by David Drake
"But what does that matter?" asked Khamwas dismis-sively. His arms encircled her, and he added as he nuzzled toward her breast, "I can take care of you. I have everything…"
Tabubu moved only slightly, but her guest's lips touched her pendant instead of her nipple as he intended. "You can," she said. "You have, no doubt. Well, before you take your pleasure with me, noble prince, you'll have to make over all your property to me in a deed of maintenance."
For a moment her breast lay on Khamwas' cheek. Then, when his arms tightened and relaxed spasmodically, she was on her feet again and slipping away from him.
"Yes, yes, I'll sign the deed!" Khamwas cried hoarsely. He seemed to be trying to get up from the couch, but his legs were tangled. "We'll go to a scribe, we'll go today. But first-"
"More wine," said Pre, ordered Pre, as Samlor started to speak.
It was a heady vintage, but it did not affect him the way the woman's presence did. He tried to grope between her legs but found his hand caught in the many filmy layers of her skirt.
Pre urged her vulva against his touch, through the soft fabric. "Not in front of the mistress," she teased in a whisper. "At least-not until they…"
Her voice dissolved into a giggle as she spun gracefully to her feet, holding the empty wine cup out to the servant waiting to exchange it for a full one.
Tabubu was standing, a statue limned in the fire of her garments. She clapped her hands sharply.
A servant scampered up the stairs, bobbing his head to his mistress.
"Show up the scribe and the witnesses," she ordered.
"Witnesses?" Samlor muttered. He shook his head, trying to clear it of the wine fumes. Pre swayed near the couch, smiling down at him. He started to rise, but it looked as though the maid were going to seat herself beside him again.
The servant returned. Beside him was a man who mounted the stairs with a sprightliness which belied the age which had reduced his hair to a white fringe. He carried a small writing desk folded and a wicker satchel with rolled paper, brushes, and an inkpot. From his chest on a necklace of turquoise hung a roller seal.
"You summoned a scribe?" he said, seating himself on the floor with brusque assurance. He unfolded his writing desk and set it over his crossed legs. "I am Aper. What is the document I am to draft?
Shuffling up the stairs more slowly, their faces set in expressions of disapproval bordering on fury, were Khamwas' three brothers.
"Prince Khamwas will assign all his property to me," said Tabubu imperiously. "His brothers are here to witness the contract."
The scribe nodded, unrolled a length of well-made paper on his desk, and began writing with quick, practiced brush strokes.
"Khamwas, what can you be thinking of?" demanded Osorkon, halting two paces into the room. He swung his head and glared at Samlor as he added, "And you-you're supposed to be his friend, aren't you? How can you let him commit such nonsense?"
"I-" said Samlor.
Pre eased herself down against him, offering wine and the warmth of her body. "Only a fool involves himself in another's family affairs," she whispered.
The softness of her hips reinforced the obvious truth of the statement. Samlor drank as his hand reached under the crocodile skin.
"Brother, we brought your children with us and they're below now," said Patjenfi. "Surely you can't intend to leave Pemu and little Serpot destitute for-" Words failed, so he flicked his hand through the air in the direction of Tabubu, a gesture as scornful as it was angry.
"Pemu?" Khamwas repeated, his head jerking as if his brother had slapped his face. "Yes, th-"
Tabubu smiled down at him and thrust her groin forward suggestively.
"Do you think you can threaten meT Khamwas snarled at Patjenfi. His hand clasped his sash where it bulged over the crystal book. "I'm a god, do you realize? You will do as I command, or-"
He paused. Instead of leaving the threat unspoken, he added in a voice as quiet and cruel as leprosy, "I will blast you as if you never existed, Patjenfi." His gaze swept his brothers. "I will blast you all."
"I didn't-" said Patjenfi.
Pentweret silenced him in a chopping gesture. "You have the right to dispose of your property, my brother," he said in a voice tremulous with emotions and his attempt to control them. "But for^your sake as much as for your children, think about what you're doing."
"The document is complete, lady," said the scribe. He held it up to Tabubu along with the ink-charged brush.
Samlor could not recall ever having seen a smile as cruel as that with which Tabubu gave the deed and pen to Khamwas.
Khamwas tried to smile back, but the expression was not successful and the man's hands were quivering so badly that he could scarcely hold the paper he was to sign.
Tabubu leaned over so that her pendant and full breasts wobbled in front of Khamwas. Her fingers rested on his hands, not so much to guide them as to still their trembling.
Khamwas touched the brush to the document and drew his name with the sure strokes of an accomplished scholar. His face had no expression and his eyes did not appear to be focused.
Beneath Samlor's fingers, Pre's breast was as densely fluid as molten lava.
Patjenfi was muttering unintelligibly to himself; Osorkon's broad jaw was set in grim silence; and the curse Pentweret spoke was fully audible.
The scribe rose, holding his desk open with the ink palette upon it. Crushed stone clung in blue shadows on the back of his thighs. His face was professionally bland and perhaps genuinely bored.
Tabubu dropped the executed deed onto the desk and waved the scribe negligently toward Khamwas' brothers. "The witnesses must sign," she said.
Nodding, the scribe held the desk out for Osorkon to use the brush waiting in the hollow of vermilion ink.
"I thought we behaved badly to you six years ago," said Osorkon. He stared at his lounging brother, then scribbled his signature with disdainful haste. The brush, carefully frayed from the reed which formed its stem, flattened under Osorkon's pressure.
"We were models of familial affection," he added, "compared to the way you're treating your children." He turned his back.
Tabubu was standing at an angle to Khamwas, watching Patjenfi take the brush and fastidiously try to straighten its splayed bristles on the flat of the palette. Her fingertips were massaging the front of her dress, working slowly downward from her navel.
"You'll regret this, my brother," said Pentweret as he took the brush in final turn. "But it won't be undone. It can't." He sighed and turned away.
Pre was touching Samlor, rubbing him with feather-light fingers the way Tabubu massaged herself. His vision was blurring. Khamwas's brothers were trudging down the stairs with lowered heads, but reflections from the surface of the wine kept staining their image in Samlor's eyes.
The scribe had squatted again to roll his inked seal behind each signature on the deed.
Tabubu was kneeling beside Khamwas' couch. She allowed him to kiss her as if the prince were a rambunctious puppy whose affections were too cute to be degrading.
"My lady," said the scribe, holding out the completed document.
Tabubu rose as she took it and slapped Khamwas' hand with the rolled paper as he reached for her.
"You can't deny me now!" Khamwas bleated. His tone made it obvious that he knew she could-and that he expected her to do so.
"Deny you?" said Tabubu, snapping the scroll open angrily. "It's you who're denying me!"
Samlor had not heard an order to the servants, but they were returning up the stairs with-
"Your children haven't signed this yet!" Tabubu was saying. Her voice was as cold and hard as the walls of the crater where Nanefer fought the worm. "Do you think I don't know what will happen? When you're gone, they'll take everything away from me."
"Daddy, what-" said Serpot. She took a quick step toward Khamwas, past a servant whose reaching hand halted when the child and the child's words stopped at Tabubu's glare.
Serpot h
opped back beside Pemu. The boy was as stiff as a soldier being cursed by his superior. Tears rolled down Serpot's cheeks although she tried to hold them back with closed eyelids.
"You see?" Tabubu hissed. "They'll ignore any agreement you make!"
Samlor kept seeing Star rather than Serpot facing Tabubu in blind misery. He wanted to get up and hurl a smirking servant through the window to the crocodile pond beneath. . That would show this bitch what the real power was in,this world where women were only toys for men.
He didn't move though, couldn't move, because Pre had given the cup to another of the servants. Now, as she caressed Samlor with one hand, she rubbed her own groin with the other.
"Tell them they must sign the deed," Tabubu ordered as she dropped it on the little desk the scribe carried. He bore it to the children as he had to Khamwas' brothers. His face showed no more emotion than the paper did.
"Father?" said Pemu. His hands were gripping his thighs as if to keep themselves from being dragged upward toward the waiting brush.
"Don't speak, Pemu," Khamwas said. He lay on the couch with his eyes closed and his fists clenched.
"Tell them they have no inheritance!" Tabubu said. Her voice was chilled steel, but her belly thrust and withdrew rhythmically a few inches from Khamwas' face. "Tell them you have beggared them for life and that they must sign their agreement to what you've done!"
"Da-" Serpot pleaded.
"I can't bear your voice!" Khamwas screamed in sudden anger. "Sign it! Sign it! Don't make me hear your voice!"
"I will do as you order, Father," said Pemu stiffly. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, at the scene and at his father's behavior.
Serpot turned to hide her open blubbering, but a liveried servant stood behind her and she whirled around again. "I can't," she wailed. "I can't write, I can't I can't I can't!"
As Ahwere couldn't write the symbols that would have protected her, thought Samlor.
Pemu wrote his name with the careful certainty of a child who is well taught but as yet lacks the practice which makes the motions instinctive.
Prince Nanefer had been a scribe and a scholar without equal in his time, and he was dead as surely as Ahwere. Samlor wanted to say that to Khamwas, but only a sigh of pleasure escaped when he opened his mouth.
"Your brother will sign your name, child," said the bland scribe. "Just make a mark on the paper."
Serpot could not prevent her eyes from dripping as she took the brush from Pemu, but she dabbed the tip against the paper with queenly disdain which belied her sobs of a moment before.
They were good kids, royal in the best sense of the word, but Samlor hil Samt couldn't move a muscle to help them. He was kneading Pre's breasts. The crocodile hide was coarse against the backs of his hands, while the skin beneath was as smooth as finest silk save for the erect nipples.
"My lady," said the scribe coolly as he returned the document to Tabubu after sealing the new signatures also.
Tabubu sat on the couch, her hips to the curve of Khamwas' lap just as the maid sat with Samlor across the table. Her right hand played with Khamwas' hair while the left gently waved the scroll in his face. Khamwas was trying to pull the woman prone onto the couch with him, but only the dimples in the silk beneath his fingers suggested that she resisted him.
Samlor had expected Pemu and Serpot to be led away. They still stood by the window looking doubtful, frightened-and as resolute as children could be in the face of unspoken threats.
"You've really tried to provide for me, dearest, flower of my life," said Tabubu as she leaned slightly closer to Khamwas. Instead of icy hectoring, her tone was a lover's in the moment following a splendid climax.
"But you can't, you see, darling-" her voice was as soft as the breast which dangled just low enough to brush Khamwas' ear " – so long as the brats are alive. You saw how your brothers hate me. If you were gone, they'd snatch everything away from me and give it to-"
"But they're my children," Khamwas whimpered. His eyes were open, but Tabubu's pendant hung too closely before them for him to be able to focus on it.
"I can give you children," Tabubu murmured, "and I can give you much more."
She leaned still further forward. Samlor thought she was whispering into Khamwas' ear, but instead she was nibbling it. Her tongue was very pink against her teeth for an instant. Then she smiled and purred, "Much more, little flower. Bat first you must kill them."
"Daddy," Serpot cried.
"Silencel" Khamwas shouted back. His face was livid with strain. "I told you to be silent, didn't I?"
"You see how they obey you," said Tabubu, her lips inches from Khamwas' ear. The words drilled through Samlor's brain, but he did not try to move.
"Do the abomination that you demand, then," Khamwas said past the hand that he had thrown over his eyes.
"N-" Samlor stammered, "N-n-"
"No, heart of hearts," said Tabubu. Her hand touched Khamwas' and softly guided it to her quivering breast. The agony of his uncovered expression smoothed to chalky emptiness. "Your man must do it. Otherwise the act will be laid to me. Order him."
"No," said Samlor. He got to his feet, though he could not feel anything below the pulse throbbing in his groin 'Wo."
"You heard her," said Khamwas without emotion. Men in scarlet robes held Pemu and Serpot, but the children refused to demean themselves with vain struggle.
"You can't order me!" Samlor shouted. He had drawn his long dagger. If there had been a servant behind him when he flashed around a fierce glance, the watered steel blade would have disemboweled the man. There was no one.
"Samlor, I beg you," Khamwas whispered. "For our friendship-please. You must understand. .»
Someone did stand behind Samlor now. His motion as he turned seemed as slow as wax melting in the sun. Pre's hands teased open Samlor's sash. She was nude. Her pubic hair had been hennaed to a startling shade of red.
Pre pressed her body against Samlor and kissed him with her whole naked length. "Now. .," she murmured, turning him with her fingertips on his shoulders and the memory of her warmth consuming all choice but obedience to Tabubu's will.
Samlor walked slowly toward the children. He tried to grasp Pemu by the hair, but the boy's head had been shaved to mere fuzz in the fashion of the country. Instead, Samlor closed his hand across the skull with his fingertips on one temple and the pad of his thumb on the other. He turned the boy so that Pemu's tightly-clenched eyes were on him.
The eyelids flew open as Samlor cut the boy's throat from ear to ear. The blade severed all four branches of the carotid artery, bathing both victim and killer in hyphenated spurts of blood. It dripped onto the floor, cratering the lapis lazuli dust and turning it into purple gum.
Pemu's head flopped to the side when the muscles holding it erect were cut, but his eyes were still bright as the servant holding him turned and dropped the dying child out the window. The body splashed in the pool beneath. One, then the other crocodile slammed their jaws on it with a sound like vaults closing. In the room's dead stillness, Samlor could hear the boy's ribs cracking beneath the pressure of ragged yellow teeth.
He looked back at Khamwas. He could feel nothing except Pemu's blood, and that burned like boiling vitrol. "Go on," Khamwas croaked.
Tabubu's dress lay crumpled beside the couch. She wore nothing but the dangling crocodile pendant toward which she drew Khamwas' face.
Samlor turned. His bloody left hand was a claw poised to wrap itself in Serpot's hair and jerk the child's throat up for his blade.
Her face was already lifted to him. Her eyes were glistening with tears, but they were open and her slender throat bobbled as she swallowed a sob.
"Don't you want me?" Pre breathed in Samlor's ear. She was standing behind him, so close that when she lifted herself on her toes the pressure of her body slid Samlor's tunic up on his hips.
He swung the coffin-hilled knife in a short arc that grated on Serpot's neckbone as it tore through everything else, ski
n and flesh and the tough cartilage of her windpipe. Her tongue stuck out in final terror as the force of the blow flung her sideways, against the smiling servant holding her.
A voice in Samlor's mind screamed "Father!" and his eyes flickered with images of Star, not Serpot, being lifted and hurled through the window to the reptiles waiting below.
His dagger clanged to the floor. There was blood everywhere, ropy trails slung from the blade as it cut clear and great pools splashed on the sparkling dust by the child's jugular emptying her life.
Pre's arms were around Samlor. She kissed him, the touch of her lips beneath his ear drawing his face around to meet them.
"Now," she whispered as she drew Samlor down onto the blood and lapis of the floor with her, "take what you have earned, my hero."
He didn't realize he was tearing the strong linen of his tunic until the fabric ripped. He knelt between Pre's thighs and felt her heels encircle him.
As he thrust forward, her grinning mouth opened wider into bestial jaws… a tunnel of blue fire. . into a screaming void that filled the cosmos. .
Samlor was face down on the ground outside the arbor in Khamwas' garden. Khamwas was within, sprawled across
the curved wicker bench in a pose that must have been as painful as the way Samlor's knee pressed a knotted root in the turf.
Samlor had cut the neck off a gourd-two gourds, he saw, when Khamwas sat up. His cock was stuck through the hole, and that hurt also.
"What in the name of heaven are you doing?" demanded Osorkon in amazement. Behind stood the palace children, their game forgotten, and the equally frightened servants who had been watching them. "Are you drunk?"
CHAPTER 29
"COVER YOURSELF, FOR pity's sake," said Osorkon scornfully as he stepped past Samlor to the entrance of the arbor.
Samlor turned toward the wall and tried to blank out the memory of childish faces gaping in amazement at him. The rind was tough enough that the edges scraped as he pulled the gourd off him. That pain helped him-not forget, but at least put aside the shock and embarrassment that made his skin burn all over his body.