the quay. There wasn't much time.
'Akhenaten, you're diverting the revenues of Amun?'
'Of course,' he replied as he waved at their daughters. 'Did I not say I would?'
'I hadn't realized your decision was set.'
Akhenaten looked down at her with a slightly hurt expression. 'After your zeal on my behalf, are you surprised? You said-'
'I have no patience with those who offend you, my husband.'
She was rewarded with a royal smile.
'However-' The royal smile vanished, but she continued. 'However, if you close the workshops, transfer the fields and orchards, divert all the revenues, many will suffer.'
'The priests of Amun have had the benefit of my majesty's patience for years,' Akhenaten snapped. 'They'll have it no longer.'
Here was the test of her diplomacy. 'Of course, husband.But it isn't only a question of the priests. There are the families of the priests.'
'They should have considered that before defying me.'
'Perhaps, but then there are the artisans, the field laborers, the scribes, the-'
'They can work for the Aten.'
'Some, perhaps, but there are only a few Aten temples, and they won't be able to use all the labor of those displaced.' Akhenaten's face was growing stiff with resistance, so she hurried. 'Think of the thousands upon thousands of people who will be cast out, and with them their families and those who served them. Each pr-each worker represents many more who will suffer.'
Akhenaten pulled his arm free and confronted her. 'All must learn the price of defying pharaoh. By the Aten! Never was a pharaoh so disobeyed. That's why I'm building my new city. I need a place of truth, unsullied by the abominations and falsehoods with which Thebes and Memphis are contaminated.'
'This is true, husband, but in withdrawing to the new city, you cause great disruption to those left behind. What will happen to the people of Memphis once pharaoh's patronage is diverted to this place where no city ever was?'
Akhenaten shouted, 'Enough!'
She pressed her lips together, folded her arms across her chest, and met his wrath with her own growing irritation. Tiye would have scolded her, but Nefertiti was disgusted with her husband's callousness. After years of diplomatic maneuvering, her patience was at an end. Pharaoh was the shepherd of his people. It was his divine duty to care for them, not make their lives harder than they already were. Nefertiti's eyes narrowed, and she felt her cheeks redden. Without warning, Akhenaten threw back his head and laughed.
'By the Aten, little wife. You're the only one in all of Egypt who dares glare at me. Come, we mustn't quarrel.' Akhenaten planted a kiss on her hot cheek.
She would have objected to this sudden end to their conversation, but the barge was docking at the royal quay. Allowing Akhenaten to guide her to the gangplank, she eyed him surreptitiously. His manner was excited, cheerful, and something else. She noted his rapid breathing. By the gods, her defiance had excited him.
As she stepped off the gangplank, Nefertiti was mobbed by her daughters. While she greeted each little girl with a kiss, her thoughts chased each other in a furious attempt to assess this new development. Perhaps Tiye had been wrong. If her defiance excited Akhenaten, might she be able to use it as well as her charm and tact to bring him to see reason?
Lifting the naked and chubby Ankhesenpaaten, Nefertiti followed her husband as he made his way toward the royal palace. She gave half her attention to the happy chattering of her two oldest daughters-Merytaten and Meketaten-and pondered this new discovery. Dared she use defiance as a tool? It had served the priests of Amun ill. But she was Akhenaten's queen, whom he called mistress of happiness, fair of face.
Suddenly she remembered the two colossal statues of himself that Akhenaten had recently shown her. Twice normal size, each was a nude, elongated monster with the feminine attributes Akhenaten insisted upon. A narrow, triangular skull supported the pharaonic headcloth and diadem. The eyes were mere slits, separated by a long, thin nose. The only fullness in the face came from the lips, which protruded with a roundness that was blatantly sensual.
Those statues represented confusion to her. Akhenaten had explained their symbolism, but Nefertiti remained unconvinced. As the son of the Aten, Akhenaten was the font of all regeneration; he was both male and female. Well, pharaoh could be anything he wished, she supposed. But to her, those composite stone creatures represented confusion more than anything else. Akhenaten was confusing, and his reactions to defiance unpredictable. Neither his father nor Tiye had made progress with him by argument. Could she?
Nefertiti felt a tug on her ear. Her youngest was playing with one of her heavy gold-and-carnelian earrings. Disentangling tiny fingers from the jewel, Nefertiti handed the child to her nurse and hurried to catch up with Akhenaten and her older daughters. A quick glance over her shoulder showed the glint of the sun off the electrum- tipped poles and gold-encrusted doors of the temple of Amun.
The dying sunlight caused the facade of the pylon gates to burst into flame and then grow dim. Turning away, Nefertiti shivered. Soon her husband would extinguish the brilliant flame of that place. And she was very much afraid that from pharaoh's sacrilege, misery would flow like the waters of Inundation.
Chapter 6
The morning after Kysen looted Dilalu's refuse heap, Meren stood under the small loggia attached to his office on the top floor of his town house. The air was suffused with moisture, a sign of Inundation, for the Nile had swelled over its banks to flood the fields of Egypt and deposit its fertile gift of new soil. It was almost dawn, and he could see silver mist floating above the river. The vapor obscured the east bank except for the tallest palms, but its ephemeral cloud was no barrier to the croak of toads or the occasional bleating of goats.
Meren glanced at the bundle of papyri in his hand, but he was distracted by the sight of Bener striding into the granary court, her household records under her arm. She proceeded to direct his steward in the distribution of grain for the day's baking. A splash from the reflection pool deflected his thoughts. He could see Kysen's young son, Remi, toddling around the edge of the water. The child bent down and slapped the water again, causing a duck to squawk and flap its wings and Meren to smile. Isis scurried from the direction of the women's quarters and scooped the child into her arms with an ineffectual admonishment.
Meren's smile vanished. Isis was still avoiding him. Twice now he had lingered after an early-morning meal in the hope that she would remain behind with him rather than hurry away. He'd spoken kindly to her, had done so for days, without response. Isis, his most beautiful and willful daughter, had lost her pride and seemed filled with shame. Meren had never been blind to Isis's lack of humility, but this bent-necked, cringing remorse gave him pain.
The murmur of voices from his office reminded him of his duties. He hadn't yet had time to do more than receive the reports of the men he'd sent to various offices in search of records from Nefertiti's household. He went inside and collapsed on his chair on the master's dais, the focal point of the long room. Stacks of document cases and rolls of papyrus littered the elegant chamber. They obscured the delicate wall paintings and leaned against slender wooden columns.
All three of his scribes had been diverted from their search for old royal records to pursue two tasks he'd given them. Kaha, the best translator of the wedge-shaped characters used by the Asiatics, sat on the floor in the middle of several small piles of clay tablets, deciphering Dilalu's discarded correspondence. Dedi and Bekenamun, called Bek, strode about the office and dug through the piles of documents strewn over every surface. Most of the records had been borrowed from various government departments like the treasury, the chamberlain's office, and the army. Meren had instructed his scribes to trace the career of the military officer known as Yamen.
It seemed years ago, although it had only been weeks, since Kysen had brought word of the three men suspected of being the mastermind behind Nefertiti's murder-Dilalu, Yamen, and Zulaya. Kysen's account of the fear the names of these men inspired hadn't alarmed Meren until his son told him that even the Greek pirate Othrys
