The Shepherd Kings (82 page)

“I might ask the same of you. If you dispose of the king,
and make yourself king, then go away, what will Egypt do?”

“Egypt will submit,” Gebu said, “because the king is a god.”

“Not if he can be killed.”

Kemni, in the shadows, wondered if Gebu heard the threat
there.

Maybe he did. Or maybe not. He said, “His death will be seen
to be the gods’ will. I intend nothing as crude as a knife in the back.”

“Indeed.” Apophis let silence stretch for a moment. Then he
said, “Tell me why. Why do you do this?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” said Apophis.

Gebu did not like that: he was as close to showing temper as
Kemni had seen him. “The gods move me. They set in me the desire to be king.”

“So you blame the gods.” Apophis shrugged. “Maybe it’s even
true. Though I think a younger son, the son of a concubine, whose parentage is
somewhat in doubt, might find his ambition thwarted unless he took steps to
accomplish it for himself. What will you do with your brothers, then? What of
the heir—what is his name?”

“Amonhotep,” Gebu said. “They also will be dealt with.”

“By a conspiracy of—what? Priests?”

“Lords of the Upper Kingdom,” Gebu answered. “Some are
priests for part of the year.”

“Are they still with you, now that your father is succeeding
so well in his conquest of this kingdom?”

“Do you think that he can win?”

“He might,” Apophis said. “He has gained far more than I
thought, though less than he seems to be claiming—or even than you seem to
think. He rules one branch of the river and two cities—Sile and Memphis. I rule
the rest. Now that all his forces are gathered here, I’ll close upon them and crush
them. And yet, your erstwhile allies might not see it as I do. You might find
them faint of heart and inclined to cling to the king they know, and not trust
their hopes to a lesser prince.”

“Some of them, perhaps,” Gebu said. “But most have other reason
not to love the king. Kings make enemies, as you well know. Judgments given
against certain men of the kingdom, jealousy of others favored above them,
duties given them that are onerous or unwelcome—even the imposition of war on
men who prefer to live in peace: no, my lord; these enemies will not turn back
to the king who has treated them so ill.”

“And they may believe that they can control you, whereas
Ahmose has proved that he will submit to no such thing.” Apophis nodded, and
rose suddenly. “Very well. Swear your oath before these men of my council. Then
go, and do as you promise. The way out will be open, as was the way in. Only
have a care that you don’t stray from it. An Egyptian of apparent rank in
certain portions of this city is likely to be killed on sight.”

Gebu inclined his head. It was not a bow. “I will swear,” he
said, “and then go. We’ll meet again as king and king, before the gates of this
city.”

“So we shall,” said Apophis. “Only tell me this, before you
swear. Has no one suspected this conspiracy of yours?”

“No one at all,” Gebu said steadily. “We’ve concealed
ourselves well.”

“And yet I’m told that you sent a messenger to us before the
war began, offering to stop it. He never came here, and the war went on in
spite of you.”

“He was one man,” Gebu said. “I would have sent more—would
have had an embassy, and used the lords in Memphis who were then subject to
you. But I was overruled.”

“You never thought that the messenger might have been caught
and stripped of his secrets, and the conspiracy uncovered?”

“If he had been,” Gebu said, “do you think I would have been
left alive, and even allowed to ride in a chariot behind the king?”

“That would be very subtle of him,” Apophis conceded. “Very
well, then. Swear. And then go.”

Gebu swore his souls away before the lords of the Retenu
council, bound in blood—a barbarian rite, but Gebu submitted to it. He seemed
glad of it, as if after all some god was in him, perhaps even Set himself, who
was the enemy of Horns. Had not Set destroyed his brother Osiris and fought
with Horus for kingship over the Two Lands?

Set was Baal of the Retenu. And it was to Set, and therefore
Baal, that he swore. When he had spoken the great words and sealed them with
his blood, he was let go. Alone as he had come, he left the roof and the
garden, and the king of the foreign kings.

Kemni followed Gebu out of the Retenu palace and city,
with si-Ebana silent in his wake. He glanced back once or twice, but he could
not read the charioteer’s expression.

As they took the narrow and lighted ways, keeping back out
of Gebu’s sight, Kemni came to a choice. It was coming to king-killing—soon, if
Gebu hoped to fulfill the oath that he had sworn. He would go to Ahmose, of
course he would. But he would go as he best saw fit to go.

He stopped before they passed the postern gate, so abruptly
that si-Ebana stumbled into him. He grunted but did not fall. “Si-Ebana,” he
said, soft but clear. “Will you do a thing with me?”

“Yes,” si-Ebana said promptly.

“But you don’t even know—”

“I know.” si-Ebana’s face wore an expression at last, and it
was grim.

“It’s dangerous,” Kemni said. “He’ll never forgive you, once
he knows what you’ve done.”

“I belong to the king,” si-Ebana said. “Quick now. He’ll be
gone before we can catch him.”

Kemni had more to say, but si-Ebana had spoken rightly. They
would lose Gebu if they lingered. With a shrug and the faint gust of a sigh, he
slipped out of the postern into the odorous night.

Gebu was still in sight, if barely. Kemni ran as quickly as
he could, with si-Ebana soft-footed at his back. The army was close. If Gebu
slipped in among the tents, he could lose himself before they ever caught him.

Part of Kemni knew that that was absurd. Gebu the prince
could not be lost. But if he gathered his co-conspirators before Kemni reached
him, and set the oath in motion, it might go very swiftly—too swiftly. And
Ahmose would die.

If Kemni had been wholly in the world, he would have been
too appalled to move. This black remoteness of grief made the rest of it, not
endurable, but thinkable.

Gebu had quickened his pace. He might be aware of pursuit,
or he might simply be eager to finish what he had begun.

Kemni was not as strong as he should have been. Si-Ebana
passed him, running long and light. He circled wide round Gebu and vanished
into the camp.

Kemni stumbled to a halt, gasping for breath. Gebu had
passed in among the tents—too easy; someone should see to that, dig a ditch or
build a palisade, or the enemy could walk in unnoticed.

Kemni slipped in much as Gebu had, on the edge of a fading
revelry, to find Gebu face to face with a middling large, seemingly drunken,
and very friendly young charioteer. He dropped a heavy arm about Gebu’s
shoulders, spraying him with beer from a jar that he had found—gods knew where,
but bless the boy, for that was clever indeed. “Friend,” he said in a slurred
voice. “
Good
friend. Have some beer?”

Gebu was neatly trapped. If he fled, he confessed to guilt.
If he stayed, he could not go where he needed to go. And si-Ebana’s arm was
immovable about his neck.

Kemni did not need to feign the stagger, nor, when it came
to it, the sluggish tongue, either. He was distressingly near the end of his
strength. He managed to circle as si-Ebana had, to come from within the camp
and not from without, as if in search of what he found in si-Ebana’s hand:
“Beer! Where did you find beer? Everywhere I look, it’s all wine.”

Gebu must have been grinding his teeth behind his fixed
smile. Kemni cried out to him as if to a long-lost kinsman. “Gebu! Brother! So
that’s where you got to. I looked everywhere. You were finding beer!”

“And you see I found it,” Gebu said with a flicker of
laughter.

“Splendid!” Kemni declared. “
Splendid
!”

He hung about Gebu’s neck from one side as si-Ebana hung
about the other, by sheer force of ill-balanced weight bearing him away from
the camp’s eastern edge where he had been aiming to go, and toward the starlit
gleam of the river. The fleet was like a shower of sparks, so many lights were
in it still.

Near the bank, Gebu resisted at last, digging in his heels.
“My friends,” he said, still feigning merriment, “it’s been a great pleasure,
but I must—”

“You must come with us!” si-Ebana cried. “The camp’s gone as
dull as a dead fish, but look, the fleet is as lively as ever.”

“No, indeed,” Gebu said. “I had promised—”

“Ah,” si-Ebana said with a wave of his free hand that sent
the beer-jar flying into the river. “Promises. She can wait. It’s early hours
yet, and we’re out of beer.”

“I must go,” Gebu said, with markedly less mirth. “Truly, my
friends, I must.”

“I don’t think so,” si-Ebana said. His free hand circled
Gebu in an embrace that must feel like bands of bronze. He swung his burden up
with surprising strength and dropped him with some force in a boat that waited
on the bank. Kemni knew better than to think that the boat’s presence was an
accident. Si-Ebana was proving to be a man of much more complexity than anyone
would have thought.

There were coils of line in the boat, since by birth it must
have been a fishing-boat. With one of these Kemni bound Gebu’s hands, while
si-Ebana cast off and began to wield the oars. He was skilled with them, and
much at ease in a boat—more so, in truth, than in a chariot.

Gebu lay at Kemni’s feet, bound and helpless, but not
seeming yet to recognize that he was found out. “Brother,” he said, “what is
this? Is it a joke? If so, it’s in poor taste. Let me go.”

Kemni did not answer. Not because he was trapped behind the
wall of dream; not at all. Because the wall was broken. He could feel again.
And the pain—oh, gods, the pain.

He could not even double up with it. He had to mount guard
over the prisoner. Si-Ebana rowed them in among the ships, striking unerringly
toward the golden flagship and
Dancer
moored beside it.

The lights there seemed softer, the revelry muted. There was
music, the deep pure strain of the aulos of Crete and the piercing sweetness of
a voice trained in Egypt. It was a song of love and loss, beauty and grief. It
came nigh to breaking all of Kemni’s hard-won calm.

But he had a thing that he must do. That was always so, and
perhaps always would be. As the boat slid smoothly in toward
Dancer
's side, he caught at one of the
lines flung over it for just such a purpose, and moored the boat.

Si-Ebana, no longer feigning drunken unsteadiness, slung
Gebu over his shoulder and hauled himself up over the side. Kemni followed more
lightly but less gracefully, a little restored by such rest as he had had in
the boat, but exhausted beyond words.

~~~

The king was there, and his queens on either side of him,
sharing the last of the wine. They were warm with it, but not lost in it.

Si-Ebana dropped Gebu, bound, at their feet. They all gazed
down at him, and up at the two who had brought him.

The warmth of the wine left Ahmose’s face. “It is done?” he
asked Kemni.

Kemni nodded.

“Ah,” said the king with sadness that seemed almost as deep
as Kemni’s own. “He wasted no time.”

“In what?” Gebu asked from the king’s feet. “Drinking to
excess, sire?”

“Wanting to excess.” Ahmose gestured to the guard who stood
nearby. “Raise him.”

The man obeyed, raising Gebu to his knees. His wig was gone,
lost somewhere between the camp and the ship. His ornaments were in disarray.
But he maintained his air of innocence, the lie that he had lived—for how long?
Since Kemni had known him?

“What could I want for, sire?” he asked. “You’ve always been
most generous.”

“Except with my throne,” Ahmose said. He leaned forward in
it. “Give it up, child. I’ve known from the first what you were doing. Did you
never wonder what truly became of your messenger to the lords of the Retenu?”

“Sire, I don’t—”

“No more lies,” Ahmose said.

And yet Gebu persisted. Almost Kemni would have believed
him, except that he had seen and heard the other side of him, the face he
showed to the enemy whom he would make his ally. “Have I ever lied to you,
Father? Surely—”

Ahmose lashed out like a cobra, swift and utterly without
warning. Gebu fell sprawling. “
Enough
!
Your crimes are known, the judgment passed. You have been among the walking
dead since first you conspired to dispose of me and take my throne. If you will
not confess to it, others have witnessed, and will testify.”

“I have enemies,” Gebu said. “Do you believe—”

Ahmose struck him again. It was a hard blow, with pain in
it, and sorrow even more than anger. So a father struck his son who had sinned
against him. “The truth is lost to you. When your soul comes before the
judgment and is weighed against the feather of Truth, the feather will plummet,
and your soul will wither and fall into Soul-Eater’s maw. Is that what you
wish, child? You would have destroyed me in this life. Would you destroy
yourself in the next?”

Gebu shook his head. He had, at last, fallen silent. Maybe
he was afraid.

Ahmose said, “Unbind him.”

People stared. There were many about by now, caught by the
sight of a prince in bonds. But Ahmose took no notice. “Untie his hands.”

One of the guards obeyed when no one else would. Gebu knelt,
rubbing his wrists, frowning at the air midway between himself and his father.
“Are you letting me go?”

“No,” Ahmose said. “I am letting you confess.”

“Will I live any longer for it?”

“You’ll die more quickly.”

Gebu shrugged. “I have nothing to confess.”

“Then you die slow,” Ahmose said.

Not even the guards saw how Gebu moved then. Kemni barely
did; but he was closest, and his eye happened—by chance or the gods’
blessing—to be resting on Gebu when he launched himself at the king. There was
a blade in his hand, gleaming bronze—and a guard’s sheath empty, the man
standing helpless, as if bound by a spell.