by David Drake
"I would have thought your highly-placed master would know Tabubu," she added with a tart voice and a flounce of the cat's head. "But-" she smiled again " – her house is in Ankhtawi, across the river, and we don't leave it very often."
"You've been very understanding," said Samlor-an understatement if ever he had made one. "I appreciate it. Perhaps we'll have the opportunity to speak again."
The woman stretched her shoulders back so that her chest arched and the cat slid against her. "And you?" she asked. "Do you have a name, or shall I call you 'Boy'?"
Samlor grinned back, aware of the game she was playing and too controlled to lose at it. "I'm Samlor hil Samt," he said. "But I answer to any name that seems appropriate."
He turned and strode out of the shop, hearing the owner bleat something inconsequential.
The woman called, "My name is Pre," but the words did not bring Samlor back into the shop. He had information to pass on to Khamwas, whose anxious face peered from the loggia opposite.
Besides, Samlor had a nagging fear that if he continued talking to Pre, he would succumb to his growing desire to throw her down on the floor and screw the hell out of her.
"Well, what have you learned?" Khamwas demanded, his discourtesy redeemed only by his obvious agitation. "She'd already left the shop when you went in, you know?"
"Sure, I know," said Samlor, frowning. "Look, you can hire people to snap at. All right?"
Khamwas' left hand touched his sash. His thumb hooked beneath it, toward the Book of Tatenen-but he snatched his hand back as if it burnt, an instant before Samlor would have buried the watered steel blade in his chest, determining for good and all what protection the book afforded.
"My. .," said Khamwas, pale with amazement. He reached out and clasped Samlor's hand, drawing him willingly back into his chair by the rail. "Samlor, I don't know why I'm so jumpy. Please forgive me."
The sincerity could not be doubted. "I'm not my best either," said Samlor, apologizing for what he had been ready to do.
"But what about her, the woman?" Khamwas went on eagerly. Already he had resumed his appraisal of the crowd below. "There, she's still here!"
"Her name's Tabubu," Samlor reported.
He kept expecting Tjainufi to make a comment, but the little manikin wasn't on Khamwas' shoulder. Hadn't been since. . the day before, in the garden, he thought.
"She's the daughter of the Prophet of Mnevis, and she's here to make offerings on the anniversary of his death."
"Good, good," said Khamwas, though his enthusiasm did not cause him to look around at his companion. "That means she's the head of her household and able to make decisions for herself."
Samlor was watching the crowd also. The scarlet garments were easy to spot. Now the woman was leaving a booth selling floral sprays to be laid at the feet of the statues of gods in memory. She didn't hold the caravan master's eyes, though. His concentration was on the maid beside her, as lithe as the cat whose skin she wore.
"Now. .," said Khamwas. "I want you to approach her. Tell her that I'll give her ten gold pieces to spend an hour with me. Only an hour, and no one will ever know about it."
Samlor blinked as if Khamwas had just taken his clothes off and begun to dance on the railing.
"Well?" Khamwas prompted, glancing at his companion with an incipient scowl.
"Ah," said Samlor. "Ah, Khamwas, I'm not-I wasn't born here, so I wouldn't know. But this Tabubu-friend, she doesn't seem to be the kind of woman you'd, you know, offer money to. Not even her servants…"
He didn't realize at once that he had let his voice trail off. He was too engrossed in his imagination.
"Yes, yes of course," agreed Khamwas. "Of course. I told you, I'm not feeling myself today."
He paused, cleared his throat and went on. "She owns property, so she'll have a lawsuit with a neighbor over boundaries or irrigation rights. Tell her I'll have it settled in her favor."
"Ah?"
"Or perhaps she has a complaint over her tax assessment." Khamwas burbled on, oblivious of the wondering look on his companion's face. "There's nothing simpler. All she has to do is tell me what the problem is and it's solved. For just an hour with her."
He beamed.
Samlor shrugged as he got up again. "Well," he said- aloud but speaking to his own doubts, "you're the local. I'll see what I can do."
He might have been more hesitant about his mission were he not looking forward to talking again with Pre. If Khamwas were successful, well-Samlor was going to have an hour to fill also, wasn't he?
CHAPTER 27
PRE CARRIED THE velvet parcel of earrings, but lesser members of the retinue bore the sprays of flowers which would be thrown onto the altar. As they withered, their color and vibrancy would infuse the spirit on whose behalf they were offered.
Tabubu strolled free as a flame, pausing now to examine fabrics racked in an open-fronted shop. Her staff-bearers watched the crowd with their mistress in the corner of their eyes-ready to conform to her movements, protecting her without blundering into her path.
Good men, and they had more than a casual awareness of Samlor hil Samt.
At closer look, Samlor found Tabubu imposing, but the feeling she aroused in him was awe similar to that he felt beneath the gigantic reliefs of the river temple. The red silk of her headdress was diaphanous. Through it he could see that her hair was dressed in multiple braids, each banded at intervals with broad gold rings. Tabubu's bracelets bore complex designs in coral, carnelian and turquoise, all mounted in heavy gold.
The material of her dress was only slightly less transparent than her headgear, and the straps plunged to waist level in front. The pendant dangling across the cleft between her breasts was of metal filigree, gold and electrum-the alloy of gold and silver. It seemed to depict a crocodile swallowing the ball of the world.
Tabubu's eyes glanced across Samlor like sunlight from a glacier. The pendant, rather than the two husky attendants, changed his intention of speaking directly to her. Instead, he approached Pre. She had been watching him with amusement from the moment the caravan master reappeared in the forecourt.
"My friend," said Samlor carefully, using the bustle around them as an active form of privacy, "believes he can be of service to your mistress. It may be that she has a lawsuit that he can have settled to her advantage. Or-"
Pre's eyes had grown as hard as the jewels glaring from the cat on her bosom. "What would your master," she asked, "expect in exchange for these services? If he is merely a generous man, let him help those who have need of it."
"He's a very discreet man," said Samlor, aware that his own desire for discretion had put the situation in the maid's hands. "As discreet as he is powerful."
He could feel Khamwas staring at his back, demanding some indication of success. Damn him, he could handle his own affairs if he was in such a hurry! Where did he get the notion that Samlor was a pimp?
The spotted cat, smaller than an adult leopard, rose and fell with the breasts it covered.
"He would spend an hour with your mistress," Samlor plowed on, proceeding with what he had started, "in the most complete secre-"
"What!" Pre cried, bringing stares from all directions. "Why doesn't he just offer money, then? Does he think my mistress is a whore?"
Samlor trembled. All his emotions were turned to lust for the splendid woman whose harangue was making a public fool of him. He didn't understand it, but he neve/understood much when he was thinking with his dick.
"You there," called Tabubu imperiously. "Samlor. Come here."
Feeling as though he were encased in crystal, Samlor obeyed the scarlet-garbed woman. He remembered that he had intended to speak with her before, but he could not imagine how he had presumed so far. Her voice was contralto, and it reverberated as if it were coming from a hot furnace.
"If Prince Khamwas has something to tell me," said Tabubu, "then he can visit me at my home tomorrow."
She was tall to begin with, and the red silk
of her headdress waved above her like the plume of a volcano. Samlor faced the woman as he had faced death many times before.
And not even Tabubu's dominating presence could quell his desire for her maid Pre.
"He should remember," Tabubu added, "that I am a priest's daughter and not a common prostitute. Not common at all."
She turned away with a flash of the pendant swinging between her breasts. The staff bearers moved to block Samlor if he tried to follow their mistress toward the inner court of the temple, reserved for religious purposes.
Samlor didn't notice them. For a moment he stood puzzled, though he knew that Khamwas would begrudge him every instant until he had reported.
Most people in Napata didn't even realize that Khamwas was alive, much less that he was accompanied-served, if you would-by a Cirdonian named Samlor hil Samt. Tabubu's knowledge was as striking as the woman herself. It was something for Khamwas to think about before he decided what he should do next.
As Samlor made his way back across the court, he thought of Pre clasping her arms around his shoulders and crossing her legs behind his buttocks as he thrust within her.
CHAPTER 28
THE STATE BARGE was too reminiscent of Nanefer's yacht for Samlor to find the river crossing pleasant, but Khamwas was so abstracted that he did not appear to recall the disastrous journey of his dream.
"Your highness," said the desperately fat, desperately perturbed major domo who had come from Osorkon with the apartment. "There's still time to reconsider, and I can only pray that you will. It simply isn't fitting for a member of the royal house to visit a commoner at home."
Khamwas continued to stare over the bow toward the approaching pier. He said nothing.
"Well, she's a priest's daughter," said Samlor, speaking because the gurgle of water made him jumpy and because he was trying to convince himself that what they were doing was reasonable. "A prophet's, her maid says."
His voice didn't silence the water bulging around the bow, either.
"A commoner," said the major domo flatly.
Pemu and Serpot had woven their father a chaplet of flowers and presented him with it as he boarded the barge. Khamwas' fingers touched the braided stems absently, then stripped the chaplet off and dropped it over the side. The petals had already begun to wilt in the sun.
The major domo sighed and pressed his lips together in an expression of pudgy disapproval.
Ankhtawi, the suburb across the Napata River from the capital, was not heavily populated, but the bank was divided among mansions whose grounds were more extensive than would have been possible on the east side. The barge had struck across the river in a slant that used the current to bring them downstream in the direction which the servants believed Tabubu's house lay. For some minutes the vessel had been coasting past landing stages of greater or lesser ostentation while servants whispered doubtfully among themselves.
The doubt was over. Pre stood in the midst of a group of gorgeously-attired retainers on the nearing dock. Today her breasts were covered by the skin either of a large monitor lizard or of a small crocodile.
"Welcome, Prince Khamwas^" she called as crewmen scurried around their oblivious master as they carried out the business of docking. "My mistress Tabubu awaits you."
The major domo was hopping from one foot to the other, afraid that the operation would be marred by curses or a crunch of wood on stone-and horrified that it was taking place at all.
"And welcome also to our entertainment, Samlor nil Samt," Pre went on. Her smile was as wicked as Samlor's thoughts.
The three-rung ladder hooked over the dockside for the guests to ascend was of ebony carved with serpentine patterns and gusseted at the joints with gold. Khamwas climbed it with the clumsy deliberation of a sleepwalker. His fumbling delay forced Samlor to suppress an urge to hurl his friend and companion aside into the water.
He was preventing Samlor from standing again beside Pre.
The major domo and the five lesser servants whom that worthy considered the minimum entourage (since the visit had to occur) followed, but Pre left them for the servants of her retinue. The maid strolled through the archway into the mansion's walled garden with Khamwas to one side and Samlor on the other.
Khamwas walked with the fixity of a coursing gaze-hound, but Pre's presence drew Samlor like an arm around his waist. He wanted to touch her, but he did not dare as yet.
The false amber eyes of what was surely a crocodile grinned as the head wobbled with Pre's breast.
The garden between the house and the river was more formal than that of the royal palace. Four narrow reflecting pools reached like sunrays toward the building, giving different aspects of the pillared facade to those on the central walk. Lilies with broad, blue flowers floated in the water, but at certain angles the distorted reflections of the pillars seemed to engulf the plants.
There were birds, hopping among the mandrakes, oleanders and chrysanthemums, but they rarely chirped.
Beside the house and to the right of the paved walk, another pool was almost hidden by a screen of powder-leafed shrubs-wormwood, closely planted against a bronze fence with inward hooks. There was no sound from the water, but the rank odor warned Samlor of what he would see when he peered over the shrubbery.
A crocodile, its head raised by the haunches of another of the reptiles, stared back at him. The nictitating membrane winked sideways across its eye, occluding but not hiding the slitted amber orb.
Samlor's fingers twitched toward the dagger in his belt; but Pre was striding on, and he followed.
The double doors into the house were of louvered wood, broad and high. They sprang inward as the procession approached, causing Samlor's heart to skip momentarily with a different animal emotion. . but they were moved by another pair of servants in scarlet livery. Only instinct had suggested otherwise.
Tabubu stood in the doorway. The hall behind her was double height, but a broad staircase curved from the floor to a railed mezzanine on the visitor's right. Tabubu offered her hand to Khamwas and gestured toward the stairs. "Greetings, noble prince," she said. "I have prepared refreshments for you above."
Tabubu was again dressed in scarlet, but the only item of her costume which had not changed since the day before was her breast pendant. A headband and broad coils of gold shaped and confined her hair into a tapering cascade framing both sides of her face.
A round plaque of red glass fused onto gold fastened either tip of the hanging coiffure and lay on the upper curve of Tabubu's breasts, perfectly mirroring her bare, rouged nipples. The straps of her dress crossed her cleavage to support the high-waisted skirt.
The cloth flowed like wine when she moved and, like wine, was translucent.
"There is a table set for your men," said Pre, gesturing to the side room toward which liveried servants were conducting the major domo and his subordinates. He didn't look especially happy, but even he found no additional reason to protest at the circumstances.
Tabubu and Khamwas led the way up the stairs, the woman's fingertips resting on her visitor's hand in a fashion that managed to be both intimate and reserved. How intimate Samlor did not realize until Pre touched his hand and guided him behind Khamwas.
The stair treads were of onyx in an openwork frame of bronze, but they only hinted at the luxury of the floor above. The floor was blue and dazzling, strewn with crushed lapis lazuli and turquoise. Light from the windows opening onto the garden reflected from the stone in a cooling fire.
A circular table stood in the center of the room, between the rails over the entrance hall and the painted wicker screens from which came muted sounds of food preparation, dishes clinking and muttered commands. Braziers released perfumed smoke which the breeze from the wind-catching vents in the ceiling distributed through the air.
There were only two couches at the table, padded and sloped upward so that a diner could recline on his left elbow and eat in comfort.
"Rest here, honored guest," Pre murmured as she hande
d Samlor onto one of the couches. Tabubu was providing the same service for Khamwas, speaking so softly that only the warmth of her tone was audible across the table.
Servants came out from behind the screens. The two women took cloths and silver bowls from them, then knelt beside the guests.
"Let me wipe away the stains of travel," said Pre. She dipped the cloth into her bowl of rose-scented water and gently swept it over Samlor's hands and forehead.
The awareness of her fingers burned Samlor through the cooling moisture. He reached toward the woman, but she intercepted him with the cloth and wiped his scarred fingers. "Why, we scarcely know each other," she chided with a lilt that ended in a giggle as she whisked away the cloth and herself.
Across the table, Khamwas tried to embrace Tabubu. She nestled closer to him, then twisted lithely away to hand the bowl and cloth back to a servant. One nipple had left a streak of rouge on Khamwas' cheek. "I told your man," she said mildly, "that I'm not a prostitute."
"I know that, I know that," Khamwas said, the words coming out in a series of gasps as though he had been punched in the stomach. "I'll marry you."
"Kh-" Samlor said, starting from his couch. No more of the word came out because Pre seated herself on the cushion so that her hips nestled against the angle of his groin.
"You must be thirsty," she said as she held a cup of wine to Samlor.
He shivered at the contact and touched his lips to the rim. Pre tilted the cup without spilling the rich, undiluted vintage, seemingly unaware of the way Samlor's arm encircled her beneath the crocodile skin and cupped her breast.
Tabubu slipped onto Khamwas' couch in a motion which mirrored that of her maid. Servants passed to and from the screened end of the room carrying dishes, but they were as silent as the breeze and almost as little noticed by the men at the table.
"You'd marry me indeed," said Tabubu with a mixture of scorn and caress in her tone. Carbuncles below the rim of her cup glinted as she held the wine to Khamwas. "And then what, pray tell? As soon as I marry, my father's estate reverts to the Temple of Mnevis and I have nothing."