Sunrise on the Mediterranean (11 page)

“The Pelesti are our vassals?”

Wenaten glared at him. “What part haven’t you heard, fool? The Pelesti are our vassals, but they have forgotten!
Haii
, that fop on the throne, instead of reminding them of their allegiances by sending a few soldiers their way, he withdraws
the one competent idiot still there!”

“Egypt rules an empire. Part of accepting their tribute is to protect them, whether they have forgotten or not. It is the
covenant of suzerain,” Cheftu said.

Wenaten glared at him. “You must be a royal adviser; you sound just like one.”

Cheftu gathered from his tone that Wenaten wasn’t complimenting him. “Aye, well,” the ambassador continued, “Inundations have
been poor, our priests are dying like lotus without water. Even the court is dwindling, though every noble who leaves Akhetaten
is immediately declared an enemy of the state. It’s hardly an empire, sad to say.”

“Do you have to return?” Cheftu asked. “I could take the ship to court with a message from you.”

Wenaten pursed his lips. “I’ve seen much of the world outside Egypt. Even if Pharaoh, living forever! is foaming mad, still
our land is more peaceful, beautiful, and soothing than anything on earth. Look at this,” he said, stretching his hand toward
the horizon. “You can see for
henti.
No mountains, no trees to obstruct the view and weary the eye.” Wenaten sighed.
“Aii
, Egypt, the garden of the gods. Err, god.”

“When will we be in Akhetaten?”

“With this current? In two weeks.”

A few days later they dined beneath the stars. Wenaten had stopped again at the mouth of the Delta, picked up a scroll from
a friend of his, another envoy. As he ate fish, fowl, and fruit, he chuckled over the contents of the papyrus.

Cheftu and RaEm exchanged glances. He was being rude, but also he had been traveling for two years. It must be good to be
home.

RaEm, per Egyptian fashion, had shaved her head and wore a new wig, called “the Kushite,” with the same angled cut and curl
as Wenaten’s. It was the trendiest thing in court, she’d been told, further testimony of how androgyny was the rule in this
new regime. After a few tries she’d given up explaining to Cheftu what “trendy” meant, since the Egyptian language they spoke
to each other had no equivalent for the term.

Trendy, or
au courant
, went against the Egyptian concept of perfection, of Ma’at. In Ma’at, nothing changed. All things dwelt in a universal sense
of balance—Pharaoh ruling from above, commoners in the fields, nobles feasting on the Nile—throughout this life and into the
next. This divine stability was what the rational, devout Egyptian sought.

New fashion was change. New wig styles were change. The new artistic style was an even greater change. The Egyptian whom Cheftu
had been for seventeen years balked; this was not the Egypt he knew and understood. The Frenchman who had wholeheartedly believed
in
Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité
, saw change as progress. Most changes, at least. Cheftu looked back at RaEm.

Pleated linen sleeves covered her from clavicle to wrists, another new style, while the skirt of her gown was layered over
a solid underskirt. RaEm declared she was delighted to be back into a black-haired and copper-skinned body, even if it belonged
to another person; she didn’t care about anything else. Praise the gods, Cheftu thought, the body she was in had emerged from
the eruption of Aztlan free of permanent scars, though RaEm was still boyishly frail. Without her wig or dress, one would
almost wonder at her gender.

The promiscuous priestess of HatHor appearing asexual: it was an interesting, ironic twist.

Wenaten rolled up the scroll, then drank his beer in one gulp.
“Aii
, well, shall you hear the news?”

RaEm nodded, smiling at him. Did the little man realize she would bed him just for the control of it? Cheftu wondered. He
leaned back with his own cup of beer to listen.

“Rumors fly thick and fast that Akhetaten has sent for his cousin,” Wenaten said.

Cheftu knew that the term
cousin
essentially meant anyone with a drop of royal blood. As the pharaohs of Egypt were known for generously spreading their seed,
it was possible that half of Egypt was a cousin of Pharaoh.

“Where is his cousin?” RaEm asked.
“Aii
, well, beyond the cataracts,” Wenaten said, lowering his voice. “Queen Tiye the Kushi was married before she became the consort
of Amenhotep Osiris, Akhenaten’s father. Tiye’s brother is Ay.”

Cheftu tried to recall any of these names. Amenhotep had been Hatshepsut’s father’s name, though it was Egyptian custom for
royalty to bear almost all of their ancestors’ names. Each pharaoh had his prenomen and his secret name, then a list of lineage
names.

“Ay is fan bearer to Pharaoh.” Wenaten hunched closer to them. “Tiye’s husband in Kushi gave her a child, before it was recognized
that she bore the throne right.”

Aye, the royal blood of Egypt coursed through the veins of the women, Cheftu knew. So even if Tiye were wed to someone else,
if she were the only royal woman left, it would be Ma’at that she wed again to serve the throne.

“She was brought to Amenhotep Osiris, leaving her child and husband in Kush.”

“A son?” RaEm said.

Wenaten shrugged. “No one has ever seen him, so it is assumed he is a son.” Wenaten muttered the rest. “Pharaoh needs a co-regent
so that while Pharaoh focuses on prayers and sacrifices to his hot god, someone else will handle the details of ruling an
empire.” He stared into the distance for a moment. “Some of the envoys have waited years for intervention from Pharaoh. Their
lands await rescue by Egypt.”

“How many Amenhoteps have there been?” Cheftu asked, trying to grasp the chronology, narrow down when they were.

Wenaten stared at him. “Amenhoteps have always ruled Egypt,” he said, his tone confused.

Aye, and it was the Westerners who broke the reigns of Egypt into dynasties, for the Egyptians had no sense of individual
rule. Even if Wenaten gave Cheftu a chronology, he wouldn’t recognize it, Cheftu thought.

“No one has ever seen this cousin?” RaEm asked, drawing Wenaten’s attention back to her. “He is an heir to the Egyptian throne?
I thought all the heirs were raised together?”

The envoy picked at some skin loose on his arm.
“Aii!
Thutmose was Akhenaten’s brother, but he died young. There was another brother who had died while he was yet in the cradle.
It seemed wise to hide any other heirs. Akhenaten, while he was called Amenhotep, ruled with his father, Amenhotep. Though,
truth be known, Tiye ruled them both,” he said in an undertone.

RaEm’s eyes gleamed. “Powerful women are still admired in Egypt?”

Wenaten pursed his lips. “She is more than a woman, she is a general!” He shivered. “Many a career soldier or diplomat has
been reduced to tears in her presence.”

“Does the queen mother live in Ak—the town where Pharaoh does?” Cheftu asked.

“What of this unknown son?” RaEm asked, glancing at Cheftu.

“Smenkhare is the third son—”

“Smenkhare could as easily be a woman’s name,” RaEm interrupted.

Wenaten answered RaEm. “I guess it is possible that maybe he is a she. Who knows? The point is that someone, anyone of royal
blood, will be ruling Egypt instead of just letting her run to ruin.”

“Tell us about Akhetaten,” Cheftu said, glancing at RaEm, who had fallen silent, her gaze on the horizon, a slight frown on
her brow. He could almost smell the brimstone and sulfur from the workings of her mind. “Does the queen mother live there?”

“It’s a new city, barely built when I left,” Wenaten said. “Most of the court still lived in Waset, though Akhetaten was becoming
populated.” He closed his eyes, as though summoning the image. “The city has very large buildings and very few roofs. We’re
all supposed to bake our brains in service to the Aten.”

“Does the Aten take sacrifices?” RaEm asked, pushing herself back into the conversation.

“Nay,” Wenaten said, shaking his head. “The only person who knows what the Aten wants, or when, or why, is Akhenaten.”

“He has no priests?” Cheftu asked.

Wenaten filled their cups again. “Priests aplenty, but none of them speak to the Aten. Or he doesn’t speak to them,” he said,
waving a hand before his face. “I’m not sure. I never considered myself a religious man. The gods were the gods, we wore amulets
to protect ourselves, we sacrificed when we needed something. They stayed in the heavens, we stayed on earth. Now, now …”
He sighed and drained another beer.

RaEm looked uneasy. “Is that Aten really Allah?” she whispered to Cheftu. “He is so rigid a god.” To Wenaten she said, “What
of the other gods?”

“Banished,” he answered shortly. “Gone.”

How could one man do away with the Egyptian pantheon? “Surely they have just become minor deities?” Cheftu said. “Much in
the same way that Amun-Ra—”

“Are you a fool?” Wenaten interrupted in a hissing whisper, glancing around. “That name is death! Death, I tell you! There
is one god in Egypt! One! His name is Aten!” Wenaten leaned back, calmer, his tone normal again. “It is a punishable offense
to speak the name of another god. Worship is daily, in the Temple of the Rising of the Aten, as a group. No one is excused.
Punishments are levied if one is late or misses.” He rose abruptly. “I must piss,” he said as he staggered off.

Cheftu sipped his beer. “Was the Aten not just a minor element of Amun-Ra?” he whispered to RaEm.

She glared at him for saying the name of Egypt’s god; then, when she saw that no one was watching them, she shrugged. “I have
never heard of this god, this Aten. What a strange thing, Egypt without her gods. What of HatHor? Isis? Neith? Bastet?” She
looked at him. “Are there no goddesses at all?” She gestured to the topsail, hanging limp above them. “This god doesn’t even
have a face! How can we worship something that has no eyes to see us, no ears to hear us?”

Cheftu looked at the symbol: a disk, with rays extended, each ending in an open-palmed hand. How had this pharaoh turned his
people against what they had known and worshiped for so many millennia? It made no sense. “I am for my couch,” he said, rising,
finishing his beer.

RaEm looked away. “I think I will stay up awhile longer,” she said.

You think you will seduce Wenaten, Cheftu realized. However, he nodded and walked away. Once inside the tent enclosure, stretched
out on his pallet, he withdrew the stones again. “What land is Chloe in?” he whispered to them.

“I-n-t-h-e l-a-n-d-o-f-y-o-u-r-d-e-s-t-i-n-a-t-i-o-n.” Cheftu blew out the lamp.
“Zut alors.”

I
CURSED, ROLLING OVER
. My shoulder was still extremely tender, but at least it was back in place. How the hell I’d survived that insane Batmanesque
tightrope torture wasn’t abundantly clear.

At least I was alive. I could walk. Also, for better or worse, I was the local goddess. I wasn’t sure exactly how it worked,
but by making it across, I had outwitted the lover Mexos, I hadn’t embraced Dagon, and I was one with the mother-goddess.
Like many ancient people—and I felt as though I were becoming an authority on ancient peoples— not every last thing they believed
had to agree with every other thing they believed. In fact, stories could contradict each other but not be viewed as inconsistencies.

To a Western linear thought pattern, it was bewildering. But to the Eastern mind, which I’d spent a lot of time with both
here and in my childhood, it made a strange, convoluted, and quirky kind of sense.

Consequently I was the local goddess, a facet of the great goddess Ashterty. They had given me a house, Tamera as my handmaid,
food, clothing, and power. I’d been invited to sit with the
serenim
, the city elders, when they listened to cases and dispensed justice. I was to attend every dinner, every event, of which
there were many. The bad news was I was escorted everywhere, waited on by everyone, and my chances for slipping into the crowd
and hitchhiking to Egypt were nil.

Especially since I still couldn’t use my left shoulder, arm, and hand. I wasn’t healed yet. Though it was back in place, the
swelling wasn’t completely gone. I looked up at Dagon, since I was living at the base of his tail until I took possession
of my new, goddess-worthy dwelling. “Heya,” I whispered to the idol. Groaning, very un-sea-mistress-like, I sat up. What I
wouldn’t give for coffee! Or a painkiller.