From the shelter of a persea tree in pharaoh's private garden Meren watched Karoya leave and a pair of royal guards swing shut the carved door in the gate. Surrounded by a high brick wall, the garden was called Delights of Hathor, and it was deserted. As he'd entered, Meren had glimpsed retreating figures as they went through a door concealed behind dense vines. The chief gardener and his assistants, several water carriers, slaves bearing tall fans, women carrying trays-all had been dismissed.
The king would be a while disrobing. The heavy crowns, beard, rings, and jeweled linen overrobe demanded intricate maneuvers to get pharaoh out of them without snagging the royal hair or tangling the beads of a necklace with those sewn on the robe. And each item had to be treated with ceremony by privileged servitors who would be offended if Tutankhamun removed even an earring by himself. This was why the boy often avoided formal robing ceremonies.
Meren wandered over to a stand of sycamores. A delicate pavilion stood in the midst of this small forest, a bright blue, red, and gold jewel amid the dark green foliage. The quarrel with Mugallu would have to be settled. Pharaoh's harsh words could provoke an exchange of insults during which one side or the other would go too far, inciting war before Egypt was ready. Ay was already handling that problem; Meren had his own duties, others tasks, other worries, not the least of which was his own son.
Kysen was daily growing more perceptive. Even a few months ago, Meren could have hidden his anxiety from the boy. Wandering across the garden to a line of imported incense trees, Meren sat on the edge of a clay tub in which a myrrh tree flourished. His wrist itched. He pulled a slender pin from the clasp of a wide gold wristband inscribed with his name and titles, opened the hinged bracelet, and removed it.
He rubbed the white scar on his inner wrist. He could feel the voice of his heart pounding beneath his fingers as he rubbed the skin. Without meaning to, he sank into memories sixteen years old. Then he'd been but eighteen and a prisoner of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. The king had suspected him of adhering to the old gods when pharaoh had thrown them all out in favor of his own deity, the sun disk called the Aten. After killing Meren's father for refusing to adopt the new god, Akhenaten had imprisoned the son and tested him. Beatings, starvation, threats, nothing had broken Meren and made him confess to betraying the king's parvenu god.
Meren could still remember the smell of that shadowed cell where they kept him, a smell composed of dirt, sweat, the coppery scent of blood, and the contents of the sandy hole that served as his chamber pot. Meren pounded his fist against the side of the clay tub, willing himself to abandon this senseless reverie. Yet the images flooded through him as relentlessly as the Nile during Inundation. A burly guard kneeling on his arm while others pinned him to the floor. The white heat of a brazier, a glowing brand in the shape of the sun disk with sticklike rays extending from it and ending in stylized hands.
Then the images became feelings-that brief space between the moment when the brand met his flesh and that first searing agony; the pain shooting up his arm, into his heart; his scream; the feeling of distance, of floating away from his body, even as he broke out in icy sweat.
Then, at last, the nausea that slammed him back into his body and kept him there to endure the pain.
Cursing aloud, Meren pounded his first harder against the tub. The memories of pain faded, but not the misery of humiliation. The sun disk scar began to itch again. Meren glanced down at his wrist, smoothed his fingers over the pale circle that formed the sun, rubbed the rays that marked him as a victim of the heretic. Then he replaced the bracelet.
He should never have taken it off, never touched the scar. The burden of the truth about Nefertiti's death had disturbed memories of that terrible time in his life, memories he'd tried to seal in a deep stone chamber within his ka. But he shouldn't lie to himself. It wasn't just the dangerous secret of Nefertiti's death that robbed him of sleep and heart's peace. It was that other, even more momentous death, the one for which he was responsible. How did one justify allowing a living god, a pharaoh, to be killed?
He had suspected that Ay and his allies were going to end Akhenaten's life. Years of attempts to curb the king's excesses had failed, and Ay had no longer been willing to watch Egypt suffer. This Meren had known, and still he'd let Ay send him away to the Libyan border. When he got back, the heretic was dead, supposedly of the same plague that had taken his queen. And now, every time Meren tracked down a criminal, every time he sat in judgment of a thief, revealed the treachery of a courtier or the guilt of a killer, the dishonesty of his position tortured him.
Someday he would go west, to the netherworld and the Hall of Judgment. There the gods would weigh his heart on the divine balance scale against the feather of Maat- truth, lightness, and order. With such sins burdening his ka, his heart would send the weighing pan crashing to the floor. There the Devouress, Eater of Souls, would snatch it up in her crocodile jaws and sink long, jagged teeth into its meat.
The edge of the tub was biting into his legs. Meren winced and got to his feet. If he didn't watch himself, he would succumb to babbling lunacy. No wonder Kysen was suspicious. During the past few weeks these old memories had come back with increasing frequency. It was as if the heretic's vengeful ka had been aroused by the death of one of the queen's murderers. Perhaps Akhenaten was punishing him by forcing him to find and reveal the truth, so that Meren would invite his own death.
He was relieved that this frightening train of thought was quenched when the gate opened and a youth in a simple kilt strode into the garden. He was followed by two slaves bearing ostrich feather fans, another carrying a tray with a wine flagon and goblets, and several guards. His brows drawn together, mouth set in a tight line, he saw Meren and headed for him. The goblets on the tray clattered. The boy stopped, turned, and hissed at the small crowd behind him. The fan bearers backed away. The wine bearer skittered after them. A command like the snap of a whip sent the guards marching out the gate. Karoya appeared bearing the flagon and goblets, shut the gate, and went to the pavilion.
By this time Meren had reached the boy, who turned from glaring at the gate. Meren sank to his knees and bent to the ground. He heard an exasperated sigh.
'Get up, Meren. Making your obeisance to my majesty won't convince me that you're either biddable or humble.'
'As thy majesty wishes,' Meren said as he rose.
'Things are never as I wish.' Tutankhamun stalked past Meren, between dense beds of cornflowers, mandrake, and poppy to a grove of tamarisk trees. In their midst was an arbor covered with ivy. The pharaoh snatched a water bottle hanging from the arbor in a woven net, poured from it into an alabaster cup from a table, and drank. He thrust the bottle at Meren, who poured himself a cup and drank as well. The king downed another cup of water without pause. When he finished, he was breathing fast and glaring at Meren.
'You're not to scold me,' Tutankhamun snapped. 'I'll get enough from Ay to fill my belly.'
'Thy humble cup bearer would not dare-'
'I remembered you doing that very thing not long ago when I visited you at your country house.'
It was Meren's turn to frown. 'The golden one stole away from his own court, his own vizier and ministers, to sail unescorted to a house where I was trying to conceal the bodies of-'
'Don't!'
Royal irritation vanished, overwhelmed by pain and horror. Tutankhamun's face held the beauty of his mother, the great and powerful Queen Tiye. With it he had inherited her large, dark eyes, heavy-lidded, thick-lashed mirrors of a ka too sensitive for the burdens of a god-king.
Meren waited a moment, giving the boy time to compose himself. 'Forgive me, majesty.'
'I know it's really Akhenaten's fault,' Tutankhamun whispered. 'If he hadn't cast out the old gods, beggared their priests and the thousands who depended on them, he wouldn't have provoked such hatred. He must have done horrible things to provoke the desecration of his tomb, the savaging of his body.'
He couldn't let the boy dwell on such anathema. 'All has been put right, divine one.' He drew closer to the king, who gave him a look of desperation.
'They won't let me return to Thebes for the reburial. Ay says I must remain here to draw everyone's attention.'
'It's the only way, majesty. You trust Maya. If he can manage the royal treasury, he can arrange for thy majesty's brother and his family to be concealed in the Valley of Kings, where no one will disturb them again.'
Tutankhamun sighed again. 'Of course.'
'And only thy majesty can summon the priests of Amun from Thebes to Memphis.'
A grin brightened the king's solemn features. 'The high priest was so furious, he was shaking when he arrived
