Sitamun.
Like a thing obsessed, he could not get her from his mind.
It impeded his work. It impeded his want to be away from the palace overlong.
Yet he would not be drawn into the wedding preparations; they were not his wheelhouse, nor did he pretend to hold an opinion for one floral arrangement or another. He owed a rare measure of gratitude to the queen’s insistence— perhaps the only flicker of warmth he had ever permitted himself toward Khaemwaset’s otherwise fruitless wife.
He continued his circuit of the parapets, tail set high as he trotted out toward those who had approached into the courtyard below.
Only a girl, it seemed, yet appealing in her bearing and softened by grace, flanked in guards and attendants. Sapair fixed his attention, an imprint of royalty evident. “Who has come upon the domain of Pharaoh?”
These things too were not unnoticed by the jodai, whose office it was to observe every detail. An emissary from a wealthy kingdom would arrive in grand fashion. But he found himself enchanted by the young voice; the smooth and pliant beauty of a woman devoid of hard edges, and dipped his chin in reverence of high blood. “Welcome, princess. I am Sapair, commander of the army for Khaemwaset Khafraemka-wehemibre, Pharaoh of Satriya. You seek an audience with the divine?”
If she affirmed, he would lead the princess and her retinue first towards the subterranean pools.
Jodai displayed a near proprietary pride in the works and open galleries, and the acacia and tamarisk which framed the promenade in shade for cornflower, jasmine and papyrus. At the very center was the axis of earth and sky, the obelisk with its reach into heaven ornamented by a pure gold capstone. “Yes, princess. The altars and shrines were raised by the fellahin, the gardens sewn and tended by the paw of Pharaoh himself.”
He did not lead the tianlong girl into the throne room, where Pharaoh and queen sat in court, but instead into an arched chamber where water streams into wide pools. “You may wish to bathe.” The guard spoke, calling for one fellahin to assist her while another brought down a selection of furs from the stores: oryx, antelope, and barbary sheep. Sapair would wait in the hall.
She was transformed, cleansed of the road and burnished to splendor, gleaming with all the radiant finery he associated with goddesses. How such a delicate perfection might be perceived beneath the gaze of Pharaoh he would yet behold. “This way, princess.”
Through the great halls he guided, past colonnades of stained ochre and beneath ceilings strewn with Nut’s stars upon fields of sapphire-blue. Bronze censers still breathed old ribbons of myrrh and kyphi into the air while servants pressed themselves flat against carved walls to clear their path.
Ahead, the throne room opened beneath its vast domed canopy, where at the far end, elevated upon stairs of pale stone, stood the thrones of horus and iset.
Courtiers and petitioners were parted at the captain’s approach to permit ample passage for the lady of Tianlong and those who attended her. In the center of the hall, jodai bowed. “Here is Princess Téng Lian of the Tianlong, come for an audience to the palace and court of Pharaoh Khaemwaset Khafraemka-wehemibre, and his Great Royal Wife, Satriya Merneith.”
From here, jodai took up bulwark post to the left side of Pharaoh’s plinth.
Eyes re-open. Everything is blurred. Her breaths are so resonant in her ears that they seem the loudest thing in the room. She is so precariously close to tears. For the ugliness of how she’d spoken to Satakhetem, and the ashes between them. How her sister had cursed that fate was cruel and never random.
What Satakhetem did not know was that Neith, cruelest judge of her own thoughts, intents, and silent hatreds, had already begun to believe it.
The gods have not chosen you for that, sister.
The face she summons is so calm as to give the impression of a kind of benediction. On. this day she will not speak first or assert herself, only wait to catch all the words and the moods of others. She would be a passive listener.
And if the gods had mercy on her ka, they would make the voices thunderous.
New arrivals are admitted ahead of the petitioners. Neith watches their ascent of the long hall, heart an invariable twist behind serene pretense.
