that. He did not want to wake and find himself a gelding.

A strong hand, but not a harsh one, tipped his head up. He
looked up blurrily into the king’s face. “I should have you killed,” Apophis
said as if to himself, “but not for this thing which I begin to doubt you did.
For being such a blind and perfect idiot. I don’t suppose you’ll name the man
who laid this trap for you?”

No man laid a trap for
me.
The words were there, on the back of Khayan’s tongue. But they would
not speak themselves.

“You understand,” said Apophis, “that if you won’t defend
yourself, I can’t defend you. The woman’s family is out for blood already. Her
father has been sent for. When he comes, he’ll want your jewels for a necklace.
Tell me why I shouldn’t let him have them.”

“Mine.” That word obliged Khayan by letting him speak it.
“They’re mine. He can’t have them.”

“By law he is entitled to them,” Apophis said.

“No,” Khayan said. “Can’t have them.”

“If I let you keep them,” said Apophis, “and give you what
it is you seem to want, what will you give me in return?”

“Loyalty,” Khayan said.

“Yes,” said the king. “That is a valuable thing. What if I
take your rank with it, and your holdings?”

Khayan shrugged, though the pain nearly cast him down. “If
you’re wise, you’ll not call my brothers back from wherever they may be
hiding—where for all I know, after all, they may have had something to do with
this. If you will, my lord, of your kindness, let my mother keep them in your
name. She’ll rule them as you would best prefer. Whereas my brothers, or
Barukha’s father . . .”

“Barukha’s father is a truculent fool,” Apophis said, “and
he is going to deafen me with his bellowings when he makes his way here. Of
your brothers, the less said, the better. Yes, I can make your mother regent
for your holdings, and protect them against any who would take them from her.
But what am I to do with you?”

“Send me to war,” Khayan said.

There was a pause. Apophis’ eyes blazed. “Is that why you
did it? Is
that
why?”

“No,” Khayan said.

“I don’t believe you.”

Khayan sighed. His breath caught on a spike of pain. He
waited till it had passed before he spoke. “Sire, if you want to believe that I
would commit such a crime in order to be sent to battle, you well may. You are
the king.”

“So I am,” Apophis said. “If I give you that—if I send you
to the north—will you be glad?”

“How will I be sent to the north?”

“At the head of a company of footsoldiers. You’ll be a commander
of a hundred, my once proud young lord. No more than that. There will be
commanders over you. The general above them will know that you are in disgrace.
What he chooses to do with you is at his discretion. Will you still go? Or will
you give me a way to exonerate you from this appalling charge?”

“I will go,” Khayan said steadily. “And I thank you, my
lord. This is most generous, and most merciful.”

“Merciful? I’ve likely sent you to your death.”

“I don’t intend to die,” Khayan said. “I intend to defend
this kingdom against its invaders. I’ll help drive them back, my lord. Then
when they’re defeated . . . maybe there will be a pardon for me.
Do you think that’s possible?”

Apophis shook his head. “Young fool.” His voice was rough,
but strangely tender. “Blazing idiot. I should throttle you with my two hands.”

“Leave that to the Egyptians,” Khayan said.

Apophis laughed, a bark almost of pain. Khayan tried to echo
him, but it was dark suddenly, and he could not find his voice. After a while,
neither could he find the light, or Apophis’ face, or anything but oblivion.

Iry hated Khayan. She hated him with a perfect hate. He
had gone away from her, left her aching and bleeding, and never spoken a word.
Then he had come back, and that same day, that very day, not only tumbled into
bed with a woman of notoriously supple virtue, but managed to be caught at it
and condemned for it.

“You don’t honestly believe he did it,” she said to the
king. She had gone to him as soon as the sun came up, and been admitted remarkably
promptly, which after all was her privilege; she was the Mare’s servant. The
king was haggard and worn, but he still found a smile for her, and offered to
share his breakfast. She declined as politely as she could, but her mind was
elsewhere. “He didn’t rape that woman.”

“Child,” said the king wearily, “don’t you think I know
that?”

“Then why—”

“Consider,” said the king of the Retenu, “that the woman
involved is the daughter of one of my greater lords. He can muster a thousand
men and half a thousand chariots. If he is told that his daughter, for whatever
reason, lured and entrapped a young man and cried rape against him, the
dishonor will force him to go to war against me. I need him, child. I can’t
afford to lose him. And your young lord knows that, too.”

“He is not my lord,” Iry said somewhat more firmly than was
strictly necessary. “And I doubt he’s thinking of you. If he’s true to himself,
he’s shielding the woman. Protecting her. Defending her honor.”

“I’m sure he is,” Apophis said. “And I would happily throttle
him for it.”

She had to pause, to breathe, before she could speak again.
“What will you do to him?”

“Exile,” he answered, “after a fashion. I’ve taken his rank
away from him and sent him to the war in the north. If he does well—and I expect
that he will—he’ll win it all back again. In the meantime, I keep it, with his
mother as regent.”

Iry sagged in the chair, briefly, before she remembered to
stiffen her spine. “Will the woman’s father know this?”

“He need only know that Khayan is sent into exile. If he
reckons that I’ve returned the boy to his kin in the east—well, and the road
there is blocked by Egyptian armies. He can hardly be faulted for joining in
the war.”

“He could die.”

Apophis bowed his head. “Yes. As could any man.”

“I think,” Iry said after a pause, “that the king, to
salvage the woman’s honor, might do two things. He might marry her to a man of
suitable rank and strength of will. And he might send her as far away from the
young lord as she can go.”

“What, should I marry her off to a man in Memphis?”

“That would do. Or,” said Iry, “would your general Khamudi
be pleased to accept a wife whose honor is besmirched but whose beauty is
incontestable?”

“My general is in the midst of a war,” Apophis said.

“I know that he took a dozen of his women with him. Why not
send him another, with your compliments, and with her father’s blessing?”

Apophis frowned. It seemed he did not like it that she was
thinking like an abandoned lover. If this Barukha was married to the general
Khamudi, who was aged yet strong, and famously jealous of his wives, she would
never set foot outside the women’s quarters again, or lay eyes on another man
but her husband.

It was a fitting punishment, in Iry’s estimation. She opened
her mouth to say so, but Apophis overrode her. “I will consider it. The woman
meanwhile is in close confinement—for her own protection, as she has been
told.”

“Good,” said Iry.

He eyed her a little oddly. Whatever he thought, he did not
speak of it. And that was well. She took her leave, abrupt perhaps, but she did
try to be polite.

~~~

Khayan left the palace without fanfare, hidden in a
company of men who were being sent to the war. Iry told herself that she was
glad to see him so reduced, limping on foot, with his face battered and swollen
and his back as stiff with pain as with pride. It might have been merciful to
keep him imprisoned until he was healed, but it likely would not be safe; not
if Barukha’s father descended on the citadel in a proper and paternal rage.

“There’s a chariot waiting for him half a day’s walk
northward, and a hundred men for him to command.”

Iry started and turned in the shade of the colonnade.
“Sadana! I thought you were—”

“I came back this morning,” Khayan’s sister said, “on the
heels of this uproar. Mother and Maryam told me everything. Don’t pity him too
much. He’s getting what he wants; and he never was one to set great store in
niceties of rank and station.”

“No,” Iry said coldly. “He never was.”

“What, you can’t forgive him for being a fool?” Sadana
sighed. “Nor can I.”

Iry turned and walked away. Sadana was kind enough not to
follow. Or else she simply did not care.

That was well. Iry had no desire to tell anyone why she was
so angry at Khayan. It was no one’s affair but her own—and his, if he ever
troubled to remember it.

~~~

He was gone. Barukha was sent away, borne on the wind of
her father’s wrath, to be married in haste to the general Khamudi, and given a
name and rank and honor apart from the scandal that still exercised the court
in idle moments.

Iry had not been able to resist seeing her go. She went
veiled and in a curtained wagon, but before she did that, she had to walk
through the women’s quarters. Iry saw her then, how erect she was, and how high
she held her head.

That was rage, Iry would have wagered. Rage and a kind of
fear. Barukha hated confinement, the women whispered. She had sought Sarai’s
service because the lady of the tribes allowed her greater freedom than was
granted to women of the Retenu.

This to her would be prison, and unbearable. And Iry was
glad. If Barukha had simply bedded Khayan, that would have been almost
bearable. But to bed him and then try to destroy him . . . Iry
could not forgive that.

They were gone. And she was shut in these walls nigh as
closely as Barukha’s new husband would confine his wife.

She was the Mare’s servant; for that she had great rank and
respect. But she was also Egyptian. No one spoke of betrayal or mistrust, but
the guards on the gates, the eyes on her wherever she went, told her all that
she needed to know. She was accused of nothing. But she was to be allowed no
freedom to turn against the Retenu.

She could not retreat into herself as she had before. Khayan
had ended that. She had no refuge. None within these walls, where every thought
and word was of the war against her people. None in the lessons that she was
compelled to learn, that were shaped by and for the women of a tribe beyond the
edge of the world.

She needed the sky. Even more than that, she needed the
Mare. She needed that warm sweet breath and that strong back, and that mind
which cared nothing for the follies of human people.

The Mare was far away from this anthill of a city. Iry was
trapped within it. Foreigners surrounded her. Every one was her enemy, and her
people’s enemy.

For a hand of days she endured it. She did as she was
bidden, performed her duties, attended the king in those brief moments when he
could turn his back on the war.

She was in his roof-garden on the fifth day, alone but for
the silent and half-drowsing Iannek. The king had come up to share a moment’s
peace with her, but a messenger had called him away—some matter of the war.

She wandered out of the garden to the roof’s edge. The
parapet was high, but the crenellations let her look out on the city below. Far
below.

There was one escape. She knew that as she stood there. One
long wingless flight, a moment’s blinding pain—and then, nothing. Or the gods’
country. Would she see that to which her own people went, or would the Mare’s
people claim her?

She climbed into the crenellation and knelt there. It would
be simple to lean forward till she overbalanced. And then—

Hands dragged her back. Iannek’s—and Sadana’s.

Iry lay on the sun-heated stone of the roof and stared at
the warrior woman. “Are you my guardhound now?” she asked.

“It seems I may have to be,” Sadana said. “What were you
thinking of?”

Iry shrugged. “I wanted to look at the city.”

“You wanted to fall on the city. Why? Is life so intolerable
here?”

“
Yes
!” Iry had not
meant to shriek the word, but it had burst out of her like a cry of pain.

They were both staring. Iry had not realized before how much
alike they were. Their father had stamped both their faces, though their
mothers had shaped the rest.