Nefertiti

her latest earrings. What does she need me for?”

“She will always need you.”

“But it isn’t what I want! I don’t need this!” I flung my arm to encompass the heavy woven tapestries and bright ivory lamps. “No.” I shook my head. “She will have to accept it. She will have to convince him.”

Ipu’s face tightened. “Be careful. Think of the general’s position.”

“We will wait until the move is complete. Then I will tell her.”

“And if he is dismissed?”

If he was dismissed, then I would know where I stood in my family.

When Nefertiti returned to Thebes, she was furious. She paced my chamber, kicking at a stray piece of coal from the brazier and enjoying the dark streak it left along the floor. It was Akhenaten’s time with Kiya and he had not come back early, as he usually did.

“He wants to build her a palace,” she seethed.

“So then you will let him,” my father replied. He steadied her with his sharp blue eyes.

“A palace!” She turned. “An entire palace?”

“Let him build her a palace,” my father said. “Who says it has to be in the city?”

Nefertiti’s eyes grew wide. “It could be to the north. It could be outside the city even.”

“But inside the walls,” my father clarified.

“All right. But the walls will be wide,” she warned. She collapsed into a chair and looked into the brazier’s glowing flames. “The army is being sent to Amarna,” she said casually.

My breath caught in my throat. “What? When do they leave?” There was too much haste in my voice, and Nefertiti regarded me suspiciously.

“Tomorrow,” she replied. “As soon as the servants pack, we will leave after them. I don’t trust Panahesi. I want to see that every coin in the treasury is going into the building and not into his pocket.”

“Then Tiye and I will be staying behind in Thebes,” my father said. “We can’t hear petitioners—”

“Dismiss the petitioners! I need you there with me.”

“Impossible. Do you want a nation wealthy enough to build a new city or a nation on the brink of starvation?”

Nefertiti stood up. She wore her crown indoors, even with us, her own family. “Egypt will never be on the brink of starvation. Let the petitioners wait. Let the foreign governments find us in Amarna if they want us so badly.”

My father shook his head and Nefertiti sank ungracefully into the chair.

“Then who will I have?” she bemoaned.

“You’ll have your servants. You’ll have Mutnodjmet.”

She glanced at me. “Did you see the plans for the villas? One will be for you,” she said. “Of course, you’ll spend most of the time in the palace. I’ll need help. Especially now.” She looked down at her belly with tenderness. “Now that a son is on its way.”

My father and I stood up at once and I exclaimed, “You are pregnant?”

Nefertiti lifted her chin proudly. “Two months. I’ve already told mother. Even Akhenaten knows.” She narrowed her eyes. “He can go to Kiya every night of the month, but I am the one who is pregnant with his son. Two children. And all Kiya has given him is one.”

I looked at my father, who said nothing about Kiya, even though I was sure I’d heard whisperings among the servants of how strange it was that since our family had come to court, Kiya had not fallen pregnant again. But my father’s face showed nothing but pleasure.

Senet boards and heavy thrones, cedar tables with dozens of chairs and lamps—all were loaded onto heavily weighted barges that floated north toward the city that wasn’t even a city. I stood and watched Malkata stripped of its most glorious treasures and tried to imagine what my aunt must be feeling, watching the rooms she and her husband had furnished emptied on a young Pharaoh’s whim. She stood with my father on the balcony of the Per Medjat, and they both surveyed the chaos in silence; her blue stare unnerved me.

“You won’t be coming north then, Your Highness?”

“No. I won’t be sleeping in a tent waiting for a palace to be built from the sand. Your father can go.”

I was surprised. “You’ll be coming with us then?” I asked my father.

“Only to see what’s been done so far,” he replied.

“But it’s only been a month.”

“And there are thousands of workers already building. They will have cut the roads and built houses by now.”

“When you have the entire army at your disposal,” my aunt said sharply, “it’s amazing what can be done.”

“And the Hittites?” I asked fearfully.

Tiye glared at my father. “We will simply have to hope our new queen will show my son the wisdom in defending our territories.” It was clear from her tone that she expected no such thing.

Nefertiti has not done what she was supposed to, I thought. Instead of risking her place as Chief Wife to sway Pharaoh, she’s protected it by goading him on. All three of us looked down on Akhenaten, instructing his Nubian guards, and I heard my aunt heave a heavy sigh. I wondered how much of it was regret over choosing Nefertiti as Chief Wife the day she’d come to visit us in Akhmim. She might have chosen any of the palace girls. Even Kiya. My father turned toward me.

“Go,” he suggested. “Go and pack, Mutnodjmet.”

I returned to my chamber and sat on my bed, looking at my windowsill where my little pots of herbs had been. They had been so many places with me. First in Thebes, then Memphis, then back to Thebes, and soon to the desert city of Amarna.

The site that Akhenaten had chosen for his capital was surrounded by hills. There were overhanging cliffs to the north and copper-colored dunes to the south. The Nile ran along the western edge of our new city, where goods from Memphis and Thebes could be brought. In the midst of the endless stretches of sand, a road had been built, big enough to fit three chariots side by side. It was the Royal Road, Nefertiti said, and when it was completed it would run through the center of the entire city. It was a road unlike any ever created, just as this would be a city unlike anything that had ever come before it, a jewel on the east bank of the Nile that would write our family’s name in eternity. “When future generations speak of Amarna,” she vowed, “they will speak of Nefertiti and Akhenaten the Builder.”

The workmen’s village was to the east. As my father had predicted, there were hundreds of workers’ houses already built, and the barracks for the soldiers had been placed at the edge of the city. To the south, the villas of the nobility were being constructed around the beginnings of a palace, and in the midst of it all, surrounded by palms and giant oaks, lay the half-built Temple of Aten. An avenue of sphinxes led to its gates, where my sister would travel by chariot every morning to do obeisance to Aten. Even with the help of the army, I didn’t see how it had all been done.

“How could they have done this in such little time?”

“Look at the construction,” my father said tersely.

I squinted. “Cheap?”

“Mud brick and sandstone talatat. And instead of taking the time to create raised reliefs, they’ve cut them into the rock.”

I turned, holding my robe down in the wind. “And you allowed it?” I asked him.