by T. L. Higley
“Not guilt, Rashidi. Justice.”
The priest smiled, and I ventured closer.
“Yes, justice. Even better.” He frowned. “Come no closer, Hemiunu. Unless you wish to see your woman thrown to the crocodiles right now.”
I saw that he had a knife, perhaps the very one he had been sharpening in the temple, pressed to Neferet’s side. I tried to give her strength with my eyes. She held my gaze and gave a slight nod, as if to signify that she was well.
“What do you want from me, Rashidi?”
The priest pursed his lips. “I want you to die for the evil you have committed.”
“I have committed no evil.”
Even as I said the words, they sounded foolish to me. Leaving Amunet in the marsh. Remaining silent all these years. These acts were evil enough to condemn me when my heart was weighed. And they were only the beginning of a life lived in selfishness and hard-heartedness.
Rashidi laughed and pulled Neferet closer. “Perhaps you deceive her, Grand Vizier. But you do not deceive me.”
“I should not have kept silent, Rashidi. I know that now. Amunet deserved better than that. I regret the secrets. But must more people die because of one’s death?”
“Secrets? You think that’s what this is about, Hemiunu?” Rashidi’s voice rose, and I took several slow steps closer.
“Lies and deception must come to light, it is true,” he said. “But today I avenge her very death, not the lies that followed. Today you will pay for what you did to Amunet. And you will pay in ways you never expected.”
I moved again and Rashidi twisted Neferet away from me.
“Not yet, Hemiunu. Not yet. First, we eat.”
Eat? “What are you talking about, Rashidi?”
The priest indicated a parcel that lay on the grass nearby. “Is that not what you did? You and the other royal whelps? Took your meal here, lay about with no cares at all, then into the marsh for the hunt? So that is what we will do.”
I looked from the priest to Neferet. I was close enough now to see the way her eyes went dark.
“Open it,” Rashidi said.
I went to the parcel and untied it. Inside was a packet of dried fish and some hard bread. Rashidi lowered himself to the ground, taking Neferet with him. He held her against himself as though he loved her, and my stomach twisted.
“Sit down,” he said.
I sat on the grass. The sheathed knife at my belt bit into my skin and reassured me.
“Eat.”
“You have been misled, Rashidi, if you think that I killed Amunet.”
“Eat!” His voice filled the reedy enclosure.
I ripped at the salted fish with my teeth and chewed like an angry jackal.
It was very like that day, sitting here with food and sun with the green smell of the marsh around us. A flock of birds lifted behind Rashidi and Neferet. Their calls took me back.
“This is madness, Rashidi. You must stop now, before another is harmed.”
“Another?” He squeezed Neferet to him. “Do you mean your peasant woman?”
I sneered at him. “You speak to me about titles and birth? Is not all of this about your low birth? That you could not have Amunet?”
Rashidi’s upper lip twitched. “Do not forget I was educated at the palace just as you were.”
“Yes, out of pity. Given a place at the princes’ school only because you showed an aptitude with writing that would have been wasted in the fields. But it was not enough to have Amunet.”
Neferet watched me without blinking. Did she fear that I would make Rashidi angry enough to harm her? It was a dangerous game, but I had to take the upper hand.
“It was you and your friends who made it impossible,” he spat. “All of you who convinced her that I was worthless.”
“She had the eye of the prince of the blood. Why would she want a weasel of a priest in training?”
Rashidi jumped to his feet then wrapped his fingers around Neferet’s upper arm and dragged her upright.
“All these years,” he said. “All these years I believed that the prince—Khufu—was the one who killed her. I insisted back then that Sneferu hold his son responsible. He silenced me, then made me a priest of On to ensure I would remain so. I did my best to serve the gods and to forget.”
“You should have stayed in On.”
“How could I? There was no life for me there. You made certain of that, with your whisperings in Khufu’s ear. When I learned that you were also responsible for the death of Amunet, I could forget no longer.”
I threw the fish aside and closed the gap between us. “You are wrong, Rashidi. I did not kill Amunet. Someone has lied to you.”
He laughed. “Oh? Your own brother? Would he lie to accuse you?”
“Why would Ahmose say such a thing?”
“Because he could no longer contain his guilt. When I spoke to him about the king’s decision to move the center of worship, Ahmose confessed to me that it was in fact you who were responsible. The same man who murdered Amunet.”
“And so you decided to take your revenge?” I shifted my position, hoping Rashidi would not notice.
He wrapped an arm around the front of Neferet’s shoulders and pulled her against his chest, the knife at her throat now.
“You still have no idea what is happening here, Hemiunu.”
“Then tell me.”
“Yes, it was time for you to pay. Do you know what I am going to do, Hemi?”
I said nothing.
“I am going to slowly cut this woman open until you confess to me what you did to Amunet. Then I will end her pain quickly.” Rashidi recited his plan like it was an incantation, and all the light seemed to have gone out of his eyes. “When she is dead, I will take you out with me to the water’s edge, and you will watch me feed her to the crocodiles just as you once did to Amunet. When you have seen that she will not pass to the afterlife, then I shall kill you too.”
I ran toward the two of them, but Rashidi held the knife to Neferet’s throat and screamed, “Stop!”
I stopped.
“If you move again, Hemiunu, I will cut her throat open right now.” He wrapped a hand over her mouth.
I held up two hands, palms out. “Priest of the great god, Ra,” I said. “Think of the afterlife. Think of your own heart, weighed against the feather. You do not want to do this evil.”
“Tell me what you did to Amunet.”
The tip of his knife angled toward Neferet’s delicate throat, then traced a path along it. A thin red line chased the tip of the knife. Neferet’s eyes went wide as the pain reached her consciousness. I saw the blood drip down her graceful neck to caress the pounding hollow of her throat, then continue down to the edge of her white dress, like a grotesque distortion of the red embroidery she often stitched into her clothes. I waited for the faintness to rush through me. Instead, I felt only a hardening anger.
“Say it, Hemiunu. Say the words.” Rashidi’s voice had flattened. I wondered how many animals’ throats he had cut as priest. If he ever felt pity.
He would kill Neferet. I knew it. This was no idle threat, no trickery to bring me to a confession. He would kill her and I would never know what could have been. She could have saved me, I knew. She and her One God. Why had I not seen it before?
I still held my hands out to him. “What do you want to hear, Rashidi?”
“The truth.”
I think not.
“That you lured Amunet out here into the marsh. That you killed her here, then left her body to the water beasts to ensure that she would not join the gods.”
This was the truth Rashidi wanted. This was truth for him, but that did not make it true.
Neferet swayed on her feet. I thought of the first time I had seen her, swaying to her own music in her kitchen. Rashidi held her upright, his hand still gripping her mouth. I watched her eyes, the way they danced even now.
I could not rush at him, even with the knife at my belt. He would cut her
deeply before I’d moved three steps. Her only chance was to get away from him, to give me more time.
I caught her attention with my own eyes. “I am sorry, Neferet,” I said softly, forcing them both to focus on the soothing cadence of my voice. “Sorry that I could not be the man you wanted. I am sorry that I will never dance with you.” My eyes bore into hers. “Even now,” I said. “I would like to see you dance again.”
She understood.
I brought my hand to my waist, slowly. Slowly. Then the slightest of nods to her.
In a movement so fluid, so graceful it seemed borne of the wind and the water, Neferet twisted away from the knife and Rashidi’s hand on her mouth, dipped her head through the crook of his arm, spun her body to the left, ducked under his swinging knife hand, and slammed her forearm against his, sending the knife spinning through the air. I admired all of this with part of my conscious mind, even the way her hair swung away as she spun. And I ran at Rashidi with my own knife in my fist and a cry of fury on my lips.
Rashidi reacted with the litheness of a panther. He grabbed Neferet and shoved her toward me.
I had no time to shift direction.
With horror, I felt my knife meet resistance, then slip into flesh.
Neferet fell against me, her breath warm on my neck.
I pulled her away, a desperate prayer seeping from me.
My knife had penetrated the fleshy part of her upper arm. She looked at it as though from a great distance, then slowly wrapped her fingers around the wound and stared up at me.
“Go,” she croaked. “Go and get the priest.”
With reluctance, I let her go.
The priest had disappeared into the reeds.
I heard the splash of something hitting the water but knew not whether it was man or beast.
Bloody knife still in my hand, I ran into the parted reeds.
The thought of Neferet’s eyes, the way the blood ran on her neck, fueled a rage in me like I had never known. I hacked at the reeds with my knife as I ran. Wished that Rashidi would appear so I could hack at him.
Perhaps I am a murderer at heart, I thought. But I did not care. He had threatened to take her from me. He had taken Merit. And Mentu. No more.
I ran on. No more.
Rashidi’s flight through the marsh was simple to track. Broken reeds, crushed undergrowth, muddy footprints at the water’s edge. I pounded on, back the way I had poled through the marsh in my stolen boat.
It felt good to give chase, to have a focus for my hatred after all this time of chasing the wind. A face for the Scourge of Anubis at last.
Ahead more birds squawked and beat their way out of the reeds into the air. I thought the priest must have startled them out. But then a throw stick hurled through the sky and knocked one of the geese from its hurried flight.
Hunters nearby.
A renewed urgency hit me. I could not allow Rashidi to find another victim to use as a shield.
And then I saw him. The slight build, running ahead of me. His head and back glowed with sweat, and mud licked the back of his legs. He must have heard me. His head pivoted over his shoulder, and his eyes found mine.
It was a mistake. His feet faltered in the mud and growth. His frantic flight carried him forward, even as his feet lost purchase.
I was on him in an instant. I rolled him onto his back and straddled him, my knife at his throat.
“Finish it, then,” he said, his lips white. “Finish it here in the marsh, where it began. I died that day anyway.”
There was raw pain in his voice, even after all these years, and I saw for the first time how he had been a victim too. Egypt would withhold from him the woman he loved, would not give him justice for her death, would not even allow him the peace of the priestly life he had chosen.
My pity was ill-timed. Rashidi was not as resigned to his fate as I imagined. He must have sensed my faltering resolve.
His sinewy body twisted under me. He brought his forearms up hard to break my grip. The impact knocked the knife from my loosened fingers, and its point lodged in the mud at the water’s edge, a few cubits away.
Rashidi fought to reverse our positions, a strange laugh gurgling in his throat. “Your brother was right,” he said and shoved my shoulder into the mud. “You are far too weak for the role you’ve been given.”
I saw him rise above me, knew he would go for the knife.
The many years of my brother’s enmity now hardened to a solid thing in my chest, turned my fists to stone, and ground away any pity I had left.
In a blur of hatred, we went at each other, until I again straddled the smaller man and gave vent to my wrath, pounding my knuckles against his face in one glorious strike after another.
The priest’s eyes blinked. Then fluttered. Then closed. Finally, my rage spent, I stopped and breathed.
We were alone in the marsh still. No hunters happened by.
There was no one to witness how this would end.
I pulled myself off the priest’s unconscious form, crawled to the edge of the water, and retrieved my knife. My chest heaved and my throat closed, as though I had drunk my fill of marsh water.
I stood and tightened my grasp on the knife hilt. I stood over Rashidi’s unconscious form.
Then I went to a clump of papyrus reeds, taller than my head, and sliced a thin one from its root at the base.
I flipped the priest over onto his belly. He moaned but did not resist.
I pinned his legs with my own, then used the reed to lash his wrists together. Back and forth, around, between, under. I twisted the pliable reed around his soft hands and again thought of the lies and secrets that had been buried in this marsh. Finally, they were coming to an end.
Rashidi was fully conscious now and flopped his head around to remove his face from the mud. I pulled him to his feet and spun him back the way we had come.
A stream of curses called down upon my head flowed from him as though he had practiced them for years. His gods did not answer, and I pushed him ahead of me with no small amusement at the frenzy with which he interceded for my destruction. But the insults and curses soon grew hard to ignore, and I stopped and held my knife to his throat, reminding him who held his life now. “It is not so pleasant to feel like an animal marked for sacrifice, is it Rashidi?”
He said nothing. But there came a crashing through the marsh ahead of us. I pointed the knife in that direction, still standing behind Rashidi, with my other arm wrapped round his shoulder.
Two figures burst through the reeds and drew to a stop.
Ahmose? Khufu?
“Hemi!” Ahmose yelled. “What are you doing?”
“He is going to kill me,” Rashidi said, his voice the whimper of the innocent. “Help me.”
Khufu moved toward me, hand upraised. “Hemi, lower the knife. This man is a priest of the gods. You cannot—”
“You are always ready to think the worst of me, aren’t you, Khufu? After all these years.” I dropped my arm and stepped to Rashidi’s side, retaining my hold on his arm.
Ahmose ran a hand over his head. “Hemi, let the priest go. We can settle this another way.”
“There is nothing to settle, Ahmose. If you would but hear the truth.” I looked at the two of them. “Why are you here? How did you find us?”
“Sen,” Ahmose said. “He showed us Rashidi’s message. We knew you would come to the marsh.”
“Then you know he took Neferet, that he wanted me to follow so he could kill us both.”
Khufu crossed his arms over his muscular chest. “I know only that the two of you have unfinished business.” His voice seemed to bounce around the clearing in which we stood.
Rashidi took advantage of this moment of ambiguity. “Your Majesty, Beloved of Horus, you know that I would do nothing to bring disorder to Egypt. I sought justice alone, for the death of Amunet.”
Khufu’s face passed from stern tyrant to uncertain young man.
I shook Rashidi by the arm. “Ju
stice? You think that the deaths of the others brought justice?”
Rashidi laughed. “You are a fool, Hemiunu. A fool. I—”
A misplaced yet familiar sound buzzed through the marsh. The sound of sliced air, and then the thwump of a target well struck. Rashidi turned his eyes to me, a look of surprise on his features. He lowered his head to examine his chest. An arrow had buried itself there, deep and true.
Ahmose and Khufu shouted and turned together. Behind them, Tamit stood, bowstring still vibrating at her shoulder.
She held there only a moment, then reached for another arrow.
“Tamit, hold!” Khufu yelled. “What are you doing?”
“The arrow was meant for Hemi,” she called. “I will not miss again.” She nocked another and lifted the bow.
Beside me, Rashidi still stared at me. And then the staring eyes clouded with the confusion of death, and his legs failed him. I loosed my grip on his arm. He fell to the ground at my feet.
“No!” It was another voice, from behind Tamit still. She turned, arrow ready.
Neferet held up her hands as a shield. Her left arm was red with blood.
My breath caught in my chest.
“Tamit,” Neferet said. “It was Rashidi who forced me here. To kill me. And to kill Hemi. It was Rashidi. Hemi rescued me.”
Tamit swung her bow back toward me. “That doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “For Hemi killed my sister.” She closed one eye and stilled her posture.
“No!” It was Khufu’s shout this time. “I killed her! I killed Amunet!”
THIRTY-TWO
The marsh quieted at the shout of confession, as though it had waited many years to hear it, and Khufu’s chest heaved as though he had run many miles to tell it.
Tamit’s bow faltered, then lowered. “You?”
He turned to her, the sorrow of a decade in his eyes. “I—it was an accident, Tamit. I swear upon the life of the gods.”
Tamit dropped the bow to her side, and her voice was dry, like desert sand. “How?”
Khufu pressed his fingers into his eyes. When he spoke, it was with the voice of a younger man, one who had not yet ascended the throne of his father.
“She was so lovely. You know that. And Merit.” His voice wavered. “Merit loved another.”