Persian Rose (White Lotus Book 2)

by Libbie Hawker

  It doesn’t matter anymore, she told herself. Not to me. Her heart had grown wings; it fitted gaily inside her chest. In one stroke, Rhodopis had severed her ties to Egypt, secured her place in Babylon, and put Phanes safely out of her path. She could breathe now—she could sleep easily, laugh honestly with the women of the harem. Karânî had called Rhodopis “sister.” Perhaps she could finally come to think of herself as part of the king’s family. What a deliciously satisfying prospect it was, to find before her a life of freedom and ease, a rich contentment at the end of her long and very strange journey.

  But as she walked, Rhodopis noticed the wide-eyed appreciation, the half-amused awe with which every man and woman regarded her. She could tell by the way they leaned toward her that they longed to speak to her. But even if all they sought to offer were words of congratulation or sympathetic encouragement, Rhodopis realized with a sudden chill that she wanted none of it. A singularly bleak thought had risen, dominating her consciousness, and she knew she would not rest easily after all—not until she could decide with a level head whether this new fear could be safely dismissed, or whether it was indeed worthy of haunting her dreams. Word was already spreading like a brushfire around the palace. Far-flung guards and stewards, maids and servants who had been nowhere near the courtyard seemed to know already that the new Egyptian bride had snubbed the ambassador from her own country, repudiating her father before Cambyses and his entire court. If the take had passed from mouth to ear so quickly, how long would it take for news to reach Amasis and Khedeb-Netjer-Bona? Perhaps it would fly even faster than Turo’s own report. Rhodopis could not rid herself of the sickening fear that somehow the Pharaoh and the chief wife knew already, though of course that was impossible.

  The Pharaoh was bound to find out sooner or later, she thought. It can’t be avoided; you knew that when you stepped forward and spoke. What is it you’re so afraid of?

  A chilling image answered: a man cloaked in blackness, slinking through her bed chamber. A knife in his hand, fearfully sharp and wickedly cold, the blade hungering for Rhodopis’ blood…

  She shuddered, almost breaking into a run as she crossed the garden terrace. There’s no reason to fear. You are exactly where the gods intended you to be—far from Egypt, far from Psamtik, removed even from the Pharaoh’s wrath. Surely there’s nothing Amasis can do to you now. Cambyses will protect you. You are his loyal wife.

  Tears filled her eyes; she wiped the useless things away. She couldn’t ease her fears so simply, it seemed. If only I could truly believe I am safe, she thought morosely. If only I could be sure, for more than a fleeting moment. Then I might have some hope of sleeping through the night.

  A new, fragile hope sprang up in her heart. The goddess Ishtar would defend Rhodopis… wouldn’t she. Hadn’t Rhodopis been as good as her word? She had seized the opportunity the goddess had presented, ingratiating herself in Cambyses’ esteem so completely that no one could doubt her loyalty to the king, to Babylon itself.

  But when had gods dealt fairly with men… or women? And who was Rhodopis to Ishtar? A stranger, a bit of foreign refuse blown to Babylon on a stray wind. She was no one—no one at all.

  Rhodopis shut herself inside her apartment and threw herself face-down across the bed.

  “Mistress, are you well?” Amtes said.

  “Yes,” Rhodopis muttered into one of her cushions. “Only a headache from the heat.”

  “Shall I send for iced juice? Or milk?”

  “No, no,” Rhodopis said weakly. “I need only rest, Amtes. I will sleep a while, and then I’ll feel better.”

  “If you’re certain you need nothing… I was going to bathe in the outdoor pool. This is the time of day when some of the servant women use the pool, and I thought I might try it. But if you aren’t well—”

  Rhodopis looked up at her handmaid with what she hoped was a convincing smile. “Go on; enjoy yourself. I will be fine. My headache will clear soon; it’s not severe.” And truly, no Egyptian assassin is likely to descend on me in the next hour.

  Amtes frowned skeptically. “I’ll bring you food first. Then I’ll go.”

  “I don’t want any food, dear one. I couldn’t eat a bite.”

  “You should try, at least. You look pale—a bit wilty.”

  “Bring me wine, then. It may help the pain in my temples.”

  “It may make the pain worse,” Amtes said sensibly.

  “I’ll take that chance.” I seem to enjoy taking chances of late.

  When Amtes had departed, Rhodopis rolled onto her back with a disconsolate sigh. She lay staring up at the lime-white ceiling, blinking back tears, trying to order her thoughts. She had been so happy only minutes before, so joyfully assured that her oppression was at its end. Why this dragging weight of fear? Was it a sign? Perhaps her work was not yet finished—perhaps her journey had not reached its end, after all. Seems as if it’ll never stop, she thought, fighting the storm of sobs that was building in her throat. Soon as I think I’m safe, and can finally be happy, the gods drag me off to some new, terrible fate. Would they never cease to play with her?

  Surely the gods owed Rhodopis some respite from the endless danger, the harrowing intrigues. Hadn’t she been obedient to both gods and men, from her first days in Egypt? When had she ever failed any master, whether mortal or divine? Surely justice was the least reward she could expect.

  Surely the gods must protect me—Ishtar, or any other. Surely Cambyses must defend me, too.

  Then why this strange, diffuse fear that still haunted her, clinging like a spider’s web to her every thought and decision?

  Amtes returned from the kitchen with a platter of food. She laid it on the table near Rhodopis’ couch. “Roasted pumpkin and preserved figs,” she said, brisk and business-like. “Under this clay dome, you’ll find a fowl crusted with honey and nuts, and roasted on a spit. Don’t ask me what sort of bird it is; it’s small but it looks plump enough. I stole it from the fire before Faidyme could take it.”

  Rhodopis groaned. “That’s entirely too much food, Amtes.”

  “Eat as much as you can, all the same. I won’t have you withering up and perishing on my watch.”

  “Very well, if it will make you happy. Did you bring any wine?”

  Amtes moved her shawl aside, exposing a leather skin slung by its strap over one shoulder. It looked heavy and full.

  Rhodopis sat up eagerly. “Wine first. Then I’ll eat.”

  “It would be wiser to get food in your belly before the wine. You don’t want it going to your head just now, do you?”

  “I promise I’ll eat, Mother,” Rhodopis said. “Now go and enjoy your bath. The harem ladies will take over the pool again soon; you’ll miss your chance.”

  With one last hesitant look at her mistress, Amtes slipped away. Rhodopis took a long swallow of the wine, and then another. It was sharp and tangy—strong, too, filling her stomach with a pleasant warmth that spread along her veins. A semblance of calm returned to her fevered mind. Rhodopis drank again, slowing her thoughts as she rolled the flavorful wine in her mouth. She swallowed it down only after a long, savory interval. As the warmth inside he redoubled, she thought darkly of the gods—of Ishtar, the Lady of Victory, the stranger-goddess who had answered her prayer when no other god would. Yet I know nothing about Ishtar. I cannot trust her—can I?—any more than I could trust that ambassador or a stranger in a market square.

  A rap on her door pulled Rhodopis abruptly from the bleak reverie. She tensed. Who could it be? Certainly, Amtes would never have knocked. If it were one of the harem women, come to crow with approval over Rhodopis’ display of loyalty in the courtyard, then she would be shouting already through the door, laughing and cheering. She would not remain silent; her unseen presence would not fill Rhodopis with the dread of a creature hunted.

  Anger at the intrusion, and at the gods’ unwelcome manipulations, surged up inside her. Rhodopis rose from her bed and crossed the room, never pausing to ask who was se
eking admittance. She felt reckless and defiant, and piqued by the wine. If somehow Amasis had already sent an assassin—and if the assassin had won his way past Cambyses’ guards—then let him do his task. Rhodopis was in the gods’ hands, it seemed, subject to their strange whims, whether it pleased her or not. She could do nothing to direct her fate, nothing to forestall her doom.

  It occurred to her as she laid her hand upon the bronze latch that an assassin would never have knocked, either.

  When she wrenched the door open, Rhodopis was not surprised to find Phanes standing on the other side. He said nothing, only gazed at her with silent expectation. As before, he held his lamp on its slender iron stick, but the flame was not yet lit, for sunset was still an hour away. Rhodopis glanced down at the lamp, swinging gently on its three fine chains, then back to the physician’s hard eyes. Evidently Phanes expected to remain with Rhodopis until after dark. She stood in obstinate silence, determined to force Phanes to speak first.

  “We must talk,” Phanes said quietly. “This cannot go on.” His manner was not accusatory, not challenging. In fact, there was something almost pleading in his voice.

  “I will listen to you, if you wish.” Rhodopis stepped back, allowing him inside her chamber. “But I can’t promise I’ll say anything in return.”

  He ducked his head, an unironic acknowledgment of her cooperation. “Thank you. Is your handmaid in?”

  “She has gone to the bathing pool.”

  Phanes nodded. He set his lamp on the table, just as he had done the last time he’d appeared in her chamber. He turned to face Rhodopis with arms tightly folded beneath his gold-fringed shawl. “You showed great loyalty to the king,” he said, “even in the face of serious risk to your own person. Word will reach Amasis—you must know that, surely. You will never be allowed to return to Egypt.”

  Rhodopis shrugged. “I have just been thinking the same.”

  Phanes smiled, a sly, approving expression. “I knew you were hiding a secret, Lady Nitetis, but I did not think you were a party to the cause.”

  Something prickled inside Rhodopis, running its sudden fire up her spine. Mingled fear and sudden, intense interest. “Party to the cause? What cause? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “I mean to say… you are no longer loyal to Amasis. You made that much clear.”

  “I never was loyal to Amasis. Not truly.”

  Phanes lifted his brows, slowly, coolly. “Not loyal to your own father? That is strange, for a King’s Daughter of Egypt.”

  Rhodopis drifted to her silk-covered couch and sat with a careless air. She spooned up a preserved fig and chewed it slowly, watching Phanes in stubborn silence… waiting.

  “You are too shrewd to speak further, I see,” the physician said. “That is wise. Wisdom is a rare trait in a person so young.”

  Still Rhodopis waited. Let Phanes flatter all he pleased; she would not be moved.

  His shoulders drooped a little; he nodded again, pensively, as if settling some internal argument that had raged within for a long time. Phanes sighed, and looked at Rhodopis with a mood of surrender. “My lady, I will make one final offering of peace and trust between us. Will you allow me to sit?”

  “Certainly,” Rhodopis said.

  Phanes sank onto a chair opposite her table. Rhodopis pushed the platter toward him, but he raised a hand, refusing the food.

  “What I tell you now,” he said quietly, “I tell you at great risk to my own life and safety. I have no reason to trust you, Nitetis—indeed, I do not trust you, for I can tell you are not what you seem to be… what you try to seem. But you risked yourself today, to stand in loyalty with Haxamanishiya and Cambyses. I can at least attempt to act as bravely as you have done. Perhaps if I risk myself yet again—further than I already have—it will be enough to win your trust. And your cooperation.”

  Phanes paused. He stared down at the floor for a long moment, but his eyes seemed to see through everything—carpet and stone, place and time, as he searched memory and knowledge for the right words to move Rhodopis, to goad her toward his mysterious purpose. After a long silence, he looked up again and spoke.

  “Ever since Amasis expelled me from Egypt, and separated me from my wife and sons, I have felt a deep, terrible longing to bring his kingdom down… to destroy the Egypt that exists now, and restore my homeland to its former glory. To bring back Kmet, righteous and true—the Kmet my parents loved, and their parents before them. This is what I have worked for, silently and in the shadows, since I first came here to Babylon and entered Cambyses’ service.”

  Rhodopis sat up straight, leaning to the edge of her couch. That strange, fiery flush had returned, filling her with a shivering energy, half curiosity, half fear. There was such directness and force in Phanes’ words, she felt instinctively that they were true. “Why tell me this?” She felt like a skittish horse, ready to leap up and bolt at the next breath of danger.

  “Today you turned your back on Egypt—quite literally. I saw you do it. That makes us allies, Nitetis, whether you realize it or not. We are fighting on the same side.”

  She clenched her teeth for a moment, but forced herself to speak. “That’s where you’re mistaken, Good Man. I am on my own side. I care for myself, and I fight no one—long as I can manage to stay out of a fight, at least.” She fell silent, swallowing down her anxiety and the loss of control that had come with it—the country speech that threatened to come bursting forth, and her youthful need for protection, deliverance from danger. She was on her own, and no mistaking it. She added grimly, “I’ve learned better than to trust anyone who claims to be my friend.”

  Phanes leaned back in the chair, a simple acceptance of her position and clarity. Yet despite that acceptance, he pressed on. “The world is poised just now in a delicate balance. I’m sure you are aware—clever girl that you are—that only three great powers remain: Egypt, Greece, and Persia. Egypt is weakened, ready to topple—that will come as no surprise to you—and Cambyses is ready to sweep in, to salvage what remains of its former glory, and use Egypt to further his own ambitions.”

  Rhodopis tossed her head; the dyed-black braid of her hair slid from her shoulder. “What do I care? Cambyses is not a bad man. In fact, he’s a good deal better than some men I’ve met. He’ll rule just as well as any king, I reckon, and better than most.”

  Phanes blinked in surprise at the slip of her tongue; Rhodopis blushed. Her uncultured ways were emerging too fast for her to conceal them; the excitement and uncertainty of the moment was getting the better of her. You must slow down, she told herself. Think more carefully before you speak.

  “Indeed, he will rule well,” Phanes said, pretending he hadn’t noticed the momentary disintegration of her nobility. “I have great respect for Cambyses. My loyalty to him is real, but even so, I have no wish to see Egypt become Persia. When Amasis falls—as he surely must, sooner or later—”

  “Then his son will be Pharaoh,” Rhodopis said. She dragged those words out reluctantly, and they were bitter in her mouth. She barely hid an involuntary shudder. “His son—Psamtik.”

  “I have a suspicion that the son may be just as dangerous for Egypt as his father has proven to be—though perhaps the dangers Psamtik poses are of a different nature.”

  She couldn’t hide her reaction this time. Rhodopis pulled her shawl tightly around her shoulders, a weak attempt to disguise her uneasiness. “You don’t know how right you are.”

  “Regardless,” Phanes said, “when any Pharaoh falls, whether Amasis or his son, I intend to be at Cambyses’ side. My great work is laid clear before me, ordained by the gods: by working with Cambyses, the fated conqueror, I will restore the Egypt that once was. I will make Kmet whole again.”

  Rhodopis sipped from the win skin, more to calm her cold fear of Psamtik than to soothe a dry throat. But the tartness of the wine perked her up; her curiosity bubbled to the surface. “What do you mean—Egypt as it was? When?”

  “Why, before Amas
is took the throne, of course.” Phanes smiled. “Before his infatuation with Greece began. Shall I tell you what Egypt once was, Lady Nitetis? You are so young; it’s reasonable enough that you wouldn’t know the story, especially if you were raised in a country estate by a Greek nursemaid.” Phanes’ wry tone said he had long since ceased to believe that tale, if he ever had.

  She ignored his pointed words, nodding for him to speak. Phanes offered a seated bow of thanks.

  “Kmet has a long history,” the physician said. “As far back as memory goes, it was a place of equality and freedom. Every man and woman had more than they have at present, even the common people—more work, more wealth, more happiness. To be sure, the noble families and great houses have always existed, but in the times before Amasis reigned, the greater part of their influence was confined to courts and temples. In the cities, in the countryside—wherever ordinary people lived—all people stood equal, and all had plenty.”

  “All equal?” Rhodopis’ smile was rather acrid. “You mean all men stood equal.”

  “No, Nitetis… no. Though you may not believe me now, I swear I speak the truth: in those times, women were equal to men in all things—rights, possessions, freedom. This separation of the sexes, this habit of hiding women away, this relegation of women to separate rooms, separate lives… it is a Greek custom. These things are foreign to Kmet, and yet the separation and degradation of women—and many other Greek customs—are spreading like an illness through the Two Lands. Outsized Greek influence is changing what it means to be Egyptian, taking it all away, piece by piece. Is it any wonder that every street in Egypt boils with unrest? Oh, yes, we have heard all about the riots, even here in Babylon. Amasis has indulged his admiration for Greece at the cost of Kmetu identity. Imagine everything the Kmetu have lost, for the sake of the Pharaoh’s idle interests… especially the women of Kmet.”