Jewel of the Nile

by Tessa Afshar

  She had to tell Natemahar!

  Natemahar would have to report the plot to the queen. He would have to reveal Sesen’s treachery.

  Chariline thought of the twisted scar that marred the handsome face. A sudden vivid recollection made her sit up. In her final letter, Vitruvia had warned that the queen would harm Gemina’s husband for daring to defy her. Was that the Kandake’s mark upon Sesen’s face? The punishment she had bestowed because he had dared to fall in love with Chariline’s mother?

  What kind of retribution would such a woman mete out for outright conspiracy?

  The Kandake would surely put him to a slow and agonizing death.

  Her shoulders drooped. In all likelihood, Sesen was not her father. He was a complete stranger to her. Still, the thought of causing the man’s death left a bad taste in her mouth.

  She bit her lip and laid her head on her folded knees. With the curtain drawn, the windowless alcove had grown pitch black. Thick dust pressed into her lungs, making it hard to breathe.

  Two lives were at stake, and Chariline only had the power to save one. The queen or Sesen. Which one more deserved her help?

  It occurred to her that she still had four months to decide. The Kandake’s life was in no immediate danger. Sesen’s plan would not go into effect until summer. Anything could happen during that time. Perhaps, one day soon, she might even be able to convince Sesen to deviate from this violent course.

  For now, she would hold her peace. Tell no one what she had heard. Not even Natemahar. Especially not Natemahar! He would never keep such a grave secret from his monarch.

  She heard the creeping of a door and realized the men were leaving. Holding her breath, she waited until their steps had passed the alcove. Scampering to the edge of the curtain, she drew it aside enough to peek into the hallway. Sesen turned just then, a smooth revolution of his head, and Chariline pulled away hastily. Too late, she noticed the tips of her toes sticking out beneath the curtain and scooted them inside.

  She felt certain he had not seen her. In that dark corridor, the tip of a sandal and the gentle twitch of a curtain were not easy to note. Though she had no intention of revealing his secret, she did not wish him to know that she possessed it. The last thing she wanted was for the man to feel threatened by her.

  She needed to speak with him privately. Needed to confront him about her birth and uncover what he knew. Even if he was not her father, he certainly held some thread of information, some understanding of her birth that would help her. Making up her mind, she shoved the curtain aside and stepped into the hallway, intending to follow in Sesen’s wake.

  With a hard thump, she ran into a broad chest.

  “Chariline!” Natemahar’s gentle voice emerged, for once not so gentle.

  “What are you doing here?” he lowered his voice but could not cover the tremble in it.

  Chariline might be planning to hide Sesen’s plot from her friend for the time being. But she could never tell him an outright lie. “I came to find my father.”

  Without slowing his steps, Natemahar pulled on her tunic, forcing her to walk with him. “You are leaving. You don’t understand the danger you are in.”

  She tried to dig her heels in. “I am not finished!”

  “You are. You are absolutely finished. How did you find your way in?” By now, they had descended to the ground floor, and Natemahar caught sight of Arkamani, waiting on the landing, his hand clutching the banister. “I might have known,” Natemahar murmured under his breath.

  Catching sight of them, Arkamani’s shoulders relaxed. “I grew worried, honey lady. Where did you go?”

  “Worried, were you?” Natemahar gave the boy a stern look. “Take her home. Straight home, you understand? And if you ever help her sneak into the palace again, I will pluck you like a chicken. Hear me?”

  Arkamani looked crestfallen. “Yes, master. Like a chicken.”

  “But Natemahar . . . ,” Chariline said, trying to find a way to return upstairs in search of Sesen.

  “Not a word,” he instructed, his lips a flat line of displeasure. “Go to the spice seller’s. I will meet you there as soon as I can.”

  To his credit, Natemahar did not let her wait long. He arrived like a thunderstorm, surrounded by black clouds of gloom. “Forgive me, Natemahar,” Chariline said. “I know I have caused you worry. But listen. I think I know who my father is. Or at least someone who knows about my birth.”

  Natemahar dropped onto the box they used as a chair. He dragged in a ragged breath. “Who?”

  “Sesen.”

  “Sesen?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Of course I know him. He is one of the queen’s six treasurers.”

  “He works for you?”

  “He works for the Kandake and Cush. But yes. He answers to me. Why in the world do you think that man is your father, Chariline?”

  “Do you know how he lost his eye? Did the queen punish him? Was he mauled by a lion?”

  Natemahar rolled his eyes. “Try and curb your imagination, will you? More likely, it is the work of an irate husband. He has been known to leave a few of those in his wake. It happened years ago, and Sesen never speaks of it. What has that to do with your father?”

  Chariline leaned forward. “What if the queen blinded him as punishment for marrying my mother?”

  “Now you are worrying me. I hope you have better evidence than an eye patch for thinking the man is your father.”

  “I have.” Chariline told Natemahar everything that had taken place in the palace. Everything save the queen’s assassination plot.

  Natemahar considered her silently for a long moment, his face blank. “You are jumping to conclusions.”

  “I don’t dispute that. Perhaps we are not related. But he knows something. And the only way to ascertain what he knows is to ask him. Which is what I was about to do until you interrupted me.”

  The inky eyes softened. “Why don’t you let me pursue this? I will approach Sesen.”

  “No!” She did not want Natemahar involved. She did not want him connected with Sesen in any secretive way, lest the plot should come to light and Natemahar fall under suspicion. Any clandestine meeting with Sesen could be misunderstood. “I need to do this myself, Natemahar.”

  “You cannot return to the palace. Promise me!”

  Chariline’s lips tightened with exasperation. He wanted to protect her every bit as much as she wished to shield him. Deadlock. “What if I write him a letter instead?”

  “Letters can fall into the wrong hands.”

  “What do you want from me, Natemahar?” She leaned forward, her eyes level with his. “I am not giving up. This is my only chance to find my father. You can help me or not. But you will not stop me.”

  Natemahar rubbed a hand over his short hair. “It goes against my better judgment, but I will avail you of what assistance I can.”

  “Thank you, Natemahar!” Chariline gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. “You are the best of friends.”

  He gave her a pained smile. “We shall see. Here is what I can tell you: the day after tomorrow, Sesen has an audience with the king. You can approach him then, on the road between the palaces. Hand him your letter. Write it now, and I will help you. Do not, I pray, spill out too much information. You are the daughter of the Roman official in Cush, and Sesen is a courtier. If he is not your father, he will try to use you as a pawn, if he can, to gain power through Rome. The interest he displayed in you would surely not be altruistic. So word your letter with care, my dear. Else you will hand him a weapon against you and your household.”

  Chariline frowned. “I had not thought of that.”

  “Think of it now.”

  CHAPTER 8

  For behold, they lie in wait for my life;

  fierce men stir up strife against me.

  PSALM 59:3

  Chariline waited in the shadow of a palm tree, her carefully penned letter clutched in one hand. She stood close enough to the quee
n’s palace to have a clear view of those who traveled through its main gate. Rivulets of sweat trickled down her back in spite of the majestic cover of the palm fronds.

  Chariline’s heart picked up speed when she saw Sesen emerge alone, his gait swift. Before she could lose her nerve, she forced her feet into motion and approached him softly.

  At the sight of her, Sesen froze, the planes of his angular face growing taut. His arm, midswing, dropped as though it weighed too much.

  Words hitched in Chariline’s throat. She had so many questions that they tangled her tongue, rendering her speechless. She was about to stretch out her hand and offer him her letter when a commotion at the gate distracted her.

  Several guards had emerged in perfect formation. Behind them, nimble as a gazelle, the queen strode toward Chariline and Sesen, her white skirts fluttering in the breeze.

  Sesen heard the noise at the same time and, turning his head, spied the queen. The intake of his breath, an abrupt hiss of air that snaked its way into his nostrils, sounded louder than the soldiers’ footfall.

  For an infinitesimal moment, the Kandake’s gaze shifted from Sesen to Chariline and settled on her with unwavering curiosity. Chariline felt that probing inspection down to her toes, like a none-too-friendly sniff from a wolf seeking its next meal. She slid back into the shadows, hiding behind the shelter of a thicket of blooming shrubs.

  She almost wept with frustration when the Kandake joined Sesen, her soldiers forming a hedge about them as they walked to the king’s palace together.

  Her last chance. Her only chance, stolen by the queen.

  It was her final day in Meroë. In the morning, the riverboat would carry her and Aunt Blandina back up the Nile for the last time.

  She had failed to find her father. Grandfather had won, after all.

  Chariline felt choked by a piercing loneliness. For a few days, she had grasped onto hope. Hope that by finding her father, she would finally belong somewhere. Instead, she had found a pile of ashes. The very hope that had sustained and invigorated her since discovering her grandfather’s secret now became a ruthless dagger, twisting in the wound of her solitude.

  Chariline headed for the ancient cemetery north of Meroë. Her mother had obviously spent hours in that place, long enough to create her accurate drawing of the pyramid. It made Chariline feel close to her, somehow, sitting where she had once sat, observing what she had once looked upon with such meticulous attention.

  Entering the silent burial place with heavy steps, Chariline searched for the pyramid in her mother’s sketch. A plethora of pyramids surrounded her, some built on high platforms that elevated them, making them appear taller, others sleek and compact. A few towered above the rest, while several of the older ones showed signs of age, their decaying lime render revealing crumbling brick under their elegant skin.

  Chariline spotted her mother’s pyramid with ease, thanks to her detailed depiction. Sinking on the arid ground in front of the monument, she pulled her knees to her chest and gave vent to a strangled groan. Around her, the pyramids stretched into the air, their eerie, triangular walls an inescapable obstacle from which their occupants could not escape.

  An apt metaphor for her own life.

  Walled in by Grandfather. By the queen. By time. Unable to break through.

  Natemahar had asked God to guide her steps. To give her the desire of her heart. Had God guided her steps to this dead end? Was this his answer? This resounding no?

  Then again, she had not bothered to ask his opinion about any of her recent decisions: her visit to the palace, her letter to Sesen, her plan to spring upon him with no warning. She had simply barreled through, leaping from one idea to the next, allowing her emotions to lead her decisions. Her mind had been tangled in its own storm of plans. Plans that had crashed around her, gaining her nothing.

  Forgive me, Lord. Tell me what to do. Where to go.

  She stared at the pyramid, a shrine to the power of death, to its finality, its implacability and inevitability. This whole monument, its desperate man-created effort to reach into the heavens, to pierce them and somehow ferry its inhabitant into a higher plane, was nothing but a clump of dirt. But there was one who had overcome death. Pierced it as he had been pierced, conquered it as he had been conquered by a brutal cross.

  And the one who wielded that power also loved her.

  She expelled a sigh as she thought of all the walls that surrounded her, the disappointments and impossibilities, the fears and frustrations. Yet none were so high that he could not overcome them.

  Lord. Lord. Lord. She spoke the word again and again and again as an act of surrender. Of acknowledgment. A restoration of her heart to the right order. He was Lord. She was not. And she would stop trying to be.

  Out of nowhere she remembered the lines in Vitruvia’s final letter. Vitruvia had intentionally refrained from mentioning specific names in that letter. Yet she had written as one who knew Gemina’s betrothed. Chariline’s mother had clearly written Vitruvia a great deal about the man she intended to marry. In the enthusiastic river of information, could she have revealed his name?

  Might Vitruvia know his identity? Might she be able to confirm if Sesen was, indeed, her father?

  Chariline felt a sudden certainty that Vitruvia held the answers she sought.

  Better still, Vitruvia would be able to paint a fuller picture of her mother, one even Aunt Blandina was unfamiliar with. Vitruvia knew the story behind her mother’s scandalous marriage. Knew the full scope of her mother’s dreams. Knew of her talent and her vocation.

  Chariline’s heart swelled with hope. Vitruvia could give her a piece of her mother that her family had withheld. Had simply not understood. A piece that had been reborn in Chariline.

  Not Cush, but Rome held the answers she needed. To Rome, then, she must go. To Rome and to Vitruvia. There, she would finally be able to put her past to rest and perhaps even find a new future.

  No one would understand Chariline’s love for architecture quite so well as Vitruvia. Perhaps her mother’s friend would be able to help Chariline pursue her dreams of becoming a fully trained architect. Help her the way she had intended to help Gemina.

  With a surge of wonder, Chariline realized that her recent disappointments had not led to a dead end at all. Rather, they had pointed the way to better things. For the first time in many days, she smiled.

  Pulling the hood of his thin cloak farther over his head, he stepped onto the crowded boat. He had shed his customary panther-skin vest and left behind his favorite long bow and iron-tipped arrows, which marked him as a warrior. Instead, he had contented himself with a long, nasty-looking knife and a deceptively trim dagger.

  His employer had stressed that he was to make things look like an accident. Not too hard, when you were chasing after a slip of a girl. He suppressed a yawn. The money was good. But really, this was beneath him. Give him a good hand-to-hand combat to the death. An oily Roman foot soldier with his short makhaira, looking to gut you like a scaly perch. That seemed more suited to his dignity.

  He shrugged. Work was work. You couldn’t always get what your talents deserved.

  He adjusted his hood, making sure to keep his face hidden in its shadows. The three precise vertical lines that had been carved on his cheeks and forehead as a boy, marking him a warrior, made him stand out on a vessel full of merchants and women.

  She was sitting alone, near the prow, her back pressed into the wooden side, her hands busy drawing something on a piece of papyrus. He had to admit she was a beauty. Pity to snuff out all that youth and loveliness without even having a taste of it.

  He shrugged again. Work was work, he reminded himself. He felt lucky to receive the patronage of such an exalted employee.

  The assignment would be a little more complicated than he had first assumed. Passengers crammed every corner of the riverboat. He would have to pick the right time. Push her over now, and a dozen people might notice. Accidents were not so simple to arrange in a c
rowd. He decided to wait until they had reached the Nile delta, close to the port. Everyone would be distracted, then, getting ready to disembark.

  He settled himself across from the girl where he could watch her movements. A boy approached him, his hands full of round, smooth stones.

  “Game?” the boy said, eyes sparkling.

  “Money?” He had no qualms stripping the boy of his hard-earned coins. Teach him to approach his betters.

  The boy extracted a few coins from a wrinkled leather pouch and set them on the reed deck. “Yours?”

  The warrior had to admire the boy’s nerve. With a smirk, he dropped a few coins between them. They drew lots and the boy won. He began throwing the stones. He was good. The warrior scowled as the boy made it to the second round with ease.

  Too good.

  He snarled a curse under his breath. The boy’s grin widened as he threw two stones into the air, his fingers flashing like lightning.

  He watched helplessly as round after round, the boy made the stones dance in the air, catching them with impossible ease. Something made the hair on his neck rise, an old soldier’s instinct that had saved his life more than once, warning him that someone was watching. He lifted his head fast and caught the girl staring at them, her teeth flashing in a wide smile.

  She was enjoying his defeat at the hands of the skinny boat rat. He would wipe that smile off her face soon enough. It would be a pleasure.

  The boy finished a perfect game, never giving him a chance to play even one round. Collecting the coins he had won, he shoved them into his pouch and gave the warrior a deep bow.

  The girl laughed. “Arkamani, you are incorrigible. Give the man his money.”

  “Won it fair, honey lady. Man to man.”

  The warrior pulled the hood further down his face and crossed his arms across his chest. It hit him wrong that she should defend him. Like he needed the help of that slip of a girl. This whole job stank. The sooner he finished it, the better he would feel.

  He settled down to watch her movements. It was going to be a long few days. Perhaps an opportunity would present itself sooner than the delta, if the gods blessed him.